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 don't get it when people say "after the first few weeks I just lived my life as usual

It meant not bothering with the moronic leaving your home once a day guideline, not wearing useless face coverings, working out of home, seeing people when I wanted in our homes...basically doing as I pleased. I couldn't have given a shit about non-essential services being closed and not being able to travel.

The penalties were like parking tickets, Boris said so himself, as long as you paid them, that was it, there was no criminal record or anything like that, they tried to give the impression it was a really bad offence but really it was like parking tickets, we factored this in and if we had got a fine then we would just pay it and carry on

Yep.
We had a neighbour who questioned another whether their car journey had been really necessary - it was because they had a boot full of beer and wine!

I had people regularly step into hedges when I walked past.

DD was out jogging and had a woman hold her rolled up umbrella out at her as she went by. Presumably to ensure social distancing- in the open air!

I unfriended several people on Facebook who bizarrely took great satisfaction in filming/recording others, reporting them to the police and then posting what they had done and then to see the comments from others congratulating them on doing it too!

Because I questioned policies at the time, I was routinely called a granny killer. Ironically, one person actually said they hoped I’d die of covid because I “deserved it” for my views.

If we had ever been occupied, covid certainly highlighted who the collaborators would have been.

I wasn’t ever a denier. I was actually petrified when Boris announced the first lockdown, but it very soon unravelled for me when Prof Neil ‘lockdown’ Ferguson was caught crossing London to shag his mistress, despite predicting deaths in the millions and the need for 100,000 ventilators.
The revelations of the Hancock WhatsApp’s merely confirmed everything I suspected at the time.

This isn't realistic, and I say this as someone who racked up a lot of lockdown breaches.

It's quite understandable that people were afraid of the consequences of law breaking, at a time when governance was appalling and the police had been given extensive extra powers. Yes, you did have to get unlucky, but some people were. Some people were much easier targets than others, and knew it. Not everyone had anyone to break the rules with.

The fines had no further repercussions than you would be out of pocket

Same, but that's because I understood the law and any fine I did get wouldn't have had to come out of the food money.

And this was a big part of the problem with the fines system, of course. People could, and did, simply price it in.

Weak, yes, and also incredibly self-righteous, looking to shame others in their new found position of virtue. For some I think it gave them a cause to be a "leader" of some kind. A lady I know kept posting on Facebook complaining about people who weren't obeying and posting videos of young people playing football in the park! She is older and has lived her life! Also, she and others used it politically to keep blaming the Tories, saying they weren't doing enough of course. I know Boris slipped up majorly during lockdown but I don't think any government would have been without blame. Keir would likely have put us under harsher lockdowns.

I'm still angry about the lack of weighing up of harm to vulnerable people living at home and the ignoring of reality that home is in fact not a safe place for everyone. So many horrific child abuse cases arose, where it turned out that parents had of course been taking advantage of Covid and fobbing off social workers and schools even when rules were relaxed.

For good or bad I mostly followed the rules. I thought it wrong not to question their damage, but I didn’t want things extended

Plus the things I really railed against such as closed sectors and schools were not within my control. Would love to have just rocked up but no dice

Each fine doubled, up to £6400, even if paid, this isn't like a parking fine and for students it could mean being thrown off your course.

My DD was at Uni, in private accommodation, the Police visited on a few occassions to check who was there or not, frightening for people who don't normally come into contact with the Police.

Obviously some MNers are wealthier than others and have dealings with the Police lol!

I don't know anything about students and fines, but some people were certainly fined life changing sums. And for others, even the smallest fines would fit into that category.

Yes the things i wanted to do were shut or easily enforceable, living rurally, it was easy to get out n about, what on earth it was like for families in flats etc, must have been awful.

I think if we do get another pandemic, compliance will be another matter, though of course that would depend on its severity, Covid was very very mild historically, imagine if the people dying were mainly under 50 ?

I said on the other thread, but I really doubt that another pandemic that's either nastier or affects younger people more would result in more compliance. More likely we'd be at risk of significant unrest, and basic services would struggle to function. We have a massive existing trust vacuum already and as things stand I'm not sure who'd actually be listened to. But also, if the people who form the bulk of the workforce thought they or their kids were at real risk, lots just wouldn't leave the house for work. Very real risk that supermarket shelves wouldn't be stocked and lights wouldn't stay on.

I think you missed the point. Covid is not fundamentally a different problem than other respiratory diseases in this setting. If we did not want elderly people to die due to respiratory distress, we would have always had measures to keep them totally apart from germs. Flu and other respiratory illnesses, long before covid, killed many many of the elderly.

