To think a short, hard, lockdown is better than a soft one dragging on for months?

[PrincessNutNuts]

Would you rather go hard for a shorter duration? (YANBU)
(Stay at home order. Daily exercise outside, only see your bubble, shop as infrequently as you can, work from home if you can, most things closed, schools and universities closed.)

Or have a softer lockdown for longer? YABU)
Unlimited shopping, schools open, Tier 3 rules, I guess.

On a more positive note hopefully we’ll see another way other than calls for continual lock downs

www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-12-17-oxford-vaccine-stimulates-broad-antibody-and-t-cell-functions

[quote rookiemere]@JacobReesMogadishu this is perhaps a stupid question and I apologise in advance if so. Why would having more nurses impact on the number of cases?
I don't disagree that more nurses are generally a good thing, I'm just wondering how specifically it would change the current circumstances? If it's about administering the vaccine, many non medical professionals can be trained up to do that.[/quote]
Not cases, but deaths. We're at the point again where decisions have to be made about who can go to ITU and who can be admitted to hospital at all. And the crucial deciding factor is do we have nurses to look after them? Or not.

@FindHungrySamurai

Baffled by the fact that posters are still running the “lockdowns are pointless because you’re just kicking the can down the road” line.

It was pretty ignorant in September, but now? Do they not read the news at all?

Yeah. Totally ignores the vaccine factor. There's an endgame now.

How stupid would it be to let thousands of British people die unnecessarily during the actual vaccine rollout?!

Neither.
Just vaccinate as fast as possible for those who want it, and just go back to normal.

@EmmanuelleMakro

Neither. Just vaccinate as fast as possible for those who want it, and just go back to normal.

And what about all the avoidable deaths?

The U.K. coronavirus measures have been judged to be on the less stringent side by the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford:

ig.ft.com/coronavirus-lockdowns/

www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2020-04/BSG-WP-2020-032-v5.0.pdf

Lockdowns do not work at stopping the virus so when they are lifted the virus spreads. The only way it would work is to lockdown until enough people are vaccinated but the vaccinations are not being done fast enough so that could take months (possibly all year).

@Lovemusic33

Lockdowns do not work at stopping the virus so when they are lifted the virus spreads. The only way it would work is to lockdown until enough people are vaccinated but the vaccinations are not being done fast enough so that could take months (possibly all year).

This is what they are doing in Israel - they have locked down until their 1.5 million over 60s are vaccinated

Lockdown in March was pretty tough with most of the measures you describe in place. And it wasn't short it was bloody months until the numbers went down.
I don't want another lockdown but am 99% certain it will be announced on 30th December. Dreading it.

It's a combination of things, to get more people vaccinated, try and help the usual winter horror of the NHS....try and avoid infection in the young, keep infection at a manegable rate, get us through winter... To spring when the weather helps, every day we learn more about the virus, how to treat it, how to fight it6

Schools are an impossible situation. You cannot build an entire economy including distribution of essential goods and services on state-funded childcare, and then take that away and expect the whole thing to still function.

Not to mention the drive to "efficiency" in education by having larger schools and bussing children who previously went to small, local schools into these bigger places where there is more mixing, where the kids are in close quarters on busses every day.

It's a system designed for maximum productivity, not resilience of any kind. Much like the health care system itself. This is the product of successive governments, and it's even more than that - this is the case in the majority of western countries, it's the model of global capitalism.

Neither
Zero evidence that restrictions work at all

They did in NZ. Clearly not all countries even have the option of doing what NZ did, but restrictions clearly do work.

Go early (that ship has sailed and the horse long bolted), and go hard.

The UK did neither of those things.

Make the most of citizens who care for their communities as much as they care for themselves. And then, once it’s eradicated, close the borders, test and trace.

That’s not an option for the UK.

But to say ‘restrictions don’t work’ is patent nonsense.

Of course lockdowns work. Look at Melbourne. They accepted very tough restrictions because they cared about each other, and they had an absolute triumph. You just have to want to.

