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.

Sorry, but there is absolutely now way you KNEW it was an overreaction. On what grounds? You had absolutely no evidence whatsoever.

You correctly predicted there could be other implications from the lockdown. Thats it.

Lockdown was implemented to flatten the curve of severe and critical cases. We all watched the health infrastructure collapse in places like north Italy. If we hadn't locked down, there would have been an even more terrifying spike of critical cases and the NHS, the ambulances, the care homes, the funeral industry would not have been able to cope. At all. Why is this so bloody hard to understand? NOBODY said that lockdown wouldn't cause other problems. NOBODY claimed that cancers would go untreated, mental health issues multiply, etc. But this was an unprecedented threat to our health and social care infrastructure. We should have locked down a week or two earlier IMO.

I hated most aspects of it. I consider we (as a family) got off lightly and I know so many didn't. We're still processing the knock-on effects in terms of mental health and confidence in my family (my parents continue to refuse to eat in enclosed public spaces, for example, and still wibble a lot if we come to stay). But it was done with the knowledge we had at the time, and based on projections built on solid data.

Hell121, please would you give details of the report you mention published yesterday, or even better, a link. Thanks.

No. People downplaying covid always rely on the mortality figure rather than the morbidity. It’s the biggest reason the whole Great Barrington thing was shite. The age at which the risk of being admitted to hospital increased hugely is early 40s. No way we could shield all those to protect the NHS.

And if you’ve tripled your ICU capacity and then filled it with people who aren’t at risk of dying from covid but are really really sick (which we did in Nov 2020), where do you put the 25 year old who needs an ICU bed because of a motorbike accident?

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.

@taxguru I don't think lockdowns would have been a thing. I think each government (and each population) was seeing what other countries were doing in such a way that social media almost dictated the lockdowns, rather than political will.

How many people were saying "we should be locking down harder like spain" or "we should be opening up like Sweden" or "we should let it rip like Brazil"

Social media meant that we could openly see what other countries were doing, so it was almost like lemmings - one country started doing it, so others followed suit regardless of whether it was right or wrong.

We instantly saw the Chinese lock down, then we saw Italy follow suit, then we followed, as did Ireland, France, Spain etc...

I genuinely wonder if social media hadn't been around if lockdowns would have happened because we've never had the first hand experience before of what other countries were doing.

To be fair @SunnyEgg Jeremy hunt and Gove I believed favoured stringent harsher lockdowns so it wasn’t just the left but yes I do dread what would have happened under a more left wing leadership at the time.

I think it is one of those things where you would have needed a crystal ball. It was unknown. I'm in Ireland and we had pretty long lockdowns, I was neither for or against really. Masks were never really a big deal here, people just wore them and got on with things.

I appreciate that I was lucky, my business boomed during covid, I was working 14hours days and lockdowns flew by really. Dh could work from home. Our kids were old enough that they could entertain themselves and they both didn't mind it and it didn't have any effects on them mentally or educationally. It seems like the distant past now and I never really think about it, it had no longterm effects on our lives at all, it was what it was.

If you are the kind of person who needs hindsight to know that lockdowns were utter lunacy, then you have a problem.

It was a obvious from the very beginning that lockdowns would cost far more lives in worse health outcomes, mental health problems, a generation of children losing out on education and the biggest of all - inflation induced poverty.

You didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to know any of this. And lots of people called it out but were labelled conspiracy theorists and granny killers.

So a genuine question to the lockdown enthusiasts of the time - how are you enjoying the fallout from the disaster brought on by lockdowns? Are you genuinely surprised that the economy has tanked, inflation has sky rocketed, children’s mental health is shot to bits and that the country is poorer?

It definitely wasn't a left right thing. The left in England was utterly rudderless at the time we went into lockdown. Simply didn't have the power or influence. And globally, both right and left wing governments locked down.

I supported, and still support, the lockdown. I do it based on the evidence and knowledge we had at the time.

Furthermore, I'm originally from a country in this part of the world that went against everyone else and didn't have what we would call a "lockdown". I saw how people back home didn't care for the more vulnerable in society and how it was up to each one to "fight" for themselves. Eg the elderly suffered immensly and had to stay inside for longer than the lockdown in the UK as a result. I saw how my doctor friends back home almost died from covid and the trauma they went through when they were discharged from hospital, only to realise that the general public had little awareness and care about the virus. The only person I know that suffered that badly from mental health issues during the pandemic, that they ended their life, was in my home country. Because consideration for others didn't exist.

In hindsight, I think more support should have been given to people's mental health. And maybe a different approach to lockdowns. But who cares about hindsight? The past cannot be changed. There are lessons to be learnt. And I think a "middle way" would be the best.

@Dahliasrule google John Hopkins report - I read about it in guardian and telegraph (I have access to all papers through work so no paywalls) and all over Twitter, it really isn’t hard.

