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?

UK never had a proper lockdown.

Which doesn't remotely affect the correctness of her point about playgrounds.

They should have stopped people coming into the country or made them quarantine or even just tested their temperature when they entered the country. Instead it was a a case of "the last flight from x will be entering the UK on x date so everyone get here while you can" with absolutely no attempt to stop COVID from being spread by travellers.

The rationing rules from the supermarkets were the biggest burden for me apart from homeschooling which was horrendous. We're a family of 6 and were only allowed one box of eggs per shop whereas someone that lived along could buy the same amount of eggs. We ended up having to go shopping more often because we weren't allowed to buy enough food for our family.

@StuntNun I agree we should have shut the borders for a few weeks, or months, while we got other sensible arrangements in place. We are an island so could have kept the virus out if we wanted to.

What did you want?

Why should schools have stayed open when everything else was closed? It wasn't true what they claimed about children not spreading the disease.

Outside playgrouds and most other outside things should have been kept open as long as no massive crowds.

It's not possible to completely separate the elderly from other-aged people. They need contact eg in care homes, other-aged people are caring for the elderly. It wouldn't be fair to lock them up too so they are out and about mixing with everyone else then coming into contact with the elderly.

They should have paid furlough to all CEV people rather than leave it up to the employer to claim.

My neighbour is CEV but her employer decided not to claim furlough as they were key workers so she was only entitled to SSP. She ended up struggling in the first lockdown as she didn't have enough money coming in to live on.

She ignored the rest of the lockdowns and went to work as she couldn't afford to stop off on SSP.

Out MN in charge of any future catastrophes, they seem to know all the answers it seems!

This might not be popular but we should have closed our borders in Jan/Feb and been like Australia and New Zealand. Able to carry on as normal just with no one coming in unless essential with a two week quarantine at the airport.

It's not the popularity issue it's that it wasn't feasbile

Whitty confirmed this at the enquiry

@Gwenhwyfar because education and children's mental health is more important than buying some shit from b&m that wasn't essential.

What about adults' mental health?

@Gwenhwyfar what could an adult not do?
They could shop, exercise, smoke, drink speak to people on the phone. Work if not furloughed.Do hobbies, go out on their own to exercise.
Adults suffered as well, no one is denying that but to close everything a child has was fucking batshit.
It didn't even affect me as my children are adults but even I could see how ridiculous it was.

You have to tell yourself that hindsight is a wonderful thing. Very few people alive would have had any idea of how bad a pandemic could actually be, and the news clips coming out of Italy were absolutely horrendous. It didn’t help that the country had a set of self serving, not very bright pillocks in charge of decision making (as opposed to giving factual information) Add in the selfish me me me attitude that tends to prevail across society, coupled with the no one is telling me what to do types, and they had to base decisions on keeping the sensible majority safe. So you legislate to the lowest trust base🤷‍♀️

It will be considered a huge learning curve, anything similar comes along, certain things probably won’t be the same.

Were you actually on here in the run up to Christmas 2020? I posted that my Christmas dinner would be at my parents and that there would only be four of us. i was treated as if i was going to a rave! And i wasnt the only one who had that kind of shit chucked at them on here

Agree with you. Just wanted to add that a supermarket here did the same thing. Closed the upper floor where clothes and kitchenware and books are sold. Not Wales North Essex

Id be on board with this so long as teachers and TAs in the vulnerable categories and those caring for elderly dependents were maid or moved to non-contact roles.

Tell that to the people who got fined.
the working class people who got targeted by the police. Including the one at the very beginning of Lockdown 1 who was told he couldnt stand on his own doorstep So sick of this gaslighting crap.

The "Lets shut ourselves off like Australia" thing was always ludicrous. Australia is relatively isolated anyway, while the UK is a stone's throw from a densely populated continent, which it relies on for all sorts of essential imports. How many lorries need to trundle back and forth to France, Belgium & the Netherlands every hour just to keep essential supply changes going?

Quite.

Also the UK has an actual land border with the EU that it was never going to be able to close.

Most folks can only relate to their own experiences, be it furloughed or not, looking after children or not, trying to keep vulnerable family members safe, where they lived, type of accommodation/garden, etc…… Governments cannot legislate for the individual needs, they have to find a path that keeps the majority as safe as possible, particularly in the very early, pre vaccine stages. Some folks will have had a better lockdown, for some it will have been awful.

I agree with this and I said this at the time. The problem was that the lower age threshold to be below the retirement age to be effective, it needed to be around 55, 60 ish and that would never have been adopted as it highlights the stark discrepancy between when you start getting older and retirement age.

I know it bugged me then and still now it's said. Even after it has been confirmed it wasn't possible.

Politicians? Not handed billions to mates for shit PPE and so on. Not broken the rules. Locked down sooner and more effectively (airports in particular) so they would have been shorter.