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.

Medics raised what they called the silent pandemic in July 2020

Harm to children. In the BMA journal. Largely ignored, by many deliberately

That is indeed really sad, TequillaNights, but I just hope the old woman you overheard in the PO remembers that the reason we were locking down was to protect the most vulnerable (eg, people of her age) and ensure that she DID have more life to enjoy!

And of course it stole 2 years from lots of groups, didn't it? Think of the school children who had 2 years taken from their social lives at primary. The kids who had to cope with the GCSE debacle. The kids who couldn't cope with being without their peers for that long. The disabled people who couldn't visit day centres. It wasn't all about the aged. And yet I still think this was the right decision to make, based on the knowledge we had at the time and the need to stop the NHS from collapsing entirely. We would, quite literally, have had those bodies stacking up that BJ is often quoted as mentioning.

The fact that there are still people defending lockdowns, even after everything that’s out in the open, shows that there is no shortage of stupid. And to think that these people have the vote.

Eh no, not really. Sweden, for example, famously didn't lock down at all and they had a left wing government. In the anglosphere yes, sure, but that's only a small part of the picture.

One of my family who is a doctor cared for a colleague and a retired colleague and held at least one of them when they made their final ipad call to family. The mental scars for some are truly horrific.

I'm glad you didn't have the same experience.

Of course I thought I thought about adults and children suffering, those without gardens , those with mental health issues etc, but as a society we had to contain the cases as much as possible.

My point still stands, people didn't comply or stopped complying with lockdown, not due to some great insight on the long term societal issues it would cause, but because they were personally inconvenienced and didn't like it.

Lockdown, masks, and vaccines - I've seen sides of friends that I never suspected they had over these issues.

Agree OP. Lots at the time, and now said 'we only followed the science' which was of course not true at all (in fact, the pandemic readiness plan we had together with some Northern European countries was what many leading scientist in the pharma industry wanted but politicans bowed to the masses).

Yes, first lockdown, got that as the pictures and initial data was streaming in from China/Italy and we simply didn't have much data.

But, for anyone keen to explore further to listening to the news or reading newspapers, you could look at data in other countries from May-time 2020 and very early it was evident that primary school children, for example, was at minimal risk (in fact some countries kept them open) and that certain conditions e.g. asthma was in fact NOT associated with increased risk unless other co-morbidities and that actually age or living in a care / old people's home was the real issue in most cases!

Had many conversations and some people were hysterical. I stopped after a while....

They died because they had abusive parents. Step parents ,lockdown didn't cause.them to be abusive .

Lockdown allowed them to get away with their abuse.

Well you’ve only mentioned one country. And I’ve mentioned various factors so yes I stand by it.

My point still stands, people didn't comply or stopped complying with lockdown, not due to some great insight on the long term societal issues it would cause, but because they were personally inconvenienced and didn't like it.

They're not two separate, discrete issues as you suggest here.

Part of the reason I didn't comply is because it was clear to me that my DC were suffering, and they weren't going to be collateral any more than I could help. There was nothing I could do about them being considered unworthy of schooling, but I could at least make sure they had socialisation.

The impact on children is something that was obvious pretty early on, but it's not like most of us can do anything about the wider societal issues. As a person who was concerned about the welfare of DC, the only ones I was in a position to have any influence on were mine and those I'm close to.

100% this.

Lockdowns went against every pandemic plan in place. A total power grab and when every major world leader started banging on about Build Back Better, only a raving lunatic would fail to see it was all planned for a very long time.

I supported the first lock down, I saw what was happening in Italy and think we reacted too slowly. Anyone who left the house had a bottle of handgel until the shops ran out.
I thought then and still think now that masks weren't needed as nobody wore them in a way that would stop infection. The queues outside supermarkets were ridiculous. Sending elderly ino homes without quarantine was criminal. Whoever made that decision should be jailed.

Eotho shouldn't have happened.

The amount of money wasted and given to their mates by the government was criminal. They took advantage to raid the public purse.

The NHS staff I know are still traumatised from what they saw, and still have anxiety in public spaces as a result.

It's not a report, it's a book, @Dahliasrule.

https://iea.org.uk/publications/did-lockdowns-work-the-verdict-on-covid-restrictions/#:~:text=The%20results%20of%20our%20meta,role%20in%20mitigating%20the%20pandemic.

Here is the original paper and the second revised version, after the first paper was criticised. Neither are peer reviewed.

https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022/01/A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality.pdf

https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/113732/

I would caution you with this quote taken from The Guardian article:

"At the time, Dr Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, distanced the school from the work, saying it was not a peer-reviewed scientific study and that “serious questions” had been raised about its methodology."

@Rockybooboo indeed - and I don’t think we should forget Sarah Everard either whose killer was able to use lockdown rules as part of his evil plan.

I’ll just leave this here. No conspiracy theories, no massaged figures, no smoke and mirrors. Just the ONS.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/averageageofthosewhohaddiedwithcovid19

We should and could have locked down earlier it would have saved people's lives .we needed lockdowns because we didn't have vaccines.

Masking was necessary and had a major effect on transmission. Lockdown could have been handled differently but also was a major firebreak in the battle to keep people alive and conserve medical resources until vaccines came on line.

Sorry I should have been clearer - why bother soliciting people to say they were wrong about something in the past and OP was right? What possible good can it do - or is it just so OP can say "I told you so"?

Are you suggesting all this was some kind of worldwide leader's plan spanning njmerous leaderparties in that "long time" to... What?
Or am I misunderstanding

No, I've mentioned two. The same as you, I think. England, which had a totally rudderless left and a lockdown imposed by a right wing government is the other. There are of course many more countries than either of us have mentioned: ROI, Russia and India are all examples of right wing governments that imposed lockdowns. There are left wing ones too, of course.

Ultimately, if you want to prove lockdown support was a left wing not a right wing thing, you're going to have to do a lot more than you have.

Nope @Fightyouforthatpie and I’ve explained why upthread. Would you ask the same question of someone posting a “do you regret voting for brexit” thread?

Found out by whom?

Aren't you a fucking delight.

But none of those things would have happened without a pre lockdown panic. People wouldn’t have rushed to the pub, people wouldn’t have crammed onto trains and planes to get to loved ones. People wouldn’t have piled into care home for one last visit. There wouldn’t have been the mass craziness in supermarkets. Of course there would be a large number of people who wouldn’t do common sense at all. But most would have made slight adjustments and everything could have been fine.