Why are we not allowed to be adults?

[Mumlove5]

Throughout these forced restrictions, this is what has been the most troubling for me. SAGE has written that citizens should be treated as “rational actors”. We as people have been allowed to take personal risk during past pandemics. My grandfather and other family members became very ill during the 1968 pandemic. In the end, all survived thankfully. However, everyone went on with their lives and took common sense precautions. They were treated as adults. What has happened?

unherd.com/2020/06/was-the-two-metre-rule-one-big-lie/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=18743&tl_period_type=3

In a pandemic, as new understanding emerges by the day, clarity is even more important. As early as February, scientific advice to the government about how to handle the Covid-19 pandemic included the importance of being clear and definitive, coherent and consistent, not only to improve compliance with helpful actions, but to discourage pointless or counterproductive ones.

But this is no excuse for dishonesty about the basis for official advice or rules. Where the scientific basis for policies was uncertain, it would have been far better to say that the science was uncertain, but the government had made a decision for these reasons: erring on the side of caution until more was known, or recognising that human life is about more than medical health.

When the WHO switched its advice to one metre, what was the rationale for sticking with two? Fear of looking indecisive? Lack of faith in British people to know what a metre looks like? In mid-March, the UK’s scientific advisory group, SAGE, was invoking behavioural science to argue that the public is mostly rational and altruistic in a crisis:

“The behavioural science points to openly explaining to the public where the greatest risks lie and what individuals can do to reduce their own risk … Greater transparency will help people understand personal risk and enable personal agency, send useful signals about risk in general and build public trust. Citizens should be treated as rational actors, capable of taking decisions for themselves and managing personal risk.”

Of all the expert advice given to the government, it’s a pity this paragraph has been so often ignored.

Initially Johnson said guidance but people didn’t change their behaviour enough, why would they? The majority don’t want to be restricted (despite what is often in diatribes on here ).

I assume because there wasn’t the technological capability to work from home during previous pandemics?

One thing to bear in mind is that it is only by surviving the previous pandemics, that your relatives were able to go on to have you. Of course, they all survived, dead people don't procreate. You say this as if their behaviour led to them surviving but you have your logic back to front.

Depends on the disease. Something like Coronavirus mainly kills people well past childbearing age. If my granny dies tomorrow age 93 she still left multiple children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Dead people don’t procreate further, they may very well have already procreated!

Ahh. So if your mum does. That's ok

Got ya.

Dies*

@MarshaBradyo

Initially Johnson said guidance but people didn’t change their behaviour enough, why would they? The majority don’t want to be restricted (despite what is often in diatribes on here ).

Johnson's father didn't even follow the guidance.

You want the British public to be treated as adults able to make their own informed risk-based decisions.

The same British public who in response to a pandemic respiratory virus, panic bought toilet roll before cough medicine and painkillers?

I’m not so sure that’s for the best.

For a quick answer to your question OP, take a look at news photographs of Bournemouth beach yesterday!

Or Brixton last night!!

Just look at the countries that are not doing lockdown properly! It is a disaster! Would you fly to Brazil right now?

Besides, the more you don't control the longer it goes on. People in the same breath complain that china didn't control enough, and complain about their own lockdown.

A global pandemic does not give individuals the right to choice. Your action does not repercussions just for yourself, but for everyone near you. That is why the government should step in, to make sure the good of all is not being violated by the actions of individuals.

• Right, understood. But there were no restrictions. Schools weren’t closed, etc.

If you extrapolate the number of deaths during the 1968 pandemic to today, it would be even higher due to population increase. It was more of a killer than covid.

You may have some valid points, but I’m fed up of these ridiculous false equivalences that keep on being brought up.... We didn’t lock down, or even any significant social distancing, back in 1968, while we have done this year.... so to imply the 1968 flu was somehow more dangerous is ridiculous and absurd.

It’s a bit like saying that seatbelts are a waste of time because fewer people die today in car accidents than they did before seatbelts, so clearly we don’t need seatbelts...

Or that you went to the doctor with an illness and we’re prescribed antibiotics, and you got better.... only to say to the doctor “why did you give me antibiotics, I got better!”

It’s the logic of the madhouse.

