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 dont know because we all have the benefit of hindsight now which means we all feel very differently than at the time. We also have muddled memories of what happened and when and we all seem to have picked up different messages.

The main message I heard was flatten the curve and protect the nhs

Others heard protect the vulnerable

The main thing I would have changed is the absurdity of bubbles in schools after the big lock down. They were a total nonsense and affected play. The 'open but not open' stage was a pointless nightmare.

As a teacher I worked in school through both lockdowns. I was teaching ft and expected to produce a full week of online learning and live lessons. What I was teaching in person wasn’t possibly to ask people to do at home. My daughter wasn’t classed as a key workers child until the 2nd lockdown so I had the same issues as every other working parent. All while being told by the media that I was a slacker, waster, shirker etc as schools weren’t open.

I think that, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s also easy to forget that in the early days we didn’t know much about the virus or how badly healthy people would be affected. It was an unknown entity.

Pandemic management is inherently political. Especially in a democracy, as governments know they're going to be accountable to the electorate for what they do sooner or later. Though even in China the population eventually forced the state's hand.

Covid meant some people and interests were going to have to be prioritised at the expense of others. There was never any way round that. The decision about who gets to be protected and who's the collateral is political. Even with the best and most sensible governance in the world, which the clowns in the UK clearly did not provide, that would still be true.

Oh and ventilation was never improved and we certainly never got a hepa filter. My classroom windows open less than 2 inches.

That was always stupid too. Quite apart from covid, air quality in schools isn't good enough. We knew that in 2019.

Hard to day really but I think going forward maybe a short shap lockdown or say 2-3 weeks to prevent spreading whilst they prep hospitals with equipment etc to cope and get schools ready with whatever they need. The allow non vulnerable back out and those who are to decide if they stay at home or not

It also need sus the people to not be stupid and send ppl out when they are not well. Unfortunately even today you see people getting on train coughing, sneezing away who clearly have a cold. It's annoying you are spreading it to other ppl. Wear a mask or work from home or go off sick...this obviously means we need businesses to ensure that ppl don't feel pressure to get into work

I don't think another lockdown is possible at the moment. Nor that people would believe a short sharp 2-3 weeks actually meant that. I wouldn't.

I think “eat out to help out” was ridiculous. As far as lockdowns went, I’d have shut the boarders more tightly like they did in New Zealand.

They won’t answer. These posters never do.

Schools should never have closed - GCSEs and A levels should have been taken. There was so much damage done to children, including those who had grades awarded by an algorithm.

Who would have done the teaching? Teachers weren’t immune from becoming ill from Covid.

I think this would have been the answer, really. Mass provision of air filters and ventilation for all enclosed public buildings, but as much done outside as was sensibly possible.

The first lockdown while the virus was unknown - Fine. After that, better procurement of medical supplies, air filters etc so the hospitals could cope, letting the elderly make their own informed decision about whether to take the risk (since they were the ones with the least time left, they might not have wanted to be cooped up).

NZ was able to do that because of very specific geographical factors that don't apply to the UK, a country with a land border, reliant on a just in time food import chain to feed ourselves and on one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

With you on EOTHO though! I have never understood what the point of that was.

Until we had a vaccine we had to restrict the circulation of the population to control the spread. And we needed to control the spread to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed, because if that had happened we'd have had massive numbers of people just dying at home or in the streets, as happened in China.

Some of the later rules, like 'the rule of six' and the constantly changing advice on travel that forced people to abandon their plans and rush home immediately were bloody stupid; but in the initial stages, when no one really knew what we were dealing with and the govt/health advisors had to try and stop a mass casualty event, I'm not sure what else they could've done really.

They accepted from the start that we'd all probably get it eventually, but it was about spreading out that time frame of infection and hopefully providing a vaccine quickly to give people some protection. They did that. Overall, IMO, they did a decent job with what they had.

Wales was a bit like this!

I’m so sorry you experienced the hard end of the pandemic. It’s easy for the many who had Covid and got over it to be flippant and say it was all over hyped.

I hope your sister has had a break and some help to come to terms with what she had to endure and thank her from me, a stranger on the internet, for her service.

Neither were NHS staff, supermarket employees, police and many more key workers.

A hundred times this. And now, lots of people, including myself, will never trust the government or the police again, because of the abuse of power; and then, the blatant hypocrisy. I thought it might be the odd MP being caught having Christmas dinner with his or her family, but I was really surprised it was on the scale of Partygate.

Reportedly, the police were not even consulted, and they didn't even know that they were expected to enforce lockdown, until Saint Boris announced it on TV.

I did say more tightly rather than the total isolation that was available to NZ. (And actually they did have some weak points with people visiting from outside.)

I think if people had reliably followed the rules rather than having to be all rebellious at every inconvenience we would have been able to work out what worked or didn’t MUCH more quickly and effectively.

Didn’t Sweden have a higher death rate than the other Nordic countries, they too were guilty of big looking after their elderly in care homes

I think the public was a lot more compliant than the planning.

People took rules of six etc very literally. I think the behind the scenes was 'we'll say six for Christmas knowing no one will leave the seventh person out when it's their child but to discourage 25 people Christmas dinners'.

Or we will say no picnics meaning don't all gather for a jolly a foot apart in Hyde Park but we don't really care if you stop part way along a deserted coastal path for a sandwich.

People on here were mental with taking it absolutely to the letter and sometimes beyond.

Some of the decisions were taken more by the public demanding action.

It's really hard to mitigate for the behavioural aspects.

And huge numbers got ill affecting the service delivered. More difficult in a school when there are only a small number of teachers to start with. If three out of the 10 teachers are off ill, what do you do with their classes.

Did ye have to have vaccination passports to go to restaurants / cafes /bars when they opened up? It was crazy here that summer, everyone delighted that they could go into a pub. Bouncers at the door checking your vaccination status 🙈

Some rules seemed so petty (e.g. the one a day walk)

This was never an actual rule. This was just something some MPs said on tv, just like how you could only exercise for an hour.
The rules said nothing about either of those things. That was something that annoyed me during the pandemic. The rules said X, someone on tv would say "well I think an hour is maybe reasonable" and suddenly you've got people believing that the actual law is an hour and getting worked up that their neighbour has been out for 65 minutes.

If there is another pandemic I think we're buggered who's going to comply ?

I think it depends on the pandemic. I think if it was something closer to Ebola in terms of symptoms and mortality rate then more people would.

What they should have done differently was not give Michelle Mone any money.