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 work with children 1-5, our nursery/preschool was open as usual (it’s basically free where I live) so I worked. We had a great time. After 3-4 weeks after sending home anyone with a slight sniffle as adviced, we basically had a full group of healthy children every day. None of us got sick. It was amazing.

But now it’s back as usual, and we have all got a cold all the time. 😂

I think maybe allowing one household at a time to meet in a garden or outdoors would have been OK, and people should have been able to drive further afield for outdoor activities (not that I think they ever really stopped people, but I remember a sense for the first 6 weeks or so that you weren't to go on long drives or anything). At the end of the day, you were never going to catch it outdoors by just walking past someone unless they were infectious and literally coughed or sneezed in your face (dense crowds outdoors were another matter).

I thought from early on that small, local non 'essential' shops should have been allowed to open, although I guess there is a question of how you'd define 'small' and 'local', but when I think about places like a local flower shop, or bed shop, they would only ever have a handful of people in them at once, and wouldn't have been a hotbed for infection.

But hindsight is a fine thing. It was a novel virus and they had to act on the assumption it was as transmissible as possible and as dangerous as possible rather than going 'Meh, it probably won't be that bad'.

I think maybe allowing one household at a time to meet in a garden or outdoors would have been OK, and people should have been able to drive further afield for outdoor activities (not that I think they ever really stopped people, but I remember a sense for the first 6 weeks or so that you weren't to go on long drives or anything). At the end of the day, you were never going to catch it outdoors by just walking past someone unless they were infectious and literally coughed or sneezed in your face (dense crowds outdoors were another matter).

One benefit of this would've been that some socialising that was pushed indoors due to fear of detection could instead have taken place outside. With lower risk.

I understand your point. I am discussing the pandemic from an entirely social aspect but it's important to me it's discussed. And they are different beasts, covid its self/the non medical havoc it caused.
But more children died utterly harrowing deaths than would have had these children had social worker visits and school in place. There was also a rise in people shaking up with new partners at the beginning of the pandemic and who knows how much child abuse that is responsible for, it was definitely responsible the death of Lola James, the wee girl who was murdered by her mums new partner who was a monster.
I don't live in the greatest area and I know more people during the pandemic who would access drugs than normal people could access toilet roll. Genuinely. People did more drugs, drank more booze and lads I know who did work that saw them laid off ended up broke, relying on alcohol and feeling like they were struggling with everything which in turn made them more volatile and violent on occasions which is a side they'd controlled until the pandemic.
As i agreed, you're of course correct I'm discussing the social aspect to the pandemic and yes we have a staggering number of abuse and DV cases, but locking up people with their abusers was a disastrous choice, the consequences were devastating.
I lost people to covid, I have friends who lost parents to cancer due to lack of available treatment during the pandemic and all the side effects of lockdown but I personally can't believe now that we locked children, knowing statistically how many men are peadophiles, in homes with no escape knowing the likelihood in a pressured environment such as covid, children would be abused.
It's barbaric.

We fucked up on every level, we ignored good advice and the repercussions of the long lockdown will be seen for years to come with the children who missed out on education, socialising, having a place to go when their homelives weren't stable.
I'd never ever again advocate locking away children, they're too precious to risk.
I hope you understand why I feel so strongly and that I do appreciate what you've said.

And, to be clear, my hypothetical was really just: "would people be more compliant and less blasé if they knew the threat was definitely greater to their own mortality (or their children's)".

Yep. And my answer is, some of them probably would and some not, and we'd face big new issues with people even believing official information about death rates, who was at risk etc. There were elements of that last time, but it'd be higher now. Can't see levels of trust getting that high again for a good long while.

You can't debate that in isolation though.

A high mortality pandemic would not simply come down to compliance or non-compliance. You would have to factor in how people would behave when they had no heat, light, food, water - as essential services would not just keep running as normal in these kind of conditions.

@TheKeatingFive they were but there were many complaints about cold classrooms

Sure, but in an either/or situation i feel sure what would b have been chosen

Lorry deliveries don’t involve mixing in high density population areas. Delivery drivers are much more controllable

Look at how controlled Melbourne quarantine was and how many days in lockdown they had due to single cases causing spread.

Why do you think Chris Whitty can get this wrong when he says it wasn't feasible?

Why do you think thousands of people with covid entering the country didn’t mean thousands more cases in the country? Even if none of them passed it to a single person…

I'll answer after this is answered

What is your experience and where does your certainty come from that you dismiss Chris Whitty's confirmation that it was not feasible to use quarantine and close borders as Aus and NZ did?

I’ve never said I wanted to close borders, so I don’t need any experience. I said it is self evidently wise not to let thousands of active cases enter the country with no trace or regulation or quarantine.

You have to mix social issues with covid though. That's what determines your response. We spent the second half of the pandemic living in a middle income country where the government response was to let it rip; they didn't have any social structures in place for supporting any sort of isolation, incredibly high levels of poverty and low trust in government. People would have starved to death.

The result was an incredibly brutal 3 or 4 weeks (albeit with a young population and a culture that is outside a lot) and then everything went back more or less to normal, and they got vaccines. No one tested because it was expensive. I'm not sure what was worse, but I've never, for example, heard people from that country talk about long term impacts on children's education.

It was very interesting to compare the two countries and people's personal reaction to it. Of course your pandemic response takes into account social factors like demographics and poverty. If you've got no social support system you can't furlough people for a start.

Adults living alone couldn't go within 2m of another human for almost 3 months.
That's huge.
Even solitary confinement in jails is less severe.
That should never have happened.

@NeighSayers I'm not saying that it wasn't hard on adults but they could do a hell of a lot more than a child

@needhelpwiththisplease
You're right that there were things where adults could do more than children, was totally unbalanced. Only children having no chance to socialise with other children springs to mind.

But the very basic human need of being able to be with other humans, in person, was denied to some adults for far, far too long. It just seems next level, hard to put into words. No hunkering down with loved ones, as you are separated from them all. Just horrific.

ETA: When you strip away all the frills, the most important things in life are love and relationships. Being able to do solitary hobbies is hardly compensation for having them taken away.

Blimey. I didn’t know the publishing the names bit.

Are you suggesting that the UK’s approach was the best it could have been under the circumstances?

The problem with cold classrooms was, in my DSS’s experience, that they were not allowed to wear coats. Layering with thermals under their uniform worked to a point but scarves, hats and fingerless gloves weren’t allowed. For the children, of course. The staff wore whatever they wanted.

They put infected people into care homes

They gave PPE contracts to their mates

Thats two HUGE mistakes

But there weren't any tests in Feb/Mar 2020! This is a classic example of hindsight and forgetting what it was actually like at that time. It was a brand new virus, THERE WERE NO TESTS FOR IT TO START WITH!!

So yes, ideally, ever border would've been firmly policed with temperature scanners and Covid testing booths, etc. But airports weren't set up for that until much later on.

Seriously? You'd like to live in permanent hard lockdown? Where does your income come from?

Well of course he would confirm it

I thought that might be a joke? Hard to tell on the Internet sometimes!