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

@Newbutolfather Don’t lockdown sceptics worry that vanishingly few genuine experts (virologists, epidemiologists and immunologists) think lockdown was unnecessary?!

Those experts were giving advice only on reducing the number of infections.

Others are looking also at increased deaths from other causes, but it is, quite honestly, impossible to have a data rational discussion on this issue without being accused of wanting someone's granny to have died.

Exactly this. All the people saying 'i will not comply' are just talking bullshit. And what would that even look like when everything is shut down? Standing in the street going 'look at me look at me I'm not complying' 🙄. People think that because they had covid in the latter stages and weren't seriously ill that the virus was mild. By that point the virus has weakened, as a lot of viruses do over time. People that got the virus early on were seriously ill or dying. Our friend, a key worker in his 40s, fit and healthy, died. My hairdresser and a colleague from work, both in their 20s have permanent heart and lung issues and are significantly impaired. I dont believe that anyone, in the face of a new, unknown virus, with scenes as we saw in Italy and China would refuse to lockdown

I rather miss lockdown.

@EasternStandard ,

‘I still agree with **we’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.’

You are welcome to agree, but reducing it to a facile binary isn’t the real world.

At the start of Covid, it was reasonable to assume a 1.5% case fatality rate in what was known from China and Italy. It ended up being a lot lower, and lockdowns ended up being less severe with experimentation (bubbles, rules of 6 etc).

But, in the real world, most viruses are neither Ebola or a cold, and when you get a novel zoonotic virus, there are a lot of unknowns, so you have to play safe.

Just read real scientific papers on both epidemic and how to manage them. Zero of them will suggest reliance on people to self manage isolation.

If you die, you die.

Yep! And things would get nasty if they couldn't.

I sometimes wonder whether 2020-21 would've gone differently if it hadn't been so easy to obtain deliveries of treats, nice food and inessential crap to entertain oneself actually. It's not even just about having the bare necessities, though obviously order would break down soon enough if people didn't have their electricity and three meals a day.

Well, both, along with a succession of useless governments, including this one, have damaged us, in many ways, but I was just talking about virus compliance.

I bet you didn't have to work outside the house or enjoyed furlough

I find your checkpoint post facile tbf it’s not going to work.

You need the public consent for any response to happen.

It didn't 'become apparent' that most people recovered. The vaccine luckily worked well and therefore people had it less seriously. That is why most people recovered. If the vaccine hadn't worked death rates would have been what they were at the start multiplied as more people caught it.

I doubt people would comply if it was something similar to Covid.

There is so little trust in politicians these days.

Some idiotic responses here. No two diseases are the same so the response to the next outbreak will be different. But if there was an infectious airborne Ebola variant circulating you would still be mingling down the pub? Right…

Or you could take a less hysterical approach. There needs to be a balance between protecting the vulnerable and damaging everyone else. It’s awful on a personal level when you are left thinking I could well die because of this, but governments are thinking for millions, so it’s about balance between competing and contradictory interests.

Arguably we got that wrong with lockdown because we now have far more vulnerable people who cannot work because of their mental health, at great social and economic cost to the population. Put simply, no society can “afford” to cater merely to the needs of the most vulnerable. They need to be offered a reasonable level of protection, not everything possible, because the latter damages others.

Obviously. In the same way that the will of the people to have lockdown trumped the lives of those vulnerable to lockdown in 2020-1. Hence, say, increased deaths due to alcohol consumption during that period.

That's part of what pandemic management is. The will of the people, expressed through governments, trumping the lives of whichever vulnerable are seen as most suitable to be collateral.

Now there's a surprise a one post wonder goady op that's vanished
colour me shocked
carry on frothing guys

Thanks for your clear and very sane post. I despair really. People seem to have lost their ability to think clearly and logically about this horrible time. And at the time of the first lockdown, the vast majority DID comply. We saw community thinking and compassionate concern for people we didn't even know. I try to cling on to that in our post-Covid era where social cohesion and community seem to breaking down.

