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'm not that familiar with Arthur's case so don't know whether he'd have survived without lockdown, but one thing we did know in March 2020 was that the policy increased the risk to DV victims.

https://refuge.org.uk/news/refuge-reports-further-increase-in-demand-for-its-national-domestic-abuse-helpline-services-during-lockdown/

Refuge told us as much at the time.

LOTS of us foresaw how lockdown would play out for the most vulnerable like Arthur - and we got shouted down on MN and got called granny killers and told it would never happen.

Harm to dc and increase in DV was known.

It was only on mn groups slammed the discussion, because they wanted lockdown or restrictions to continue.

Mn was crazy over this stuff and the least likely to accept arguments such as this

Tbh the main victory for the government in this saga is that people, generally, are so focussed on other normal (as in non political) people’s behaviour and stance through it and debating that/having pops at each other they their fuck ups (wasted PPE, contracts for mates etc).

Its the same tactic they’ve used with the welfare budget. Taking the focus off themselves and setting people against each other.

Its one thing they are very good at!

The first lockdown was understandable, because we had no idea what we were dealing with and everyone could see the appalling scenes coming out of Italy

I've always agreed about the first lockdown, because it wasn't known what we were dealing with, but some of the scenes "coming out of Italy" are dealt with here: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-italy-coffins-idUSKBN21F0XL

I really don't think people loved it. I think some people were much more scared than others. And there are all kinds of reasons for that, most nothing to do with actual vulnerability levels.

We did not have lockdown. Unless you were CEV you could go shopping, for a walk and some other things.

What I regret is because restrictions of varying kinds were not introduced until late March, at least 20,000 people died who should not have done. And that restrictions especially school closures were longer than they need have been.

The only reason why Boris Johnson should not hang for his neglect is that the death penalty quite rightly has been abolished.

There are posters on here who've talked about having enjoyed lockdown, tbf. Especially the first one.

I supported it because as a community nurse I had no choice - in terms of my family/personal life I would not support another lockdown. The damage caused to people's mental health was horrendous - including members of my family. Not because they were worried about covid - but massive problems arising as a result of following the rules. I would go as far as to say our family will never return to our pre covid situation in significant ways.

I was on the other side in intensive care. The fear and waiting in March was horrendous and when it stated, we had so many sick people. And we had nothing to give them. We gave them oxygen and antibiotics and tried our usual measure but nothing worked. If you were intubated the mortality rate was 70%. People were basically saying goodbye on intubation. We should have locked down earlier in 2020.
I was feeling fairly positive by the early autumn, and thought restrictions should be eased. But the second big wave December/January/February 2021 was almost worse. We by then had some drugs that might help and the most vulnerable had started having vaccines. What was the worst bit was everyone had mixed for Christmas, we went into lockdown in our area Boxing Day. So everyone had big Christmas days. So we had families coming in. I had to tell someone her father had died after her mother had the night before. And tell a heavily pregnant woman who was sick with it her father had died. We went from 10 CPAP beds to 35, and 25 ITU beds to nearly 60, we had spread everywhere. And if there hadn’t been some lockdown where would we put all the usual patients?
it was badly managed and key things were missed but it was needed.

It’s like the new Brexit, isn’t it. Lots of people saying “oh yes well we know NOW it wasn’t the best idea, we know NOW, but we didn’t know THEN, back then it was just not known at all and isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing”.

And some of us are quite flabbergasted because we did fucking know then, and every time someone dared to hint at it they got called a granny murderer and a science denier and fuck only knows what else and told to put cheese in their coffee by a baying mob. So at least acknowledge that you were fucking vile to people because you were scared and believed whatever you were told, and not because you were right and we were evil.

And some of us are quite flabbergasted because we did fucking know then, and every time someone dared to hint at it they got called a granny murderer and a science denier and fuck only knows what else and told to put cheese in their coffee by a baying mob

Yeh I’d take this admission

Don’t forget the propaganda coming out of China too.
Remember the footage of people keeling over in the street (often with their hands out in front of them!) and the pictures of bodies being left where they fell (also neatly on their backs with their hands by their sides) because people were so frightened of contagion and the hospital corridors full of unburied dead?
No wonder there was the initial panic.

