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.

@Refractory

No, absolutely don’t regret it. My Mum was in an extremely fragile state and I saw how hard it was for the NHS throughout that time. Every time she plays with her grandchildren, and to see their shared joy - makes me very grateful for our NHS. They saved her life.

It’s so easy to be wise in retrospect.
The truth is we didn’t know the lasting impact or outcome of Covid at the time.

I followed the rules. I wish I had hugged my Mum more as she’s dead now anyway, but she died peacefully with me by her side and not alone gasping for breath so ……

I regret the impact lockdowns had on my family, especially my DD who made some questionable life decisions. It destroyed us for a while, I felt conflicted in my choices and still living with the consequences

Followed the rules as much as legally needed, bent a few of them occasionally- sat inside with guests and doors open, not outside when it was cold- stuff like that. Hated wearing masks but did. As soon as we could go to a pub, we went, same for restaurants and holidays.

What about you op?

"Arch lockdowners"? This sounds like bollocks language like "extreme remainers". How very silly of you, op.

We locked down to protect the vulnerable in the face of a scientists didn't know much about.

The vulnerable turned out to be the physically fragile and elderly as well as some strong and fit.

When we have more knowledge then we can change our minds. If necessary.

In the face of a virus.

Am I an arch lockdowner? I kept strictly to the rules because I thought that was the responsible thing to do, and I don't regret that.

I followed the rules because I didn't want anyone in my family to die. Or anyone else for that matter. People who didn't follow the advice weren't in possession of an advanced intellect. Nor did they have any special knowledge about the virus and its trajectory. They were mostly people who didn't think the rules applied to them. People with no real sense of fellowship and empathy with other human beings. Nobody knew whether this new virus might wipe out half the world. Just because it didn't, doesn't mean that those of us who followed the rules were wrong. Or stupid.

Yes, I believe the lockdowns were detrimental to children and very young adults. If it was eradicated, it would have been worth it, but it's still around.
We got Covid earlier this year, our whole family was very sick. However, what's the alternative? We can get vaxxed but that's about it, we can't self isolate forever.

I feel very similar to you BigMandyHarris

Sorry for the loss of your mum 💐

I followed the rules as we didn't know what we were dealing with at the time and it's easy to disparage the strategies we did take in retrospect. I understood that they were put in place for the benefit of others, not just myself.

Some people said "well why can't I go to X or y, what difference does it make?" while not understanding that if 300 others had the same attitude, it could potentially create a load of risk for others.

On the negative side, we lost a close and much valued friend who didn't get cancer treatment in time and I will always feel angry about that.

Similarly, one of my dd's has ASD and she went through a lot of issues as COVID measures badly affected her last year in school and her first two years at uni which took their toll. It destroyed us all for a while too and we are still recovering.

Equally it did make me more aware of the huge disparities in our society, how one set of people carried on "serving" the rest, and how unfair it all seemed.

The length and severity of lockdowns in each country was based almost entirely on how their medical services were able to respond to the numbers. The New Zealand government wasn’t more compassionate than governments in places that had less strict lockdowns. They just had fewer ambulances and hospital beds.

This. We were dealing with an unknown amd had to err on the side of caution.

I just think that there is enough polarisation out there without adding more labels.

I think a lot of us have lived through a golden time when world wars were things we learned about at school (never again! We have the EU! 🤦‍♀️), antibiotics seemingly always available and vaccinations gratefully taken by our parents, and ourselves as children, eradicated horrendous diseases that we didn’t have to see - polio, diphtheria, severe measles and on and on. Severe reactions occurred then too (read about the polio vaccine) and awful lessons were learned but the appreciation that we could eradicate them was huge.

Then a pandemic happens and why should we listen to an expert, why should we do something for someone else? Why should we feel any discomfort at all? We’re supposed to have nice selfish lives! It’s not fair wah!!

I don’t regret following the rules. Of which I followed 99%. I used to walk the dog on my own and then go for a bike ride so guess I broke the one exercise a day rule but that seemed bonkers seeing as I’m rural and never saw anyone.

i actually personally locked down a week before Boris announced it, anyone could see it was needed. I refused to go to work! Before wfh was a thing.

I think it’s easy to forget how scary it was. Before we had the vaccine, before the virus mutated into its current milder version.

I was one of those "back room staff". I still worked 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week to try and keep the NHS functioning. Back room staff are how front line staff have any (if not the optimal) PPE, how patients have access to the right medicines, how the computer systems still worked, how people still got paid and how you know how many patients you have in the hospitals, with what diseases, what symptoms and what treatments and therefore what else you need to provide.

Early in the pandemic, we had limited data and limited forecasts.

