I'm finding the reaction to covid utterly bizarre

[TheDailyCarbuncle]

If anyone had told me that healthy, fit people would willingly put their livelihoods at risk and deny their children an education for months on end, that they would send the country into recession putting healthcare, education and public services at risk for years and years to come to avoid getting a disease that had a very very small chance of killing them I wouldn't have believed it. If you'd said people would be afraid to talk to their healthy siblings I wouldn't have believed it.

I had measles in the 1980s as small child - the vaccination programme where I lived was slow to get off the ground - and it nearly killed me. In 1980 2.6 million people worldwide died of measles, a very large proportion of them children. No one ever considered a lockdown, it was never even suggested.

I think all the analysis of this situation in the coming years won't be about the pandemic, but about the contagion of fear that made people so terrified of something that wasn't a real threat to them that they created huge, long-lasting, in some cases devastating problems for themselves, problems that were nothing to do with their virus and everything to do with their reaction to the virus.

OP - I agree 100%.

In 50 years people will look back on this self inflicted debacle with total disbelief.

That so many people have been turned into fearful NHS clapping zombies every Thursday says it all.

don't know how many times it has to be explained that the lockdown, in the UK at least, is not aimed at preventing deaths. Not at all. It's aimed at slowing down deaths
This is just not true, although people keep saying it is. The purpose of the lockdown is to prevent the spread of the infection and to limit the number of deaths. Some countries have reduced deaths to 0 or almost 0 and are now opening up. Yes part of the reason was to protect the NHS but it was also to save lives. In fact that is the only part of the Government slogan that remains.

Regarding the 2m rule and pavement width - I believe we are supposed to walk into the road and get hit by a truck.

It is all part of a Government plan to drive back up the numbers being admitted to A&E...…...

@VenusTiger and your point is?!

Government slogan? I thought Government slogans were supposed to have died out after the Berlin Wall came down.

@Nonnymum yes I keep saying it. The lockdown was not to just protect the NHS. We are not all going to get the virus. Herd immunity is not the aim in any country.

This as you have said is the purpose...
The purpose of the lockdown is to prevent the spread of the infection and to limit the number of deaths. Some countries have reduced deaths to 0 or almost 0 and are now opening up.

Thanks for the link OP I will check it out.

538 did a podcast worth checking out on modelling and covid.

Lockdowns do not work. They’re not working. They haven’t been working. They will never work in the future... “maybe” if the Bubonic Plague or something like it happens again.

Every country that did or did not lockdown has the same bell curve. ...Whether they had strict or lax lockdowns, all a similar curve.

Lockdowns brought and kept the virus inside the home. Below new percentages from NY of those being admitted into hospitals.

Lockdowns are pointless and counterproductive. All of this is a colossal mistake. Massive overreaction that we will regret for years. If not, find me and let me have it.✌🏻

“Most new Covid-19 hospitalizations in New York state are from people who were staying home and not venturing much outside, a "shocking" finding, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday.

The preliminary data was from 100 New York hospitals involving about 1,000 patients, Cuomo said at his daily briefing.

It shows that 66% of new admissions were from people who had largely been sheltering at home. The next highest source of admissions was from nursing homes, 18%.”

So should we just get on with it, let people die, let a large number of people be ill for weeks (as many people are), face possible longterm chronic health issues caused by covid pneumonia and other issues cropping up in severely affected patients?

Wonder what people in 50 years time will say about that?

I think the government’s delayed actions have caused more deaths than there should have been. Lack of testing/tracking in the early days (first case 30th January iirc) and allowing holidayers to come back into the country unquarantined was highly irresponsible.

Doing less and the resulting death toll would be far worse.

Every country that did or did not lockdown has the same bell curve. ...Whether they had strict or lax lockdowns, all a similar curve.

Totally untrue. Complete lie.

“maybe” if the Bubonic Plague or something like it happens again

The bubonic plague was spread by fleas on rats, so a lockdown wouldn't help for that.

