Did the benefits of lockdown outweigh the harm to children’s education?

[PoisedKhakiUser]

AIBU to ask whether the benefits of lockdown - saving lives and protecting health - outweighed the damage it did to children’s education and future life chances? I feel like kids lost out on so much during this time, and I wonder if the cost was too high.

It likely wouldn't have been tho, we know who died. It wasn't people who should be having kids. The problem was we have become accustomed to living beyond our time and using powerful drugs to control immune conditions that should have killed us, to the point we are having kids we likely shouldn't be.

None of the lockdowns should have happened, we could see what was happening in Italy the vulnerable should have legally been required to stay at home. Any kids locked in those house could have gone to friends/family to keep them in school.

I would have opposed going as far as saying they only had access to the nightingales if they caught COVID outside of hospital.

do people honestly still believe this?

Care homes have a large percentage of people that die every year. Unless they are young people there for other kinds of reasons, most people who go to a care home will not be alive in two years.

You can't look at numbers of deaths without understanding the larger context.

There is very little evidence that more people would have died if we hadn't locked down. Across the world there is virtually no correlation between death rate and severity of lockdowns.

There was never a chance that millions would have died in this country. It was not the Black death. The government was told in April 2020 that lockdowns were harming children and it did nothing. In fact it went on to make the problems worse with repeated lockdowns, school closures, bubbles, masks etc. Children were simply not the priority they should have been.

As far as locking down sooner - there were valid reasons that governments did not want to lock down too soon. At the time, the conventional wisdom in in epidemic management said that you could only manage a lockdown for a very short period of time. Something like three weeks if I recall correctly, maybe a month at the outside.

So no one wanted to start too early, before the virus was really in the population, and lose that time.

They found of course due to changes in the economy with the internet, and through ramping up fear, they could keep people compliant much longer than they had thought possible.

I am not sure that is a great discovery.

@TempestTost except behavioural management specialists were tearing their hair out at the idea that people would only follow a lockdown for a few weeks. They knew that was simply not true. There is lots of research that backs up that view.
The idea people would only follow a lockdown of a few weeks was pop psychology. On a par with the idea that you have to drink 8 glasses of water a day for good health. The slightest critical examination of the concept would have shown it to be false.

"At the time, the conventional wisdom in in epidemic management said that you could only manage a lockdown for a very short period of time. Something like three weeks if I recall correctly, maybe a month at the outside.
So no one wanted to start too early, before the virus was really in the population, and lose that time."

This is total bunk. Boris dithered be ause secretly he was worried about how long he could enforce lockdown. The impression I got is that he missed all the cobra briefings, did not understand what was going to happen in the NHS and gave plenty of speeches, saw himself as some brave exceptional leader and wanted to set an example to the world and keep shaking hands keep the economy going.

FGS the MacDonald board closed their stores before the UK govt lockdown.

I work in a scientific company. We were all sent home a few weeks before the lockdown.

They found of course due to changes in the economy with the internet, and through ramping up fear, they could keep people compliant much longer than they had thought possible.
I am not sure that is a great discovery.
@TempestTost Exactly. It's an appalling discovery. "Oh look, a way to control the peasants that really works!" And while I'm not saying they locked down for shits and giggles (although I did think it at times while it was happening, and it looked as if it would never end), there was written all over it "lets seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experiment with exactly how much we can manipulate the public, and keep them terrified and compliant, in case of a future emergency", hence rules becoming more and more absurd (rule of six: did they throw a dice to decide that?), fencing off non-essential shopping, closing playgrounds (they admitted this was to prevent parents congregating), banning singing, hinting that they would have to kill our cats, more and more tinkering around the edges, the "gears of tiers" (yes, that phrase was used), the stupid three-word slogans. Even a scientist has admitted that the figure of "two metres" was made up on the spot, with no calculation. To think that there were people designing those adverts "look them in the eyes", while Johnson and his staff were partying. And I'm still waiting for the scandal to break that the "crying nurses" were actors.

