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?

Especially after you had to listen to 10 minutes of them telling you not to bother them with anything less than imminent death on their phone systems before you could even get to speak with a receptionist! And if you went past the GP surgery, you'd see all kinds of "stay away" signage, with hazard tape all over! It's no surprise at all that a lot of people who could have benefitted from a GP consultation thought they'd be wasted their GP's time and simply didn't bother!

And some universities actually banned their students from leaving their campus flats during the lockdowns. Campus security would stop students walking around to challenge them as to why they were out, with very limited reasons being accepted such as going to the shop for food, going to do their laundry, going to the library to collect books, etc., all with the threat of disciplinary action if security deemed their reason to be out as unsatisfactory!

I don't really think so.

If you create a situation where people are terrified of one thing, covid, that will impact their behaviour. They will make crazy decisions about stuff that is actually more serous. Most people are not naturally all that good at risk assessment, if there is a lot of messaging creating fear it will make them afraid out of proportion to the real risk.

If you create a scenario where it's difficult to get an in person doctors appointment, you will find things are missed an overlooked - it's not an adaquate standard of care.

If you create a situation where going out at all is fraught and exhausting, that again will affect behaviour.

Governments across the globe, regardless of their position on the political spectrum, locked down as this was the accepted health protocol at the time, pre-vaccine.

I'm referring to the swathes of anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine and anti-science misinformation out there. These commonly come from alt-right sources.

Covid was actually quite terrifying for people with many underlying conditions. Those with diabetes, heart disease, cancer were not getting the risk out of proportion. They were being realistic. Many were stuck between a rock and a hard place when it came to visiting hospitals or any other health care at the start of the pandemic.

Yes, treatment of students was terrible.

And of course are back in that same situation now.

If severely immune-compromised, then the vaccines don't work, and there are no mitigations now in hospitals. It's one of the riskiest places to visit but also the one that cannot be avoided.

About 1:40 people have covid on current estimate

There are thousands of hospital acquired infections.

It's all shit for those affected

The fact that some people were more at risk does not mean their terror was proportionate. Those who are immunocompromised, for example, are more at risk for all kinds of diseases and already need to think about being more careful. Covid was not in a totally different category compared to other illnesses.

People felt it was very different in large part because they were getting this crazy advice to basically hide in their house - sometimes even from the other people in their house which was stupid and useless. It was totally different that what is usually recommended for people who have higher risk factors.

There's also the fact that even a covid vulnerable person who felt they needed in person healthcare, despite the risks that might entail, still faced structural barriers to getting it. And that can't be explained as poor communication.

A system that makes it difficult to get eg a GP appointment is going to lead to things being missed, regardless of whether the person who can't get one is at higher risk than average of covid complications. Inadequate or non-existent standards of care have consequences.

I was a vulnerable person at the start of the pandemic and the main barrier to my care was that I was very scared of catching covid while in hospital because so many people there had it. It wasn't because no one would answer my phone calls. Quite the opposite. It was a lot easier then than it is today if anything.

Yes but it's too early to maintain any objectivity.

None of this refutes what I wrote, especially as you talk about phone calls not going in person.

Barriers to seeking medical care in person for those who wanted or needed to do it existed. They just did. That incudes some people whose risk of covid was higher.

Immunsupressed people were getting their advice about risk from their specialist and organisations that specialise in their conditions. I suspect they might know a bit more than about their risk of covid and other infections.

I didn't want to see anyone in person unless i had too and was more than happy for the majority of appointment to be by phone. I did go in for tests.

Again, this doesn't tell us anything at all about the societal picture or structural barriers to care in person.

No, but people who are or were immusupressed will know more about it than you about the benefits and risks of lockdown for them.

I'm glad their policies to protect vulnerable people worked on the whole for you.

I was prescribed antibiotics over the phone for a breast lump in the hope it went, rather than referral for more investigation. I wonder how common this sort of thing was.
I'm not someone who felt a need to stay away from services to protect me, so that wasn't the reason.

It does seem harder to get through to a GP now than even before COVID but I'll agree, getting through was very easy during COVID. I wonder why that was.

The same happened to my friend, prescribed antibiotics. She in fact had very aggressive breast cancer. Only 27.

I'm so sorry to hear this.

You really need to do better at remembering who you're replying to. I haven't used the word immunosuppressed once, and this isn't the first time in this thread you've confused me with another poster.

It isn't a matter of opinion that there were barriers to accessing healthcare in person during lockdown, barriers that weren't going to be solved by better communication, and that these barriers have consequences. This isn't affected by you merailing.

YANBU.

I actually have a hard time absorbing how utterly bonkers it all was.

People condoning shouting at elderly people sitting on benches. Or calling the police because the neighbour went out twice. Politicians encouraging people to grass up their neighbours if they go out too much. Hundreds of Linda worth of fines and a court case for being out in public.

All so people wouldn’t get a virus that, however you look at it, barely affected the vast majority of people. We don’t behave this way in flu season, which totally crippled the NHS every single year. Yet people were utterly setting themselves with glee to be spending their days curtain twitching and calling the police and doing what they were told by a demonstrably incompetent and hypocritical government.

Why don’t more people think this wasn’t OK?

I know of a young teenager who is now blind because the easily diagnosed, in person, issue was not diagnosed over the phone. The larger problem was that because remote appointments are not normative, when in person care was finally given to this person, certain things that normally would have been done earlier on were missed again.

There is good reason remote medicine isn't really a great standard of care. It's something done to fill gaps where there is no other option.

Yes, many doctors bought into the hysteria as well and failed to keep a sense of proportion, or ability to see the larger picture in terms of overall health.

I mentioned immunosupressed because that applied to me but the same point applies to anyone with an underlying condition that put them at higher risk of severe covid. Even if you want to argue that lockdown created some barriers to accessing care it reduced the risk of severe covid so there was a net benefit.

No, this is you inventing a backstory.

People who were at higher risk of covid, which is the group I talked about, don't only include medical conditions but could be related to age and/or obesity. They will not all have been getting advice on what to do if they felt they needed to see someone in person from specialists. They just won't. You can't possibly think that. You don't get a specialist just because your BMI is over 30 or you've blown out a certain number of candles on a cake! You having mixed me up with another poster would be much less silly than claiming this.

Also, claiming that barriers to accessing care created a net benefit is just something you've pulled out of your arse.