Lockdown report/Covid enquiry - if you supported lockdown do you regret it?

[Hell121]

I haven’t seen a thread on this so sorry if it has been done. In light of the report yesterday I wander if people have changed their minds on whether lockdown was a good idea. I remember the threads of utter lunacy on here and the mask hysteria/schools debate. I was against lockdowns and masks very early on but complied - I don’t think I’d ever do it again. I genuinely think it was a massive overreaction which has damaged things in this country irreparably and left many children and adults far worse off than they were pre covid.

This is true , members of the mdt would say they can't come and assess because of covid. Frontline clinicians were being moved from ward to ward yet others were sat at home wfh shunning f2f patient contact. It was very strange, frontline clinicians expected to move across services and that was ok but heaven forbid other teams coming out as the delicate flowers couldn't be at risk of catching covid. It was bizarre many services just shut up shop.

I fully supported the lockdown , the NHS would have completely collapsed if we had many more cases than we did.

I believe anti maskers and anti lockdown people were being selfish and entitled by not complying. They were not thinking of long term affects and societal issues, they were just thinking of their own inconvenience.

As it happened, I had a good lockdown, especially the summer one. The great re-set. That isn't the point though.

I don't think this nation will ever recover from the stupidity of both Brexit and the divide over lockdown and masks. It really showed how ignorant, selfish and entitled people can be .

Some people like my DH and myself worked through the lock down. I think that a lot of people who started to work from home and never went back have caused some problems like shops closing and where I live the Green line coach and Nat Express coaches stopped running because only a few people were using them after lock down.

This

I was late for the train and running, trying to board when the doors were already half-closed, but someone on the platform stopped me and told me off for being reckless, gave me a lecture about the dangers and risks. So I missed my train and my flight and am now furious with that person as nothing wrong has happened apart from me losing my time and money.

Can you see the similarity?

I did comply with the rules, but maybe people who didn’t realised quicker than the rest of us that lockdowns were only making things worse for society?

I really enjoyed lockdown. 2020 was a fab year for us.

That aside, I think the masks were ridiculous though and lockdown has been bad for the country as a whole and for peoples mental health.

Did you think about children and adults suffering during lockdown though?

Surely that self interest goes both ways

I didn’t agree after the first few weeks, I did largely comply though even though the fear factor was gone and I could see the damage the restrictions were causing

FPNI

I was neither 'for' or 'against' lockdowns. I found myself in a pandemic, the like of which I had never seen or experienced before. I did what I was told to do in the desperate hope that the 'experts' knew more about it than me.

I still don't really know if it was right or wrong, tbh.

Its not I'm sure some staff did see that and I'm terribly sorry for them but there's this rhetoric that all nhs workers saw mountains of unexpected deaths and deaths of scores of staff. I personally did not experience that. I worked on medical wards almost all were expected to die quite soon of preexisting severe limiting illnesses and most were very elderly. The problem with covid was it stretched capacity and the deaths were happening too quickly while EOL is normally more spread out.

We had the worst possible govt at the worst possible time. We also had a high death rate. I worked for the NHS and I recall seeing what was going on in Italy and knowing that it was heading here and being worried. We had to lockdown, it may be worth noting that the rest of the world locked down too. Maybe if we had a govt that cared about the physical and emotional health of the nation rather than seeing the pandemic as a cashpoint for them and their mates then it would have been better managed. The tier restrictions were horrible (I live in a city that ended up in Tier 3 with additional restrictions , I live alone and by that time I really was suffering with my mental health). I complied because I care about others, and because it was obvious that this was this was a changing and developing situation. I remember being Ok until about November 2020 and then just crying nearly every day. I have a few friends whose health has been damaged by Covid, it was a horrible scary time and I try not think about it too much

Not hindsight, anyone who tried to question the obviously naive, senseless, evidence baseless

What evidence could the policy makers use? It was an entirely new situation.

Would you really have preferred harsher longer lockdowns from the left?

I fully supported lockdown, I don't regret that I supported it and did as I was told at the time- I do regret the impact it has had on our economy and our children but I also don't think I would do anything differently in that I would still follow the advice should something else hit us.

If we're going down the lockdown opponents should tell that to the families of the bereaved/NHS staff route, that works both ways. Lockdown undoubtedly caused harm too. So those of you making that argument can say it to those whose relatives died alone, whose abuse began or was heightened during lockdown, who have died or will die earlier because of the increase in inequality, alcohol consumption and obesity.

There is no moral high ground here. To lock down or not simply means which shit sandwich do we want, who do we prioritise. You just sound stupid when you pretend otherwise.

I supported the first lockdown as Covid was an unknown. I thought the other lockdowns were political posturing and probably did more (economic) harm than good.

Left wing politics love of the lockdown (and vaccine shaming) in the UK and other countries (Canada, Austria etc) was the final nail in the coffin for voting labour for me.

genuine question my foot. I thought it had long been established that the lives saved by lockdown was minimal, if any.

I definitely agreed with the first lockdown the second was pointless. The government had no interest in saving lives they were trying to ease capacity and spread the deaths out. In many terminal conditions the most common cause of death is respiratory infection.

It's good to hear your perspective, because the idea that all NHS workers had the same experience and views is bollocks.

I lost 4 colleagues during the first half of 2020 to covid. None were elderly or particularly high risk. I have a number of clinical friends who have been retired on health grounds due to long covid. I know staff still working, but still suffering with some effects of long covid. But strangely, I haven't had covid either. I consider this luck and possibly genetics as I am literally the only person I know to have not had it (including my spouse and children).
My husband works at a much larger hospital than mine, and they lost more staff to covid than we did and were much more hardcore front line. He has so many colleagues suffering acutely from PTSD from their experiences in ICU and similar. There were more people needing high level care than there were beds or staff to cover.

I know two people diagnosed with cancer during the 2020 lockdowns. Both received excellent care with no delay. Two friends diagnosed before 2020 had their continue with no issues. This doesn't mean that it was the same same experience for everyone and I am able to understand that.

This is a good point. Had covid happened a few years earlier, we simply couldn't have had the same lockdowns/restrictions! They were only possible because we had widespread and fast broadband and a relatively mature internet shopping market, and the ability to work and shop from home.

I'd love to have seen how the Western World would have dealt with covid in, say, 2010 or 2005 when far fewer people had broadband, fewer people had smartphones, and the internet generally was a lot less widespread.

It does perhaps suggest that 2020 was a big experiment, i.e. because of the widespread internet, we "could" lockdown, so why not try see and evaluate the effects!

Were the people 'kept safe' though? What is safe? Is being isolated in your home for months on end, for fear of getting what is essentially a cold, 'safe'?

Perhaps because you say things like 'baapulation'.

From day one, I knew this was a huge overreaction, one that we and our children would pay a terrible price for, in many ways. The cost of living crisis impacting everyone now wouldn't be happening to the extent it is if it wasn't for the government and their quantitative easing of half a trillion pounds.

I never bothered with the dumb guidelines and rules, anyway - didn't see the point. Was it ever my job to protect the 'saintly' NHS?

It just wouldn't have happened. Can't have lockdown without widespread Internet access, not just for work purposes but also pacification.