It was as if they decided to throw all the money they had (and much more) at prolonging and promoting lockdown, and keeping people terrified; any notion of trying to keep it short and causing as little damage as possible simply was not there; they threw the baby out with the bathwater. "We have to squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze the brakes on reopening." The parties in Downing Street are very strong evidence that they knew extremely well that the virus was nowhere near as dangerous as they were telling us. Because Saint Boris had promised "we will do whatever it takes to eradicate the virus, and to keep you safe", they painted themselves into a corner. It was politically impossible for them say "lockdown is causing much more harm than good; we can see that. We cannot eradicate the virus, we can only lessen the harms. It would be better to have the peak in the summer, instead of delaying it until autumn and winter. We are having a clean break from lockdown, because it is only causing huge damage, we apologise for the damage we have caused so far, it is costing £400 million* every day". Instead, they could not possibly ease restrictions until things "appeared" to be getting better. Remember the glacial pace of reopening in 2021? "Just until the elderly are vaccinated. Just until the over 60s are vaccinated. Just until the over 50s are vaccinated. Just until everybody is vaccinated. Irreversible roadmap to freedom in June. Sorry, I can't spell, July." Day after day, week after week, month after month of economic carnage, all for the illusion of "safety".

*I did make that figure up. But notice that the government chose to throw exaggerated death figures at us every day, with Johnson making a staged grovel when it supposedly reached 100,000. They kept very silent about other figures, such as debt, and suicides. Nobody committed suicide as a result of their livelihood destroyed by lockdown, as far as they are concerned.

The numbers were out. Lockdown was put together in about a week after it was realised.

My husband is an intensive care doctor. They were in massive risk of not being able to handle the number of cases. I recall him trying to work out the logistics, it’s an amazing feat that the NHS just about coped, it was a lot of planning and hard work.

It was incredibly close to not working out, given the number of cases.

Had lockdown not happened we wouldn’t have had a working healthcare system. That’s very scary. As it happened certain sections of society were effectively abandoned to die, such as those in the care homes. Those families will still feel the upset of that now.

Kids did feel the impact, but it was for an incredibly important reason. We take healthcare for granted, and don’t realise just how we would feel or suffer without it.

I broke my shoulder during lockdown.

Went to hospital and I've never seen it so quiet. It was deserted. Obviously I wasn't anywhere near intensive care, but after I'd been treated I had to walk (off my head on morphine) out and find dh in the car park. It was like being in 28 Days Later.

Really interesting thread, OP. I've been wondering too if any of it was "worth it" and curious about the long term effects on different groups eg those who had a newborn that year, children transitioning from Primary to Secondary school, students.
It's early days, I guess, so we won't know the true impact for a few years yet. I know friends of mine who had babies during Covid and I really feel for them because they couldn't get out of the house (apart from the 1hr walk 🙄) to go to baby groups, see their wider family, interact with fellow babies, go to the library etc etc and it will be interesting to check several years later if it has impacted them at all.
The school in/out/in/out hokey cokey did my head in....the dreaded email that would say your child has been "in contact" with a Covid and had to stay off school for a week.
Tbf, I've forgotten a lot about that time because it was so horrid. My daughter is a bright kid and generally just cracks on with life - if I asked her about it, I don't think she'd be too fussed, but she really needed to be in school as that's where she learns best. We could've pulled some strings as my husband is a key worker, but I'm not so seemed unfair on others to send her in - in hindsight maybe I should've.
Also I've often thought about people in care homes, the elderly, the disabled who a) didn't always understand the situation and b) would've benefited more from seeing their family and loved ones than not. I think lack of human interaction for some people was detrimental to their health and well-being, more so than if they risked getting Covid. I'm a big believe in the power of human touch and think some people suffered more from the lack of this than anything else. If you look at studies children fail to thrive without human contact/hugs.... and this speaks volumes.

I recall my husband saying it was like a post zombie apocalypse walking through a deserted hospital, then he went into ITU and it was like walking into a war zone.

I asked the surgeon and he said they weren't busy. We are down in the south West.

@Yerroblemom1923

I had a 10 month old at the start of lockdown. In some ways I think it was beneficial. I worked from home from February 2020 until 2023. I got to spend so much time with my son and I think his language skills were very advanced for his age. His vocabulary was huge when he started nursery at the local school. I think his language actually regressed during nursery as he interacted with other children that didn't know their irregular verbs, etc. Some were non-verbal.

