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 supported the need for lockdowns as we didn't know what we were facing. I wish we had done them properly to start with though as I think they ended up prolonged unnecessarily, especially the second one. I didn't and wouldn't do the clapping though as I thought it was complete nonsense.

That was never a rule in fairness

There wasn't in England, that came from Gove bullshitting, but Welsh posters have said there was one there.

I was fine with lockdown, this was an unknown virus, and we were protecting the health service and the elderly. In retrospect, only the 1st lockdown was justified, and I think after that vulnerable and elderly people should have been supported to isolate, but not everyone else. A lot of people took the piss, and it's caused the economy billions, that the young people will have to pay for, with no thanks either for essentially giving up their education and well being for two years. The people I saw breaking the rules and not wearing masks were the same elderly people who we all had to bend backwards to protect. Not doing that again, and at the time I was a stickler for the rules.

If there's an argument it should've happened earlier in 2020, it's not because of the eventual lockdown length. Case rates were low for weeks before we lifted restrictions.

The same lot telling you to sip from a paper straw whilst flying private jet planes

Exactly.

The same ones telling us, “we’re all in this together” yet ignoring the very rules that they brought in allegedly for all our benefit. Partygate was just the tip of the iceberg, there was a completely different set of rules for different people. That’s why I’d never again comply with another lockdown should it ever happen again.

@JohnPrescottsPyjamas

The same ones telling us, “we’re all in this together” yet ignoring the very rules that they brought in allegedly for all our benefit. Partygate was just the tip of the iceberg, there was a completely different set of rules for different people. That’s why I’d never again comply with another lockdown should it ever happen again.

You don't have a mind of your own? You follow the example of others?

eat out to help out being discussed on More or Less

I think about brexit as well when I see how entrenched people's views are.
However, I don't know a single person who voted for brexit who has changed their mind on it, or at least, is prepared to admit that.
I supported (the first) lockdown myself, quietly, I certainly never told anyone to put cheese in their coffee.

8 to 17 % increase in infections attributable according to Warwick University.
reasonable to conclude lock down in the autumn started earlier by a few days as a consequence, although Spanish variant had an influence, would have been important for psychological benefit.

Partygate was just the tip of the iceberg, there was a completely different set of rules for different people.

The other aspect of this, which I think is part of the reason for resentment now, is that the people making the rules were never going to be on the sharp end of them. It's easy enough to make legislation that functionally excludes lots of people from outside exercise and green space when the large garden of 10 Downing Street is available to you. No big deal to condemn millions of parents to simultaneous work and care of young children when yours are entitled to a school hub place and you've got a nanny anyway. That sort of thing.

So even the members of the political class who did keep to the rules still weren't playing the same ball game as someone trying to work and look after their 4 year old in a flat with no garden.

How can a vaccine be tested to see if it stops transmission of a virus? Just have a think about it for a minute. (An ethical think.)

covid admissions lower than in summer 2021

As I posted earlier up the thread, I complied with the very first lockdown - until it became obvious that those supposedly leading by example were visiting family, second homes, travelling across London to visit their mistresses and Barnard Castle.

It was never a real lockdown anyway (thank goodness) There were so many exceptions made for so many ‘special’ cases, it was as leaky as a sieve. Rules and regulations made no sense or logic.
A friend who has to fly for business said he had to line up at the airport 2 metres apart from the person in front - but side by side with the person in the next queue! Remember the red, green and amber areas they also had? After 10pm, everyone was just herded into one room anyway.

Supermarkets clearly had to remain open, but the employees were for weeks and weeks openly exposed to potential infection. I often wonder if death rates were actually higher amongst this group because of this?

Very true.

How can we be sure that it was the vaccine that slowed down the virus or was it just the fact that the virus (Omicron) mutated into a milder but more infectious version and we’ve now all been exposed anyway?

I’ve heard so many people say how ill they were with covid but, “I would have been so much worse if I hadn’t had the vaccine” How do they know that? I’m not anti vax, I’ve had it myself but I also had covid before and after. Both times nothing more than a snuffly nose. The side effects from the vaccine were far worse than the actual illness. I suspect now how your immune system reacts to the virus is more about luck than vaccine status.

I supported the initial "two weeks to flatten the curve" concept - to push the peak a few weeks down the road allowing the NHS time to pivot to a Covid focus and prepare accordingly. What it rapidly became though I did not support at all (and I was frequently accused of being a granny-murdering monster).

I was rapidly horrified by the utter glee with which people turned upon others - the division and hatred against those who couldn't wear masks was fucking horrendous, and many, including many on here, would have happily locked up all those with mental health difficulties, learning disabilities, sensory impairments and god knows what else in order to increase their own perceived bubble of "safe". That was horrific. The rush to apply DNAR orders to those with any form of learning disability, physical disability or autism in some areas was absolutely dystopian and horrendously reminiscent of the kind of mindset that led towards Nazi Germany.

The utter disregard of the impact upon children in terms of the way education was treated - as something that was dispensable, that could be easily outsourced to a computer and the subsequent issues that are emerging with cohorts who lost that window of early socialisation in terms of language development issues (and of course NHS SALT is completely fucked and in a horrendous mess as a result of the backlog+demand+SALT students who dropped off courses because it was so bloody horrid trying to train through the pandemic - I have peers who work in services with 50% unfilled vacancy rates as there just are not the SLTs out there), and behavioural issues - and older kids where the impact of basically being left to online as a babysitter so parents could do some work has led them to being at risk of grooming, radicalisation (I work with a lot of autistic young adults who are interested in WW2 and military history - think about what a year googling "Nazis" with less supervision could have led them down in terms of internet rabbit holes), toxic masculinity and endless internet "banter"... it had such an impact upon one of my children's school cohorts that the boys in particular (older primary) have now gone from being a challenging year group to being utterly uncontrollable, driving teachers to long-term sick and I had to move my kids' schools after multiple physical assaults on one child, endless utterly inappropriate sexual comments and the like.

