With the benefit of hindsight.....

[LilBlackLab]

What should our government have done?

People are saying ‘this shit show of a government have let us down’

How would labour have dealt with this any better?

I strongly believe lockdown and subsequent adjustments were not clamped down on hard enough. Early days the police were out, checking journeys and shopping habits..... there was a bit of an outcry so police were then stopped..

. Saying ‘don’t swamp the seaside towns’ was never going to work Boris! Boris should have been shouting louder through this whole period imo

What should we have done?

[Cornettoninja]

@BigChocFrenzy

"But where else could they go?"

In Germany people from care homes were put into hotels until tested negative again.
Staff in PPE and didn't work anywhere else

The government paid for it all

This seems like such an obvious, simple solution.

It’s amazing how varied the worlds responses have been.

[LilBlackLab]

yes we were literally counting down to lockdown....expected it and nothing came

too little too late

[Ozzie9523]

And yes compulsory masks.

[BigChocFrenzy]

Main mistake: The UK lockdown was at least 10 days too late

Whitty, SAGE & co were advising lockdown in early March, but BJ dithered for several days

Brits were very compliant with the rules, as much as any country anywhere

• it's not the public's fault
  
  It's not the severity of lockdown but timing relative to the stage of the epidemic,
  because once exponential growth gets under way, infections rocket out of control,
  spread all over the country
  and it takes a long time to get them down again
  
  e.g. Germany's lockdown was early considering their deaths at the time,
  but was very relaxed outdoors - provided social distancing was kept:
  unlimited exercise (except for a couple of towns that were hotspots)
  sunbathing, sitting on benches etc was OK

[Ozzie9523]

A lot of people in this country unfortunately don’t do as they’re told like they do in China etc. Even when we went into lockdown Boris didn’t use the word ‘lockdown’ in his speech. His wording was not strong enough and he was not strict enough.

Stopped flights coming in from February from certain countries. Madness that we were on ‘lockdown’ and flights were still arriving with no restrictions.

And yes, stocked up on PPE.

[BigChocFrenzy]

"But where else could they go?"

In Germany people from care homes were put into hotels until tested negative again.
Staff in PPE and didn't work anywhere else

The government paid for it all

[FrugiFan]

I dont understand why they didnt limit international travel, or at least tested anyone coming in. I read recently that they think Covid was brought into the country by over 1000 people flying in from all over the world. Therefore making any attempt to track local cases impossible.

[annabel85]

I think it would have been hard to impose lockdown much earlier. I remember it seeming unthinkable before it became clear that the impossible was suddenly going to become not just possible but unavoidable.

Much earlier, yes, but it only needed to be 1-2 weeks at the most. The pubs were ordered shut and all football suspended a few days before lockdown was reluctantly forced on Boris, so it's not like it came out the blue. A lot of people were horrified Cheltenham and big football matches were going ahead a week before lock down. The exponetial spread of the virus was huge in that week we dithered. It's cost us more than anything, but has only been exacerbated by failures with PPE, testing, care homes and masks.

[CaptainBrickbeard]

I think it would have been hard to impose lockdown much earlier. I remember it seeming unthinkable before it became clear that the impossible was suddenly going to become not just possible but unavoidable.

I think it was testing that was the major failure. Countries who were testing rigorously got it under control early.

They should have encouraged mask wearing early on when I think people would have been more compliant. To enable this, they should have had enough PPE in hospitals and care homes so that they didn’t have to fear a run on depleted stocks.

There should have been testing and quarantining at the borders; that’s just an unforgivable error.

I think it has gone so badly wrong because the government have had to do a screeching u-turn on everything which means they have lost all public trust and confidence (obviously the Cummings fiasco was the nail in the coffin on public faith and clear messaging). They started out saying that we didn’t need testing - that’s just mind blowing! They also strongly discouraged mask wearing and I’m not sure that can now be a recoverable issue - so many people are unwilling to wear one now, having been told they are unnecessary and even counter-productive early on.

If we had imposed aggressive test, track, trace and quarantine then we would have done so much better in handling this.

I despise Johnson’s government but I am not sure that Corbyn would have handled it significantly better at the start. I think Starmer would. Everything is easier with hindsight, of course. But the testing failure is baffling and should never have been allowed to happen.

[QueenofmyPrinces]

But where else could they go? Even if they were tested and their results came back positive they would still have to back to the care home wouldn’t they because that is where they lived.

Yes, and what are they supposed to do with Covid+ residents with e.g. advanced dementia? Lock them in their rooms?

Completely agree - there is no blanket ‘right’ way to respond to corona positive care home residents

But hospitals could not have kept numerous wards full of positive patients who didn’t need hospital treatment just so they didn’t go back to the care home they came from.

Plus, if they were all being put on the same ward as each other they may have just kept reinfecting each other - there certainly wouldn’t have been room to isolate them all.

And who would be looking after them all seeing as they didn’t even need hospital treatment? It can’t be expected that Nurses and Health Care Assistants are taken away from wards with very sick patients on, in order to provide care for people who technically don’t even need to be there.

Providing safe areas for elderly positive people to go and live in, if they shouldn’t be allowed to return their care home (when they don’t need hospital treatment) should surely be a Social Services issue to address, not the NHS’s.

Like I said - I don’t know what the answer is?

It’s fair enough to say that positive/untested residents shouldn’t be allowed back into their care homes, but if they don’t need hospital treatment then where else can they go?