It all fell apart very quickly for me when politicians, advisors and public figures were caught left, right and centre visiting their grannies, their country houses, their mistresses and Barnard Castle. A neighbour of mine flies for an executive jet company and he was working all through the lockdown taking the great and the good to the Seychelles and other tropical paradises.
Thats when I realised we were being played as mugs.
The release of the Matt Hancock whatsapp messages further confirmed it.

@Cornettoninja you can’t compare the populations of Australia and NZ to the uk IMO

And for this blasting the science behind the report what about the science behind saying this should have been done to us?!

As I said upthread I think the question in all of this should be so you think everything we did was worth it?

I supported it because as a community nurse I had no choice

So would people leave their jobs if there was another lock down in the future and their employer required them to follow rules, that's additional lockdown rules, most jobs require you to follow some sort of 'rules' ?
Like @FabFitFifties I had to go to work and had to follow the 'rules', the alternative was giving up my job. One small plus side - the lack of traffic was fabulous if you worked in the community. dressing up like a giant blue mutant, not so much

You would have thought that Boris Johnson saying it was nothing to worry about is as close as you could get to incontrovertible proof that it was something to worry about.

Remember the footage of people keeling over in the street (often with their hands out in front of them!) and the pictures of bodies being left where they fell (also neatly on their backs with their hands by their sides)

Only too well - and the Chinese "bodies in the street" was fake too:

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-coronavirus-art-performance-idUSKBN21F05U

Same here - except I’m the clinically vulnerable one.

lots of people with very short memories here who don’t seem to understand things like case fatality rates or that until the vax programme was actually rolled out nationwide from February 2021 for the elderly and vulnerable , reducing transmission was an effective way to reduce infection/death.

I note the ONS stating today “11,111 deaths were registered in England and Wales in the week ending 26 May 2023 (Week 21), this was 10.1% above the five-year average (1,021 more deaths).”

many people sadly are not “living with covid”. People die of it and people are disabled by it. Including kids.

Fully agree

This completely.

There aren't half some crackpot conspiracies on this thread.

Yes they had staffing issues. Basically they were set up for the dying, to be staffed by anyonewith any medical knowledge, vets, dentists, etc. Remember they didn't know what they were dealing with.

However Glasgows was eventually used as an outpatients for various departments inc dermatology just so they could socially distance patients and staff

@MyFavouriteKindOfBalloon

This completely.
There aren't half some crackpot conspiracies on this thread.

I completely agree with you. I live in a country that had lockdowns that went far, far longer than any in England, and additionally, our borders were closed for almost two years. Within the country, we had closed borders and security checkpoints too for quite some time. Anyone who became ill mildly was sent to a quarantine hotel to ride it out. Our hospitals were completely overwhelmed with sick and dying people and it was only the arrival of the vaccine - plus the closed borders - that slowed things down. The sick and dying were not just the elderly, either.

I find the tendency to turn on those that have helped you out of what could have been a major catastrophe deeply concerning, particularly if they are healthcare professionals and scientists. I also see that this tends to be driven by social media, and that commonly has an agenda - and in the past few years, SM agendas are dominated by right-wing Russian bot-farms. Many of the conspiracies and repeated phrases on this thread were born in Russian bot-farms.

It was the right thing to do at the time. Yes I supported it and followed it. Lots of people who now say it shouldn't have happened were totally for it at the time but seem to have forgotten that.

Excess death rates are higher now after the vaccines than before. Can we please drop the idea that we came out of this because of the vaccines - which Pfizer etc now admit were not even tested to see if they stopped transmission. Why on earth people suddenly started trusting politicians and pharmaceutical companies (proven in court numerous times to have lied and falsified studies) is beyond me. I can hear the drum beat of pandemic 2 coming. They certainly made a lot of money from COVID.

I haven’t seen the report. I think the first lock down could be justified in that we were learning what was going on and trying to work out how bad the virus was.

Later lockdowns I didn’t feel were so necessary as we had learned much more and other measures were in place. Masks always seemed pointless to me and were the thing that affected me most.

We are definitely still seeing the effects of lockdown in the young children I care for. Many of these children probably saw nobody outside immediately family for months at a time where children need socialising and the affect on behaviour and communication is definitely a thing.

Many talked about issues on here at the time too

The trouble is the reaction was extreme