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?

Elderly and CEV stay at home or in a isolated managed space to protect them

Everyone else could have got on with their lives.

Just a reminder - it was <checks> 11 weeks until adults were allowed to form a bubble. Almost 3 months.

Even this itself was not straightforward, because you had to know someone/a family who wanted you as their sole outside contact. Understandably, families were prioritising single grandparents, for example.

We have 2 million disabled people with Long Covid most of those previously healthy. Nobody was protected. Covid did not care. There were certain groups who were more at risk but even that was not well defined. This theory that if you just somehow wall away the elderly and people in random categories then the rest are safe is not borne out by the evidence. The economically disadvantaged, overweight people, certain ethnic minorities were disproportionately affected by Covid death. Many people you would class as in the at risk category like people with T1 diabetes are not sitting at home on PIP or UC but work and/or have kids in school. How do you protect those?

Yes we had better hope for a long stretch until the next one as we've put it all into covid

At least though our collected efforts gave 6000 people an extra 3 months of life (statistics I read about in the Telegraph)

All for just £450bn. A snip.

Why do you think they shouldn't have closed schools?

They are germ factories! I've had covid multiple times and work in schools. One time it was traced to a child.

Yes, it did. That's what it was for, it had to be. Not only would people not have stood for it, but some of them would also have been desperate enough to work unofficially. Which is counterproductive when the whole idea of lockdown was to reduce contacts. No point removing people from their usual jobs for them to go and take the same risks somewhere else, without paying income tax.

Though I never thought the benefits system could've practically accommodated a massive surge in claimants overnight anyway. The staff and systems weren't geared up for however many million more in a short period.

This is another important point. As there'll probably be more frequent pandemics going forward, part of the answer to OPs question isn't just what was the best way to act in dealing with this pandemic specifically. It's also about what to keep in reserve, because some of these tactics can't be used again for a good long while. Not an easy one to answer.

Exactly. So much many hundreds of billions of pounds, and the goodwill of millions of people, all thrown at ONE SINGLE danger, and what do we have to show for it?

At the beginning there was no choice except full lockdown. I watched family and friends desperately try and build a new extra ITU in days out of a day surgery unit / theatres and saw/heard the tears and distress when they lost patients because they just didn't respond to any of the usual ITU treatments. The patients in ITU weren't the frail elderly (they never made it to ITU but died on the wards or in nursing homes) but people in their 50s and 60s who were maybe just a bit overweight or had mild high blood pressure or well controlled diabetes. Those were often the 'pre-existing conditions' on the news, not whoa your would consider to be frail/vulnerable people.

Some hospitals and areas became very very close to being completely overwhelmed in the early days. So no possibility of a critical care bed if you had eg a RTA or a heart attack. I have an only child (12 at the time) who home-schooled himself while his parents were (both medical) working throughout and I still think there was no choice at the beginning.

I do think the 'once a day exercise' rule was unnecessarily tight, and as soon as it was found to be mainly airborne the rules on eg kids playgrounds should have been relaxed.

I hope the lessons have been learned regarding preparedness and having stocks of proper PPE, but I wouldn't put money on it. Ironically in the early days the ITU staff had much lower infection rates as they wore full PPE, it was the staff on the wards who were much more at risk with flimsy surgical masks and aprons. Many died.

Tories and covid deniers always say this. No they weren’t. They were calling for earlier, more effective lockdowns.

No it wasn’t. It was never an hour a day. That was from a throwaway comment made by Gove. I live in Wales. An hour a day was never the rule.

Who would have covered the Maths department?
Not a great deal of Maths and Science (both departments had CEV staff) supply teachers at the best of times. The school was already short staffed in Science.
The school used Google Classroom when school was closed. I suppose those who were CEV or lived with CEV could have continued to do so. It would still leave the problem who would cover these classes if their teachers were teaching remotely.

Most schools lack decent ventilation. Some schools can't even open windows as they are falling to bits. They lack investment in schools buildings is dire. Many that have been rebuilt recently also lack decent ventilation.

Not all schools were completely closed to students.

It was a new virus and no-one knew it's projectery. Our government wasn't prepared.
Hopefully, some lessons will be learnt for the next pandemic.

Lockdown was hell for loads of single people

I agree, though I've found that very few people care. I didn't have anyone to bubble with, and I nearly went mad out of isolation. But a lot of people I've spoken to have no real idea about what it was like being single, and they often assume that it must've been much nicer as there were no kids to homeschool.

