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?

And just to note: it seems to me like you guys in the UK are doing a little better than we are in Canada at looking back and analyzing things. You still will not see anything like this published in the mainstream media here.

No, my Dad had to die alone in a care home (on the day that Johnson held his garden party), and the guilt of not being able to be there, at the end, tore me up.🙁. I hated having to do a silly little funeral, all sitting apart.

I resented being told to shield (I didn't, I just followed the general rules), and I resented the oppressive atmosphere of neighbours policing people, the police going barmy at times with their new powers, and all the rest of it. And I missed seeing the family.

But, it's done, and after Partygate, I don't imagine anyone would allow themselves to be locked down again.🙄

Time to move on now.

Interesting how so many are now anti lockdown.

even arch bedwetter-in-chief Rachael Johnson who demanded that alcohol be banned as it encourages people not to socially distance, now claims to have been anti lockdown all the time.

just wish more of you had had the courage to speak up at the time but many were calling for even harsher lockdowns and calling those of us who protested ‘granny killers’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’.

I guess we are all anti lockdowners now.

What makes you think people have changed their mind? There were many people on MN against lockdown at the time and they are probably the ones saying they are against it now. I personally wasn't anti lockdown and still am not although some of the rules were draconian/ridiculous (but I thought that at the time too so haven't changed my mind)

We went to Sweden a fair few times in 2021 and 2022 because we were living in Copenhagen. I thought from the start their approach made more sense, although they too got it wrong initially with care homes and elderly. Thing is with Sweden I find them a very pragmatic and thoughtful people (certainly the ones I've met) and they are shit hot on science . The idea though that everyone was out and about as normal isn't quite right - places were certainly not in full flow, but more personal choice was in the mix- along with support . If I dare say it though I think on the whole they are a healthier population and I saw far fewer feral idiots about - it does have some problems that have been reported but having been there it seems very contained within certain areas-

Yea Sweden have completed their review and their main failings were not protecting the care homes and that has been admitted.

I think people over there were given the information and then made their own decisions based on personal risk. So vulnerable, elderly people probably wouldn’t have been out and about. Lots of people would have worked from home. But they kept children in school. They considered the mental health impact of lockdowns (especially on the young . They considered the economic impact.

I thought three weeks to take stock of where we were seemed sensible.
I did not expect to suddenly be cut off from family and friends. I expected things outdoors to continue and people to work from home where possible. I didn't expect partners who didn't live together being unable to spend any time together. What we got went above and beyond what I imagined and possibly what lots of people imagined.

It's been an eye opener on investigating people's assertions that we didn't have a plan, to see that we did in fact have a long standing plan for a virus that would be caught in a short space of time by 50 percent of the population and that had a fatality rate of up to 2.5 percent.
Why were we never told about the plan? Why were disaster planners screaming into a heavily censored void that we had a plan?
It was clear in the early days, the Diamond Princess being an excellent closed model what we were dealing with. Even in a population that was elderly and likely had more co-morbidities we didn't have anything like as worrying as what had been planned for. We also quickly knew more about demographics, age groups etc. So why did the plan go out the window?

I think the UK handled covid pretty badly but I do accept that every country was making it up as they went along. As far as lockdowns go I think there's a bit of a suvivorship bias going on right now that sweeps way too many counterfactuals (ie. how bad it would have been if there weren't restrictions) under the rug. But that doesn't mean some weren't still over the top.

There's no doubt if something like covid happens again that lockdowns won't be as severe or long-lasting. It'd be politically impossible and we simply couldn't afford it. But they were popular at the time, and stayed suprisingly popular until they stopped.

This sounds better to me.

re lockdowns being popular in pp yes it’s no surprise as the campaigning was heavily skewed towards fear response. It was not indicating damage from restrictions.

It was highly effective but whether it was the right approach is the question.

Yes people were basing their support of lockdowns on the fear-mongering and false modelling from the government.

People were terrified! Washing shopping, barely leaving the house. Where did that fear come from? The government.

Yes -BMJ "The UK government’s attempt to frighten people into covid protective behaviours was at odds with its scientific advice"

https://www.bmj.com/content/380/bmj.p652

Except at least two of the authors seem to have forgotten they were on the advisory boards

Many worlplaces closed days before the government mandated lockdown. The fear was there already. Then the death count kept being terrible for months.

