Posters who want lockdown lifted

[DianaT1969]

I'm seeing an increase in threads where the poster is impatient for exact details of an exit strategy (even though we can all imagine what it will involve - phased re-opening of some stores and businesses etc,,). Plus we're hearing the usual cries of lockdown is hurting society more than it's helping.
Spain saw a spike in new infections today - the highest since their peak 3 weeks ago. To these posters I'd like to ask what your thread titles will be during our spikes in infections and deaths after this lockdown?
What I'm really getting at is that you don't seem to understand that we're in this for the long haul. There is no quick fix, back to normal.

I got seriously ill last week (not covid) and was rushed to hospital in a critical condition. Luckily there was capacity to treat/save me but I would have died without medical care.

I'm pleased that it worked out for you. It won't work out so well for many others.

I understand very well that we're in this for the long haul.

That's exactly why I feel so miserable about all the social and economic harm the control stategy is causing. I thought we had to choose, future economic prosperity vs. deaths now... but South Korea seems to be managing to balance them. I want the apparent SK solution. I don't know what UK govt wants. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask them what they plan to deliver.

@cantory

Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like I personally think we need to get on with it from next week, but I was expressing that I understand why many people are keen for things to start to return to as ‘normal as it can be’.

Someone said to me at the start of all this, something that upset me a lot originally. But it feels more truthful with every passing day and it’s sad. They said “eventually there’s going to be a decision between lives and the economy and you’re just going to have to hope no one you love pays with their life.”
It still fills me with horror, but I see now what they meant 😞

@sunglasses123 I am not sure where you are making all those assumptions from?
What I am saying is that if you end lock down next week it is foolish to think everyone will simply rush back to the businesses that have been forced to close.
In my area several businesses that are allowed to stay open have not.
Customers have to be willing to go to businesses like nail bars and massage therapists in enough numbers to make them viable. And I suspect that won't happen until the number of deaths have reduced.

Some parents were already pulling their kids out of school before schools shut with some classes half empty. Those same parents are not going to take their kids to a commercial soft play until they think it is safe to do so.
The black and white choice of lock down and businesses fail versus open and businesses thrive, is a false one. Real life is far more complex.

The arguing today with Covid19 and ending the lockdown seems to be remarkably similarly to what happened over 100 years with Spanish flu. I think the government have that in mind and are aware an early release to lockdown will bring a big possibility of a much deadlier 2nd wave in the Autumn as happened in 1918.

I don’t think the WHOLE premise of a lockdown is to ‘save the NHS’ but also to hopefully let the virus die down a bit as if it has no one to infect it will stop with the last person it infected which is possible if we are not mixing with each other. They’re not going to tell us that though as there would be even more panic. Hopefully they will be using this time to set up testing, and track and tracing methods to contain further outbreaks when lockdown ends. I understand there are issues with antibody testing as it is such a new virus and has long recovery times for those that were ill enough to be tested positive in the first place. That is going to be key to ending lockdown, antibody testing so those that have them and are immune get back to normal and the government have an idea on the numbers left that might need medical care. That’s way off as immunity has as yet not be proven from what I’ve read.

Interesting articles concerning the 1918 pandemic:

www.google.com/amp/s/www.insider.com/11-ways-the-covid-19-outbreak-similar-1918s-influenza-pandemic-2020-3%3Famp

www.google.com/amp/s/www.history.com/.amp/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence

@DBML That decision happens every day. Having lots of cars on the roads kills some people. The NHS not paying for some expensive treatments kills some people. Sadly it is always a balancing act.
But an additional half a million deaths in a year is far far too much. And if that had been allowed to happen it would have toppled the government. There would have been an enormous out cry.

DBML yes it is really as simple as being a stark choice between lives or the economy. We look round at other countries and it looks now as if they are doing better at managing deaths , but this is not a short term gain.
I just thank god we're not in the USA where there is no safety net and no NHS. Some people are laughing at the stupid Trump supporters out protesting about lock down but the difference between haves and have nots is even more stark than here, and presumably if you have no health insurance over there and you catch Covid-19 well you're on your own. Ditto if you can't pay your rent.

Rookie, thank you. I dont know either how difficult it is to perhaps locally call a few people and get the nurses and doctors to do some operations. Having seen the NHS work very inefficiently with my DM when she had been in hospital for 2 weeks. I just wanted to scream at them to hurry up and get her discharged. They told me she would be ready by 10 and I agreed that I would collect her. They faffed around, no one seemed to be in charge of the discharges for that day and no ownership. I got the impression the staff were not that bothered. She eventually left at 1700 and that bed could have been available for someone else.

So, sadly I dont think the NHS is capable of moving very quickly or even at pace. I recently applied for a job within a large NHS hospital. Took ages over my CV (quite rightly so) eventually heard after 2 months that they wanted me to attend an interview. The interview was with a panel. One chap was dressed in a Black Sabbeth t-shirt. I had a 2 hour interview for a middle manager position which was fine and having interviewed people before I thought it went quite well.

After two weeks I had heard nothing, I emailed both the central recruitment team and the Head of the Unit and despite 2 chases and 1 phone call no one got back to me. I guessed I hadnt got it but a few months later the SAME job appeared in the website! By that time of course I had got something else.

What a complete waste of not only my time but their time too!

No it is not a stark choice between the economy or lives. If too many people die that has a large impact on the economy. You don't have enough qualified consultants, people to pick crops, etc.
It is a balancing act. We are not going to lock down to save one life, but neither do we just let half a million extra people die.