Whereas it seems clear that locking down promptly and decisively can inhibit the spread of CV.

Whatsthis1515 The savagery against people who are sensible and reassuring is one of the most frightening things.

No matter how scared people are, the lack of critical thinking and the savagery of how people are acting is a really frightening long term thing for the nature of the UK.

In the absence of testing and tracking (which has worked very well elsewhere), our only option was lockdown.

It’s not great, coming out of it will be hard, but when the early stages of the pandemic and pandemic plans were ignored the country (and others) were backed into a corner where a lockdown was the only way to slow exponential growth.

It’s all very well to say that lockdowns don’t work, but with the lack of testing and any sort of management and control of the situation, it is the only way to get numbers back to a manageable level.

@StayinginSummer

Nope

Besides Sweden being twice our size with 1/6th of our population there is also this:

The Swedish model for managing society was built on trust between citizens - who had "a responsibility to do the right thing"

Which shows the real differemce between Swedish people and people from here.

"there's a letha virus going round, spreads via droplets of water and coughing. Best to stay 6ft from everyone for a while"

Lots of Swedish folks: "We can do that, no problem, we'll limit contact stay home where we can as well. That way nor as many people will get it hopefully."

lots of UK Folks: "don't tell us what to do, cunt, we're off to Snowdon and no fucker is gonna stop us. We're gonna meet in the parks and beaches for drinks, BBQs and pizza and if the cops try to stop us, we'll fight em, wankers. Fuck the virus, lockdown? Nah, screw that..."

I completely agree OP. It’s like we’ve never seen an infectious disease before.

There was a good BBC article which highlighted the risk to under 65s is about the same as a 185 mile car journey. And that includes under 65s with health issues in the dataset. I appreciate it’s terrible for people with health issues or older people but the world is a risky place, and the long term impacts on health from delaying healthcare, reduced education, millions if not billions of people going into poverty, losing their jobs, austerity to pay for the huge stimulus programmes etc. will surely have a bigger impact than the disease itself.

I was supportive of a short lockdown to ensure the NHS could cope but now with the nightingale hospitals closed, many hospitals very quiet etc. I struggle to continue to support this approach when the long term health implications over a 10 year horizon are likely to be worse from our actions than from the disease itself.

@MonkeyToesOfDoom exactly.

And if you dare suggest that we should all wear masks in shops 🤯

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078717v1

Full lockdown policies in Western Europe countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic.

This phenomenological study assesses the impacts of full lockdown strategies applied in Italy, France, Spain and United Kingdom, on the slowdown of the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. Comparing the trajectory of the epidemic before and after the lockdown, we find no evidence of any discontinuity in the growth rate, doubling time, and reproduction number trends. Extrapolating pre-lockdown growth rate trends, we provide estimates of the death toll in the absence of any lockdown policies, and show that these strategies might not have saved any life in western Europe. We also show that neighboring countries applying less restrictive social distancing measures (as opposed to police-enforced home containment) experience a very similar time evolution of the epidemic.

lots of UK Folks

Lots?

No one i know is behaving like this

Is it your friends? Or what you are reading in the paper? Or neighbours?

@StayinginSummer my point was in my post, that no matter what info people dig up, no matter what evidence there is, no matter what ministers say, no matter what the ever increasingly untrustworthy WHO says, no matter what ANYONE says about lockdown, about ppe, about figures, about testing: it's not good enough. It's all pointless debabe - nothing can be proven as someone somewhere will say "it's a lie" or "it's a cover-up" it's all POINTLESS DEBATE! and we simply can't POSSIBLY KNOW FOR SURE what is/was best for UK (or any other country) now or in hindsight.

*debate not debabe

@Mumlove5...
I'm guessing you missed this bit:

This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.

So it's not peer reviewed and is filled with Might have done, may have done, could have done..
May as well have been a spiked article.