Lockdown will end sooner than later

[Mumlove5]

Let’s hope the government will listen to the economists. A balance needs to be created.

I honestly do not think Boris will stand for a longterm lockdown. He wants to get back to normality ASAP.

Plus, infection rates are slowing in Europe🙏🏻

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/05/behind-scenes-boris-johnsons-gang-becoming-riven-infighting/

“It’s a false argument that we are either going to save lives or save the economy,” said Sir Iain, a former Work and Pensions Secretary. “We are talking about saving lives right now versus saving lives in the future because people have got jobs to go back to, and a strong economy that can raise enough taxes to pay for the NHS.”

Yet when does the crossover point come when the Government has to start prioritising the economy above all else? “I’d say we have until the end of this month,” added Mr Duncan Smith. “We have a chance of saving the economy if we are out of this in three weeks but much longer and businesses won’t be able to be resurrected and charities will go under. And then we will see real suffering. We get this done, we flatten the curve and we get back to normal.”

Surely all the scientists who have studied previous pandemics are the ones to listen to? I guess however you can't save everyone's lives only for them all to be left with no income, no job, no trade. I understand the need for balance.

Whilst Sweden is a couple of weeks behind the UK and has a much lower population the rate of infection and death seems to be on a par with what the UK had and there is currently no lockdown here. Measures have put in place: No gatherings of more than 50, adult and teenage education to be done via the net, forbidden to visit old people's homes and the kids in schools are no longer allowed to change clothing or shower after sports (and therefore sports is a much more relaxed affair outdoors) That's all so far and it seems to give about the same result? We are about 65/100,000 infected.

Unfortunately the majority of mumsnet are absolutely loving all of this and would prefer it if the government nailed our front doors shut.

so true.

The lockdown cannot last too long, because a lot of people are 'stretching' the rules as it is. We do not have the police numbers to contain people at home all the time.
The economy obviously cannot cope if it lasts too long.
I suspect, things will lift gradually.
Some people have stated they think schools will not go back until September. However, for young children, that is a very long time, so I hope they go back before then, at least in primary schools, who cannot easily work over the internet without proper supervision.
I think it really depends on the figures regarding number of infections and/or number of deaths.
If the numbers get worse, then the lockdown will probably continue.
I guess that things will restart in a staged process, such as smaller shops, etc, with large gatherings (Wimbledon, etc) still not resuming until much later.

"Hundreds of people are dying with the disease, most of whom would have died anyway."

This suggests otherwise:
mobile.twitter.com/ActuaryByDay/status/1246866119597621248

As does the number of people dying at home in New York being about ten times higher than the usual average daily numbers.

We need to keep an eye on Sweden. They know there will be deaths. Is a softer approach good enough?

No, it isn't. And Sweden is waking up to that too. They have more deaths than the other three Scandi countries combined and most Swedes are desperate for their government to take more decisive action. I agree it would have been interesting if they had had a different outcome.

What I would like to see, rather than an either/or approach to saving lives or avoiding distress for those who are struggling with lockdown, would be for this to be seen as an opportunity to address all of those problems that just about keep from imploding society under normal circumstances but are threatening to do so now. I'm thinking of poverty, poor housing, DV and other kinds of abuse, mental ill health, the collapse of communities, exploitative work, shortcomings in our food production models, etc. The lockdown is revealing cracks - chasms really - in all kinds of things that normally escape notice when it's business and politics as usual. If we could address those, in order to make lockdown less painful, society would be improved in the long term too.

@alloutoffucks I didn't even mention schools? Let alone them going back in 3 weeks.

@SpokeTooSoon I think people on here are forgetting how much this is costing and that we can't go on for 6 months barricaded inside because the life we are preserving will have disappeared.

Yes, the mental health of people whose loved ones die from this. The mental health of the healthcare workers who had to stand in for family as their patient passed away and the family weren't allowed in.

Absolutely.

My mental health hasn't been right since my young sibling died a while ago now. I don't know what would happen to if I lost other members of my family due to this virus especially my son.

As for the healthcare workers I can't imagine how they coping

Times of hardship increase mental resilience. This will be no different.

"Let’s hope the government will listen to the economists. "

Is IDS an economist?

Economists are saying that lifting lockdown too early would be counterproductive and that there is not a trade off on economy vs public health - the goals are aligned.
mobile.twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1245803837840961541

If it's of any interest, the (east midlands) hospital called me today about a cancelled non-urgent appointment - apparently they're working on the basis of running them again from 1 June

I have no desire to rush back out to bars/restaurants/concerts etc. I also have no real desire to send my children back into crowded schools and put them and others at risk.
Realistically however, restrictions will have to be loosened to some extent sooner rather than later. Not at the end of the initial 3 weeks, that would be madness. But by early/mid May. Lockdown is currently costing £2.4bn per day. It is not sustainable. If we have the current restrictions until September like some are saying, there will be no economy. No jobs. No money. And it’s not a case of lives vs the economy. The economy is lives.
As soon as is reasonably possible, restrictions will start to be lifted. This will be done gradually, with social distancing maintained. The effects will be monitored and that will govern what happens next.

I honestly do not think Boris will stand for a longterm lockdown. He wants to get back to normality ASAP.
Johnson hasn't taken this situation nearly seriously enough and now he is in hospital and it seems has had to receive oxygen.
The virus is very unbothered what your political viewpoint is, it will just do its thing.
The country will of course open up at some point but the peak needs to have passed first and reopening will probably be done in stages to minimize second wave impact.

7 more weeks.

The lockdown cannot last too long, because a lot of people are 'stretching' the rules as it is.

only because the government has been very soft so far. It might not last.
This is what people are scared about, and why they are losing patience with the twats who behave like that - because we could lose what little "freedom" we still have. Who wants that?

interesting to have a glimpse of their vision of the world.