Maybe the lessons we learned will include prioritising mental health and our young people the next time this happens - and it WILL happen again. I remember how chilling it was listening to epidemiologists saying that although Covid was bad, it wasn't THE big pandemic they'd been bracing for.

I agree. I knew someone in her 40s, previously fit and healthy, who still hasn't regained her speech thanks to catching Covid early on.

I also agree there were some very silly rules, like being able to go, say, to the pub, but having table service only, distancing and having to leave at 10. Not sure the virus would have got that memo! Ditto Eat Out to Help Out - both attempts at shoring up the hospitality industry rather than effective pandemic control measures.

The insistence on handwashing being a protective measure when early on there was evidence of Covid being spread through the air was also a bit daft.

However, it is more than silly to underplay how severe the virus was initially and before the vaccines started to work.

Don’t lockdown sceptics worry that vanishingly few genuine experts (virologists, epidemiologists and immunologists) think lockdown was unnecessary?!
Perhaps there were more that we think, we just never heard from them. Perhaps one of the government's "emergency powers" to which you refer was being able to silence anybody who contradicted the narrative. And I'm not joking. What happened to Dr Vernon Coleman? Has he been cancelled, or silenced by the secret services? You could watch BBC interviewers interrupting "experts" who were about to deviate from the agreed script.

Yep. People confuse their 'should' and 'is'. Even if one accepts the principle that it would be best to let the epidemiologists in the driving seat, we very much do not have to do that and there would be no guarantees whatsoever that the public would be willing.

Third highest Covid death rate in the world and you're still banging on about freedom.

At the start of Covid, it was reasonable to assume a 1.5% case fatality rate in what was known from China and Italy. It ended up being a lot lower, and lockdowns ended up being less severe with experimentation (bubbles, rules of 6 etc).
Did the government ever tell us "the virus is not as deadly as we thought"? Did it slip their mind to mention this? Or was keeping the public frightened more important than telling us anything positive?

Similarly, I almost feel sorry for Johnson never getting to have his big moment in July 2021 of saying "it is with great pleasure that I announce the end of all restrictions." And he would probably have thrown in "never to return", while his handlers facepalmed. And why didn't he get this big moment? Because the fear machine had moved on to Ukraine, and then it was "pleeeeeeeeeeeease take in refugees, moments after we criminalised you for having your own families as guests".

@Binus ,

If you don’t want to put virologists and epidemiologists in charge in the case of a pandemic, who are you suggesting?

Jo and Ella from the pub darts team who had Covid and ‘it was just a cold’?!

Epidemiologists entire career has been studying epidemics and the correct response to them.

Expertise has meaning. Everyone’s opinions aren’t equally valid.

So if there was no lockdown, how would that work exactly? Whole classes off school? Teachers sick? Vulnerable teachers (older/ill/pregnant) unable to teach. Kids taking the illness home to vulnerable people? Let an illness run through the population? Obviously it was awful for many but what's your plan?

Didn’t some countries set up checkpoints where there were hotspots?

The opportunity we've missed over the last few years is that of educating the public about small-scale measures we can take to reduce airborne disease spread. Even small things like opening front and back windows for air flow.

Politicians the world over wanted to "take the win" and declare covid over and life back to normal. They could have been honest and said it would be better if workplaces and schools were well ventilated, because covid is a nasty disease with even then increasing research showing health consequences even when mild.

They could also have been honest that economically the government couldn't afford to provide that ventilation, so it would be up to us to do whatever we could voluntarily.

If they had been more honest like that, useful knowledge about how to reduce the risk of airborne disease would then be much more widespread, and that would make us more able to deal with the next such pandemic. It would also mean less covid even now.

Instead, they told us it was over and not to worry our pretty little heads over the details, and as a result we now have less useful community knowledge than we could have, so we'll once again all be waiting like sheep for one size fits all instructions.