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.

Great post exactly how I feel. I wonder how many people who are anti-lockdown worked for the NHS during the pandemic and saw the reality of human suffering daily.

Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford did lockdown even more.

Remember the taping off aisles of kettles and children's shoes in Tesco in Wales as they were non-essential? Absolute madness.

The point I’m making is that we were working in a large supermarket with 200 staff and countless customers so therefore we were mixing.

Watching my nursing colleagues cry because they couldn't save everyone was one of the worst moments of my life so no. I don't regret supporting lockdown.

However, I think we need a better plan for future pandemics because it's clear that we can't do it again - I don't know if there is published research but I know the thinking behind the awful infections (e.g. strep) affecting children over the last year is that it may have been due to weakened immune systems through lack of exposure. If that's the case, lockdown is kicking the can down the road in terms of people becoming dangerously ill.

Farcical that in some situations like restaurants you could sit down and not catch it but outside you couldn't sit on a bench and had to keep moving or you would catch it, stand up, sit down, which was it.

You want to believe that. Doesn't make it true.

The thing I don't understand is until we had a vaccine Covid was ripping through the population, yes?
People were being hospitalised and hospitals were being swamped, yes?
NHS staff were themselves getting infected and dying from it even under lockdown, so surely without lockdown the hospital admissions and scarcity of staff to tend them would have been even worse surely?

It would have got to the point where there could be no more hospital admissions for anything so the deaths would have spiralled massively and people would be unable to set a broken limb, children would have to be treated at home by their parents and survive or die.

Obviously we can never know how it would have played out without lockdown, but am I wrong in my predicted outcomes above?

I agree that the news from Italy was shocking at the time and with what was known then I did comply with restrictions early on. However the impact on mine and me DCs life was too much, at one point I was suicidal so I started seeing my family because they were the only support. My youngest was born just before lockdown and I'm still chasing for an appointment he needed as a newborn for something that should have been very minor but will now need general anaesthetic and is affecting him massively.

It became clear very quickly that it wasn't the right move but actions were too slow. The vulnerable were let down hugely. All the calls of protecting the vulnerable only seemed to apply to those not in care homes. There were better ways to protect those who needed it without having the huge negative impact on everyone else.

The costs far outweighed any benefit, and still do. It's not that I think anything will improve from the enquiry, it's all too far gone now, but I would like to see the people responsible held to account.

No, we did what we thought was needed at that moment, nobody knew what the outcome would be.

Although I do appreciate that I have a larger family and a garden, we all still went to work, so not a lot changed for us.

I overhead a little old dear in the GP office this morning talking about how covid stole 2 years of the life she had left and totally changed the quality of that time she had left, that was so sad to hear.

It was all a dry run to learn what works, what doesn't and how people act. Scientific projections are for a much higher mortality pandemic to hit in next 10-20 years with most projects saying the nearer end of the scale.

@Hell121 I assume this is about the John Hopkins University report that just came out.

From the Telegraph, which opposed restrictions "Other interventions, such as the use of face coverings, which were not pushed in Britain until the end of the first wave, were found to be “relatively effective” where they were used, cutting deaths by 18.7 per cent."

This was generally thought to be the case by reputable scientists/ the WHO etc, that masks gave some - but not total - protection against infection.

Useful to some extent, in some situations, and the implication being that masks might have been used more initially perhaps.

So talking about "mask hysteria" is a bit misguided, no?

The people I know who ignored the rules most readily were NHS. The trauma was compounded by social restrictions which made it impossible to decompress.

The first lockdown I supported and I felt it should of been a harsher lockdown, if we’d of had a true lockdown then imminent ones might have been avoided.

Having covid in March 2020 left me in a lot worse shape after covid than pre covid. 😢

I am fairly sure that not contracting Covid kept vulnerable people alive, myself included.

A report from a right wing think tank is hardly unbalanced.

Other experts still maintain it was the right thing to do. I agree with them.

Yes but with all.the restrictions in place all the queues outside supermarket ,s plastic shields up.at tills, everybody staying two metres apart etc.

First lockdown yes it was a novel virus so needed. Second lockdown I realised it was a sack of shit. People were being paid to sit at home while they pumped the economy with money , we are having the economic fallout of that. I think some people were hankering for continuing restrictions for the handouts but there was no magic money tree and we are now paying dearly for it.
I feel angry really I worked throughout covid and will still be expected to suffer.

Restrictions didn't stop you catching it. They just gave you a false sense of security.

They did stop a lot of people from having their cancer identified before it was too late to treat.

An expensive false sense of security for many families.

The left wing were always for more lockdowns

Let's face it, people jumped at the chance of a three week holiday. It was a party to them, and once furlough was introduced they became addicted to something for nothing. All those calling for more restrictions were coining it in while sitting on their arses at home.

It was scary how quickly people were manipulated. If the government had said covid was on the ground and people had to hop everywhere, we would have seen BBC news reports of people being interviewed while hopping around ASDA.

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.

Seriously, @Berlinlover ? You don't believe there was a pandemic? I despair.

Think about it. You have to come into contact with an infectious person to catch a disease. If everyone is staying at home, wearing a mask, social distancing, testing if they have symptoms or testing regularly if they work in high risk professions, staying at home if they are infectious etc, you weren't likely to come into close contact with very many infectious people in your well ventilated supermarket, possibly behind a plastic screen. Now compare that to the number of infected people you would have come into contact with if there were no measures so everyone with COVID was out and about. There would have been a far higher number of people with COVID at the same time because everyone would have been far more likely to come into contact with someone who was infectious.

You weren't dropping like flies because the measures were reducing the likelihood of you coming into contact with someone who had COVID.

I can't believe that the should've locked down harder brigade still exist. Do they not understand that it is fully global?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I do wish I'd been able to see my Mum more (different country). I'd usually see her every month but I waited until late August. At that point I thought I have to see her because she wasn't making much sense on the phone and I was so worried. I remember printing off various documents to show that I was going to provide respite care and that I wasn't breaking rules by travelling, but being really worried in case I was stopped by the police.

Lockdown significantly accelerated her cognitive decline - apparently this was very common for dementia and Alzeimher's sufferers. When I saw her in August she couldn't remember her own name anymore. I do regret waiting as long to see her. In hindsight I should have just carried on going.

However I don't regret being cautious about socialising, distancing and masking. My Mum was incredibly frail and I was absolutely determined to try and stop her from getting sick where she needed to go into hospital. She would have never come back out, and her dementia made her confused and frightened of strangers - the last thing I wanted was for her to lay dying alone.

Wow, so many scientists with crystal balls on MN.

Those of you who thought it was hysteria I wonder how you would have managed it all (schools, health services, employment). I don't mean with the benefit of hindsight, but actually if you were PM at the beginning of 2020.

Remember when it was first in China? Remember the first couple of cruise ships, and the ski trip? NO ONE knew how the virus would spread or mutate and how badly (or not) it would affect people.