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.

After the first 6 weeks where I thought the lockdown was slightly OTT but went along with it but then on hearing about the Diamond Princess cruise ships stats i really began to think something was awry, then read Laura Dodsworths book in summer 2021 all about SpiB, and 77th brigade etc and realised the whole thing was about far more than a virus. From summer 2020 I felt like I was living in a dystopian novel. It has changed me as a person.

I don't think the phrase "protect the NHS" would have the desired effect now as clearly the NHS is broken regardless but at the people did wholeheartedly believe they were doing a good thing in obeying the rules.

Though I do remember a crazy thread on here where someone asked if it would be OK to take work calls in her car on the drive way for some peace and quiet, and she was told noo, you must stay in doors and what if there is covid out there and you bring it back in. That's when I realised how far it had gone

The whole ludicrous tiers thing was my finely straw. My local authority went into tier 3 despite cases being reasonably fist and claimed they weren’t getting a penny fir the decision and it was only being done for the good of the public
Yet my mum who lives 30 minutes away from as in an area with higher cases but covered by a different LA and so was in tier 2.

After weeks of pressure the LA leader admitted they’d been given a payment of around £1mllion for going into tier 3.

I had been questioning a lot before that point but that was my fuck this shit moment.

Like many, I went along with the first lockdown and did struggle without adult contact. Only bonus was the weather in 2020 was fantastic and I laid on garden most of the time. But subsequent lockdowns - no!!

Reasonably flat*

@BogRollBOGOF

School wasn't closed... from home the DCs and I could hear the playground sounds of children including their classmates playing together while they spent nearly 5 months being prohibited from crossing the threshold. Ds2 was 7 and forgot how to play because there was no one his age to legally play with for so long. By the time he went back to school he'd forgotten who his classmates were and his keyworker friends had grown and matured in his absence. In the winter lockdown, he sobbed on my lap daily during the online lessons, taunted by the sight of half his class that the law banned him from meeting. It was worse than closed.

I'm sorry to hear your DS went through this, but why would you say "he forgot how to play"? Do you really mean his 'playing with others' skills just fell by the wayside? And he forgot who his classmates were in just 5 months?

If it's so abhorent to facilitate a "two-tier" system of vulnerable people being facilitated to shield if they wish while others can live more freely, why did we basically impose it on children based on parental occupation? Children were the lowest risk age group, but by the winter lockdown couldn't even legally meet the exercise with another person exemption if they were over 5 due to the need to be supervised. Again, they were often hit by the Rule of 6 as it was easy to exceed with standard family sizes. With over-zealous policing and curtain twitching it took a lot of confidence to be willing to be seen to break the law in public.

Vulnerable people/those with disabilities don't choose their status. Most often, those disabilities and/illnesses are there for life. When Covid hit, there was little choice for this category but to isolate for quite some time until the safety of vaccination appeared.

Children may have been the lowest risk age group, but they could still spread the disease. Any time they spent at home had a limit in sight and they still could leave and socialise with others. Also, to reiterate - by your own words - they were low risk. Vulnerable people were and are not.

I remember posts on here saying that vulnerable children should take their education entirely online to enable fit and healthy children to return to school, as parents were unhappy with their own kids doing online schooling. That's the odious levels the conversation reached.

@AntQueen I agree, you simply cannot selectively LD sections of the population.
I would read "the vulnerable should self isolate" little realising that huge sections of the working population could be classed as "vulnerable" so who would actually be doing the work to support all the "non vulnerable" ?

As i said earlier, all Govt's across europe went with some sort of LD strategy

Wouldn’t have all those billions spent on furlough have been better properly spent on the NHS - not just thrown at it - and then there wouldn’t have been the requirements for repeated lockdowns ‘to save it’ in the first place?

Allegedly our government is supposed to have had contingency plans in place for just such an eventuality/pandemic but it still very quickly became more about politics rather than saving lives.

@AntQueen As I’ve posted earlier in the thread, sadly we can’t protect elderly and the very vulnerable from dying forever. My mother was in her mid 80s with dementia, my MIL was 90 and very frail. Lockdown may have bought them a couple more months, but at what quality of life? Most of us will die with something, usually pneumonia will get most people, rather than an underlying disease.

I’ve often thought about the Mental Capacity Act 2005 during lockdown.
It states that:

“Any decisions, treatment or care for someone who lacks capacity must always follow the path that is the least restrictive of their basic rights and freedoms”

“Do not assume the person does not have capacity to make a decision just because they make a decision that you think is unwise or wrong”

“Always assume the person is able to make the decision until you have proof they are not.”

“Try everything possible to support the person make the decision themselves.”

