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

But to become residents of a different country overnight? Without dual citizenship I don't see how.

This was also happening g before covid ,I went to a talk about EHCP,s around November 2019 as my son is,disabled and has always gone to a special school ,they explained the need for special school places in my LA was rising and continue ro rise at an unprecedented rate for the past 10 or so years so from at least 2009 and indeed all four special school ,s n my LA have doubled in capacity from before covidi dont think you csn blame everything on covid.

The UK was still in the EU then, so British citizens had free movement rights. Still some barriers of course, but one of the less faffy emigration paths.

It’s done in 2 specific brackets. 13-15mo and 26-30mo. The rates in 27-30mo started to fall again after lockdown but still weren’t back to pre pandemic levels in Aug 2023.

The rates in 13-15mo who would have been born between May & July 2022 were still rising when the study finished. Only quickly done the maths but there would have been a month during gestation where gathering was restricted. It does suggest that while there is a correlation the causation isn’t quite so clear cut. But the authors don’t seem to have suggested it was clear cut anyway.

The problem is that during pandemics one of the first casualties is truth and reliable information.

Apparently this was understaood by UK researchers and infectious disease specialities and they made concerted efforts to get correct information out there to correct people as much as possible.

I read there was a lot of research about ventalation and how that could reduce transmission - but there were rectictions on being outside from polcie stopping people to strangers shouting to made up rules - my kids got shouted at because they were walking home together after school - they live in the same house walking home was least risky part of their day.

Long term ventalition in schools could help reduce other respiratory diseases - but Welsh governement spent spend £3.31 million on 1,800 ozone disinfecting machines for schools during the COVID-19 pandemic which got scrapped when it finally got through to them how harmfull ozone gas would be to lungs.

A government more in control and better media - like information ministry style BBC of second world war - full of calm reliable reporting it would have massively help people stay calm and properly informed but we didn't have that and I think the media made things a lot worse.

Yes a lot of the damage to younger people was denied and squashed.

I wouldn't want schools to close again, purely because of stories like Arthur Labigno-Hughs (not sure of spelling). Some people died of covid even if they never caught it.

@GusGloop ,

Schools are the worst conundrum. They are basically superspreader events and yet closing them has huge social costs.

The thing is that, in a pandemic, everything is a trade off. You have to get the r number down to one or below once your health service is fully utilised. Otherwise everything spirals out of control.

If you wanted to keep schools open, lockdowns would be much longer and much stricter in every other way.

I suspect that next time they might try to do alternate day schooling with half classes (seated separately) and the other half on line.

The thing is governments aren’t prepared to spend money preparing for the next pandemic which might be a century away. If we doubled hospitals and doctors, not only would the health service work better, but lockdowns would be much shorter in the event of a pandemic.

And schools are no better equipped for another pandemic than they were before , if anything worse.

I didn't mind the fist school shut down as my teens have asthma and their school was being fucking stupid having whole school assemblies still. Primary DD2 was had stopped those as news started to come in.

I know it was harder for many other parents -including Dsis who lost all her chidlcare but was expected to work full time - then when things went back to normal there was a restructing and her and only other mother were only ones who didn't get a job when re-interviewing.

Hard part was how long everything dragged on for - endless year groups being sent home - for many on MN things went back way quicker than they did for my DC schools.

A lot of what we’re seeing would be dampened if children and young people hadn’t been hit so hard for such low risk to them.

Adults can for the most part deal with wfh if that’s an option to them, notwithstanding MH decline, DV, or those in flats or lower incomes fairing worse.

If there had been more awareness of the damage to younger people, and the economy but that’s another matter, it wouldn’t have been as bad in terms of lockdown harms.

That's the crazy bit amongst it. And things like my son could be in college with his mates but not allowed to see them outside college

DD2 was studying for her Masters during Covid - a world-renown course at a very highly rated (in that field) institution. The title of the course is - I kid you not - control of infectious diseases.

Covid and similar are not her area of study (she works on vector-borne diseases) but she was surrounded by experts in that field. You are entirely correct to say that there was widespread agreement on how unlikely you were to catch Covid outside unless someone was repeatedly coughing or sneezing in your face. A walk in a park? One of her professors put the chances as similar to that of being struck by lightening.

I lost my dad to prostate cancer in October twenty twenty four. If i hadnt gone to my parents at Christmas twenty twenty i wouldnt have the video that i took of him that Christmas Day. You do realise that grief is the same whatever the cause of death right?

Yep. And why were these experts not speaking on the BBC? Because they were not speaking the approved script, they were not allowed to say it in public. They were systematically silenced, because contradicting the official narrative was not allowed.

I think people would be more inclined to ask questions this time before just accepting it.

Who does it effect?
Old - No chance
Young - OK

What sensible precations are they taking?
Total lockdown - Nope
Genuine attempts to reduce spread - ok

How much information are they giving about it?
Limited - Go fuck yourself
As much as they can with genuine evidence - ok

There are loads of factors that would influence me but there is not a chance in hell i would consider a lockdown, solely based on it effecting mainly old people and those with respiratory issues. Lock them down and keep them safe and let the rest of the world turn.

If lockdown was done sooner there wouldn't have been as many deaths. I learned this the other day we are the second biggest in the world consuming ultra processed foods, United States being first. I wonder the statistics are between people who died from COVID and what they consume in their daily life.

We are heading from a top productivity country to a middling one. Our chronic health is worse, our demographic model is crushed by old age, we are poorer and more miserable. And largely this is because of lockdown (yes Brexit certainly hasn't helped and maybe lockdown made the shock of Brexit less bad because everyone was distracted by something worse).

And most people would do it again (but they still won't open the window on the fucking bus).

So why is it ok for school staff to be in the line of fire all day with the most germ ridden section of the population but not everybody else?

Our productivity issues predate COVID by at least a decade.

It's true that the UK's specific version of lockdown was particularly harmful economically though. This is because a) it dragged on so long and b) the decisions our government took made this a time of widening inequality, in a country that was already increasingly unequal. The asset price inflation that occured in the early 2020s was absolutely disastrous, especially for the young and the poor. It didn't have to be that way, and other countries handled it better.

The problems were there long before Brexit unfortunately

I denied nothing.

I asked the OP some questions about their evidence of how children will be affected for life.

Could you direct me to the evidence in either of these papers of lifetime effects.

Not meant for you my head is so tired. Please ignore my post.

Yes. I have 2 weeks supplies.

If only the government (then and now) and lockdown’s cheerleaders would only admit that lockdowns harmed children, it would do something to mollify me and others. But now, the cross-party consensus seems to be (in a whispered tone) “ssssssshhh! We don’t talk about lockdown, it never caused any harm, and it didn’t really happen anyway, the public will soon forget all about it…” My anger is slightly eased that the inquiry is at least mentioning that lockdown caused harm, but I want it laid bare how much it damaged children.

@P1nkElephant ,

I guess, like medical staff, that is what they (well, we, as I taught through COVID) signed up for.

I taught as COVID was just starting and I was suddenly aware of how many close contacts I had in class! The week after the school closed voluntarily, 4 staff members came down with COVID, two of them (not that old) needing hospital treatment.

And then, of course, returning to wiping down desks, masks, one way systems etc was pretty grim.

But the reality is that you need a certain staff/pupil ratio to safely open a school and, when there is a large amount of circulating virus, that is very difficult as staff fall ill and are off for prolonged periods.