Do any of arch-lockdowners regret it?

[Refractory]

Just that really.

I haven’t really been on MN since 2020 because I found the near complete support for lockdown far too upsetting.

the lockdowners in my life seem to not think about it much. For them, it’s just over.

with hindsight do you wish you’d been more sceptical?

would love a civil conversation about this.

How do you define a "needless death"?

We followed the rules because we didn’t want to get covid and also didn’t want to give it to anyone who may have died. With the nhs struggling as it did, we didn’t want to add to the problems.
we live in London so lots within walking distance and no food issues either.
if I had lived rurally I probably would have been less strict about the hour exercise, and I thought that the scenes of people being arrested for walking on the moors were ridiculous.

No- people forget the nuance.
at the beginning there was no vaccine and no effective treatment for the virus. We didn’t even fully know ho it was being spread.

as a result people were dying in large numbers across Europe with healthcare settings being overwhelmed. It was right to break the chain of infection to buy time to figure out what to do.

if we let all the healthcare workers get infected at the same time then no one would be available for any care. Which was not a good service continuity strategy. Same for all key workers.

i personally feel good that I didn’t infect anyone and cause the death of a relative. When I finally got the virus I was vaccinated and I was actually quite poorly because my asthma really got bad. Leaving me needing emergency steroids and then antibiotics with a month recovery.

had I caught it in the first wave, with no treatment options / no prior immunity and no ICU beds - it could have been a different story.

the circulating strains now are much milder as they have evolved so we can live with it. If a virus kills its host - it will also die as it has nowhere to reproduce or spread. It’s just basic nature. Additionally a lot of people have some sort of immunity from having it and/or being vaccinated. So it’s right we don’t lock down now.

‘Happy to diagnose and drug’

What an appalling ignorant statement.

My dd 18 had undiagnosed ADHD. She was diagnosed at 17 after a year of severe anxiety and school refusal.

ADHD medication has transformed her and her life. Beyond recognition. If she forgets her meds she drops right back down again. I’ve got my happy laughing girl back instead of the anxious self harming wraith l had.

1stpost nails it- we can not change the past move on

If lockdown even prevented one needless death it was the right decision.

Thats not at all the philosophy this society lives by generally. We could ban cars for example, that would save a couple of thousand lives a year. More actually as it would also reduce respiratory illnesses - my number is just traffic deaths.

No, I regret nothing. I'm not sure what an 'arch-lockdowner' is, but I acted according to what was asked of us.

I'm not sure what there is to regret about that.

people lost their damn minds during covid and looks like they still have judging from these comments.

Absolutely bang on!

Obviously you are not including the people who died of other things because they couldn't get medical care as their GP wouldn't see them in person or the people who had treatments stopped " cos covid" then. Or dont they count as they didn't have covid?

Let's be honest and admit that it's quite likely that at first when it looked like it was going to take out the over 65s and severely disabled/vulnerable the government here thought wayhay, savings on pensions, PIP and care bills!

The eventual decision to lockdown says they were concerned enough about just how many economically active people could die, that we should take it seriously.

Very true, although they were also worried about the potential short term collapse of all health care, which could have meant no functioning A&E, no maternity care, and many people with no vulnerabilities other than being middle-aged dying in their homes from covid when they could have recovered with a small amount of hospital care. It would have been terrifying chaos if that had happened as a result of too many people being ill at once. They needed to slow it all down until we had vaccines, after which cev people were still very vulnerable, but hospitals were less at risk, so things gradually went back to normal.

If the government thought protecting vulnerable people was a worthwhile goal by itself, we'd still have at the very least a few cheap public information campaigns about opening windows or continuing to wear masks in at least hospitals. We don't even have that, so the idea that protecting vulnerable people was the sole reason for lockdowns in 2020 makes no sense. We would simply never have had lockdowns if that had been the only benefit. (Vulnerable people supposedly having selfishly demanded to be protected by the rest of society makes for a handy scapegoat though.)

This is a wonderful post.... so true.

I also wonder - if nobody thought vaccines would stop transmission, why were NHS staff told to vaccinate by April 2022 (I think that was the deadline) at risk of otherwise losing their jobs?
Fwiw, I’ve had the vaccines myself.
I just definitely remember a time when they were expected to pretty much stop transmission and those who refused to have them were regarded as selfish and told that they were putting everyone else at risk.