All of the above were totally ignored. How many of those in care homes were actually asked what their wishes were? It was automatically assumed that they wanted to be isolated for their own protection and the decision taken totally out of their hands. Surely that is in totally contravention defeats the whole purpose of the Act in the first place?

Wouldn’t have all those billions spent on furlough have been better properly spent on the NHS - not just thrown at it - and then there wouldn’t have been the requirements for repeated lockdowns ‘to save it’ in the first place?

It was never just money though - it's skills and staffing. Just to get a nurse through university it's 3 years, 5-6 years for a doctor, and they're still not especially experienced/competent/useful until they've been on the job a few years.

This was why the Nightingale Hospitals lay empty - money thrown at it but there were no staff.

We do need an expansion of training places, but that's a long term solution not one for an immediate crisis.

We were tier 2 and all surrounding areas were tier 4, this was just before Christmas, we just ended up with massive queues at our retail park as everyone just went there to do their shopping and eat out

I'm sorry to hear your DS went through this, but why would you say "he forgot how to play"? Do you really mean his 'playing with others' skills just fell by the wayside? And he forgot who his classmates were in just 5 months?

Always good to see people still minimising the impact on children. If you as a parent (I presume) have no idea of the importance of peer play at the age of 7, I truly despair.

There is a lot of minimisation going on though, convenient memories.

I question even the term 'vulnerable' tbh. I would hear people saying they were vulnerable for all sorts of random reasons. The main vulnerability was age and yet I would hear of 10 year olds who were vulnerable because they had had an episode of asthma 5 years ago.

Age was the primary vulnerability, followed by obesity. Yet nothing, literally nothing, was said about obesity. How about 'lose weight, protect the NHS'? That slogan was true to the science, but no one would have been prepared to accept that particular aspect of The Science.

@JohnPrescottsPyjamas

All of the above were totally ignored. How many of those in care homes were actually asked what their wishes were? It was automatically assumed that they wanted to be isolated for their own protection and the decision taken totally out of their hands.

Trouble is that when you're in a confined space like a care home, the decisions made by one resident affect all the others, and the staff. Facilitating one resident to see family members risks them getting covid, and that will then run through the care home like wildfire due to the, often cramped, communal areas like lounges, dining room, shared bathrooms, etc. So you really can't be gung-ho and let people in those places have total freedom as you have to protect the other residents too, who may prefer to live a longer life rather than have a shorter one and die of covid!

That's why I advocated for "spreading out" if there was another pandemic instead of lockdowns, i.e. requisition hotels (like they do for asylum seekers) so care home residents can be moved to a bigger place with ensuite bathrooms, more/larger lounges/dining rooms, etc, fewer residents to each floor, etc etc. If you spread them out more, and provide more facilities to keep them apart more (especially if meeting relatives or going out, etc), then you massively reduce the risk of covid spreading.

Yes, the tiers were particularly and spectacularly stupid. The fool who advised the government to do that needs to be sacked, if not tarred and feathered. Which numpty could have thought it was a good idea???

It completely and utterly fails any kind of "common sense" or sanity test.

Probably the same kind of moron who thought it was a good idea to carve up parts of Africa (and to a lesser extent America) by straight lines, totalling ignoring Geography, which still causes troubles in Africa even today!

I suspect those who thought up the "tiers" didn't attend the secondary school lesson on the differences between physical geography and political geography!

Actually just looked back and we were tier 4 so probably I was one using your shopping centre.

The whole tiers was so ludicrous no one had a clue. And they still locked down anyway - what a load of crap that time was.

I thought the things that went on around the elderly were criminal. I remember hearing an interview with a woman in a large care home in my city who hadn't been allowed to leave her room for three weeks! There were also cases of elderly people going for assisted death rather than face more isolation. It was 2022 here before many care homes opened to residents and guests coming and going again in a normal way.

It points to two things for me - one being a real understanding of how many people in such places die, and of what. And a lack of recognition that everyone dies, it's almost never simply peacefully falling asleep, and there is more to life than existing in a room in an institution with no friends or loved ones around you. I knew a woman who refused to visit her mum with dementia in case she might catch covid and die - her mum also had terminal cancer. There was something a little sick about a lot of the thinking around the elderly and vulnerable. The idea that those who are very fearful get to say that those who want to spend their limited time living need to put up with being locked in an institution for a year is sick.

I recall a husband who could finally see his wife after a long period of isolation in a care home saying she had just gone mentally over that time

That isolation was so awful to hear about and her depletion, it made me cry

On Scotland I know my toddler would not have been in private nursery during the spring term 2021 if we lived there

That would have further broken women, trying to work or homeschool

Children may have been the lowest risk age group, but they could still spread the disease. Any time they spent at home had a limit in sight and they still could leave and socialise with others.Also, to reiterate - by your own words - they were low risk. Vulnerable people were and are not.