Don't be wilfully stupid. You know very well that these were at two different points of the pandemic. When we were (absurdly) being told we shouldn't sit down for a few mins (this was NEVER policy, it was just interpreted as such locally) the restaurants weren't open. You surely remember, it wasn't that long ago.

I agree with that. I think the first lockdown should have happened earlier as well.

Subsequent restrictions were really badly handled.

I still agree with the first lockdown but I did get a bit hmm about the rhetoric. There was this strange thing that people were pushing for immortality and every death is a tragedy even 102 year olds. People with life limiting conditions die everyday of respiratory infections that's one of the main causes of deaths in that group but no one pushes for lockdowns to buy more time. Its accepted. We needed to lockdown at first because of the speed of this but I found a lot of the rhetoric around death bizarre. Maybe the public has been sheltered from it too much.

@justteanbiscuits

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.

Indeed, different experiences indeed. My husband was due to start chemotherapy at the end of March 2020. On the morning of his first treatment, he was called by the hospital to cancel it, the person who called had no idea when it would be rescheduled and said someone would make contact to re-arrange a new start date. Weeks passed and we heard nothing, so he phoned the oncology dept to chase it up, only to have to leave a message on their answerphone, which he did. Still heard nothing, so he did the same, again, left a message on their answerphone. We then went to the hospital in person, only to find the oncology department shutters closed and it in darkness! After a couple of months, around May, he phoned the GP surgery to see if they knew if and when oncology was going to re-open, but they said they knew nothing either. He eventually phoned the hospital main reception to ask, only to be glibly told "Oh, they've moved the department to the hospital in a different town across the county border". So at least we knew where they'd gone! So, finally, he could make contact with them, only to find out he'd been put down as a fail to attend because his chemo had only been put back a week! But they'd not told him that, and no one had bothered to chase him up as to why he'd not attended! Because of the 2 month delay, he had to have all kinds of tests again, i.e. blood test, x-ray, MRI scan, before they could start the chemo, all of which took time, so it was best part of 4 months, i.e. mid July when his chemo finally started. It was an absolute fiasco start to finish, typical NHS administrative foul up!

I supported the lockdown I have a lot of clinically vulnerable people in my family including my parents. Unfortunately for my family Covid struck them in December 2020 and in January I lost both my grandad and my uncle to Covid a week apart. For me I did the lockdown to protect my family and I would do it again. I’ve had Covid myself a few months ago I’m lucky and thankful that it didn’t affect me as bad as I thought it would because I have Asthma.

In hindsight, I think we should have gone into lockdown sooner, for a shorter period. Time for employers etc to do risk assessments and get equipment needed (which may have been the difficult part, with everyone in the world trying to do the same). Advise working from home where possible, restrict large gatherings.

And obviously eat out to help out was abloody stupid idea.

But if really beyond the wit of people on here here -

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/covid-lockdown-study-b2351604.html

And who benefitted from it? Their own friends and cronies. Trillions of $ were borrowed and printed and where it did it all go?

If we follow the money, then we can see that the people who benefitted from Covid were all in the same circles of policymakers. While the idiots who were sat at home watching Netflix, asking for harsher lockdowns were thrown a few scraps and are paying for it now hand over fist.

Quite a few children died because of lockdown. Star Hobson. Arthur Labinjo-Hughes come to mind. Trapped with their abusers and invisible to society.

The left tended to go harder, particularly if linked to union strength as seen in Chicago (?) or wherever it was that closed schools for 18 months

Florida had a different tack, MPs here voted differently in that second winter what was it 99 who said no. And you could pretty much draw a line on here to lockdown supporters and Labour supporters in many cases.

I do take the @Hell121 point on Jeremy Hunt though, I felt some great annoyance at him too

You could sit down and eat in restaurants at the same time that they had “Covid Marshalls” telling you which way to walk around the shopping centre and to maintain social distancing and wear your mask.

Utter lunacy.

It was necessary while science caught up. I know a lot of doctors, nurses and paramedics and they were completely overwhelmed even with the lockdowns in place. The first one was very much needed but probably went on about a month longer than it needed to and the later ones could have been softer restrictions. I’m not sure what people think would have happened if we hadn’t had the first one? So so many more people would have died or become incredibly ill. It’s easy to say that it was hysteria when we’re this side of it and it’s all much more manageable because the majority of people were vaccinated and the disease seems to be weakening a little in severity with each mutation but it was brutal for a lot more people before that.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I work in the NHS (not clinical). The original Wuhan variant was killing a lot of people. It was unknown at the time and no idea really how to treat it at first. I absolutely supported the first lockdown and it was the right thing to do - and I will stand by my views on that. The variant we have now is more like a cold/flu. But no one knew how it was going to mutate at first. It could have turned more SARS or MERS like which would have been a disaster.

If we knew then what we know now, of course the approach should have been different. But we didn’t know.

Pointing out that the government's overreaction was based on flawed modelling:

https://www.aier.org/article/the-failure-of-imperial-college-modeling-is-far-worse-than-we-knew/