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 think the first one was reasinable whilst they worked out what was happening and git vaccines together but i do think there were sime stupid decisions around releasing covid patients into nursing homes and the size of grouos who coukd meet included children.

My point is that scientists said at the time that EOTHO was "madness" and that was ignored. The government was advised more than once by panels of scientists to impose lockdown and they dithered. So they weren[t following what multiple scientists were suggesting. I understand there are different priorities but nobody can say that the UK government listened to and acted promptly on what scientists were telling them about the spread of the virus.

Willmafrockfit · Today 10:08
i walked my dog across the fields
my dd escaped london and also roamed the fields!
my ds saved an awful lot of money
we drove and picked up dd things from uni, the roads were amazingly quiet
no regrets
why should i?

I think this attitude sums up why I was so angry at the time and since. Yes I was OK, I could work from home on my laptop and I did not suffer financially. That doesn't mean that I wasn't aware that other people were not as fortunate. I like in a naice village and the level of 'enjoyment' among the community there was sickening - no recognition that lockdown was horrific for some people who were not in that position.

I imagined, as I'm sure a lot of people did, that the first lockdown was to buy us a couple of months or more to change things- to pour resources into PPE, into the health-care systems, I just imagined things would be scaled up. That was a good justification for pausing life. Unfortunately, given the scale of the government who had already weakened the NHS, then gave all the money to their friends, and so on- meant that that precious window wasn't used properly at all and we became stuck in a lockdown cycle that was pointless.

One reason it was pointless was that the gov't was doing things to actively cause the spread, the most obvious one being insisting that elderly patients with Covid were returned to their care homes, without proper testing or quarantine.

If you do that to the most vulnerable, then you are essentially promoting that sector to get sick and die, so tinkering around with lockdowns to preserve most of the rest of us is pointless.

I have always been against government rules dictating what we can do in our own homes and I did break the rules a few times with dying or elderly relatives as whilst I think it's fine to police public spaces, I don't agree the state should be able to tell you if your grandma can come over to your house. The risk is yours to take. So all measures interfering with the privacy and choices in your home (beyond serious crimes like abuse) I don't agree with anyway.

The lockdown wasn't used as I thought it was going to be used, after all that bought time we still didn't have enough hospital capacity, so it turned out to be useless.

a hospital cleaner died with covid which upset me immensely.
i didnt know him personally but i knew him to see.

Does anyone else ever suspect that Boris was not in fact in intensive care with Covid and that this was meant to increase compliance?

The estimated cost to the UK of our response to the covid pandemic ranges between £310 to £410 BILLION. I’d imagine it is at the top end. Imagine if that had have been put into the NHS instead of advertising campaigns linked above - as one example.

The slogans were different. In uk it was "protect the nhs" country I am from had "support the healthcare staff". And the "protect tbe nhs" really went on ott overall. Which was very much on purpose to pit people against each other and shut some up

Ah yes - the divisive tactics of presumption and catcalling is obviously the way to ‘win’ this. Go you!

Seriously, what’s your aim?

er i didnt work from home @Umbonkers

But all you lot who were going "but our freedom" apropos of nothing would have presumably reacted the same way even if it was some kind of super ebola event. You lot didn't act like that based on "science" either

I work in a supermarket with 200 staff members. We had our first Covid case in November, 2020. If there had been a pandemic we would have dropping like flies months earlier so it was obvious to me from very early on that lockdowns etc were absolute nonsense.

Hardly any of us. It has a 99.76% survival rate.

Maybe that question should be posed to relatives of the quarter of a million people in the UK who did die from Covid. And were we supposed to just throw the clinically vulnerable under the bus ?

Some decisions made during COVID were the wrong ones. How long schools were shut, ppl not able to see dying relatives, ppl encouraged not to seek medical help, GPs not seeing patients, discharging untested patients from hospital into care homes, nightingale hospitals built but no staff for them. I felt furlough was a positive thing. I do think how the pandemic was handled needs to be reviewed so a proper plan could be put together for future pandemics. Long lockdowns caused damage on different levels. What's done is done but we should learn from it.