Yes it has transformed a coworkers child too, not saying its wrong, she used to get daily calls from the school now is just called on occasion but there are 4 others in my office contemplating a similar diagnosis it just seems very common was my point

Agree. The post you're replying to here is nonsensical. Children did badly in that situation because its not something humans are supposed to do. We evolved completely differently. It's not complex.

Compensation from whom? Pandemics happen, unfortunately just like earthquakes do. Of course the pandemic has had terrible consequences for mental health, but again, the government decimated mental health services prior to 2020.

I don’t understand why people can’t grasp that quarantines are necessary when a virus that nobody has ever had before takes hold. People with severe cases were all sick at the same time. And that is why the quarantines had to happen.

I've never been "arch" anything. Like most people, we followed the rules - one exception was that someone would walk the dog twice a day once very early in the morning. Some of lockdown was and has since been detrimental, some of the rules were a bit silly and some of the reactions to it a bit OTT, but overall I am glad that they didn't just let everyone get on with it and take their chances.

I think it’s easy to say it was too strict now that we’re all living with it. But over 1000 per day we’re dying. If you look at the spike post letting everyone mix (I think it was Christmas) then I feel it was broadly right to do lockdowns.

Lots of mistakes were made (reopening schools for just one day!) but on the whole I agree with it.

Absolutely - it's bizarre how many people are now claiming we were never told the vaccine would prevent infection and transmission. We absolutely were and that was the whole rationale for enforcement for certain workers, vaccine passes for travel and big events etc.

We live a fairly aloof anyway so in some ways it wasn’t an huge change but there was no obsessive rule following in my family. I’ve never touched hand gel and neither have the children, other than an organic, natural one at the bottom of my bag that I’ve only used once in four years when one child put their hand in dog poo on the beach (yes dog owners, everyone on the beach hates you). My parents, brother and SIL and nephew all came to stay with us for fair bit of it, it was quite lovely in many ways. My three are all home educated anyway. The idea we wouldn’t have gone out on walks etc as many times a day as we wanted to was laughable to us. I didn’t even find out until a year or so later that some people were under the imtoression that there was a thing about how long you were allowed to be out of the house for and about a certain mile radius that you could travel from your home - madness! We had plenty of visited, family and friends etc and some stayed on for weekends. No parties. On walks I crossed the road to avoid those who looked like they were cringing away from human contact as I had compassion for their real or (mostly) imagined vulnerability. Two elderly local neighbours I’d never spoken to ended up becoming good friends, we sorted of adopted them - they were bloody lonely and not interested in slightest in being abandoned ‘for their safety’.
Most people in our circles were bemused by the hysteria but those who got sucked in, I’ve never quite felt the same about them afterwards. I don’t judge them but it just highlighted how different we are. My husband had to go into work throughout, neither my brother or I were entitled to furlough, pregnant SIL had a horrendous hospital birth situ that I still feel angry about now, my mum was screamed at and threatened by an obese man in a supermarket, my dads op was delayed which has irrevocably changed his quality of life.. it wasn’t ideal but we made the best of it and the children had a wonderful time throughout. I leant very quickly to ditch mumsnet during that time, I have not forgotten how many of you were veritable lunatics.

Edited to say none of us had any covid vaccines either and never will.

Yeah that was weird.
On my street it certainly highlighted the clown-sheep 😂😂
Interestingly it was exactly the folks I thought would do it… who did it 😆

It wasn’t much of a surprise when they purchased Ukrainian flags a couple years later. Just sheeple who like to achieve precisely nothing whilst trying to show the world what a difference they’re making. Tragic but funny in equal measure though I guess. But those types are harmless NPCs so just let them crack on.

It honestly amazes me that there are people who don't understand we were facing a choice between approaches that were both going to cause deaths. Lockdown meant some people dying earlier than they would if we'd not locked down. Not locking down would've meant some people dying earlier than they would if we had locked down.

I'm very confused. Why would it upset you that other people obeyed the law and did what was considered at the time to be most safe in unchartered waters?

I more or less stuck to the rules although I wasn't super strict about it. I had some relatives who were high risk and were extremely cautious and went further than the law required for their own safety, this had no impact at all on my life.

Why would I wish I, or anyone else, had been "more sceptical?" What would I have gained from taking more risks with my safety and that of other people?

As soon as I see posts rewriting history in hindsight and talking about 'sheeple' I switch off

I still wear my mask and I haven't had the flu since 2019. I used to get it badly every year