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.

I think the Eat Out to Help Out was nothing more than a populist measure and is one of the reasons Sunak is desperately trying to avoid handing over evidence to the enquiry.

Perhaps a better question if have asked was - do you think it was worth it?

I have left the NHS, and a huge factor in my decision to leave was the abuse being thrown at NHS staff over covid and that whole period. The "spending their time dancing and having parties", or the accusations of lying on death certificates, the claims of NHS staff cover ups. People saying because corridors were quiet, there was no one in the hospital.

It broke me, it honestly did. I left for a much easier, much better paid job in the private sector.

Not sure what it has to do with Brexit but if you think that's a killer comparison you're wrong because I am similarly suspicious of the hundreds of "aren't you sorry you voted leave now" threads, because they serve no useful purpose beyond stroking the ego of the "I told you so" OPs.

Also as PPs have observed, there's a big difference between "supporting" a lockdown and accepting it as a logical response to a virulent infection spreading.

There's far too much binary thinking going on and attempts to paint people as one thing or the other and get everyone into camps hating each other.

I followed everything in lockdown 1 from March until I went back to work in July. I actually really enjoyed the time at home with the DC. Then I went back to work in our small, close environment and saw the hysteria and worked in it. I didn’t comply thereafter and hated lockdown 2 which was January the following year.

I supported lockdown but not hysterically (if that makes sense). I was sensible but not to the extent of washing my shopping or locking myself away (I had to go into an office every day despite 95% of my colleagues working from home).

All of us will remember the shocking images on tv, the daily death announcements etc.

The country was dealing with something so unknown it was pretty scary at times.

Then be clear that you're arguing specifically about the UK and the US, rather than about the left and right per se. Because they're two incredibly different points. Though even then, in the UK we had lockdown from both sides of the political spectrum. Drakeford and Sturgeon don't cancel out Johnson.

It was the right thing at the time. And as a PP said, remember the scenes from Italy. We were lucky to avoid that. My hospital trust only paused mask wearing yesterday.

Obviously whatever choices had been made, they'd be debated for decades afterwards, if not longer. That's a given.

But the hindsight is 20/20 thing is still bollocks though. It was very clear at the time that lockdown would have downsides, and that what we needed to be doing was weighing up who we were going to protect and who was going to be collateral. It just didn't happen.

When I said right at the beginning that hindsight is 20/20, I was meaning it a bit more generally. We didn't know what course the pandemic would take (I remember one scientist saying that if they got it right then everybody would look back and say it was an overreaction), but also I think a lot of people would not have predicted the utter incompetence and self serving corruption would come from our government.
I mean, I knew that government was incompetent and corrupt, and I knew that people would probably try to take advantage of the situation but paying billions to a crony for the "world beating" Excel spreadsheet for test and trace....
Maybe I just had too much faith in human nature.

We stoop d elective surgery for far too long. We could have done some stuff much earlier on, when it became clear that paediatrics wasn't that affected. We cleaned and did an awful lot of colouring!

UK, US and I’d include Aus if you want a list

The U.K. being the most relevant to me

Public demand for lockdown was huge here, unfortunately, but yes I dread to think what a government to the left would have done

That is the point.. it’s obviously here I’m talking about I’m not going to dread what they do in India

I was a lockdown sceptic throughout. In my view I've been totally vindicated.

I should add however, we buried my lovely SIL two weeks ago, stomach cancer. It took weeks, months of getting appointments, getting anyone to listen to her etc. This all started during the 2nd lockdown. She was 70 and was so badly let down.

Lockdown was great for me, personally, and while it was harder on my kids, one of them benefitted significantly from it.

Not really sure why I should regret anything tbh.

Why no Ireland, not convenient? And the very large majority of the UK population were subjected to multiple lockdowns enforced by a right wing government.

Yeah, I think you did. If we were going to have a lockdown in England, the Tories filling their boots and those of their disgusting donors was inevitable.

That report has been criticised by scientists for not doing what it said it would do and for not saying anything new.

And I think your analysis is not very sophisticated either. Lockdown is not a blunt instrument. It’s not an either/or. It could be a variation of all sorts of interventions, small lockdowns in areas with high infection rates, masks in crowded places, vastly increased ventilation in public areas, suspension of sports events, school classes outside, vaccinations for the vulnerable, more sewage analysis etc that would be less damaging than a total lockdown. The trouble is our government was not very good at doing any of them, they delayed lockdowns, continued sporting events and made fatal mistakes with the vulnerable. There was an obsession with hand washing that had little medical value. Other countries did a lot better. In Japan, for example, restaurants ventilated and published their indoor air quality along with online menus so you could choose where to go. Some countries did worse.

We are able to look back like this because of the success of the vaccine. But along the way a lot of people died, have long covid or are discovering they have heart problems or diabetes as a result. If the vaccine hadn’t worked we’d be in a different place now. I don’t think you are taking these things into account.

Lockdowns and other mitigations meant the prevention worldwide of millions of unnecessary deaths, and overwhelmed health systems (and one would imagine the collapse of many other systems with workers ill and/or dying).

What We've Learned About So-Called 'Lockdowns' and the COVID-19 Pandemic - FactCheck.org

Haven't read the thread. I thought lockdown was unnecessary - especially for schools, but I agreed with masks and distancing.

I think business/schools etc should make their spaces virus-proof now in preparation for the next pandemic so that we don't have to lock down again. It is a huge expense, but one that would ultimately be worth it.

I was against lockdowns but I didn’t realise quite how pointless they were until I looked at the recent John Hopkins statistics. It makes me very angry that genuine information was suppressed by the government and that someone as stupid as Matt Hancock and as incompetent as Boris J ever had any power over us. Unfortunately Labour was even more pro lockdown, so a total disaster all round.

I didn’t focus on Ireland enough to comment on what they did

I don’t get your need to include every country. The one I care about is here, for obvious reasons

I care about what I saw which was the left being pro lockdown in the U.K.

And I dread to think how it would have gone. Harsher and prolonged lockdowns

I don’t regret lockdown at all. I personally didn’t find it that hard and felt it was probably on balance necessary to help improve the situation. There’s no way of knowing what would have occurred if we had not had lockdown so I don’t see how you can really say it is regrettable or not; and in any case it’s passed now. If we found ourselves in the same situation again, I would assess the information at the time to decide how to behave in the best interest generally. I personally don’t regret it and actually think some positives came to light at a result.

We saw that business can adapt very very quickly when needed.
We saw quick vaccine rollout that saved many many lives.
We saw very quick reactions from government- some overnight - now if that is possible they can surely make other changes quicker. We have seen that those in charge can make big changes when they really want to. That could have big implications.
We’ve definitely seen a general shift in work/life balance since covid which imo is only positive and long overdue.

The UK apart from the country where 5/6 of the population live, apparently.

It's fine if you just want to cherry pick examples from some of the Anglosphere, but call that what it is rather than making broader claims.

‘anglosphere’ again 😬

Yes I care what we did or would have done. It impacts me more than India, Russia or Ireland.