To think there should be some kind of national reflection on the pandemic?

[23rdmarch2020]

It’s coming up to three years since the first lockdown. In many ways, it feels an absolute age ago. From personal experience, my life completely changed in the space of a week and so many things happened in my life that never would have because of the pandemic (some good, some bad). For some, it has been an absolute tragedy. In the space of a few weeks we went from being in our normal lives to it being a criminal offence to step outside our homes without a valid excuse. Obviously people are keen to move on but AIBU to think there should be more reflection on the pandemic than there has been?

Well.as nobody was forced to have vaccines and indeed many didn't I doubt very much would have happened if peopp!e said they would only have the vaccine if they had ,housing Ect sorted out .
It's always been a choice .

Not for the care workers it wasnt Why do you think they shut the Job Centres They usually LOVE dragging people down there. They were scared that certain sections of society may use Covid as a weapon. Because thats how they view poorer people. They think they are either thick or criminal or both.

This is essentially meaningless. Nobody is disputing that there exist people who oppose both lockdown and vaccines, you're clearly unable to quantify anything and words like many and very often don't tell us anything.

Why do I need to quantify? This thread is mostly opinions with very little if any quantifying going on by anyone else.

You don't need to, obviously. You can post whatever you want. But the fact that you don't and yet still claim that your vague assertions 'say a lot' speaks for itself. They say nada.

Can you quantify what it demonstrate or are you just making vague assertions too? There's plenty of evidence online that anti-vaxxers, libertarians and conspiracy theorists came together over COVID and they are very annoyed that so many people have moved on.

Your posts and the dictionary definitions of the words you're using do the quantifying very nicely for me. Those words have meanings. And you do it again here with the 'plenty'.

What are you looking at?

It could be the SM you’re looking at.

I don’t see any of this tbh

Yes, SM but you only gave to google to find that the two are often linked.

It sounds like what you’re looking at is influencing your views and vice versa.

If someone doesn’t believe in vaccine it could be they don’t agree with lockdowns.

But I wouldn’t say everyone who saw that restrictions were damaging are anti vaccine. For reasons below.

What I don’t recognise is this idea that a particular group are annoyed people are moving on. That’s what they wanted after all, to move on.

It doesn’t mean no to a review of approach though.

If they wanted to move on then why have they not moved on? Why are they still protesting about the vaccines and/or lockdowns? Arguably the people wanting a national reflection on the pandemic are not moving on either and many of those people seem to be against lockdowns on this thread.

I think you need to switch off whatever SM is filling your feed.

Many of the people who were against both lockdowns and vaccines were really concerned from a civil liberties POV. Which from what I can see hasn't ever really been addressed in any country. The rolling back of civil liberties that went on was insane, and as it stands now it could easily happen again - there is precedent. Whether you are talking about Canada freezing bank accounts of protesters, or NZ denying citizens the most basic of all democratic citizenship rights - the right to enter the country. Not to mention the issues around control of information that became crazy in many international settings.

I voted yanbu because although I did not suffer bereavement, it was terrible for me and my family and we are still feelings by the effects.

DS is autistic with high support needs. All his support systems which took years to fight tooth and nail for disappeared overnight and for many things we are still trying to claw back. He also had a second diagnosis, delayed due to pandemic. He has had no respite for 6 months because his previously wonderful care company we had been with for six years no issues just went downhill and I had to withdraw his package from them due to having so many problems with them. Nothing wrong with the carers they were great but it was very badly managed.

I'm not alone and I know many ND families and disabled people who were adversely affected and still are. Things just continue to get worse.

All of this needs looking into

Yes. We had just raised concerns about potential autism in our toddler when we went into lockdown and we basically got ignored for a year. No one would come and see him, they said they could only assess him over zoom. He was 15 months old 🙄. They said he ‘seems fine’ after 3 mins watching him playing in the background of a zoom call. He’s 4 now and has been diagnosed with ASD.

Excess deaths have been worryingly high for some time now. Often higher than the peak Covid death rate.