"And they could still leave and socialise with others"
In England, they couldn't socialise with a peer if they were primary age during the lockdowns, that's the point the pp was making.

In the winter 2021 lockdown, we could meet up with one other person for outdoor exercise. Children under 5 could also be taken along without counting towards the limit of 2 but children aged 5 and over were included in the limit. So under the rules they couldn't go and play in the park with a friend for example, because they'd also need a supervising adult.

So while I could and did go for walks with various adult friends individually, under the rules DS could only go out with another adult and was banned from seeing another child in person.

@hamstersarse

Always good to see people still minimising the impact on children. If you as a parent (I presume) have no idea of the importance of peer play at the age of 7, I truly despair.

I wasn't minimising, thanks. I'm truly interested. (And I'm assuming there were other children near his age to play with - if not, BOGROLL can tell me. That's why I asked.)

I think this is an excellent summary of how I feel, more eloquently put than I could.

However I don't think it's reasonable to minimize how genuinely frightened a lot of people were at the time. To sit back and be smug and say "I told you so" is unempathetic and unhelpful.

@JohnPrescottsPyjamas

As I’ve posted earlier in the thread, sadly we can’t protect elderly and the very vulnerable from dying forever. My mother was in her mid 80s with dementia, my MIL was 90 and very frail. Lockdown may have bought them a couple more months, but at what quality of life? Most of us will die with something, usually pneumonia will get most people, rather than an underlying disease.

Well, no, of course we can't. But as a civilised society, we do our best do protect our elderly and ensure they are not exposed to agents that could cause them unnecessary distress or pain - yes?

Your last sentence is simply acrobatics and I'm really not certain what point you're trying to make with it.

Children could absolutely bloody not socialise with others for months during the pandemic. For a large chunk of 2021 it was illegal for kids aged between 4 and around 11/12 to meet with a single other child face to face (because they’d each have to go with a parent, making an illegal gathering of 4). Please don’t minimise what was done to children - many of us are still dealing with the after-effects of it now.

No.

You could probably keep the elderly and frail alive a little longer by keeping them in a plastic bubble, but we wouldn't do that because it's inhumane, cruel, and not what many would choose. Nor would we impose it on them in order to "protect others" because it would be a severe violation of their human rights.

The frail and elderly have always been more vulnerable to disease, that's what makes them frail and elderly. It's always been the case that most die, indirectly, as the result of something like a respiratory illness, including in care homes. What goes on the death certificate will be something like heart failure, but usually what has happened is the person has had a weak heart for years, and gets a cold or flu, and that is too much and they have a cardiac arrest, and most will at that point have a DNR order that's been put in place. So respiratory illness is the secondary cause, as it was with many of those who dies in similar instances with covid, even though it was recorded differently with covid.

If we really believed in preventing that kind of thing we would still have the elderly locked down now, and we would have 10 years ago.

The patient turn-over in many care facilities, pre-covid, was less than two years. People who go into such facilities are at the end of life stage. That's normal and human, we all face it, and it's usually going to be uncomfortable to some extent unless we are extremely lucky. A few extra months locked in a room is not in any way going to improve their lives, nor is pretending we can cheat death that way realistic.

The care of the elderly during that time gives me the shivers.

There were no family to advocate for them for months on end, I am not making accusations of all care homes in any way, but I suspect if there were abusive homes, that will have ramped up massively.

The other thing I’ve been hearing more and more is about the increase in drugging patients, here is one Canadian study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10196682/ and because we literally lost our minds and discarded the death certification process and post-mortem processes, we’ll probably never know what some people in care homes died of

@DemiColon

If we really believed in preventing that kind of thing we would still have the elderly locked down now, and we would have 10 years ago.

We have Covid vaccinations now. We also have vaccination for other viruses.

The patient turn-over in many care facilities, pre-covid, was less than two years. People who go into such facilities are at the end of life stage. That's normal and human, we all face it, and it's usually going to be uncomfortable to some extent unless we are extremely lucky. A few extra months locked in a room is not in any way going to improve their lives, nor is pretending we can cheat death that way realistic.

Yes, that is true for most residents, but not all - did you miss where I noted that not all of them are elderly and/or at end of life care? In any case, is that any reason to care for them any less? I'm not ignorant of these realities; one of my parents was in a care home at a relatively young age (50s) and died and few years later. I would not have wanted her to go through Covid on top of what she had already.

Asking a question isn't minimising.