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?

How do they stop the spread of other pathogens like foot and mouth? By stringent testing and barrier measures. Lorry drivers and those handling the goods would have had to wear PPE, some stock could have been parked for 72 hours etc. it was not beyond the wit of man. But of course UK got rid of the PPE stock just before the pandemic and the Tories favoured friends and family for PPE supply instead of UK manufacturers who were ready to manufacture PPE in the UK. They let Mone, the pub landlord of Matt Hancock's local and the likes to bulk order from Temu largely completely unusable crap. They never tested people who arrived into the country by plane. They could have restricted travel to essential etc. NZ and Australia imports stuff as well. It's immaterial what way it comes in. Most important the measures you put in place to mitigate the risk.

Yes of course because there was absolutely no shortage of HGV drivers. Oh, wait…

There's a massive gap between is possible and did happen, though. And if this is simply because you disagree with him, applying Occam's Razor would mean him being honestly wrong rather than some big conspiracy.

Anyway, you say there would've been ways to make it work like Australia and New Zealand did, despite the massive differences between them and us. Like what?

In my experience, older people I know who were living at home and who didn't have underlying health conditions, seemed to come through COVID relatively unscathed. The ones who really suffered were the 30/40 year olds. They had to wait a long time to be vaccinated, had to go back into the office and tended to head off down the pub/gym/mates' houses as soon as they could.

I don’t propose to know everything about how the country functions but just letting people fly in from all over the world was stupid. We know it wasn’t handled well. Unless you think it was?

He is right about covid entering via people in lorries. You only need a few cases entering a day to make avoiding lockdown not feasible.

And it'd likely be more than a few cases

To be clear, I'm not addressing your initial criticism at all. If you think another poster is mindless, that's up to you. My interest is in the hypotheticals you created.

Well with regard to South Korea, its only land border is with North Korea. So it doesn’t quite have the same issues with thousands of trucks crossing the channel and then - crucially - relying on the same drivers to distribute.

I expect their test and trace programme was a success largely because it wasn’t being run by Matt Hancock’s friend, but by competent people motivated by running a test and trace programme rather than by lining their own pockets.

It would still spread, PPE doesn't stop that.

You are underestimating the spread of the virus, even Melbourne with incredibly strong quarantine ended up in long lockdowns as it was very tough to control

PPE would do almost nothing on that front

And the sheer numbers would make it very hard to do the same as Melbourne

That's why Whitty said it wasn't feasible, not sure why anyone would doubt him really, he would know

But if you're going to come out and say in absolute terms that there were ways to make the UK response work like New Zealand's did, you do actually need to know enough about the country to explain how.

It sounds like you're referring to a ban on flying into the UK here, either full or partial. That's only one part of the picture, since we have a land border and we're also extremely reliant on supplies brought in from abroad by other humans. So there needs to be much more.

Those at risk stay home, everyone else just get on with life and work.

Best suggestion of the thread.

You could add to this for example having the supermarkets giving prioritised free delivery slots (or if necessary paid for by the Government) by delivery drivers that daily had to produce a negative COVID test ( in return for a small bonus).

Instead we went for mass hysteria.

Wow! So why don't we just kill everyone off when they reach a certain age or have severe disabilities? I think Hitler did that, didn't he?

This I totally agree with. Secondary schools and universities too. Teenagers and young adults did not come through this unscathed; there are a hugely higher proportion now suffering mental health issues and a lack of emotional resilience.

I doubt any government would have done well with it though - unprecedented times, unprecedented measures. And we certainly weren’t the only country implementing similar rules.

How would you have managed to find enough hospital beds for all the extra Covid patients requiring treatment if you’d let Covid run unstopped through the population?

Primary Schools should've moved outdoors. We could have kept children busy even if we could not have covered the entire curriculum.

The risk of transmission outdoors in very small and children were not massively at risk. Any at risk teachers could've been furloughed whilst the rest of us cracked on.

I expect their test and trace programme was a success largely because it wasn’t being run by Matt Hancock’s friend, but by competent people motivated by running a test and trace programme rather than by lining their own pockets.

No. it was a success because their government's access to personal data is much more comprehensive than ours.

Their Track & Trace had access to moline phone and bank card data as well as having control of all CCTV. They were also able to publish the addresses of those diagnosed with Covid on the internet.

@stargirl1701 how many parents would have agreed with that?

I think people have short memories. The UK should have locked down sooner. The many children who were damaged by having their education paused, and the hospitality businesses the same, would have been way more damaged by losing their loved ones to death by covid, as individuals.

I'm finding it really odd to read about people talking about testing and PPE who seem to have forgotten this was not available for the crucial first 3 months!! maybe longer.

Maybe every single person in the world was affected in some way by this global pandemic, but that's the thing about global pandemics! It wasn't a local virus that could be contained.

My children 1) had to come home from University 6 months into their first year and then was pretty much locked down for her second year away from home.

2. didn't get to sit his GCSEs and then missed most of his first year of 6th form.

They fell short changed, as we ALL do by having to put our lives on pause for 18 months/2 years to some extent - but we move on? We are grateful not to have lost friends, relatives, or been affected by long covid. It was a collective trauma and we comforted each other. We are the lucky ones.

Much better than being stuck isolated for two terms

@crumblingschools

More than half, I would estimate. You'd never get 100%. The longer it continued, the more children who be attending.

I think any family with a child at primary school should have had a right to either have one parent furloughed or a school place.

I don’t think it was at all fair on children to have a parent trying to home school them and work simultaneously. It’s obviously impossible to do two things at the same time to any kind of standard.

In the early days parents were pulling children out of school before they closed. So not sure early on parents would have been happy with that proposal and in the January lockdown how would have that worked?

Parents complained about having the windows opened all the time

I agree with this.

The second lockdown, parents were falling over themselves to get their children into school.