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?

This doesn't really relate to what I wrote, although I certainly agree on the corrupt, self-interested buffoons part. If you want to talk about at risk groups, that includes those who were placed at risk by the restrictions you advocate for. I've been extremely clear that it was impossible to protect all the vulnerable, because they had different and competing interests.

Also, the UK's geographic position is why we couldn't have done anything like New Zealand did. The frequent reference to them in this thread is bemusing. We have a land border that could not have been both closed and policed. We're on the busiest shipping lane in the world, one that people frequently cross unofficially, and unlike New Zealand we're nowhere close to producing enough food for our whole population. Which is more than twenty times theirs.

I don't disagree with you, Society is a fragile thing and it wouldn't take much for it to collapse, but that wasn't the point being made by the pp I criticised, who simply seemed to favour a bloody-minded refusal to comply with government in any future crisis, regardless. My 1-in-10 example was simply a rhetorical mechanism to get the pp to think of a situation where non-compliance would unarguably worsen the death toll, what would they do then, still not comply?

People sometimes say that the first duty of a government is to protect its citizens but, really, the first concern of a government is to control it's citizens (broadly speaking, by coercion in dictatorships, and by persuasion in democracies). 🤷‍♂️

They did nothing of the sort. Government's operation Cygnus in 2016 found glaring holes in government readiness for a pandemic yet they got rid of the PPE stockpile. They allowed the Cheltenham race to go ahead before they locked down. UK never had a full lockdown, untested, unchecked passengers were allowed in by the hundreds of thousands bringing in Covid and new strains. They undermined the messaging to get away with their own lockdown rule breaking and to get people to accept "casualties" of Covid and go back to work. Eat out to help out was another super spreader disaster. Besides that they've wasted billions on an app that never worked, on the VIP PPE lanes and the Covid loans. Compared to other island nations such as New Zealand UK fared pitifully. So no, the government "has not done what it could", it consistently made things much worse by ineptitude, greed and corruption. 250,000 dead and over 2 million living with Covid in the UK. I would not call this "they did what they could" when NZ death toll is what could and should have been.

I know it wasn't the point they were making, but the default to the nightmare scenario means you raised it yourself. It's quite a well worn path at this point!

For the people who now refuse to go along with the government as a matter of principle, if there were another pandemic now that put them at greater risk, presumably some of them would choose to modify their behaviour because they felt threatened and others wouldn't. Part of the reason others wouldn't is because of lack of trust. There'd have to be some person or institution that people actually believed. It's not immediately obvious who that would be. I think if another pandemic came along now, half of the internet would say it was down to the covid vaccine.

It does also need to be factored in that some non-compliance wasn't borne of disagreement about medical advice, but rather about who the government had chosen to prioritise. As an example, when my children and others in the family were considered unworthy of school and socialisation whilst others got the whole caboodle with better ratios in 2021, I decided they weren't going to be any more collateral than I could help. So we had playdates, and plenty of them.

Now I agree that the greater the number of contacts that happen, the higher the risk of transmission. That's the science bit. But the question of where my children ought to fall on the priority list isn't science, it's politics. And I disagreed with the great genius scientist Boris Johnson about how much of their welfare ought to be sacrificed. There were plenty like me.

Don't mix social issues with Covid. UK has very high incidence of DV and child abuse anyway. Covid exacerbated already existing issues everywhere around the world not just in the UK. Had the UK listened to the WHO advice in time and locked down when it should have and completely, it could have been like in NZ. Short lockdown, testing and isolating new cases straight away. Life could have returned to normal sooner.

I don’t believe you. Around 2500 under 40s in UK died, and that includes serious co-morbidities. Statistically, the probability of you personally knowing two previously entirely well individuals in their 30s who died of Covid, not with, is virtually nil.

Um, human beings mixed social issues with covid. It's completely batshit to think pandemic policy can stand aloof from established social problems.

You mentioned testing people at airports

I meant what did you want to happen to those who were a positive? Not the tube I assume. How many could you accommodate a day in quarantine v how many arrive at all airports in the UK?

They don't have on road access with supplies arriving daily. Remember the lorry queues when things go wrong, there are hundreds a day bringing food to medical supplies

Covid would be transmitted that way and you'd not be able to quarantine and get the same results as NZ or Aus.

Although Melbourne had incredibly long lockdowns because 1 or 2 cases would get in and they'd have to shut things down. We'd have those 1 or 2 cases multiple times a day via lorries

Quarantine. Like 8n every other country.

Chris Whitty confirmed at the enquiry it wasn't possible to do as Aus and NZ did.

You'd not stop the spreading with quarantine

You don’t stop a disease spreading be stopping people with the disease from spreading it?

You said this in reply to me earlier. Do you not think he was told to say that? How come Aus and NZ could do it but we couldn’t? Genuinely asking btw.

As in pp you have entry by lorries, which are necessary for the UK to function.

Aus and NZ did not have the same number of people entering daily. You'd still have multiple cases entering a day and spreading.

You don't think Chris Whitty has got it wrong though? As stated closing the borders was not feasible, do you think he has the information and insight?

Do you not think he was told to say that?

No definitely not, although I'm not sure why it was only at the enquiry it was said. I think people thought it was possible during the pandemic, but it really wasn't and that was confirmed.

See pp on entry of food goods, supplies etc and the people who are required to bring them in

Just to be clear, is this an actual suggestion that Whitty isn't giving his genuine truthful view to the enquiry, but rather has been put up to it?

Is that impossible?

You can answer my question first.

Once you've clarified what you mean and set out the reasons why, I'm ready to be persuaded. Though asking why the UK couldn't be like a group of pretty geographically isolated, hard to access islands isn't going to do it.

We have more transport and food supplies going through our country so would have been very difficult to close borders or have full quarantine

Australia and NZ did track and trace very well up until Omicron came along.

Good lord. You’re suggesting Whitty lied to the enquiry? Seems highly unlikely.

And it’s been explained many times why Aus/NZ could close their borders and the U.K., with a land border with the EU and dependency on the movement of lorries of food across the channel, could not. Not without starving the population anyway.

Fine - lying is possible seeing as there was such corruption in the operation. However, I respect Chris Whitty; it doesn’t mean he is right about that though. There would have been ways to make it work, we just didn’t take it seriously until it was too late.

Couldn’t the food continue to move and the drivers stay in quarantine hotels?

What about high density Asian countries that have land borders such as South Korea, Thailand, China? They were still able to close their borders and introduce quarantine rules like Australia and NZ. South Korea didn’t even need to have lockdowns as their track and track and testing system was so good. China had a lockdown early and then lived normally for a long time before their extreme one at the end, which was a waste of time because it was omicron.

Again, not arguing, there is a debate to be had about the merits of decisions made (and I'm most definitely not an apologist for Johnson, Hancock, et al). But, again, my point to the pp was that their comment was borne purely of bloody-mindedness and ignorance, whilst they imagine that they are somehow more informed than others because they are not "a mindless sheep". The refusal to comply because many others are complying seems pretty mindless - and no other justification was given, other than that the majority were "mindless". I stand by my initial criticism.