To ask what we SHOULD have done during the COVID pandemic

[tunainatin]

So I realise the government made mistakes at the time of COVID. They also acted completely immorally by not following the rules they imposed on everyone else.
However, I suspect any government in this country would have been criticized whatever their response.

I was mulling over the rules and restrictions and trying to work out which ones were actually worthwhile. Some rules seemed so petty (e.g. the one a day walk) but there has to be a line drawn somewhere, otherwise the parks would have been full of people.

Once we were allowed to attend things with restrictions in place, I went to an event which was meant to have masks and social distancing but everyone kind of got carried away and forgot about. Everyone got COVID, including me, badly, and one person was hospitalised.

So if you were the government what would you have done during the pandemic. Which of the bizarre rules we followed do you think saved lives, and which just causes stress or distress?

I agree that it's easy with hindsight to look back and say we should have done x,y or z and that one would have been more effective than another. I do think the tier system was ludicrous and unenforceable and the 6 people in a house thing ..I remember threads about whether a baby asleep upstairs counted and the venom and vitriol and lack of ability to employ a bit of common sense was quite terrifying. People bring arrested for having a coffee outside.
The one outing a day thing also..leaving aside the entirely wrong belief that it could only be an hour, if you have children or caring responsibilities or needed to shop or work it was impossible to stick to. I tried to keep my distance from parents who had vulnerability but other than that, I was definitely at the "laxer" end of the spectrum.

Anyone in at risk categories - anyone in receipt of old age pension or CEV should have been told to stay home and the rest of us should have got on with it

I have nothing but contempt for Boris and his mates throwing parties.

But when it comes to people like Chris Whitty who set the rules, I think they were doing the best they could with the information they had. I personally think that with the benefit of hindsight the rules were too strict, but I'm not sure they could have known that at the time.

It was a tricky line to walk. We hadn't really dealt with anything quite like it in recent decades, so they were flying blind. They had to err on the side of caution, because it was really hard to damp down once it got away

Statisticians have proven this to be true. Fewer people world have died if the young and healthy had all got covid!then reduced their ability to spread it while the vinerable were locked up.

Chris Whitty did not set the rules. He advised the government and they didn’t always follow his advice.

They should never have let Matt Hancock anywhere near it. Having an egotistical fool on a power trip in charge was never going to go well.

They should never have created fear to manipulate the public. They should have been very honest with the facts and helped older and more vulnerable people to self isolate.

Any lock downs and isolation periods should have been kept to a minimum. The 2 week rule should have been scrapped the instant they knew it wasn’t necessary.

They should never have closed schools (I realise that is a bit more controversial).

They rolled out the vaccine fast which was good.

Found a way to also financially compensate the 3 million of us who were financially excluded despite having jobs or businesses, instead of writing us off as "too hard". Many of us have been paying tax and submitting information about our income for years. It's ruined so many lives.

Paid nurses and others working with covid patients a decent wage.

One ridiculous thing that I remember was the fact that you could continue to walk around shops such as The range /home bargains buying your usual stuff in your own time with nothing stopping you from meeting up with a friend in there on the sly.
But woe betide you doing it in a park if caught.
I agree with vulnerable and elderly being advised to stay home.
I also feel nothing but contempt still for the tory mps and any others who told us what to do whilst ignoring their own rules.
If there is another pandemic I think we're buggered who's going to comply ?

Being better prepared for starters with adequate supplies of PPE and an actual plan for such events would have helped enormously.

Not just flinging money around for things that were not properly considered and that helped your cronies get rich. Things like the stupid app that didn't work properly. Billions has been spent on Covid and we will be paying for it for the rest of our lives.

Kept primary schools open like Sweden did. The learning impact was huge on children, as was the emotional impact.

This is a good thread, because I've been thinking a lot about this.

First and foremost:
Not made it a policy to frighten the public out of their wits. I think this was a very, very bad move indeed, along with infantilising the public with those stupid three-word slogans.

Not pledged to "beat the virus", or to "do whatever it takes". Boris said this to pacify the panicking public, and this made it politically impossible to ease restrictions. I think they should have said "we cannot eliminate the virus; we can only lessen the harms". It is a curse of the modern age that the public expects the government to be able to solve everything. I think that a few decades ago, it was more acceptable for governments to tell the blunt truth, and say "there is only so much we can do in the face of nature; and we risk causing much greater damage if we try to stop the inevitable".