Im not a tory nor a covid denier I had the fucking vaccines. Its perfectly possible to be against excessive lockdowns (i say excessive because i understand why first one had to happen but it should have ended sooner and single ppl shouldnt have been forced to be on their own) while believing that Covid is real and having the vaccines. You have reminded me that ppl who only see things as black or white havent grown out of name calling either.

Ooh speaking of vaccines.... it wasnt as smooth a roll out as claimed by the media

MercyBooth · 05/11/2021 19:04

This is why the Government and media ramp up the vaccine refusenik rhetoric to cover up the lack of availability. I tried to get my second vaccine six weeks ago and was refused because i was told they now cant mix them (i had Moderna and they are now doing Pfizer) i was advised to go to the next town either relying on a crap bus service or a taxi at £35 each way. Sorry no chance. Ppl on another thread were a bit disbelieving so im going to have another go tomorrow and maybe do a bit of filming. because ppl be like "cool story bro it never happened" and if you film it its "how dare you do that

MercyBooth · 07/11/2021 01:40

Tried again. Same outcome

I got the second one in the end. Later that month.

Jul 2021 - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/19/keir-starmer-condemns-reckless-decision-to-lift-covid-restrictions

At this point anyone under 40 who wanted to be double jabbed, were.

Jan 2021 https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-uk-england-labour-keir-starmer-demands-national-lockdown/

Keir demands immediate national lockdown

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/02/22/sir-keir-starmer-backs-cautious-lifting-lockdown-urges-boris1/

Keir demands slow crawl out of lockdown, despite elderly being double jabbed at this point, and suggests the PM should "ignore" anyone who attempts to put across the argument against the lockdown or indeed, a timely exit.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p093m5y5

A full national lockdown, banning park benches, playgrounds, school, and seeing loved ones is not tough enough, apparently!

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-covid-omicron-restrictions-b1979353.html

Keir outlines support for covid restrictions that proved to be completely unnecessary Christmas 2021.

Oh and then when Omicron turned out to be the damp squib that it was, and the public opinion turned, suddenly Keir wasn't for tougher action any more, but he'd back the government in "following the science".

Great finds @Everanewbie

@Everanewbie none of those say what you think they say, so no - they were not great finds @JenniferBooth
When Labour asked for lockdowns to be extended it was because they hadn’t been started early enough or implemented thoroughly, so it still wasn’t safe. As we found out with having to repeatedly go back in.
Labour’s advice was to go earlier and harder to shorten duration. When Tories fucked that up. Obviously they had to point it out.

As we found out with having to repeatedly go back in.

What do you mean by this? Do you think Labour could do one lockdown and that's it?

And Wales did short circuits which didn't bring much advantage wrt the virus

Thanks for these. I recall the push for lockdown for Omicron, tf that wasn't heeded

Things like opening schools 9ne day and closing them the next, for example.

Labour advocated for restrictions on top of those that the Tories wanted. That is not a matter of opinion. It doesn't work to say they wanted shorter and earlier lockdowns, because they still came out with some of this stuff after the lockdowns happened. When Starmer slagged off the end of restrictions in July 2021, he did so in full knowledge that he didn't have a time machine. We were also not in lockdown at that point.

This was all bog standard opposition politicking and made no difference to anything, but that is what they did.

I think the easiest way to start to think about this would be to look at what we know was stupid.

We know social distancing, a lot of the rules about how many people could sit at a table, directions in shops, were total made up bs.

We know masks were almost certainly bs in almost all scenarios. (One good idea might have been to actually do some real population level trials around this.)

We know that long term, people being unable to access medical care (eg cancer care), kids being out of schools, and the economy shutting down as much as it did, has had huge long term negative effects, including on health and death rates.

What know that obesity went way up which increases COVID risks more than most other things. And also that long term, everyone will be exposed to COVID.

Most of these things were either known or suspected early on.

What might have helped- spend some money on air circulation, especially in places like schools.

Support for people who were really high risk.

Encourage some people to WFH if they wanted to.

Really launch some initiatives toward increasing people's physical activity and time outdoors.

Encourage hand washing.

I'm a retired teacher now but there is no way I would have been going into schools during the lockdown. None of my teacher friends say they would either. Schools are petri dishes for illnesses.

Not risking my health when they can stay home.

@SoiledMyselfDuringSomeTurbulence the thing is, I can remember pointing out what Labour were saying before and during lockdowns to people defending the Tories’ uselessness. I have actual memories, so saying something different now won’t wash.