That campaign wouldn’t have cost much. It was the closed businesses, and furlough

Initially it was going to be 8 weeks. How long did it last, over a year in the end, maybe 18 months

I supported lockdown at the time. I supported school closures the first time, but not the second (was there a third?) time.
As PP said, I thought we needed to buy some time to protect the NHS, get PPE, vaccine work, etc.

I haven't read the report - what are the main points that are saying that lockdown was definitely the wrong thing? From what I have read above, the report is by anti-lockdown people, is that correct?
I think we need a lot longer before we will really know if it was the wrong thing.
I still think on balance that it was right (for a certain amount of time).

This is nonsense isn't it, the NHS manages to turn 160 billion a year into a below average "service" and yet this is apparently all done by a few hundred politicians.

There is one Labour MP in the city I live in. Is he managing all the hospitals, surgeries etc. Do they all call him for decisions?

The people in the NHS are responsible for their work.

I was retired so wasn't too bothered by the farcical lockdowns though as I didn't have to worry about work rules and could afford any fines if they came my way had I inadvertently strayed into 'not local'

"It has a 99.76% survival rate."

Now. With vaccines.

Does recognition and empathy with suffering have to involve others prostrating themselves and denying their own enjoyments? Because I have to say, there’s an awful lot of people having the time of their lives whilst significant numbers suffer every single day all over the world.

I think that the majority demographic on here Isn't the norm across the UK. I started a thread on my then BF, I was told to end things because he was in debt. He is a taxi driver and things still haven't recovered. During lockdown there were days when he was making £30 a day. Of course he got into debt, just like many lower paid self employed (and employed) people. Many posters aren't seeing the effects of lockdown, daily, as other posters are. They just couldn't get life without spare income for toys, housing with gardens, devices and good broadband packages. Children for who school keeps them alive and fed. Likewise vulnerable adults. I supported the first restrictions and mask wearing, I was considered ECV, but I had a consultant appointment in December 2020. None of their patients had died, or been seriously ill, but people were dying because of lockdown restrictions on medical care. We were expected to live with nonsense reasoning while our skies were open. My African friends were going home, attending weddings/events with hundreds of unvaccinated people and coming back.

Same here. Tbh, I felt like that in spring already, after the first couple weeks of lockdown.
People kept talking about “the new normal”, some clearly fetishizing the whole concept.

As parents (it's mumsnet) I was surprised by the level of hysteria on here at the time about sticking to the rules. Because we all know children will catch and spread germs quicker than any bioweapon! I remember early 2020 and one of my children with a used mask in their mouth!
But on the flip side as parents we are protective of our children so want everyone to follow the rules so our kids don't get sick.

I remember the fear I had of both parents getting sick (or worse) and not being able to look after the children. Then the relieve that children weren't getting sick or dying. Then the relief after getting covid and surviving.

I think collectively the world did what seemed right at the time. Perhaps after the first lockdown we shouldn't have had the later ones.

The cynic in me wonders why we didn't let it run rampant to solve the over population issues of the world, but few politicians were willing to go that route (the Brazilian president was the only one I can think of).

I think people have forgotten about how it impacted the NHS and how much worse it would have been without the lockdown. I have family (nurses and doctors) who worked through it and were exhausted and traumatised. Can't imagine how much worse it could have been for them if it had just been left to run through the population.

It's easy to look back in hindsight ,three years after the event but watching the reports coming out of Italy was terrifying I'm not sure what elsrr we could have done?
Thats not to say I don't think that the rules and restrictions went on to long or that some of them made no sense ,I do by it something needed to be done
The second lockdown however was farcical with everyone claiming to be a key worker and getting their kids in school.,either schools needed to close or they didn't .