To be depressed that lockdown would happen again tomorrow if there was another new disease

[Pavementworrier]

We talk about all the things that are worse "since the pandemic"but government prep is based on all the same mad nonsense that caused the worsening

Grim

I assume that a lockdown has always been the plan in the event of a pandemic, so the fact that it’s already happened once is neither here nor there.

But I think that the way a lockdown would be received would very much depend on the disease. Yes of course if there was a horrible incurable disease with a very high mortality rate, especially if young healthy people were dying, then we’d all adhere to it. But the issue with Covid was that pretty quickly it became apparent that the vast majority of people who got Covid made a full recovery. And yet we still weren’t allowed to go for a picnic at the park. I don’t think the population would tolerate again such strict rules for a disease that was minor for most people.

@Binus ,

‘Let's assume for the sake of argument we're talking about a virus not severe enough to prevent the basic blocks of society from functioning. Who on earth do you think is going to be staffing all these checkpoints? The UK has 70 million people and our combined police and armed forces are like 350,000. You talk about jails, which already don't hold everyone we want to put in them- who do you think is going to be staffing these? Even China, with a fully functioning authoritarian state apparatus and actual gulags, couldn't manage to keep that up when the public turned. And we don't have anything like what they've got.
Enforcing lockdown would actually be impossible if the public weren't up for it. This is why so much emphasis was put on messaging and increasing people's perception of their own risk. Because whatever else one might say about the previous administration, they understood well that we couldn't possibly enforce a lockdown through deterrence. If it gets to the checkpoints stage, the whole thing is doomed to fail anyway. People have to be willing to do it voluntarily.’

It really doesn’t take much to create effective deterrence and Nightingale prisons are 100x cheaper than Nightingale hospitals! And much easier to staff.

How many people would still defy lockdown if their mate just got a 3 year sentence for doing it?

In Paris, where someone in my family lives, there were checkpoints, and people were randomly stopped, asked for their papers and why they were out. One checkpoint can easily stop 100 or more people in a day, so I don’t think the ratio is a major issue.

Brexit has damaged it more in many, many ways.

We didn’t need it. People complied in the U.K. due to behaviour change messaging.

Schools weren’t closed. They remained open for some children.

Interested in why you think it wasn’t sensible to ask parents of children who could stay at home to do so?

People would have to be dropping dead on the street from the illness before anyone else would pay attention.
It would be nice if we lived in a cleaner society, that people washed their hands often, wear a mask when ill. Washed more in general, instead we have a society and culture with a lot of sloppy dirty people who have no pride or interest in soap.

Think it would depend what it was, I can’t see many people complying though unless it was a highly contagious, life threatening for ALL, disfiguring disease of some sort.
Some people I know still put themselves in a lockdown- the recent flu going around for example, they didn’t leave their homes. I still see people wearing masks.

As has been pointed out a lot of times already in this thread, if such a disease were very contagious, nobody would be able to lock down because we'd be starving, looting, rampaging etc. And diseases that had high mortality rates but were very difficult to transmit would mean most people not worrying about getting it- they exist already.

It's the Goldilocks analogy. Lockdown needs a disease that's dangerous but not that dangerous. There is no point immediately leaping to something where everything would go down in flames anyway. The question is whether the middle ground exists and if so, where it is.

Current flu advice was for people in care jobs/hospitals to wear masks.

Is NannyandJohn back, all this talk of the army, jail and checkpoints.

Of course - and a short lockdown while we worked out where we were would have been acceptable - though distancing measures may have sufficed.

But you are wrong to suggest we knew nothing. We knew it was a corona virus - and we knew a lot about those generally. We locked down because China did - forgetting the political and socio-cultural differences between that country and the West. There are many, many diseases out there - haemorrhagic fevers, bubonic plague - that absolutely merit a full lockdown, as would a variant of them. A variant of a corona virus was in all probability an overreaction.

And that’s is a huge problem if we then can’t lockdown for something that kills on average 50% of people who get it with no treatment available because we can’t afford it economically or because people won’t comply.

There was a middle ground and we shot ourselves in the foot by not taking it.

@EasternStandard ,

‘We didn’t need it. People complied in the U.K. due to behaviour change messaging’

Correct.

My post concerned a situation, as posited by the OP, where people didn’t comply.

Epidemic control is all about getting the r number to about 1 over time (so flattening the peak), and also managing the second moment of the distribution, so you don’t get mass spreading events.

Which is why you need to trust virologists and epidemiologists to do their best for everyone, and listen to them. As most neither understand medicine or statistics properly.

If it really doesn't take much to create effective deterrence, it should be easy for you to explain how this would be achieved with the facilities that we already have. All you've done so far is tell us it would be easy.

Your Paris example is neither here nor there either, because it doesn't include a population who weren't having it. Stopping people isn't the problem. It's what happens when they defy whoever's doing the stopping.

You also don't claim that stopping people in the most built up areas does anything elsewhere. In the case of the UK, we have about 350,000 armed forces and police, and around 250,000 miles of road. I live in a large city, so one of the easier areas to police, and even then I can get to the homes of numerous friends and acquaintances without even going on a main road.

We knew a lot very early on, I agree. I also think you’ve got it on which disease we should do it for and hopefully there’s a long gap before the next one so it’s not so difficult to react if a worse one comes along.

I wouldn’t comply for any reason whatsoever.

