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.

what happened in other countries where there was no lockdown - how did the deaths data go? curious and I have no idea.

No.

I haven't read the book yet, only media reports, but it is written by anti-lockdown economists, not epidemiologists, excluded many important epidemiological studies, and it's not a peer reviewed scientific study. It has been criticised for cherry picking studies and some dubious analysis, eg a meta analysis of datasets that aren't independent. Even their definition of lockdown is dubious - any government policy on non pharmaceutical interventions (eg mask wearing, closing schools) = lockdown.

I doubt very much that it will change my mind.

We all have 20/20 vision with hindsight.

For anyone that did not agree with lockdowns. What were your plans for NHS and its staff? Easy to not agree to lockdowns if you did not work in NHS at the time and see the toll on the service and its staff.

People went insane. The insanity directed at the government by people that wanted everyone imprisoned was shocking.

We were imprisoned by feeble minded people. Never again.

It was very frightening at the time and we had no vaccine to mitigate it for about a year. As many others have said, it's easy to think that it was an overreaction at the time but we were in entirely unknown territory. I wasn't obsessive about wiping shopping clean or not going anywhere but I did wear masks and still do on planes. People are still getting covid, some people still get long covid and there seems to be a lot that we don't yet know about the virus. So I think the decisions that were made were, on the whole, right in spite of the loathsome Johnson who partied while I couldn't go to my mother's funeral.

@Umbonkers No, there were many of us that realised it was madness at the time. But when we tried to speak out we were condemned by those who bought into the hysteria. We knew at the time that eminent epidemiologists who spoke out against it were effectively silenced because it did not fit the 'narrative' - the evidence is not 'new'

100% this.

The WHO's 2019 Pandemic Preparedness report explicitly advised against school closures and the shutdown of society in the event of a pandemic. So when people say "gosh we just did the best we could and didn't know at the time that lockdown would be ineffective and harmful" it's simply bullshit. We did know.

What's coming to light now which is especially troubling is how much western governments colluded with social media companies to suppress lockdown dissent and criticism, as well as the pressure put onto the media to enshrine the lockdown narrative.

The supposed "scientific consensus" we had at the time of peak lockdown hysteria was fake, and imposed from the top down.

I followed the first one and part of the second but then the Scottish ones got silly (and went on longer) including mask rules which I followed the evidence for.

People were vilified for even having caught a virus they "must have broken the rules" for that to happen.......
I caught covid before vaccination and was very ill and have long covid and whilst it sucks ass its nobody's fault as its an airborne illness. I'm not going to stop sending my child to nursery!
I could have also got a different illness and triggered something else!

I am careful with vulnerable family members so will take a covid test before seeing them but also because it can take a few days for symptoms to pop up, I also wouldn't see them if I had a cold or a different bug!

I did support first lockfown and masks but they never moved onto better ones like others did. I saw friends and family in other countries going into lockdown even before us.
The hysteria from all sides of arguments here was something though. And I don't mean just MN....

I didn’t support it and I tried my hardest to get people to see how stupid it all was but it was like they had all lost their minds… I am glad people are finally realising how insane it all was.

I was against masks generally as I didn't think there was much benefit in the incorrect types and people not changing and donning correctly.

Some of the things looking back seem crazy like hazard taping benches closing playgrounds, kids sat in 2 meter squares etc.

I don't think closing schools was the right idea now but then at the time how could teachers have been expected to work in the schools when half the country was on furlough working at home seemingly safer.

Like a PP says hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I reserved judgement on whether lockdown was the best option available, and still do. Not read this book, but it's an unreservedly good thing that the public discussion and debate now includes more acknowledgement of the downsides. That wasn't happening much in 2020-1. Fwiw I also think there was no political way we could've avoided the March 2020 lockdown, regardless of whether it turns out to have been the least worst choice or not.

On a personal level, my loved ones and I opted out after the initial lockdown, which I was more inclined to give a chance to, and that was absolutely the right decision.

I will preface this by saying that I'm fully vaccinated, and clinically vulnerable. I'm not an antivaxxer, or a conspiracy theorist.