So are you suggesting those people didn't matter? That they don't matter now? Why aren't you advocating to keep them safe?

Would you be willing to sit in a room, or an institution, with no one to talk to, not allowed out, staff all masked, for the remaining days of your life, in order to gain a few more months of life?

Most people would not, and forcing them to do so, even to protect others, is morally degraded.

That some residents may be younger is really neither here nor there. Many did not want that kind of isolation anyway, but even if they did, they still don't get to tell other people they also need to be isolated from the rest of society.

@DemiColon

The isolation of the elderly was a disgrace and indefensible, especially those dying.
Especially when infected patients where deliberately sent to CH's in order to stop our TV screens being filled with over run Hospitals, the Govt basically shipped out the elderly into facilities that were away from prying TV cameras and to hell with them after that.

@AntQueen You might not like my choice of phase but one doesn't get a 2nd chance of dying, its not a rehearsal, so my Mum died just before CV, being with her in the last weeks of life was essential for her and for me, that was denied to 10s of 1000s of people and was very wrong.

@DemiColon and @Doagooddeed 👏👏👏
Totally, totally agree - and thank you both for summarising and expressing my views much more eloquently than I can! I think we’re all very much on the same page.

No. I and my family loved lockdown and i wish we could have another

The initial lockdown I think was needed.
I worked on an ICU and seeing our beds go from 24 to 72. Seeing every room that had piped air and oxygen being turned into an ICU bed was worrying. Numbers were increasing exponentially and there was a real risk of there being no beds and people dying because there wouldn't have been ICU beds.
Children's hospitals were also taking adults because of the lack of beds.
ICU patients were being looked after by nurses with no ICU experience
We were at breaking point
We didn't really know what we were dealing with. We needed time to get to grips with it. 50% of our patients were dying. People in their 40,s and 50,s
It's one of the reasons I took early retirement.
So many deaths every day. Not to mention all resources were needed to care for covid parients so others couldn't get the care they needed. It wasn't sustainable, the rate of infection needed to be controlled,
I will never forget it

I was happy to be cautious and avoid going out unless necessary. But I didn't support the gamut of illogical rules being made Eg. Don't go see your family, or see them through the glass window, but it's ok to walk right next to a stranger in the grocery store. People who were skeptical got shouted down in the mass hysteria, so we shut up and got on with it.

Speaking of Covid i do remember wryly thinking that the reason some didnt have room to self isolate was because they had downsized to avoid the bedroom tax.

Which is what many of the SH tenant haters still want.

Except it's not hindsight is it? Lots of us who questioned it at the time, were jumped on for being 'covid deniers' and 'crackpot conspiracy theorists.' But we endured all the nastiness and name-calling as we knew the truth would out... eventually.

@StormShadow

Look, you just made a poor argument and everyone pointed out how bad it was. It's ok, that happens sometimes. You don't need to leave, but you'd do better not to minimise the reality that many DC here were functionally excluded from socialisation by lockdown laws, particularly to their mothers who know much more about what happened than you do.

No - people on the other side of the coin simply argued with me. That's different and also fine. I also didn't minimise, and perhaps you should read my posts again if you're confused about that. I am also a mother who endured a lockdown much longer than yours. I left the conversation as 1. I was getting attacks rather than debates, and 2. It was my bedtime.

What did you base you views on?

Certainly it does appear, in the case of Sunak, he is now saying he was a sceptic when the evidence from the time proves otherwise.

I do know that what another poster said earlier about other ways to silence or abuse posters is possible, i thought about it (apologises for saying it wasn't at the time) and she is right, i ve had this on other threads, which i just left instead.

Your FaceTime argument was not only terrible (and minimising) but self sabotaging too, because you cant say electronic communication with peers is fine for one cohort but not another without looking like a massive hypocrite. You showed no understanding of the legislative discrimination that was cited to you, still don't, and being a mother who has no experience of living under the specific rule you were told about doesn't give you any insight into it.

There are a number of posters who agree with you about the necessity of lockdown, but none backed you up there. Says a lot.

@StormShadow

Your FaceTime argument was not only terrible (and minimising) but self sabotaging too, because you cant say electronic communication with peers is fine for one cohort but not another without looking like a massive hypocrite.

I don't recall making any such comparison re: both cohorts. You've made that one up.

You showed no understanding of the legislative discrimination that was cited to you, still don't, and being a mother who has no experience of living under the specific rule you were told about doesn't give you any insight into it.

Why not? I lived under a rule much more onerous. Does that count? And I'm sorry, with terms such as 'discrimination' you must be aware they only apply in specific circumstances. What you are referencing isn't one.