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?

Neil Ferguson is a prime example, as is most if the rest of the government.

Had covid. Knew he wasn't going to catch or spread it again (and this is the original variant, long before omicron etc) so quite happy to break lockdown rules. Just not the rest of us, hey. We could all stay locked up.

Imo the overall system wasn’t right and it led to incorrect decisions eg on schools

I get that some people don't think lockdowns were worth the costs but that doesn't mean that they didn't massively reduce covid deaths. Anyone would think from some of these posts that covid didn't kill anyone and that lockdowns didn't work.

I don't know if you're referring to anything specific here, but I think the general view of those who either disagree with or question lockdowns as a pandemic measure is that only seeing this in terms of covid deaths is pretty much the problem.

So you think that people with other illnesses would have got better treatment if we didn't have lockdown?. Do you not think hospitals would be overflowing with covid patients and there would be hardly any staff because they had covid?

I think that's far, far too narrow a way to consider the issue. If you're only thinking about hospitals and only considering that very short time period, you're doing it wrong.

We know that both restrictions and lack of restrictions lead to harms. That each approach would involve prioritising the welfare of some people over others, and that vulnerable and vulnerable to covid aren't the same thing. These points are uncontroversial, but they didn't form part of the public discussion about lockdown. They should've.

There's also the issue that even within a pro lockdown framework, our decision to stay locked down so long in 2020 even when rates had dropped pushed the second wave that we knew was inevitable and would be more dangerous later, into the winter. That has to be considered too. It's possible to believe the March 2020 lockdown was the best decision but that the duration was wrong.

Well we don’t know do we? Were Sweden’s hospitals overwhelmed, will all the healthcare staff off with covid? Covid cases had already peaked when we went into lockdown due to voluntary changes in behaviour.
Anyway as @BashirWithTheGoodBeard says, that’s a far too narrow way of looking at the issue.

What makes you think covid cases peaked before lockdown even happened Sweden's healthcare is much better than ours so even if they coped it certainly doesn't mean we would have done.

And it doesn’t mean we wouldn’t. That was entirely my point.
The data shows that our numbers peaked before lockdown.

If Sweden doesn't demonstrate anything regarding whether the NHS would have coped without lockdown why mention it? Given there was hardly any testing for covid early on in the pandemic how can data show cases had already peaked. Are you seriously saying lockdown made no difference to cases and deaths?

No I’m not saying that. I’m saying we don’t know, because we haven’t experienced it without a lockdown. People’s behaviour changed massively, voluntarily. There is an argument to suggest that lockdown just pushed the cases and deaths on to the poorer segments of society. I’m not saying that’s correct either, just that we don’t know. We can’t just work on the assumption that lockdown was the only way to prevent those deaths.

No - read what I wrote again. If you think the conclusions of the Cochrane review are "very obvious" you need to revisit it. Did you even read it?

No, I'm not talking about Granny's tights 😂

So to be clear, you still think that the UK rules for the general public about mask wearing were effective in preventing the spread of covid and were a proportionate and legitimate measure to impose on the population.

And that's even after you know that they were only imposed, for example, in schools in England because Nicola had done it, and she had done it even though Whitty thought there was no strong argument for or against.

Those highly effective masks.

You don't feel at all misled by any of the whatsapp leaks around the entire shitshow of performative measures purely designed to ramp up project fear?

Gosh, the denial runs deep

Did you read those whatsapps? Seriously? How can you possibly not feel incredibly stupid and duped if you actually believed pretty much anything they said in public after reading them?

You know, not everyone lives in, nor cares about the UK. I don't live there. I live elsewhere in Europe and couldn't give a fig about what Nicola did or what was in the Whatsapp messages. What I do know is that properly fitted masks are effective. Whatever population they were "imposed" upon, it was proportionate at the time as there were no vaccines available.

Gosh, gullibility to right-wing propaganda runs deep.

@BashirWithTheGoodBeard in Denmark they locked down around 11 days before UK but a fair bit of stuff was open again by late April/early May and when we popped over in early July (looking at rentals) we went out for meals etc- albeit with masks and spacing .

That would explain why you are not so pissed off about the lack of an enquiry in the UK into the national response to the pandemic.

It is thought that the peak was just before we locked down. So dragging it out for 4 months trying to achieve zero vibe cases with the blind assumption the virus wouldn’t bounce back with a vengeance was wrong.

If we were going to lockdown we should have done it earlier and for a shorter period then opened up to allow the inevitable second wave in summer.

There seems to be an assumption that if we didn’t lockdown then everyone would all get Covid at the same time and the country would be decimated but we have no evidence that this would have happened. It didn’t happen in Sweden. Viruses have natural peaks and troughs. People
would have modified behaviour. Trying to influence these peaks and troughs is only beneficial if you time it right (and get the duration right) otherwise you are causing all the harms of lockdown and still getting huge peaks and deaths when you open up.

Zero Covid cases not vibe!

I've seen mathematical modelling which suggests that cases might have started to go down before lockdown, but we don't really know as there wasn't much testing and surely you're not suggesting we should rely on modelling? That would seem to be a little bit selective.

Sweden had a lot more deaths than other Scandinavian countries with similar demographics so I don't really think they have demonstrated there was no need for lockdown. If they thought lockdown didn't work, they wouldn't have introduced a lockdown themselves later on in the pandemic. I agree we should have introduced lockdown earlier and for a shorter period of time though.

Such a shame we didn't do that here.

They could work out cases based on deaths. It was quite a while before we had accurate testing but we could see the peaks and troughs of the virus.

Yes but Sweden are playing the long game and sensibly realising that it’s not all about Covid. It’s about the other deaths and long term impact on various groups (such as the young).

Currently their excess deaths are the lowest in Europe - it’s unclear and hard to unlock why.

Unpick. Auto correct doing a number on me today.