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 do think schools should have returned sooner than they did, but keeping them open at that early stage before much was known would have been unfair. Plenty of teachers are clinically vulnerable, plenty of children have family members who are clinically vulnerable, the government did nothing to install filtration devices or anything else that was recommended; I wasn't going into work risking mine and my families health thanks. It would have been easier though, the amount of hours spent setting up online learning and the additional administrative responsibilities whilst as lots of us were juggling everything else was savage AF.

NZ option wasn't possible here

Agreed
Or sheeple

My father in law had cancer and underwent treatment during Covid that he had to pay privately for because the NHS were useless to the point that if he had waited for them to sort appointments it would have spread. He caught Covid during treatment and was fine. I’m classed as CV and have had Covid 3 times and worked the last 2 times I’ve had it. I don’t think it was an elaborate story but why were we all told to stay at home when boris the people implementing the ‘rules’ were throwing parties?

The 3 weeks to flatten the curve/help the NHS should have been adhered to. Shielding for the vulnerable if they wanted. Then maybe some restrictions in tge lead up to Christmas.

Once the vaccines were out it should have been back to normal quicker.

Multi generational families?
Carers?
The fact that not all vulnerable are old

What a narrow minded simplistic view

Sorry. It RTFT but I remember telling my DH a week or so before the closure that we need to stop people coming into the UK.
It would have been much more sensible to get people working from home where possible
Other than closing borders, stopping as much interaction as possible, throwing open all the windows in public places to keep the air circulating

I think it was more what we did do, was done too late. They fannyed about deciding whether to close schools, let massive sorting events go ahead, not to mention the government hypocrites. Anything done after that was irrelevant and too late.

We knew it was a load of crap and lies from day one and didn't follow any of it expect when they put a stupid five mile travel distance for exercise and actually had police cars positioned in certain places to stop and question people. Foe he most part we did get around it but some days had to divert when we saw a police car.

Politically does not come into it when thousands of lives are at stake. The repercussions of closing the borders would have been problematical and teaks and nuances would have been needed but that does not mean it should not have been done. The things that were done were problematical, but that does not mean they should not have been done.

tweaks

I remember telling my DH a week or so before the closure that we need to stop people coming into the UK.

Those 'people' you were talking about were mainly British citizens. Do you honestly think we should've shut our borders and trapped our citizens overseas, like Australia did? I thought that was an appalling policy. You pretty much assume in life that you can always go home, will always have a right to return to and reside in your country of citizenship. How would you have felt if you'd been on holiday or a business trip and the border had just been closed, trapping you overseas?

Politics comes into absolutely everything.

New Zealand would not have been able to do what they did if the other countries in the world hadn't agreed to take on the responsibility of hosting their stranded citizens for open ended periods, for example.

^
This.
When your previously fit and well husband is in ITU ventilated , with a tracheotomy, dialysed and comatosed for 5 months and then somehow miraculously survives albeit with lifelong disabilities and has to spend the next 6 months in a different hospital learning to walk again and do basic self-care tasks; please try living that horror while looking after 2 young children.
So yes, schooling etc was disrupted, freedoms curtailed, but do you know what? That was the very least of mine and my children's worries.

You can't take the Swedish approach without the Swedish infrastructure. More financial security, better working rights / sick leave, more living space etc

NZ option wasn't possible here - it was possible; not easy of course, but then none of the options were easy.

Ok, how?

Possibly a very short (4 week?) initial lockdown, by which time we would have realised that it was unnecessary.
A push to get the vaccine programme up and running - which we actually did.
Nothing else - no masks, no restrictions, no stupid rules. They were all pointless. We should have been prioritising keeping children in school.
The Government were not "immoral" - they were pragmatic, because they knew the restrictions were stupid, but sadly couldn't find a way to get out of them.

We should have started lock down earlier. We had about 2 weeks where it was in mainland Europe.

In Spain people were in lockdown, but the UK allowed Spaniards to travel unrestricted to a football match in Liverpool. I don't blame the Spanish fans, they had tickets and had paid for travel that probably cost a fortune.

Even if we had not gone in to lockdown there are things that could have been done. Atletico Madrid's fans are probably mostly located near Madrid. A charter flight (or more likely a fleet) from Madrid to Liverpool would have kept people off trains and ferries.

That was mistake one.

None of the rules were necessary. The only people that should have been in lockdown were the elderly or the ones with core morbidities. And there is nothing discriminatory about it. The lockdowns destroyed the economy and people’s well being which have caused more excess deaths because of the restrictions than Covid itself.

But we all know why the policies were adopted. So that corrupt government officials and leeching civil servants could funnel public money to their cronies and back into their own pockets.

Lesson? Never ever trust the government when they tell you to follow the science.

First of all, they should have seen it coming since a pandemic had been right at the top of the national risk register for years. Then they should have followed the experience of the pandemic planning operations held in the 2010s.

I agree that I don't think anyone could have got it "right".
It was a novel virus so guess work will always be part of planning.

However the fact we didn't have readiness planning was a mistake.

The fact the government has wanton disregard for the rules we all had to follow is unforgivable.

What I think should have happened was more meeting and planning and making rules with clear indication of why rather than this making rules up because of media pressure of because Johnson just thought it sounded good and gave him more tv time.

Also government clarifying the rules more clearly. Johnson's inability to communicate effectively was a major issue with covid. There never was a rule about 1 hour a day exercise.

If pubs could open they should have had rules in place and there was no need to food to be involved and clarifying what constituted a meal.

The government allowed the media to use covid as click bait far too readily.

This was a pandemic. Measures needed to be in place. I don't disagree with the original lockdown whilst we figured out how to manage the pandemic.

But the complete lack or clarity and consistency was unacceptable.

Actually, that's wrong. The economies that fared the best were those with the fewest covid deaths.

And the hospitals would have been unable to admit the number of patients needing inpatient treatment if Covid had been allowed a free for all in communities. Inpatients weren’t just the elderly and CEV.

No it was confirmed at the enquiry by Whitty

If you think about the difference in borders you can see the issue