A principle of any civilised society is that it has rules and laws that stop one person causing unacceptable harm to another. If we simply operated on the basis of “let’s all be adults”, we’d have anarchy.

Why not extend your logic to, say, cars?... no traffic rules, no need for insurance, no requirement for anyone to have a licence, no rules on drink driving... We should just all “be adults about it”.

Then irony is this libertarian nonsense ends up making all but the strongest and most powerful less free.

It's only the logic of the madhouse if you know how many lives your lockdown saved.

Don't forget the Y2K bug that was a hoax... because, despite all that IT work that was done, nothing happened!

Presuming your lockdown saved loads of lives and then using that presumption of the basis for your argument in favour of lockdown begs the question and that is also shitty logic.

It's only the logic of the madhouse if you know how many lives your lockdown saved. Or you want to extrapolate figures for an early lockdown, using the figures of the later lockdown!

I can't unravel that one!

@CuriousaboutSamphire

Don't forget the Y2K bug that was a hoax... because, despite all that IT work that was done, nothing happened!

The Y2K bug was not a hoax, but a lot of rent was extracted by a lot of computer experts. People are not wrong that more was made of it than was necessary.

It's hilarious how it is now used as proof that all steps taken to avoid an outcome were definitely effective if the outcome didn't happen.

It's Lisa Simpson's Tiger Stone.

Which countries are being affected most? I haven’t liked fir a while. Brazil still?

Looked for

@Nihiloxica

It would be beyond insane to believe it’s likely that carrying on regardless as a society back in March would have led to no more deaths than we have experienced.

It’s obvious lockdown affects numbers.

What happens when out of it is still happening.

Nihiloxica Thanks. I was one of those IT workers and I can assure you that I worked some very long stressful weeks double checking all the work that had been done over the previous decade ensuring that you could think that there more was made of it than was necessary The thing was it wasn't particularly difficult to deal with, it just required a lot of root and branch changes! Those changes had been made over the previous decade, the issue was identified as being a bit urgent in the 1990s.

The UN International Y2K Coordination Centre estimated the cost as between $300bn and $500bn - hardly a non issue.

It's also truly hilarious to dismiss the radiation equipment fail in a nuclear energy facility in Ishikaw (saved by back up facilities)!

The truth is that some countries did very little and others did a lot to to prepare in the immediate run up to Y2K and very little happened

Due to the lack of, well, anything at all happening, many people dismissed the Y2K bug as a hoax, a conspiracy theory. But it really wasn't. It was just dealt with way in advance, before the media picked it up and ran with it; various organisations wrote OTT memos and people started to panic; governments memoed first, asked questions later.

Had nothing been done, well, who knows! It wasn't allowed to, that's the point!

Dowser summed it up for me, I do my own risk assessments.

Interesting question OP. I think it's been a perfect storm rather than a reasoned plan. So, in no particular order.
We have a populist and lazy government, and Social Media is king. Therefore, there only needed to be a populist movement towards lockdown for that to become the obvious path.
The 'right' - for lack of a better term - is really clever at being on-message and s
putting things in a populist nutshell...They decided fear was key to compliance and they did a really impressive job.
We are very removed from ill health and death and we have a tendency to see all death as preventable.
We, and many countries in the world, had already become very tribal, in a battle between 'neo-con' and 'progessive', and quite understandably, when you have right wing governments appearing to be in denial, it's a good opportunity to fight for the opposite. So Covid becomes a culture war as much as anything else. And to be right, you must be compliant.
SM is all about extremes, and traditional media, fighting for its life, has to be even more dramatic.
We are not particularly well-versed in science, maths or statistics.
A populist government has to save the lives of those who will make the 'front pages', which in this instance means that they had to throw everything (whatever one may feel about how incompetently that was done) at Covid and no other deaths or life issues could matter.
Generally people find it hard to be concerned about something that's more 'general' than specific, so whilst some may be concerned about the wider health, wealth and equality issues around Covid, they can't matter to many as there are no 'numbers'.
Modern life is quite lacking in 'meaning' for some in the sense that many jobs have become more and more standardised, religious belief is not quite the glue it once was, wars, when they happen, are far away etc. I think Covid and lockdown have given meaning to some people's lives.
Taken together (with probably lots of other things) this makes for interesting times.