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?

Difficult to enforce without knowing when you left the house, yes, but if they figure out where you live they'd know how long it took you to get there and, as I mentioned, the lack of public toilets enforced it on me anyway.

At the end of the day, whatever the police were willing to enforce were the rules you had to follow so if the First Minister said an hour's walk, people knew that could potentially be enforced.

COVID-19: History shows public treat advice as law for the common good

I said track and trace, not lockdown. They're not the same thing at all. Lockdown didn't require people to stay in their homes, whereas being notified as a contact did at some points during the pandemic.

One could be entirely compliant with lockdown and still be working outside the home, attending school or childcare, be part of multiple bubbles for some of it, using public transport, attending those shops that were still open whilst unmasked or taking exercise.

the following recommendations could optimize future pandemic responses:

1. Proactive Preparedness: Develop a comprehensive national pandemic preparedness plan, including healthcare system resilience, stockpiles of critical supplies, and scalable ICU resources.
2. Targeted and Flexible Lockdowns: Design restrictions that adapt to the epidemiological profile of the virus and minimize impact on mental health and economic stability.
3. Rapid Testing and Digital Surveillance: Strengthen early testing infrastructure and leverage secure digital surveillance to enhance real-time tracking.
4. Transparent, Science-Led Communication: Employ unified, evidence-based public messaging to mitigate misinformation and promote compliance.
5. Public Health Partnerships: Collaborate with community organizations to address vaccine hesitancy, providing culturally sensitive information and support.

You can't control amounts of virus coming in unless you can totally close the borders. Even New Zealand in the middle of the ocean didn't manage that.

And no, earlier and harder would not have changed the number of repeats. If you put everyone in their house, numbers will go down some, as soon as you let them out, they go up again. That is how they work.

In any case, harder lockdowns weren't possible as people need to eat etc. There have to be people out and about working.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/06/02/six-foot-rule-covid-no-science/

It's not a surprise to anyone who is knowledgeable about how repiratory viruses spread.

The stuff about arrows on the floor, or six people in a group in a venue, was even more nuts. No scientific basis at all.

Always easy with hindsight.

Reacted faster with a blueprint developed over decades.

The initial stages were patently out of control as early as January 2020 in China, so much so that we cancelled our planned holiday to Thailand in February with T1 diabetic DH. Friends visiting from HK were stunned when we cancelled meeting them in London in February.

Incoming flight and shipping passengers should have been quarantined as they landed.

A plan should have been in place to quarantine elderly people leaving hospital before they got back to care homes.

A plan should have been in place to address the devastating impact to children and other vulnerable people.

Lockdown should have happened sooner, but accounted for the inhumane isolation of people that didn't fall into convenient households.

It still seems staggering that in this century we didn't have a contingency plan readily mapped out to handle an unknown contagion. Why? We have more resources than ever before. How is that no government hadn't mapped this possibility. In fairness, we were not alone on that one,but when you consider the billions globally that were spent on Y2K readiness 20 years earlier, why should biology readiness be any different?

Cobbling together the plan, The Rules, the tactical necessities should not have happened on the fly.

Quite! And surely the child must have caught it from someone? Or is it being implied this child is patient zero?!

The best evidence we have shows that household members and contacts of people with symptoms or a diagnosis frequently ignored rules and guidance to isolate.

The table on page 8 has records for cases and contacts who were phoned, which is more reliable than self reported surveys for obvious reasons. The mean number of those complying is around 75%.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65f092919812270011f61405/self-isolation-compliance-of-cases-and-contacts.pdf

Note that this is just the people who were known to Test and Trace. Not those with covid symptoms and confirmed LFT positives who never did a PCR or went into the system, or those who were never reported as contacts because they asked the positive person not to. So it misses out the people who were actively trying to subvert Track and Trace to avoid isolation, and the true figure will be even higher.

PHE acknowledge this, and also cite some international studies of symptomatic people (a different population) showing even lower rates of adherence. Which makes sense. One of them said three quarters of people with symptoms and their household members had gone out of the house in the last 24 hours!

Basically, this is a looooot of people who weren't having it. Clearly a group that includes over quarter of a given population is significantly sized.

Indy SAGE in March 2021- less than 30% of those who should isolate are fully adherent, at page 5.

www.independentsage.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Supported-isolation-final-180321.pdf

The reality is that had covid happened, say, a decade earlier, we couldn't have had lockdowns etc. It was only because of the development of the internet, fibre broadband, almost everyone having laptops/smartphones, and that we were already well on the way to an online World, i.e. working from home, online shopping, online banking, Facetime, email, etc., that we could extend and accelerate what was already happening, to facilitate remote schooling, Universities doing 100% online teaching, working from home, widespread grocery shopping deliveries, Amazon deliveries for everything else, hot food deliveries, etc.

It was only because so much "could" be done online that it was kind of a social experiment to lockdown and have so many draconian restrictions and do as much as possible online.

That's probably why there'd been no contingency plans for an "online" response for a pandemic and why so many mistakes were made as they were making it up as they went along, so no time for proper preparations etc.

Medical people looking after COVID patients should have had proper face fitted FFP3 respiratory protection. Not surgical masks. Surgical masks are intended to stop people spitting bacteria into open wounds, not to guard against viruses.

I think if there’s another pandemic we should just get on with our lives. The vulnerable should be advised to stay home, but not forced to do so by law.
People should be allowed to make their own choices.
Advice about the pandemic should be issued immediately - no delays - and any rules that are introduced should be logical. Sensible measures such as mask wearing, keeping rooms well ventilated and hand washing should be strongly encouraged and anyone who is ill should be required to stay at home.
The importance of cleanliness and hygiene should be communicated clearly.
Air filters should be provided in enclosed public spaces and proper PPE should be provided to all who need it.
Making sure we have plans in place for any future pandemic before it happens would also be a good idea.

Perhaps not what we SHOULD have done during the COVID pandemic but now we should be forcing China to pay the full cost of the pandemic. It started there and they failed to contain it. They have a huge economy and so should pay for this. It seems that it was either produced in a laboratory or spread due to poor hygiene at a market. In either case make them pay.

I was their one to one and my whole school was one bubble so we knew who it was.

I see how quickly tummy bugs spread in my current school (staff, parents, kids) and it makes me glad we shut them for covid!

What about the parents who are vulnerable or worked in the NHS, care homes etc. Should their children have stayed home?

Might be a bit difficult to pull off!

We completely disagree on the value of education and the level of risk we are willing to take. I have already said many wouldn’t agree with me and it is fine that you don’t.

Schools were open for the children of NHS staff and other key workers during lockdowns.

Oh yeah they were for the later ones, I forgot it seems like so long ago now!

It's complete bs. Any number of people could have had the virus and run into that poster, anywhere. There is no way anyone could know.

But he didn’t…

Saying the six foot was an arbitrary number isn’t the same as saying social distancing was nonsense.

Practically it was. If you are far enough away from people for it to work, you are basically not able to interact with them. And in an enclosed space it's very quickly irrelevant how far away you are..

Hence lockdown to stop non essential contacts…

We should have listened to experts

Worked together with EVERY country to produce the vaccines

Which experts? Not sure if you're referring to vaccines only here. And there was a loooot of relevant expertise that wasn't part of the conversation.

People need to live. It's a privileged few that can do this, most people actually have to go to their jobs so the privileged few can work from home. People need food, deliveries, boxes, infrastructure like water and roads.

It's complete shit for many in terms of health in other ways, particularly children, it makes people fat and unhealthy.

And as soon as they come out the benefit is gone and the virus takes off again.

It's not a real solution.