I opposed lockdown for the simple reason that I needed to work. My industry was shut down for the best part of two years (only got back to normal in Spring 2022) but I fell through the cracks of government support because I'd started my business about a year before lockdown. There were about 3 million of us who fell through the cracks in one way or another.

I damn near lost the roof over my head as a direct result of it all.

I still believe the lockdowns were the right thing to do, they saved lives while developing the vaccines. The NHS could barely cope as it was.

Yes, they have impacted us economically and the children have been massively affected. However, I wasn't prepared to put myself or my family members at risk. Lives are more important than money. And regards children, my parents were little in WW2 and are still impacted (massively anxious) but they are alive.

https://www.ft.com/content/0eccfeef-2913-43a7-9518-6728f15e556e

Scotland had longer, stricter restrictions than England. Our kids were out of school longer, we had more rules about social mixing, hospitality closed longer, masks until April 2022.

No difference in outcome, or Scotland did slightly worse.

So many countries did the same, some had even more severe restrictions/lockdowns. At the time, the scientists/politicians worked with the evidence available. We all watched the TV news of bodies being piled into refrigerated trucks in America, patients struggling to breath in hospital corridors in Italy. We think our restrictions were bad, but paper permits were required to leave your home in say, Italy, enforced by police checking people's permits when seen out on the streets.

I think most people supported the first lockdown, as most people were frightened with the uncertainty of how serious it was going to be, how many people were going to die, who was vulnerable to it, etc. So the first 2/3 months, fine. Yes, very damaging, but limited damage.

I think the problem was that the relaxing of restrictions and then re-imposition was a shambles, as were the "tiers" which were bonkers. None of it made any sense at all after the first 2/3 months of "proper" lockdown. The ongoing costs were insane, as was the economic damage, health damage, educational damage, etc., of nearly 2 years of restrictions!

Those first 2/3 months should have given everyone, organisations, businesses, public sector, NHS, councils, schools, etc the "breathing space" to adjust to a more spread out living and working environment, i.e. relocation of facilities, installation of ventilation, week in/week out working patterns to halve the number of people in work premises at any time, etc. The whole emphasis should have been on "spreading out" rather than banning all contact! That could have been put in motion within those first 2/3 months, and yes, would have cost a lot of money, but nowhere near as much as the hundreds of billions that the restrictions and ongoing lockdowns cost the country!

What I really despair is that it's all forgotten now. Hospital waiting rooms are unnecessary cram-packed again, ill people have to continue to be sardined into tiny GP and dentist waiting rooms, tiny chemist shops waiting for prescriptions, etc. Hospital staff don't wear masks anymore, even in cancer/chemotherapy wards. We've really learned nothing from it.

But these issues were said at the time?

Yes. Before answering people should be aware that this report isn’t quite as it seems and is not evidence that locking down was wrong.

oddly enough what doesn’t get reported is the same papers findings that mandatory masking is the answer. It might be worth wondering why the Telegraph leave that bit out.

Supported first lockdown, yes. Second lockdown, no. It was very clear by then that it wasn’t deadly for the vast majority of people. It’s caused years of damage to the next generation which is grossly unfair.

We had to lock down because the Tories have stripped the NHS and we wouldn't have had enough beds or staff to cope. The NHS would have collapsed.

That was what it was all about, remember....'protecting the NHS' rather than saving lives

But the problem is that the UK never "followed the science". Look at the eat out to help out programme for instance.

I think Nightingales had medical staffing issues

How many of us on here posting would actually NOT be here posting (because we would be dead), if lockdown hadn't have happened? And the virus had spread more, more deaths?

Impossible to answer.

It was 100% the right thing to do at the time.

This. Please remember those that died in the line of duty on the NHS front line while you are complaining about lockdowns.

The ultimate fact is that we had the worst government with by far and away the worst leader at the worst possible time.

I wonder how we would have fared if Theresa May had still been PM? Or even David Cameron?

I'm not a Tory voter, but their continuous austerity towards the NHS is the reason why the NHS broke. But having Johnson in charge was just fucking ridiculous. Singlehandedly, he's destroyed any trust I have in UK politics. They all seem to be so dodgy, and they don't even try to hide it.

I don't think I could name a single honest politician in the UK right now.