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

Lockdown is much easier to enforce than people think.

You have checkpoints and actually put people in jail if they have no reason to be out.

Governments have huge emergency powers.

Covid was really lockdown-lite and semi voluntary, anyway. Which was fine, as enough complied to achieve an r number (remember those!) significantly below one.

But if they couldn’t get their voluntarily and case numbers were still rising, they have plenty of enforcement and deterrence available.

The issue with the COVID lockdowns is that the wealthy were given get outs and the local lockdowns weren’t applied evenly and fairly.

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

If there was an illness were there was no cure, hospital were overwhelmed and people were visibly dying we would comply

may not be as easy as last time as iit wouldn’t for many governments (and as a culture we are fairly compliant) but the need to survive would be stronger that our personal feelings of mistrust for the government

Closing schools wasn’t sensible at all.

Most of the people I know look back on lockdown fondly - even my DH who lost several close family members to covid.
Even my parents who were frontline key workers.
Even me who had a lockdown birth, pregnancy and maternity leave.

No pressure to be anywhere (for the most part) time spent with loved ones, quiet, calm, no FOMO.

If I lived alone or had an unpleasant home life I would obviously have a very different perspective, but for me it wasn't a negative time.

How would you know the severity of the illness?

Do you have a link to the prep the government has published @Pavementworrier ?

You wouldn’t need this as the virus itself either concerns people enough or it doesn’t.

If it’s way worse than Covid you won’t need checkpoints. If it’s about the same they’d be unnecessary.

How do you know what it does to people or if have a high rate of recovery before the event? Wait to see if they're all dying and it's too late, the disease is spreading like wildfire? Or just lock down at the start and hope it all works out ok?

At the beginning of covid, people were dying. My partners healthy 55 year old cousin was intubated for a month, then she died shortly after. My 75 year old (at the time) neighbour was intubated and she survived with no long term troubles, I see her walking the dog most days.

It's a difficult call, I'd always err on the side of caution personally.

The people on here saying locking down for Covid was unnecessary... what drugs have you taken? Did you live under a rock when thousands of fit healthy young people were getting so incredibly sick and dying. When there wasn't enough ventilators or oxygen for those that so desperately needed it? Yes it's now a mild illness but only after the vaccine was developed. The lockdown for Covid was absolutely needed.

What type of virus are you referring to?

Restrictions obviously help reduce the spread of any contagious (airborne, touch) virus for which there’s no vaccine.

Should have been clearer - the vulnerable I meant the elderly and those with immunocompromised conditions and severe asthma. I do think that keyworkers with underlying illnesses would be safe with the correct PPE and hygiene

But what would they live on? A lot of minimum wage workers don't have huge savings they can fall back on. They would be forced to work as I doubt the state would furlough them, it didn't for essential workers

Yep… during the black death people kept away from other people!

Lmao no it isn't.

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.

Those who would refuse to do lockdown.

Discussion forums by design have a range of for and against opinions. You and I clearly just disagree.

So those hospital wards full of dying people were just stage sets then?
And the governments of the whole world were in on it?

@EasternStandard ,

‘You wouldn’t need this as the virus itself either concerns people enough or it doesn’t.’

I’m sorry but that is just rot.

If people had, en masse, ignored COViD rules, COVID was plenty bad enough for enforcement to be necessary.

And people aren’t logical. There is a lot between Covid and plague/Ebola. As we can see from these threads a significant minority of people have zero understanding of either viruses or how public health works.

A disease spread by humans is not like dangerous weather. Other people staying home is precisely what makes it safer for eg supermarket workers. Of course we may get a disease so bad they don't want even to risk contact only with each other, but at that point it's not so much that a lockdown wouldn't work as that it would be irrelevant - like pulling over in a car to let the engine cool down being irrelevant if the engine has already broken.

I thought of your post as @Binusdid. You’re not going to get anywhere with checkpoints.

Again though, they're going to worry about wages less than they'll worry about death.

And there is an answer to this, for those amongst them who don't have relatives who'd feed them. You just won't like it. What will happen is, some of them will go looting.

I wouldn’t comply next time. It’s damaged the country so much.

Last time the push was to protect the vulnerable population by reducing the spread of it.
It would be an entirely different situation if we had a disease like MVD where the mortality rate is up to 88% and people needed to protect themselves rather than strangers.
Noone other than conspiracy theorists who didnt believe in it would be socialising in that situation, and even they would likely quickly change their mind once people they knew had died.

I'd love to be paid to stay at home as I have crafting hobbies and other stuff I like doing at home that I never seem to have the time to do. In reality I'd have to go into work like last time as I can't work from home in my job.

Unfortunately there is a huge mistrust of experts so I don't think the covid skeptics/anti Vax/flat earth type thinkers are interested at all in what actual qualified scientists have to say.

Safer is not the same as safe enough that they'd mostly be willing to come in.

But your second point is correct, and that's what people are talking about. It's glib to say all we have to do is keep out of the way so services can function, because actually, there is sod all guarantee that any virus serious enough to make people willing to do this but not serious enough for it to become irrelevant. And that's why the whole premise of this thread is wrong.