My memory of it all was a general resignation, not fear. Most people intially found it novel, then boring. Then annoying.

I’ve been around some behaviour change stuff and found it interesting. The success of the Covid campaign was incredible to me, the daily case number and death count was hugely effective.

I can’t think of another behaviour change programme that has been so impactful on people.

There are downsides to this though. We overlooked the damage and it went on too long to be the right approach.

New York times 21st March 23

"We now know that the extra cleaning was unlikely to have helped limit the spread of Covid-19, but it did increase people’s exposure to the chemicals used in those products — some of which may be hazardous to health. Experts worry that repeated inhalation or skin contact can be harmful over time. Calls to poison control centers about cleaning chemicals also increased during the pandemic, primarily for accidental or intentional ingestion."

Goes on to mention cancer, asthma and infertility.

Politics.

Which to be fair is the reason for every single decision made during the pandemic, implementing restrictions and lifting them, the ones people liked and the ones they didn't. It was all political.

Although we didn’t have much of a chance to make informed decisions

Belted at with fear tactics. If it had been ok here’s your personal risk, the damage of removing dc from school or closing sectors, the economic repercussions what do you want to happen

The public demand would have changed

I agree with most of the points in this article.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/23/covid-britain-locked-down-three-years-trauma

We didn't, and I think it's a significant failing that we never had a government or really any leading politicians of any stripe who were willing to say to the public, these lockdowns that are being implemented in some other countries are utterly untested, we know they carry substantial risks in themselves and we have existing pandemic planning already which this very much is not.

That said, I think there were influences way beyond the UK here and am not sure any leadership could've done anything other than lock down by this time three years ago. I appreciate that not all Western countries did it but nearly all of them did, and we had a populist right wing government in Westminster with a leaderless opposition.

And of course the case numbers had no context. Most people had no idea how many people normally die, how many people in care homes normally die, what the numbers for other causes of death include, or anything like that.

But the level of fear they created has impacted a lot of people long term in terms of their mental health, they've become completely unhinged around disease, cleaning, going into public. The level of anxiety it's produced isn't insignificant.

That was kind of what Boris said at the beginning.

And similarly, they started out in many countries with scientific advice about distancing and masking. THen after a few weeks, it was all crazy with no rhyme nor reason.

I can kind of see why some people went in for conspiracy theories, it was actually pretty bizarre.

He sort of said some of it, not all, very ineptly: I think that's what his some people will lose loved ones and enthusiasm for restrictions will wane over time speech meant. Of course, he made that on 12th March, ie before his government made a policy decision to deliberately try and frighten people. And you had to know what he meant, to already understand that we and by extension he were choosing between two shit sandwiches and no path existed where we could just say no thank you, I don't like eating shit.

But what he never did was explain that we already had pandemic planning in place, and that the lockdown that the public were starting to clamour for had substantial risks in itself and had never happened anywhere before 2020. The arguments against locking down were never really spelled out, even when he clearly didn't want to and was hoping we could get away with not doing.

I agree it's easy to see why there's been an uptick in conspiracy theories. On a societal level it's a response to this level of manipulation and gaslighting by government, as well as loss of control.

I always felt that when BJ, and also similarly in a few other instances, were saying these things, they were assuming some level of normal thinking, and understanding of disease, in the population. Like - you can't just stop a respiratory infection by locking down

But more than that, it became clear that a lot of people seriously expected that somehow governments should and ought to be able to do something about it. They could not seem to accept the possibility that sometimes there is little control.

And I don't think many of the people in power expected that element, I should have said. They thought people understood that often, not much can be done.

I'm inclined to agree except that they're was so much censorship. With a range of discussion allowed, some nuance would have stayed to creep in much sooner and public opinion would have evolved.

To be honest @shrimp88 there has been a big change in the majority view as expressed on MN over time in respect to the restrictions/ lockdown. There was one long running thread of people who were anti lockdown pretty much from the beginning but this was not the majority view as expressed at the time . Whether people had views which they kept to themselves at the time for fear of being shouted down, I don't know . Perhaps there are just different posters here now , or perhaps there are people who like to be on the side of the majority and just name change when they feel at odds.