It’s all a big mess and sadly it goes to show how vulnerable our elderly are

[Time2change2]

By the time we got to lockdown it was all too late. Many people who had been closely following this from early jan could see what was heading our way. Whilst Boris was telling people not to go on cruises and sing happy birthday some people couldn’t believe that nothing more was being don’t or told to the public?
Why were flights with infected kids and adults allowed to return from Italy during half term with no testing or tracking of any sort? People getting off planes and wandering around London on the tube infecting many. Far more measured and preparation should have been put in place from jan, many lives could have been saved

[Gingernaut]

New Zealand and Australia were on the money with this.

Masks compulsory from the moment it became obvious this was a threat

All outgoing international flights cancelled from end of January

All incoming international flights cancelled unless for repatriation

All patients not tested for Covid-19, or with test results pending to be treated as positive and not returned home, until test results come back negative

[ohthegoats]

Luckily I had a student, so I sat at the back of the classroom pressing print on work packs for a week - that was the week before the accouncement. By the time of the announcement, my student had to go because she was vulnerable. In that week my partner was having surgery too, so I was an absolute mess. I lost almost a stone in those 2 weeks. Haha. Luckily lockdown has slapped it all back on.

[Flagsfiend]

@ohthegoats yeah the last 2 days were chaos. I tried to teach my classes how to access their work online, but we were down to about 60% attendance with lots of staff isolating due to symptoms. So we were combining classes all over the place just to have an adult with each group. An extra weeks notice of potential closure, rather than 'we are definitely not closing schools' would have helped.

[LilBlackLab]

It felt like Johnson was scared of the public.... to me he just was not strong and stern enough

Every tv commercial break should have had the current guidelines and messages

And the beaches..... we all predicted they would be rammed, here on MN! So why did he think it was ok to leave people to their own devices....

I work in retail management and our message received from the customer says one thing.....we selfishly want to carry on as normal. It’s been shocking. Interpreting Johnson’s wish washy regulations has been impossible as he was not visible enough backing us up!

[ohthegoats]

To be honest though, when we left on that Friday afternoon, we thought that we were going to be back after the Easter holidays, or at the latest, May half term.

[ohthegoats]

asked schools to put some sort of remote provision in place

Yes. They should have been throwing money at schools for laptops and work books for kids at that point.

All primary schools have websites that they could have put work on. If they had Google Classroom or Teams already set up it would have given them time to make sure kids knew how to use it (lots of secondaries have an option for homework, so could have expanded it).

As it was I spent the last morning in school teaching my class how to use BBC Bitesize as a project resource, and talking them through work packs prepared 2 days earlier in a massive photocopying panic. By then I had less than half a class. We spent the afternoon making mother's day cards as if it was completely normal. FFS.

My friend at a big posh private school sent me a photo on 14th March showing pupils in a lecture theatre with their own laptops, being taught how to log in and use remote learning options. State schools just didn't have that time or resource available.

[jerometheturnipking]

But where else could they go?
Even if they were tested and their results came back positive they would still have to back to the care home wouldn’t they because that is where they lived.

Yes, and what are they supposed to do with Covid+ residents with e.g. advanced dementia? Lock them in their rooms?

[Helenj1977]

Tested like they are now from the start.
Locked us down 2 weeks earlier.
Thought about care homes before it was to late.
Ordered more ppe when this started leaving China.
Sacked Dominic Cummings.

[ThatDamnScientist]

Mass testing early on, track and trace from the first known case, adv9ce to self isolate with symptoms from the start (ie from the start of our cases) regardless of whether you had been to china or other high risk area. Quarantine upon entering the country from the start. Our biggest failure in my opinion everything was done too late, many, many lives could have been saved had we implemented safety measures early on. We had warning, we knew what was coming, we saw the numbers climbing exponentially elsewhere yet we dithered and as such we have paid the price in lives lost, economy trashed (I don't think this is half as important as saving lives and fully agree with lockdown in the circumstances and the situation we were in due to mass failings, but still it could have been managed better if the disease spread had been managed better).

We needed to be proactive, unfortunately we were reactive.

[BumbleBeen]

As the wonderful Jacinda Ardern, PM of New Zealand put it...

"We go early, and we go hard".

If we had done the same, we'd have had a fighting chance of controlling it MUCH better than we have done. Admittedly, we were never going to eradicate it as NZ has done, because it's a small population which isn't a major travel hub. But we could have done MUCH more, MUCH earlier, and stuck at it for longer.

These half-arsed knee jerk policies have been pathetic.

[Bellesavage]

Communication has been the downfall in my eyes. The whole 'stay safe' message was ridiculous and has backed them into a corner they're desparately trying to dig themselves out of.

[GreenCoxing]

It’s too early to say:

Vaccine in the autumn - should have lockdown sooner. Should never allowed air bridges over the summer etc (as I am sure will cause an increase in cases). We should have followed New Zealand.

Vaccine not developed till at least next year (or never) second spike over winter which coincides with flu season. Lockdown for months in coldest/winter/shorter days. Lockdown at Christmas, “we should have ridden it out”. Not lockdown as severely. Protected vulnerable. Go for herd immunity. Government should have not listened to panickers. We should have followed Sweden.

[Flagsfiend]

When the Italy cases started going up in late February they should have asked people to work from home if possible. They should have said there is a possibility of schools closing earlier and asked schools to put some sort of remote provision in place just in case.

[ohthegoats]

And while I get that we have to get things going again now for economic reasons, we're making mistakes again. Because Johnson and his populist bollocks. YAY HOLIDAYS.