I spent my time trying to work out which areas of the hospital would become overwhelmed so we could divert resources to them in advance and prevent that happening. For example, COVID patients need lots and lots of oxygen. You want to put them in one place, so they don't infect anyone else, but if you do you can't physically transfer enough oxygen to each one. So instead they need to be spread out. How do you do that but minimise the hospital space taken up by then so you can have as many non-Covid patients as possible and still keep them safe? Rinse and repeat for ICU requirements, dialysis machines. For how you manage PPE when there isn't enough. How many nurses, that you need elsewhere, do you take off shift to train up on ICU machinery? How many extra ICU beds should you try to cobble together, bearing in mind ICU beds take away resources from non-ICU areas? How many COVID wards do you need to have planned for? How do you keep patients safe if they don't have COVID while they do have a respiratory illness while you wait for their tests to come back?

None of that was frontline work. But I built from scratch a model that enabled us, not hugely well, but as well as I could, to plan those things.

We had very limited knowledge of how well the general public would obey the lockdown rules. They were vastly more compliant than we were expecting. That compliance stopped hospitals being totally overrun.

I'm forever grateful to people for their sacrifices. It saved many lives because without it there would have been many more deaths, from people who needed CPAP but couldn't get it, or renal fluids but for whom there was no dialysis machine. I think the isolation experienced before e.g. bubbles were introduced was awful and I hope we've learnt lessons from that. But at the time the fear was bodies piling up so fast that the morgues would be full, so I understand why that didn't get prioritised the way it perhaps should have.

would love a civil conversation about this.

Where are you @Refractory? One post, then buggers off. Not much conversation from you.

I regret disinfecting the outer packaging of the whole food shop for weeks on end.

My mother in law washed her groceries too

I followed the rules at the time, as did everyone else I know. I don't regret a thing, and would do it again if necessary. It had zero effect on my life.

However, I didn't do the disinfecting anything that moved thing!

Do you mean the aircraft hangar with the lines of coffins that was actually from a boat tragedy in 2013 but circulated online as being covid?

I was working in social care so it wasn't an easy time. Not much bread baking and zoom quizzes.

I think it brought out the best in so many people. A feeling of unity and community. It also brought out some petty tyrants.

I think the long term costs of lock down are still being assessed. Fundamental changes such as home working are here to stay. And the financial and economic costs were huge. Plus damage to the children losing schooling. I think that was a mistake.

Nope, because I work in health care. We were dealing with a completely unknown virus, which killed easily, and left HCW in the position of deciding who got a ventilator and who didn't. You can't even comprehend what it is like, to literally make the decision, as some of my friends did, as to who was going to live or die that night, and know that putting them on the ventilator, gave no guarantee and in itself was a death sentence for many. I was extremely lucky- I worked in Australia, not the UK. We had the strictest lockdown world wide, and longest- we closed the border to the world and to each other. We had minimum deaths, minimum infections, and I do not regret that at all. Could it have been done differently, of course. But dealing with something completely new, they did what the thought was the best course to halt the spread, and if you now look back and say that a different course of action would have been more effective, hindsight always gives you that benefit

In hindsight, things could have been done better.

I right from Denmark. The best approach was clearly to have a moderate lock down, but enforce it early. Leaving it late, as Johnson did, meant that it was less effective.

I have a two deep regrets.
It was necessary, but even the moderate lockdowns affected people badly. Leaving it later and requiring a more severe lockdown is something to be regretted deeply.
I also regret that we have decided to tolerate people preaching their own self-aggrandizing fantasies with utter disregard for others.

1. I worked in around the pharma industry. About a decede ago I worked on a couple of epidemic preparation documents. There was a boost for some in the industry, but the utter disruption outweighed it massively. The conspiracy theorists claiming that I am negligent or evil are not people I have any respect for
2. My sister worked in ICU, I had a close friend in ICU. They were dealing with massive waves of deaths. The conspiracy theorists claiming they are either evil or negligent deserve to be battered.

Once the vaccine was released, my friend and sister both reported the only ones in the ICU were people who had not taken it. I understand people being vaccine hesitant, they were being asked to be injected with stuff they do not understand.

The people propagating the lies and implying things on forums are a different matter. It was their self-importance that they could not accept their lives being turned upside down by something not about them and they not being the expert. And they thought that was something people should die for.

I followed all the rules and I don't regret it. I am one of the "cev" group for whom covid was reported to be most risky.

I don't regret being extremely cautious because we didn't know then how bad it could get. We had no way of knowing whether it was going to be like a bad flu season or the movie contagion with people dropping like flies.

The world leaders don't get together and shut everything down unless they are genuinely extremely concerned. Countries just don't do that lightly. Frankly, they'd rather we die than fuck the world's economies up. They don't give a shit about a few hundred or a few thousand people dying. Particularly elderly and disabled people.

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.

You can only make decisions based on the information you have at the time. There's no point playing 'if I knew then what I know now' because we didn't and couldn't know. It is best to be more cautious than less.

I believe in hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. If another new virus appears and people start dying I will do exactly the same, because I won't make the mistake of thinking that because covid didn't kill half the population that means nothing could.