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

It was the Civil Service, part of DWP. It was entirely desk-based, back of house operations, so no public interaction. The role could have been done entirely remotely from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Presumably they didn't want to pay for thousands of people to get set up with remote working equipment, despite asking everyone else to do so.

Most people would voluntarily do it if they believed they were personally at serious risk. Some people wouldn’t but I’d wager a small minority.

Yes I'm aware of the relevant figures. There were more than 200k excess deaths during the pandemic so my 100k figure is actually quite conservative.

Who is "they". Do you mean ONS, medics? I'm referring to deaths that list COVID as the primary cause, which is widely regarded as the best metric of COVID mortality. There were around 175k deaths in which COVID was listed as the known primary cause.

Is that enough for a fuss? How many more would you like?

How frustrating. I could never get hold of people in other gov depts (Hmrc being the worst, still is) due to people wfh.

Sorry but I got Covid at the very very start and I can’t even tell you how terrible it was. I used to hike, cycle, I could barely walk and got chest pains . Age 40 and I looked like a 90 year old. I know a few people who died after getting it. I’d lockdown again BUT I absolutely would not judge people who didn’t and think they the rules at the end were ridiculous

Can't read 22 pages to check. Has anyone pointed out yet that Sweden didn't lock down and their death rate was way l lower than ours and about 40 other countries?

Lock down was not the only valid and effective strategy.

I worked in the lockdowns, mixing with every Tom, Dick and Harry but wasn't allowed to mix with my family or friends, I obviously did because I was out in the wild anyway.

Why would we only comply if children were more at risk and not adults? I’m happy to protect adults as well as children …

By we I mean our household, not we as in the whole country.

My husbands dad died in June 2020. His cause of death is recorded as Covid. He didn’t die of Covid, he died of the massive brain tumour he’d had for 3 years.

I don't think it would happen, we have data on the positives and negatives of the last one and I don't think the country would shut down in the same way again.

Exactly this.

Yes people would comply like last time, because otherwise the NHS would go under and then it won’t just be affecting the sick or elderly that are apparently, from some of these comments, disposable, it’ll be affecting everyone. Children too.

Agreed! Some wilfully ignorant people out there who should only be commenting on threads on lasagna, hair removal and toilet paper ! 🧻 💩

Last night i posted on a thread a link to an article about SH tenants being forcibly evicted so that four hundred SH homes could be demolished and replaced with two hundred and thirty more expensive homes. The reply i got?
GOOD.
And thats just one example of how SH tenants are spoken about on here. Im also on a thread posted by an Mner who is on minimum wage and worried about her pension. Several posters told her she isnt trying hard enough. Oh yes six years ago it was we are all in this together then as i predicted at the time it was straight back to the default setting of hating on SH tenants and key workers.

I didnt fall for the we are all in this together crap the first time round and IMO less ppl will fall for it again. A little while back there were murmurings about face masks being brought in for the flu. Back in twenty twenty when some of us said we may be expected to wear masks for the flu in future we were called conspiracy theorists

I don’t want to minimise the impact of the pandemic but on the scale of “how bad could a pandemic get?” this wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it could have been.

Also we shouldn’t forget that, though we’re still dealing with the after-effects, life has long since returned to ‘normal’. There was definitely a period where it felt like we were dealing with a “new normal” of on-going restrictions of one sort or another and that would simply be how we lived.

Agreed

So your household only cares about risks to children not to adults ?

Anyone who tested positive for Covid at death were recorded as a Covid death, despite their actual cause of death. Died in a car crash? Covid. Died of a heart attack? Must be Covid.

When the numbers are so skewed and manipulated it becomes useless for comparison.

I'm very sorry that your husband had to go through what he did. And I'm very grateful for all that frontline medics did for people back then.

But the fact remains that for the vast majority people under 50 years old and the majority of people under 75, Covid was not life threatening.

Sheer numbers overwhelmed the health service but even Delta, which was really bad and I caught it, wasn't life threatening for a fit and healthy person. The bigger problem was how infectious it was, which we can thank skilled Chinese bioengineering for, not how deadly it was.

Needless to say that my heart goes out to anyone who lost a loved one or who has been left with post viral complications.

I agree. Especially the child free who are last in line for everything.

I don’t think the pp was suggesting gatekeeping, just natural consequences?

What the pp is correct though, for the majority it’s mild. She didn’t say everyone. The CMO said similarly at the start.

That doesn't surprise me. Although the WFH thing is just an excuse, it's really just a staffing issue. Those in the call centres, and HMRC are particularly bad for it, are really heavily monitored. There are teams of people whose job it is to monitor things like break times and report on it. It's like a bad parody of the worst traits of call centres, but they are real.

This has been debunked. To analyse the effects of lockdown you can't just compare Sweden with other countries because the mortality rate is multifactorial. Sweden has a excellent health system and starting population health, for example. If you compare Sweden with it's similar neighbours however, it's mortality rate was much higher.

More generally, academic research has shown that lockdowns do significantly reduce mortality, but they have to be done correctly - i.e. immediately, consistently and strictly.