Wow, the way disabled and poor and working poor have suffered under the likes of IDS is interesting to you, 100,000 deaths and it's interesting? I wouldn't want a glimpse into IDS's version of the world, that's for sure.

@alloutoffucks but not everyone's families are going to come out of this fine, happy and ok, due to the lockdown and effect on all the areas I've mentioned previously. Keeping the lockdown going does not ensure that every family will be fine. It's just exacerbating a mass of different problems.

Times of hardship increase mental resilience. This will be no different.

Our life will not have disappeared after a long lock down. Yes it will be different, but life will go on.

Being honest I think threads like this show how privileged most people in Britain are. They have no seen major disruptions from country wide natural disasters, civil wars, revolutions, or all the other things many countries do deal with.

Just look at after the second world war. Britain was virtually bankrupt. Many, many people had died, many people were homeless and there were a lot of disabled veterans. The war ended in 1945. Life carried on. People were poorer and struggling from the impact of the war, but the economy slowly recovered, houses were built, people had families and built their lives.

There is an awful lot of catastrophising around at the moment. After lock down, even if it is a prolonged one, some much loved chains, shops, restaurants and leisure industries will have closed down. Unemployment will be high. But entrepreneurs will spot the gaps and new restaurants, shops and leisure industries will spring up. These will employ people. And slowly life will get back to a new normal.

Hmm. This country never used to prioritise the economy. We used to prioritise winning the war.

In any case, if IDS was worth listening to, then he'd be PM wouldn't he?

It's very disappointing that the antibody tests don't seem to be working properly because that was one way to think (not now, in a few week) about easing the lockdown for some people.

I don't know when the lockdown will end, but imagine it will be after an extension of the original term but before the middle of the summer. But can I make a plea for posters to stop rushing straight to the unhelpful binary of economy vs lives. There might be a few psychopathic financiers (plus POTUS) who really care more about their investment returns than other people dying. But almost everyone else cares ONLY about saving lives. The difficult question is how best to do it, given that medicine is imperfect, and medical treatment is expensive, so has to be rationed (not everyone can have the optimal money-no-object level of care all the time on a national health service).

The real tradeoff (which is very hard to model, as Neil F has said) is between the number of lives saved via lockdown and the number of lives lost via lockdown.

The lives saved are people who contract coronavirus and are able to be treated but who wouldn't have been treated without the lockdown. (This will be mostly older people and people with health problems, because a young healthy person would have tended to get a ventilator anyway, via triage, even if the NHS had been completely overwhelmed.) Because we have no especially effective treatment, it's also sadly not the case that lockdown is able to save the life of everyone who gets the virus. At the moment, because the NHS actually isn't over capacity as a whole, the people who are dying in hospital are people whom even aggressive treatment couldn't help. This is shit but this is the nature of viruses. Fast research will hopefully lead soon to better antiviral treatments and a vaccine (though this isn't trivial; the SARS vaccine turned out to be deadly and made reinfected people MORE not less likely to die).

The lives cost via lockdown are harder to account for because they stretch over a much longer time period. But it is very important we try to think about them and be fair to those people too, in balancing out resources. A woman who notices a lump in her breast today and doesn't get seen or treated quickly enough for the cancer to remain localised and treatable would be one example. Domestic violence cases. People with drinking problems who start drinking a bit more heavily during lockdown then lose their job and continue until they have liver disease, which rumbles on and off, but eventually deteriorates into organ failure. People whose mental health worsens to the point that it shortens their lifespan. Children who have fevers and aren't admitted quickly enough and it turns out to be meningitis. Children who have accidents unsupervised in the home because their parents are busy working and the ambulance doesn't get there fast enough. Babies who die during pregnancy because scans aren't offered as regularly and placental problems aren't diagnosed. Women who are pushed into home births instead of hospital deliveries and have a placental abruption or other likely fatal emergency outside the hospital setting. Elderly people who aren't able to nourish themselves properly or care for themselves without family support or carers and die of neglect. Homeless people. People who have a heart attack after months of inactivity and a worse than usual diet and high stress levels.

Sorry for such a grim list. But we need to balance the emotive claims on BOTH SIDES of the lockdown debate to make the most ethical choice in a few weeks time as a society.

I think there is some confusion on here.

Ending lock down is not the same as lifting all restrictions.

Clearly lock down will end within the coming weeks, there is no other option for the government, but that does not mean all restrictions are lifted. As has been suggested.

Lockdown ending means people are told to go back to work, but other distancing measures are still in place, Ie all social gatherings banned, social and hospitality venues still closed, borders not fully opened, social distancing measures to be put in and policed etc.

So basically lock down ending means something like they close the funding for folks staying at home out with hospitality etc industries, get everyone else back to work, tell people to work from home where feasible, everyone else to get into work, open schools a bit more for a certain age range for kids who won’t have a parent at home due to work.

People will be only able to leave home to do the school run, which will have social distancing measures, and then go to work, shop, and exercise once a day.

That’s the kind of thing lock down ending will look like. It is absolutely not the same as all restrictions being lifted.

I have said before how I will be interested to see further down the line the proper numbers of those who died as a direct result of the virus and those who died of something else but had covid in their system because both are recorded so how do we actually know the true numbers? The ones dying in nursing homes do we even know if they were expected deaths? People who were nearing the end of their lives anyway? So many variables really

@BatmanBaby I support government policies to support those who are not fine. And in any situation there are always losers. So an economic boom in an area often means low paid workers can't find anywhere decent to live.
There is no situation ever where there are not some losers. It is how the government supports those that matters.
Also recessions do happen fairly regularly anyway. You can't avoid them.