I think people are not really aware of the real picture here, there is a lot of people finding ways round the ‘rules’ and a large amount of non-compliance because people interpret the rules to suit them. So whatever lockdown you have there is no enforcement, we are relying on people being sensible and doing what has been advised. The issue with that is most people have given up or can’t be bothered. There was compliance in April tine and everyone felt they had to do their bit to help and was concerned enough to make sacrifices but aren’t willing to do so now despite the situation being as bad now as it was in April in some parts of the country. It’s too inconvenient for people so they find an accuse not to do it. Schools being open the main reason people give for not following rules when the reality is reducing social contact outside of school will still reduce the spread despite schools being open

Yes, that’s the point. There was compliance, but fatigue has well and truly set in, and you’ll never get the same levels of compliance again, which proves going hard and going early option offers the only chance of success.

Once the ship has sailed though, it’s sailed, and there’s no coming back.

There was compliance in April tine and everyone felt they had to do their bit to help and was concerned enough to make sacrifices but aren’t willing to do so now despite the situation being as bad now as it was in April in some parts of the country. It’s too inconvenient for people so they find an accuse not to do it.

I'm not sure it's inconvenience; I'd attribute it to severely eroded trust in the government. Which way is Barnard Castle, again?

@EssentialHummus if what you read on here is anything then it is about inconvenience “can I go in to a lower tier to do the things I can’t do in my tier?” “We HAD to get together for Christmas” “am I allowed my friend over to babysit” etc etc! Whether you trust the government or not you cannot exactly complain about Cummings breaking the rules (ie barnard castle) if you are doing the same!!

I don’t trust the government but know that social distancing makes sense as does limiting household contact so people can’t blame the government for ignoring common sense

I agree with @EssentialHummus that keeping Dominic Cummings on after Barnard Castle did more damage than anything else. It made me think, sod it, I will bend the rules when it is absolutely clear to me they harm or risk no one else but benefit my family in need. Scummings' behaviour and Boris's reaction shafted public attitude towards lockdown.

life that kind of behaviour may be prevalent or no, I’ve no idea. I haven’t encountered it in my own life. What I’ve noticed is a shift from “we’re all in this together” and obeying the spirit of the law to “What the fuck do they want from us now?” and endless unfavourable comparisons to Aus and NZ. People are weary.

I'm as aesthetic as they come, but I don't understand the love for harsh lockdowns. No for a moment do I believe that "gritting our teeth very hard for a "short" period" is going to lead to less total pain in long run.

You could go Wuhan style & drag all covid+ people to 'hotels' where they either die or get better on their own. You could fine people £10k who are supposed to be self-isolating but popped outdoors for 20 seconds. And you still won't completely suppress the virus.

I think "short sharp lockdown" proponents are thinking that "short sharp lockdown" was all they had in Australia (actually they've had series of long lockdowns in different places), that life is completely normal in Hong Kong or China now (it isn't), that things are easy in South Korea & Japan (those countries are struggling with covid too). Ignores that unlike New Zealand or little Caribbean islands, most of our freight isn't unaccompanied and UK is not food sufficient, so we can't viably keep everyone else out forever.

What we need is month long heavy snow with schools closed and almost inaccessible supermarkets

It seems when you look across the globe at the countries that have regained control the hard lockdown do seem to have taken affect. They werent short though. They long and tough. I don't think Brits would have ever tolerated such strict lockdown but definitely not now.
I don't think there was ever the apetite here, even before apathy set in, for a harsh lockdown. Every man and his dog seemed to have special reasons why our first lockdown was too harsh for them/ didn't take account of their isdues/needs.
We're so far down the road now and our country is one of the worst affected in the world i dont know what the answer is.
Personally I'm on my knees struggling with our current restrictions. I'm in Wales and so pissed off at our expotential rates of infection despite living under restrictions for so long. Ive not seen anyone in my extended family since September, an only had an odd walk with a local friend.

One of the things that makes me quite angry about this is my friend works at an airport and right up to the date of the first lockdown- when it was known already where the hotspots were - planes were coming in from Wuhan and Italy and I believe there were still a number of flights coming in over lockdown with no quarantine instructions at the time.

Still the case now that the quarantine period is more or less voluntary. Yet in Australia people have to pay for their own quarantine in a hotel which I think is fair enough.

I think a large part of the problem with compliance at the moment is the constantly changing rules. It takes a fair bit of effort to work out exactly what the rules are this week, and a lot of people are not keeping up. I would like to see a more clear framework of rules, that people actually have a hope of understanding and complying with.