The British Heart foundation published a report at the end of last year that found 30,000 people died ‘needlessly’ of heart disease since the start of the pandemic. That’s 230 deaths per week. But because these people weren’t dying from
covid It didn’t matter. We need to analyse this. What about all the missed cases of cancer?? If the death rate of excess deaths of deaths from heart disease, from
missed cancer diagnoses etc far exceeds Covid deaths then there is a big discussion to be had there. Why would you want to brush that under the carpet?

It is really important that we understand the long term impact that lockdowns have so that we can decide if (hopefully not) they are worth using again. Especially in a time of global travel.

It is really important that we understand the long term impact that lockdowns have so that we can decide if (hopefully not) they are worth using again.

Yes. This is absolutely vital. They were brand new in 2020 and we just don't know yet whether they were the best option in terms of harm reduction- I realise they were the only option politically by this time Johnson took the decision. I don't agree with OPs suggestion that a national reflection process is going to be useful though.

No I don’t think we need a national reflection and I understand many people want to move on.

But it’s clear that lots of experts are working away in the background assessing the impact of this in all areas and I expect we’ll keep getting lots of reports through in the coming years.

We don't know that the excess deaths wouldn't have happened without lockdown. Covid infection increases cardiovascular risk. Many people with cancer are are at increased risk from covid too.
Sweden didn't have lockdown and they have had excess deaths too.

It’s definitely complicated (but very worrying) as to why excess deaths are so high. And we don’t have all the information yet. But we do have evidence that many cancer diagnoses were missed and obviously far less people would be going to the doctor and seeking medical help for conditions during a lockdown. It’s just hard to quantify how many.

I hope we have some answers soon.

Not just cancer diagnoses. My OH was due to start chemo the week lockdowns were announced and received a phone call on the morning of his first infusion cancelling it and saying they'd contact him to reschedule.

Days passed, weeks passed, nothing heard from them. After around a month he started chasing them, and left messages (on answerphones and with receptionists), but still heard nothing. After a couple of months his phone calls kept going to answerphone and never answered by a human. He went down to the hospital oncology dept and it was all shuttered and locked in darkness, so he assumed they were still "closed".

A couple of weeks later he phoned the hospital main switchboard and they told him the entire oncology dept had moved to a different hospital across the county border, so he rang there instead, and they couldn't have been more helpful - said he should have been told weeks ago about the location move and to get the treatment started. He got 2 or 3 phone calls back that same afternoon, one from his consultant, another from the nurse specialist, and then an appointments clerk, all basically saying sorry and fitting him in to start his chemo a couple of days later.

Luckily it was in time for him, but 2/3 months without any kind of treatment/monitoring and not even having any contact details was ridiculous and could have easily led to his death. I wonder how many patients who maybe weren't as "on the ball" just carried on waiting, and waiting, etc?

It's nor "filling my head". I have my own opinions. I am just observing. Perhaps you should look outside your bubble. news.sky.com/story/how-covid-conspiracists-and-anti-vaxxers-are-getting-organised-and-making-money-12206707

You do seem stuck on it though at the same time as complaining they’re stuck and not moving on.

Tbh I’m not interested in following it as you are. So I’ll leave you to it.

It will be a very hard question to answer. If we hadn't had a lockdown and hospitals were filled with people with Covid (more than they were) cancer diagnosis and also other diagnosis very probably would have been missed anyway. Many people weren't keen to go to the hospital during the pandemic as the risk of catching COVID was high and would have been even higher without lockdown. Hospitals could have been filled with many of the staff off sick.

I hope so.

It interests me that more people who believe lockdown was the best option and who think it might be needed in the future don't push harder for this, actually. You'd think people who are that certain would be happy to have proof instead of just belief.

After all, as things stand now, if we had another pandemic we wouldn't have another lockdown here, not a successful one anyway. The combination of circumstances that would be needed to make it both viable and accepted don't exist any more. I'm not saying they never will again, if nothing else this government will be out soon and the parliamentary arithmetic is one of the things that would prevent lockdown at present. But multiple things would have to change on a societal and political level, and we've no guarantee they would. Proof that we did go for the lesser of two evils could be very significant.