Admitted from the very start that lockdowns would cause great damage, if they went on for too long, and sold them as an extremely regrettable measure, rather than the only thing to do. Because they were sold as the solution to "save lives", "protect the NHS" and "in twelve weeks, send the virus packing", people craved lockdown. Even now, they are still trying to pretend that lockdowns were harmless.

Assured us that lockdowns and other restrictions were temporary. With their use of phrases such as "new normal", and the drip-drop boiling frog method of "just three more weeks, just three more weeks, normalish by Christmas, significant normality by Easter, just until the over 70s are vaccinated, just until the over 60s are vaccinated, just until the over 50s are vaccinated, etc.", it looked very much as if restrictions would become very, very permanent. Even now, there's still the possibility that they might be brought back at the drop of a hat.

If lockdown became inevitable, instead of throwing death figures at us all the time (which showed that lockdown was FAILING its objective), telling us more about the damage lockdown was causing.

If one good thing has come out of what happened, far more of the public will be aware of how easily the government can use the media to distort reality, and to manipulate the public. Hopefully lots of the public will be much less trusting of government from now on, and less likely to believe everything they say.

Interesting points - I do remember from Mumsnet at the time that people lost all sight of common sense when it came to applying the rules. Probably as a result of anxiety. I remember in the early days of lockdown getting really stressed with my young children being picky about food, as I honestly thought we may end up with a limited food supply.
Yeah, keeping the vulnerable in lockdown sounds sensible, and like it would have saved lots of lives without getting us quite so much in debt.

I think they did the best they could. They looked at Italy and saw how all the hospitals collapsed from all the sick and dying people (not just the elderly) and acted quickly to prevent that. The earlier variants were much more lethal than omicron weren’t they and it would have been terrible if no one could get hospital treatment e.g a car accident because the hospital was overwhelmed with Covid patients. From what I read, they clogged up intensive care units which were used to turning patients out much faster.

I don’t think lockdowns would work again however. I think next time, they should implement mask wearing, encourage WFH but keep schools open. They could close certain high risk venues such as nightclubs. Pubs could serve people outside.

Should have been more diligence about the compensation scheme for the self employed. So much fraud. That’s what happens when the Civil Service is drained of all resilience.

CW didn't set the rules, he provided professional opinion to the government but as its come out in the inquiry, they didn't listen to much of it. For example, he said that restricting people from mixing as much as they did was not fair, sustainable or proportinate, but the government rejected this saying they didn't want to backtrack.

That said, there's a lot with the gift of hindsight that could and should have been done differently, I'm not convinced any other party would have done any better.

I didn't comply with the majority of the rules anyway, I'm not a mindless sheep.

I think it's absolutely terrifying the things people did/didn't do, just because the government said so.

Parents were pulling children out of Primary school before the closure of schools were announced.

Our schools are generally more cramped, more pupils per classroom and less outdoor learning/opportunities than in Sweden.

Teachers were also dropping like flies (with illness rather than dying)

COVID still has a knock on effect on staff absences now

When anyone calls others sheep you know their opinion isn't worth taking notice of.

The definition of 'essential' workers, I realised it was all a nonsense when certain retail shops opened and it's employees were fine to work, selling unnecessary goods for 'mental health' reasons but what about the mental health of employees being coughed over by customers.
If it had literally been essential to life, I'd have accepted that but it wasn't.

Unfortunately we had the neighbours breaking rules without any consequences, so I can’t get het up about what they did in Downing St.

Exactly what we did but without party loving Johnson involved.
My sister is doctor in a major London Hospital. She was broken by it. On the rare times I got to see her during the pandemic I found her laying on the floor of her kitchen crying and unable to move.

She eventually tolde that that night they had been overwhelmed with patients needing beds and so many had died she didn't think she could go back.

She was utterly broken.
My lovely neighbours lost their son who was only 38. He had no pre-existing conditions.
At my friend's work place they lost 5 staff members. All Asian or black men. She said she misses them everyday.

We should have been better prepared.
It will happen again. But more people will die because we've turned into an anti vaccine world of idiots.

This, which I believe has now been proven to have been the best solution.

The venom that was hurled at me, and others for saying it at the time was truly off the scale though.

Really? Do you have a source for that? Or is this based on an idea of segregating the “young” from the “old and vulnerable” without any idea how that might have been even vaguely possible?

Schools and playgrounds should have remained open.
The old and vulnerable should have stayed home.
Everyone else should have gotten on with it.