Sorry to derail. Can anyone help me understand the paragraph below in layman.

Why are these industrial fatality storage tents required.
Mass Fatality Resilience Capability-Lot 2
Home Office
Published date: 18 August 2025

Following on from the market engagement notice in late 2024, and a competitive process ending on 28th March 2025. The Home Office now publishes the contract award notice for a Mass Fatality Capability Resilience Storage Framework.

In the event of a major incident resulting in a large number of fatalities which could overwhelm existing body storage capacity the Home Office would provide contingency support to the requesting local authority. The Home Office seeks to replace its current capability with a more efficient operating model. This opportunity will support the Home Offices strategy.
The initial term is 2 years, with the options to extend yearly for up to 2 additional years (2+1+1).
Our vision

I still agree with @Binuswe’re not dealing with this in the way your post describes. It’s either messaging or it’s so severe people just stop going out.

Absolutely! At that time, we did not know how bad COVID was. But there are many viruses that could kill, and people would fall like flies. I don't think people who refuse to comply today would still go outside if a new, dangerous virus struck.

Why worry about something we have no control over.

This is precisely what worries me, and why I feel that we must keep on and on reminding ourselves and others just how terrible lockdown was. I do feel that if we are not careful, we will be nudged to believe "actually, lockdown wasn't all that bad" or "it wasn't actually lockdown". (They tried that in December, calling it Tier 4, to avoid using the L-word.)

For me, it was not lockdown itself that was the worst part, but the way the government communicated with the public: a screeching U-turn from "it's nothing to worry about" to "you must stay at home"; and another screeching U-turn from "masks are worse than useless" to "you must wear them, they save lives". And the fear. They decided that the only way to talk to the public was to "frighten the pants off the public". Their words, not mine: it's in the Whatsapp messages which they tried so hard to cover up. The fact that they TOTALLY REFUSED to admit that lockdown caused any harm at all.

The way the government tried to micromanage EVERYTHING, and the fact that people seemed to want this - to me, that was much more terrifying than a virus, or even lockdown. Mumsnet was clear evidence that people wanted the government to have an answer to everything, and took their word as complete gospel. "You're not allowed out for more than an hour a day!" That was never a rule: it was something Michel Gove improvised in an interview, and it quickly became the gospel truth. The government didn't bother to correct the record.

I would have respected lockdown much more if the government had been more sensible and measured about it, and said "unfortunately, we believe we have to lock down. We are aware that this will cause massive damage to the economy, and the development of your children, if it goes on too long. We shall endeavour to protect you from losing your jobs and businesses, and we shall endeavour to keep lockdown as short as possible, because it will cause massive damage." And then, after a few weeks, "We can now see that lockdown is causing more harm than good. We shall lift restrictions, but provide measures to protect the vulnerable, and it will be better to have more infections in the summer, rather than the winter. We cannot control the virus: all we can do is lessen the harms."

But instead, we got Boris Johnson claiming he can work more miracles than Jesus, saying "we will do whatever it takes to eliminate the virus, and to keep you safe." And the boiling frog method of stringing the public along with "in twelve weeks, we can send the virus packing. Normalish by Christmas. It would be inhumane to cancel Christmas - oops, I've just done it. Significant normality by Easter. (Which year?) Irreversible road map to freedom by June. Sorry, I meant July."

And all this has now set a precedent: people expect instant action from the government. (One reason they are disappointed with Starmer is because he has not solved all the country's problems by now, but that's another debate: Johnson had a habit of constantly telling us that salvation was just around the corner, people believed him, and expected instant results. People expect the same from Starmer.) Although people are now licking their wounds from the damage caused by LOCKDOWN (not the pandemic), I worry that it might not take much fear propaganda to have the public baying and pleading for lockdown again, and not even for a pandemic. They'll probably call them something else, like a "stay at home order", and use them in the event of terrorism, climate change (tweak a few figures here and there to make things look terrible), Trump using weapons of mass destruction, or whatever other threat the government uses the fear machine to bombard the public with.

And the counterpoint to that is that many people, including myself, are more distrustful of government in general than ever: I distrusted most politicians since the day Tony Blair was elected, and now I will never trust any politician again as long as I live. As scandal after scandal is still breaking, with the "fast lane", and Johnson and his mates lining their pockets on the dodgy contracts, people will be angrier than ever. I bet that the "Partygate" we heard about was only the tip of the iceberg, and that far more politicians and lockdown's biggest cheerleaders were breaking the rules: thinking he was politically invincible, Johnson was careless enough to get caught.

People would still expect others to be out though if it meant they couldn't get their shopping, it's always others.

-I believe the evidence is that it has severely impacted the mental health of children, as well as social capabilities, of which the effects are still being felt

-My understanding is that children were at a lower risk with covid

-Children missed out of education

-Impact of parents having to manage childcare while still having to work from home

-Danger of children not being able to go to school who are in abusive situations at homs

And the 'will of the people' trumps the lives of the vulnerable, does it?

At the start - they didn't really know what they were doing and lockdown was a good idea.

The problem is that later on it then became about politics and manipulation and that is why the trust has been lost.

If it were to happen again public compliance will depend on the disease and not just belief in the government.

I disagree. I lost my dad to it in a care home and it reinforced the “fuck this, life is for living” attitude I had. I travelled and had foreign holidays all the way through and have zero regrets