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’ve no read every page but I did see things like shopping mentioned. In a stronger lockdown I’d guess those working who were willing at least that is to work in closed stores.

Staff only picking non contact delivery orders.

So I’ll use Tesco. Tesco lorry pulls up. He doesn’t get out. Tesco Warehouse staff member/s unload. Zero contact with lorry driver.
Those same warehouse staff pick the orders and load into the delivery vans. No contact between warehouse staff and driver apart from the actual stock.
Driver takes crates or bags to front garden/door step. Gets back in van texts that’s the order is there. No contact.

I think that’s the only way shopping would work and how you’d get staff to go in, in a much worse situation and still feed the population without army style rationing.

All actual stores closed to the public and with bigger technology again Amazon robots and drone deliveries and locker points is something that isn’t hard to see as a solution or part of one.

Might not help mental health however although maybe that would be some encouragement for some to want to be the Tesco staff inside the closed store. A slight bit of human interaction within a work “bubble” ontop of your household without massive lines of people playing red light green light to get inside the store.

Someone who goes to their neighbour’s house, or has people round, broke the rules, even if they show up as having ‘not moved’. Likewise when people who lived alone were allowed to form a bubble with one other household, there was no way to measure how many households they were ‘bubbling’ with. Compliance with other rules like Rule of 6 can’t be measured reliably either. Bars were accepting bigger groups and just seating them on multiple tables of 6 (I went to a birthday party and we took up 3 tables in the bar, but moved around between tables to chat to everybody).

And id love to see how many ppl would be willing to go to WORK in Tesco. Try to think critically

We didn't lock down to protect the vulnerable, but to protect the hospitals and the mass of ordinary middle-aged people in the workforce who'd recover fine with hospital care but not without, and who were in danger of not getting that care because of the hospitals being overwhelmed.

The evidence for this is that pretty much the second most people were safe from needing hospital care thanks to the vaccine, all the precautions stopped, even though the most vulnerable were still vulnerable. So it was clearly never something done only for them.

I wouldn’t comply over “every flu bug” either, and nobody is being asked to. I pointed out that if the next pandemic disproportionately affected healthy children and young people, and you actually saw children you knew being struck down and killed, you would probably have a rethink.

The point which has been made several times is, in this situation, it wouldn't be about complying with lockdown, but figuring out how society keeps functioning when people refuse to go to work.

So staff absolutely shouldn’t be working with key worker children then?

It’s the double standards that makes it laughable. Too deadly for supermarket workers but fine for staff to work closely with hoards of key worker children.🤔

I think if this happened again there would be more questions asked of the NHS like what changes have they made in the last six years

Well they’re going to have to come up with better evidence for that if there’s a next time- as they well know.

Who is suggesting it's harmless? I don't think anyone is - well at least I am not; what I am suggesting is that we were misled (whether deliberately or not) as to the severity, and the likely severity, of it. This is potentially fatal when we face diseases that have a higher mortality rate.

I wonder if a big part of the problem was the use of modelling; we as a whole still don't seem to understand the limits of modelling and the need to understand the parameters on which it is based in order to assess it's ability to accurately reflect what might happen. Again, a big part of the problem may have been the statistical and modelling illiteracy of government and government advisors. If this was the case, it is very shaming for us as a whole.

Off the top of my head you’d probably have to switch away from paying people to be furloughed to paying “danger money” for people in truly essential roles.

Your prerogative. Personally I think it's quite silly to extrapolate from an off-the-cuff remark in the way you have done. I said precisely none of the above, you're just assuming I think it.

@HisNotHes i wasn’t speaking for everyone, I was speaking for me. I was working full time hours in 4 days as I always did but my work changed due to the lockdown and the change was incredibly fulfilling for me! I know it wasn’t the case for a lot of people.

On that we agree! I think the Covid pandemic was handled dreadfully and we are all still dealing with the fallout. I just think that the “I won’t comply next time” brigade aren’t thinking it through either. Depending on the terms of that particular disease, they may have no choice.

It was my opinion at the time that we didn't lockdown soon enough. And I stand by that even though its probably an unpopular one. There was too much dithering and the governement flipped from one course of action to another. We are incredibly lucky that the fatality rate wasn't higher. Then I think they let lockdowns drag on too long. Once we had a good idea of what covid was, how it would impact us, and we had hospitals ready to go then I believe they should have been lifted and only those most at risk should have been shielding.

Hopefully if and when it happens again the data on the impact on our children will be considered. But as others have said I dount so many will be compliant. There is so much anger on what we missed during that time, especially in light of the behaviour of some of those in the government at that time.

I wouldn’t expect them to. I was a ‘key worker’ and would now absolutely refuse to go into work just to facilitate those who want to stick it to the man. That’s what I’ve taken from the last pandemic! Anyway, remove Tesco and change it for public park, if you prefer.

So I don't think those people are wrong as such, they're just talking about something that couldn't possibly happen. It's just that a lot of them don't seem to realise that, which matters when it means making assumptions about what other people would be willing to do in order for them to lock down. Anyone who does get that and is just doing a thought experiment for the sake of it, fair enough.

Also in a really catastrophic scenario, we wouldn’t be fucking about with bespoke Tesco orders, we’d be getting rations delivered. We might be using supermarkets as distribution centres but it wouldn't be like normal click and collect.

I think people’s resentment to the very necessary lockdown was caused by events around it as much as lockdown itself.

The stupid petty rules like taping park benches, closing public tennis courts whilst allowing personal training and preventing loved one’s accompanying one another into hospital. These prevented very little spread but caused very real hardship.

And, of course the hypocrisy of allowing ‘necessary’ corporate entertaining and COVID parties dressed up as work events.

Finally, the government-sanctioned profiteering that no one has yet gone to jail for.

In addition, the messaging of ‘save the NHS’ was asinine. It was always about preserving a functioning medical system in order to save lives, not about saving the NHS per se, but that was poorly explained with the four word slogans.

I am assuming hopefully we will not see another pandemic in our lifetime but, if I’m wrong, we need a government leading with dignity, gravitas and self-sacrifice, the opposite of BJ and his shower.

I think food production would be a much, much bigger problem than supermarkets or distributing food.

I'm in ROI and some of the worst places for spreading Covid were in the food processing and packaging plants.

Absolutely - much more likely that people will refuse to go out rather than being forced to stay in. The old ‘I will NEVER lose my freedom again’ is nonsense.

Plus progs like Strictly and Dancing On Ice going ahead with everyone on them looking glam cos its work while the public looked and felt like scruffbags

Well, they're not going to be in public parks except maybe to try and hunt any wildfowl that happen to be hanging around. Or be one of the parties in a scapegoating massacre, perhaps. But there also wouldn't be anything to comply with in that situation, because that assumes a functioning government making and communicating laws. We wouldn't have one of those!

Which is why people keep saying, there's not much point talking about lockdowns in an apocalypse scenario because obviously society would just collapse. What's actually up in the air is what would happen with a milder but still dangerous virus.

But the point is, you wouldn’t know if it was a novel virus. And the buggers keep mutating. Hence, we prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

Well as a PP pointed out, it's a situation that just wouldn't occur. Compliance and lockdown would be irrelevant concepts and we'd have a whole host of other problems on our hands.