On the flip side, he went from being a baby that loved being passed around the room at parties, etc, to a toddler that was very shy and scared of meeting new people. All the toddler groups closed and never reopened. We used to watch programmes on cbeebies featuring children playing, such as Time for School, Our Family, etc, and he'd say he wanted to play with other children, but it just wasn't possible.

After the first couple of lockdowns, we just started ignoring the rules. My wife would meet the other NCT mums in our/their homes. We'd meet my dad and her parents and would have just lied to say we were in an extended bubble if anybody had challenged us. Nobody ever did. None of the neighbours ever grassed us up for having the other mums and kids in our house.

i asked the care home after the pandemic was over enough for me to be visiting again. I’ll repeat what I said earlier in the thread. They were used to one or two residents dying each year. Out of 60. The staff were reeling. 18 out of 60 died, so no, your ‘larger context’ isn’t correct here. My mum was there 5 years and is still alive.

No - lockdowns were a mistake, the vulnerable should have been given the choose to isolate but the rest of society should have been left to get on with life. The long term damage will not known for years. I am not a fan of Boris Johnson but his first instincts were right to carry on with no lockdown.

The fact is that lockdowns couldn't have been so long had covid come a decade or two earlier. That would be because we didn't have the internet back then, didn't have easy delivery of goods etc., most people couldn't work from home, kids couldn't be taught at home, etc. The internet changed all that. It made long and repeated lockdowns possible. Without everyone having the internet, lockdowns really couldn't have gone on for months. The internet facilitated it. That's why the long term "expert opinion" was that lockdowns couldn't last long. Now we know they can last because of all the stuff that can be done online not requiring physical/face to face. After the experience of 2020 and 2021 we know also know that lockdowns shouldn't last so long, just because it's possible due to the immense harm they do!

They can’t actually last that long as they cause loads of damage

Damage to mh, the economy and social contract

I mean that could be ignored but it’s not a good idea

Just read your last line, I agree

I think the first lockdown was sensible, given that we didn't know what we were dealing with.

After that, I think they did more harm than good.

But lockdowns were never about protecting the public and saving lives, they were about managing the traffic in hospitals. They were completely overwhelmed.

Not all care homes suffered big numbers of deaths due to covid. We have an aquaintance who owns a care home and he proudly says he lost none of his residents to covid. He refused any new admissions from the start of 2020 and imposed precautions in his care home voluntarily at the start of Feb 2020 before formal instructions were issued. Maybe he was lucky with his staff who he commended for taking it seriously themselves and being careful not to bring the virus in with them. He'd also voluntarily set up a "visiting" room where visitors never went into any communal areas nor residents' own rooms, but ushered in/out of a separate room with it's own outside access, where he imposed a "no touching" rule himself, again, voluntarily and again, before formal rules were introduced. He just said it was common sense! As I say, maybe he was lucky, but even basic precautions seemed to help keep covid out. He does say he was under immense pressure from the hospitals to take in patients being discharged, but he just didn't believe it was safe so he refused them, and as it has borne out, he was right, as patients were being discharged to care homes, even when the hospital knew they were infected with covid!!

Perhaps the care home situation wouldn't have been as bad in others had the hospitals not been so negligent in sending patients to them who were carrying covid!!

My mother has told me how they sometimes got school by radio in 50s/60s in bad weather (as in schools shut for a few weeks, not the odd day... she grew up in the Hebrides). I think there would have been TV school in the 80s or 90s had it been then.

Plus a lot of children just left alone!!!

(Remember as welll... schools were having to drop off worksheets as not everyone had Internet for online school. And thats part of the issue... many children got interactive video lessons, regular contact with teachers. Others got worksheets and the odd phone call. )

Yes, some schools were very poor. My friends and ex-colleagues rotated so they were in school a couple of days each week with key worker children and the whole school moved to on line lessons. Basically the teachers worked right through.
Some schools did very little.
i wonder if we are so used to the ubiquitous presence of phones that it came as a bit of a shock that some children had little or no access to technology.
A man in a nearby town spent much time refurbishing old laptops for students who needed them. Sad that it was so needed.