Once again - the lockdown was never intended for us to cower in our living rooms until a magic vaccine came out and so no one caught this. It was intended to be like a tap to control the flow of how many cases there were in circulation and in the hospital system so that the NHS had a better chance of coping and we didn't end up having to decide who got the one ventilator left. It was never ever some mystical magical charm to keep us all indoors so the virus got bored and buggered off away. It is never going to work like that.

And why I'm pissed off (and I was one who was very pro us locking down slightly before we did) was that now things have turned from these smaller rises and re-lockdowns when required model that we were told when the regulations came in, to the "we must be sure there's no second peak" and the utter fucking morons on here demanding we're locked down till the year 3000 so no one dies.

Even with a vaccine this awful virus is going to go into the general pool of "shit that has the potential to kill you" whatever happens - pretty much everything in the world is in that pool somewhere (I have a DH who ended up in A+E putting the washing in the washing machine FFS). What we want to happen is it to go into the pool of "shit that has potential to kill you - but we've got a vaccine for it to reduce the chance of you getting it, and we know how to give you the bloody best chance if you DO get it" - that's pretty much all we can hope for - diseases don't tend to go away, they just drop down in profile into that latter pool. Those who want everyone locked up until this goes away - will never have what they're aiming for with a disease that is out in the community.

We went into lockdown to buy us breathing space and time to prepare for the storm (whether we made the best use of the time it bought us is a discussion I think we need to have some form of a serious public enquiry on at a later date and balls need to be on the chopping block) - we didn't go into lockdown to dodge the disease, we can't do that, we went into lockdown to buy us some time to prepare better.

I fear for the unseen death toll of those cancelled appointments, the undiagnosed illnesses because GPs have all but shut down, and the mental health toll this is all going to take if we don't get some balance between prancing around singing to "open up the gates" Frozen style and "if you even ask about an exit plan you're literally murdering 500k old grannies" and start actually thinking beyond the soundbites and insults being thrown around. That means we need to be able to have a sensible discussion about possible ways of phasing in things like reopening schools - without just being shrieked down that "you can't possibly talk about that" and how that might be managed, and it even means you need to have the freedom to discuss how we can approach things like allowing small non-essential businesses, like, shock horror, hairdressers to plan on re-opening - and also how to approach the balance between employers pushing staff who have health concerns into returning before advisable. Trying to shut down discussion on it - like has been going on on here is just fucking ridiculous.

We also need to be able to have a discussion where we can say that some of the approaches employers and schools have tried to work with for this situation aren't the best - without those threads being shut down or flower bombed. There are far too many people on here who are running around with fingers in their ears, having decided that nothing is ever going to reopen again, who not only refuse to allow other people to hold different views, but will also refuse to allow people to even discuss any views. That's fucking bollocks - and, since we can't easily escape the bullshit at the moment, it's fucking toxic.

It’s a western attitude, stay in lockdown forever whilst “they” sort a solution. Except maybe, just maybe there is no solution.
People will die. Maybe me, maybe you. It’s the nature of the beast. People cannot face their own mortality.

DominaShantotto

Amen to that 👏

@DominaShantotto you are so currect about the current MN atmosphere

@DominaShantotto

@DominaShantotto Perhaps it would help the discussion if you did not post quite so many straw men and inflammatory statements yourself? Your comments seems designed to inflame with a lot of untrue statements.

*correct

Applauds

Okay from the responses above it is clear no one actually wants to discuss this in a sensible way. The way to operate is obviously to make a lot of untrue statements to "win" the argument.

Hear hear Domina!

PS I could do with a cut and blow dry!

OP, I'm with you.

I don't want the lockdown to be lifted until we are ready for it, which we blatantly are not. We need hundreds of thousands of tests to be ready and an army of contact tracers - if we don't have that, all the lockdown will have been for nothing, as wave 2 will be as bad as wave 1. We also need our hospitals and care homes to be ready with sufficient PPE and equipment, which blatantly they are not.

In terms of the economy, those worrying that if we don't end lockdown soon, it will harm our economy, should take comfort from what happened in the 1918-19 Spanish flu lockdown.

Those cities which stayed locked down for longer in 1918-19 suffered LESS damage to their economies than those which ended the lockdown quickly. Because the ones which ended it quickly were hit far worse by the 2nd wave of the disease, which impacted their economies more.

More haste, less speed. We failed to lock down quickly enough in March, thus vastly increasing the UK death rate.

Let's not make the same mistake again, by ending the lockdown too early.

@DominaShantotto

I fear for the unseen death toll of those cancelled appointments, the undiagnosed illnesses because GPs have all but shut down, and the mental health toll this is all going to take if we don't get some balance

The latest data on deaths from the ONS is already showing a massive increase in deaths that are not attributed to Covid but exceed Covid death numbers, but clearly as a result due to people not going to A&E with chest pains and other conditions like strokes. This as you rightly pointed out the cancer patients not being treated. Friends wife with stage 4 cancer...treatment on hold! Difference between 1 year of life and potentially 5 years. Won't get counted of course

So the evidence is already showing the cure is worse than the disease.

Go for a cut and blow dry once lock down is lifted. But many businesses stopped from opening under lock down will not be viable until most people feel safe enough to go.

PS I could do with a cut and blow dry!

I'm now trying to pass off my roots as a really really shit baylage job that I paid stupid money for. It's not working - I'm not even kidding myself but shit happens.

@MarieG10 No one knows why those excess deaths have happened. It has been said clearly there needs to be more analysis.
That is your opinion, there are other opinions circulating as to why. But no one actually knows yet.

I imagine that the economic effects of the Spanish Flu and covid19 would be the inverse, given that the former disproportionately affected young/working men and the latter disproportionately affects the elderly.

Also, the fatality rate was something like 2-3%.

@DominaShantotto

Brilliant post, you sum it all up perfectly. Don’t have anything to add, but completely agree.