The impact upon my own clients is still being felt - the loss of relationships with family members unable to visit care homes for so long, the behavioural issues caused by the loss of all the routine and structure that these individuals used to regulate their emotions, anxiety and lives (I work with adults with learning disabilities), the projects that closed "temporarily" and never reopened meaning finding meaningful day placements for clients is increasingly hard, the exodus of carers from the roles after the way the Govt treated them meaning staff turnover (which was always a challenge) has gone through the ceiling and the knock on impact that has in terms of training, knowledge and skills dealing with clients being constantly lost. Or we have the clients now who have gone from having a great routine of activities - to being still too scared to leave home because they cannot grasp that the restrictions were lifted and life has moved on - so they remain basically in one room watching TV all day... or those homes where residents are still periodically confined to their bedrooms as the homes go in and out of "outbreak" measures - and residents can't establish any trust or confidence in what they will be allowed to do from one day to the next.

As for myself - I was one of the people who spoke out as being anti-lockdown in an "errr - have you actually thought about if this is the right thing to do" and was socially ostracised for it, but now more and more I speak to colleagues about it and they comment about "the damage those fucking lockdowns did" and how we got it incredibly, badly wrong and I don't know if we'll ever fully dig ourselves out of the holes we dug ourselves into. I don't think we'll ever fully repair the rifts it caused in society in terms of friendships lost, fear generated (it's taken my mum until about now to emerge from her fear of infection and get out and about again) and groups turned against each other in society. But that was very handy wasn't it - we were so busy arguing about if a scotch egg was a substantial meal and counting how many times a day Doris from number 57 took the dog out to pee and if Derek hadn't come out to clap and bang a saucepan that we didn't notice eye tests at Barnard Castle, groping your secretary and snogging her face off in a manner usually seen at the 6th from Prom, and so many piss ups in Number 10 that they at least managed to prove they'd be able to organise a piss up in a brewery.

I complied with first lockdown in March 2020 because I could understand the need to stop the NHS getting overwhelmed.
It wasn't long before the focus quietly shifted to 'zero covid'.
When DH tested positive we had no less than 5 phone calls in the first 48 hours making sure he was isolating. On the sixth he had to threaten to report them for harassment.
We complied with rules for the most part but didn't get the hysteria at all. I could never go back to the whole 'isolate for two weeks' rule. Unfortunately for the vast majority of people life just doesn't work like that.

I think the data we had always suggested compliance with isolation was patchy. Even Indy SAGE said as much. As you say, life doesn't work like that for most people.

But protecting the NHS was about keeping it running so it could treat as many people as possible.

We lost some friends. They decided our jobs made us high risk. They dealt with it by ghosting us. They ghosted because they didn’t isolate, they decided to be safe bubbles with their safe work at home jobs and just see each other.
I was quite tolerant at first, thinking they were just highly anxious. When I realised they were actually meeting up still and just blanking texts out of guilt I was annoyed.
They tried to get in touch since but I’ve not responded. It really hurt the kids, to avoid us finding out they even stopped the kids having contact via Roblox, messages etc. the kids thought they’d done something wrong and didn’t know why they were shut out, it was horrible for them.
We’d become the dirty key workers it turned out. I’ve heard others say similar

@CoffeeWithCheese

Excellent post and I completely agree. The nastiness thrown at those with disabilities was disgusting and I won’t forget sone peoples attitudes.

A good friend has a daughter with Downs who was exempt from wearing a mask but was refused entry to a major retail store for not wearing a lanyard to prove her disability. And the friends who agreed with that stance and that she should stay home.
I’m sure some would only have been happy of anyone with any form of physical or mental health condition was locked away to rot.

My own DS was Y10 when the first lockdown came and he really struggled with online learning and lack of socialisation. He really found going back after the constant in and out of school difficult and didn’t get anything like the grades he would had lockdowns not happened. He also withdrew into himself and become really quiet and anxious.

He’s taking his A levels this month and I’m very proud of how he’s finding his feet again but it’s taken it’s toll over last 3 years.

I agree on education. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on here most of the time.

People hounded for suggesting schools were important, incredible.

It wasn't much better in London. If your child wasn't in one of those key year groups they brought back in for skeleton schooling a couple of afternoons a week (was it years one and six?) then they were out of school March through to September and then again Christmas through to the first week in March. The second one felt totally insane even at the time.

I think there was a lot of confusion about what was actually the law, what was "guidance" and what was made up nonsense. The police in particular, didn't seem to know what was actually law and what wasn't, hence the sheer number of incorrectly issued penalty notices and "warnings" that carried no legal power at all. Same with university security guards who made up their own "rules" and completely ignored things like what constituted a "household" when they would stop and threaten with sanctions, groups of students walking around in a group larger than 6 (even though they lived together so were legally allowed to!). It was the "enforcers" making things up as they went along that did a lot of damage and just caused severe annoyance to people who actually knew what the law was at the time!