to not know what difference a female perspective would have made?

[icewoman]

Covid enquiry.

Helen McNamara, deputy cabinet secretary says women were being ignored and disregarded and the female point of view was missing from most decision making

I have no difficulty believing that our revered leaders behaved like a bunch or ignorant arrogant chauvinistic pigs but I do wonder what, if anything, a female point of view would have changed about the decision making?

It’s not ‘hindsight’ if people said it at the time.

As I said, I raised all of these issues at the time, multiple times, including directly with the NHS (with whom I was working on a covid-related project). So this isn't hindsight, this is being able to see what's right in front of me.

How is it not totally and blindingly obvious that if you isolate elderly people they will suffer? How? That is a genuine question.

And I don't understand how you can't see that pitching the situation as being
lockdown
or
let elderly people die

is incredibly simplistic? I would expect much more sophisticated thinking from a ten year old and yet that was the level of thinking a lot of people displayed at the time. They seemed totally unable to see that isolating people prevented the spread of covid and created other huge problems. They didn't seem to be able to hold two ideas in their head at the same time.

I know I'm wanging on now but so much past anger is rising up again. The hindsight comment has really annoyed me.

It does not take hindsight to know that closing schools harms children. It's obvious.

On the plus side they are finally admitting harm

Even if they can’t say it was entirely obvious to anyone sensible

The key takeaway for me is the whole political system was based on a flawed objective - the government strategic objective was not the prevention of harm.

If it had been, we might have balanced risks more effectively.

What we saw was we had fools in government oscillating wildly between 'lockdown' and 'open up' rather than how do we manage all the potential harms that are identified. The UK government didn't even identify the full list of harms.

I can't believe that the Covid restrictions for pregnant women - and those giving birth - would have been as extreme if 50% of the decision makers were women.

Everyone knew it caused harm.

I knew that too.

So I also was right.

So what?

Yes it was obvious it would cause harm.

What I don't understand is why you feel you were special in spotting it.

Do you think? I mean the only country that catered better for women and children was Sweden

Female leaders here demanded harsher restrictions

I'm not pitching the 'situation' as that, I'm recalling the discussions at the time as that.

I mean maybe if a parenting site like this was busy telling everyone about harms to women and children for the pandemic

But it wasn’t, it was severely the opposite

You are the one who made the comment about hindsight, aren't you? I was responding to what you said.

That's how a conversation works.

You made the comment about hindsight, I was responding to that. Again, that's how a conversation works.

I didn't mention being special.

Well going by conversations on mn I’d say they were an outlier.

It was definitely the case among my friends and family that I was one of the very few people pointing out the inevitable fallout of closing schools, isolating the elderly etc. A few friends agreed with me, but many didn't.

I don't think I'm 'special' but given that schools had to close because of the outcry from the public, I don't think I was in a majority in seeing the downside of lockdowns.

Yes, I did make that comment, because what you get after events like this people wanting to talk about how right they were and not what the fuck went so wrong in our structures and processes that these glaringly obvious harms were ignored.

Looking back saying 'I told you so' is natural but pointless.

We (the nation) need to get past the anger at what (not that it is easy, it is enraging) and get to the why.

I doubt you posted on mn about it, otherwise you would know the level of vitriolic hatred anyone who dared say such a thing faced at the time. Your post wouldn't have stayed up long.

Exactly, public demand was high

I was in the minority too, and felt it. Not so much irl, we all supported each other a fair bit with how crap it was for dc but coming on here and seeing the attacks at those who suggested harms, and the high demand for restrictions showed how much it was wanted.

I doubt you posted on mn about it, otherwise you would know the level of vitriolic hatred anyone who dared say such a thing faced at the time.

This

Nope. Thank you.

I'm going to feel angry at the arseholes who supported the policies that caused so much suffering. I don't care if you think it's pointless. I am absolutely not going to let them off the hook with this whole 'let's move on' bollocks.

Some people I respected and liked were truly horrible to me when I tried to point out the harms they were supporting. They do not get to turn around and say 'oh well hindsight is a great thing' and just whitewash it. They also do not get to imply that it's all the fault of the awful Tories.

If we are interested in the why, then we need to ask why people who seem intelligent fell for such total bullshit. Why people who are generally normal and can have sensible thoughts believed isolating elderly people and locking children in homes with abusers was the right thing to do. And we can't let them go 'oh well, we all tried our best,' because that's not good enough.

What went wrong included the behaviour of those who shouted down any voice talking about the harms

Did you do it? Anyone who did was part of that fundamental mistake

100% with you on that

I agree.

And one might make the same argument for any characteristic, ethnicity etc.

"Why should black people be represented. How is an Asian point of view relevant. Why does it matter if they all went to public school. It surely can´t be relevant that most of them will inherit a title?"

We would end up in an era where decisions were exclusively made by white men from wealthy families with privileged backgrounds. And nobody dared to question it (or complain...)

Almost every parent I spoke to saw the harm of closing schools.

(I accept some parents felt it suited their kids better to be home)

Believing the closure of schools to cause harm doesn't mean parents wouldn't call for closures if they thought the harm caused by closure was less than other harms caused by not closing, or more manageable by them.

I can't see how the UK would have got right through without some limits to school attendance. But that could have been done in such a different way as to be a totally different thing. I don't (yet) think Sweden did the right thing, but I'll have to reflect if the inquiry says that's what we should have done.

The wild oscillation between harsh lockdown and rapid reopening was dizzying to watch. The dithering, the delay, the chaos, the headless chicken impression was dreadful.

I wanted to avoid problems in schools by putting better mitigations in. Why on earth the government were opposed to reducing transmission by methods other than lockdown is the thing I understood least from my position on the sidelines.