Possible national lockdown over October half-term

[GetRid]

FT reports that Sage are looking at a 2 week national lockdown to coincide with October half-term.

article here

Chris Whitty said back in April, I think, he envisaged to deal with the virus the next year could be a series or cycle of lockdown or restrictions, followed by a period of easing of restrictions , and that SD would likely be in place for a year to 18 months.....

Well. I suppose it is good that the virus seems to fit in with the school term, how convenient, thank goodness for half term.

More heartless stella than a mental health crisis, increase in cancer deaths and economic ruin for a generation?

Surely you must de sense. The most at risk are those than are best able to isolate for four months. The rest of us ride it out.

What about all the people, of all ages, who have underlying health conditions which are not yet diagnosed? They might just be putting minor symptoms down to just getting older.

More than 1.8 million people inEnglandhavediagnosed chronic kidney disease(CKD). In addition, there are thought to be around a million people who have the condition but areundiagnosed. CKD can substantially reduce quality of life, and leads to premature death for thousands of people each year.

The above is copied from NHS England. We cant let the virus run through the population hoping that it will be a mild illness.

@Calledyoulastnightfromglasgow

More heartless stella than a mental health crisis, increase in cancer deaths and economic ruin for a generation?

Surely you must de sense. The most at risk are those than are best able to isolate for four months. The rest of us ride it out.

The countries that have just let it rip are also seeing a rise in mental health problems, a rise in things like missed cancer treatments, and economic devastation.

I would have a little more sympathy for the ‘shield the vulnerable while letting the virus rip and it’ll all be fine’ idea if there was any country anywhere that had successfully managed to do that. Or if the people who were touting it could actually explain how it would work. How do you shut off, what, 20% of the population away from everybody else for months and months? Where do you put all the people living with family who aren’t in that category? What happens to their jobs? Who provides their care? Who provides services to them, what if we manage to shunt my aged auntie off into a house on her own somewhere but a pipe bursts, so we quarantine a plumber for two weeks first? How is removing people from their family, friends, jobs and wider society not going to result in a massive mental health crisis even if it was achievable?

It just seems like magical thinking. “Shield the vulnerable and let the rest of us get on with it and we’ll avoid deaths AND avoid economic damage, bingo!” Yeah except you can’t realistically shield the vulnerable, and the rest of us don’t just ‘get on with it’ as if nothing was happening.

@Calledyoulastnightfromglasgow

More heartless stella than a mental health crisis, increase in cancer deaths and economic ruin for a generation?

Surely you must de sense. The most at risk are those than are best able to isolate for four months. The rest of us ride it out.

Correct.

Because in one scenario you get the mental health and other health and poverty crises. And in the other, you get Covid plus all those crises, because the chaos of an uncontrolled peak (and national collapse for several weeks) is even worse

There is no magic 'Covid be gone' button, that means we can stop having restrictions. We need to get through this winter, with NHS still able to offer some 'clean' areas, and have planned suspensions of non-infectious disease work, rather than it just all going randomly to rats.

I think your approach is the more heartless, because all the things you rightly worry about, are going to happen either way. The question is how much Covid misery and social disruption (from widespread sick leave, and all the non-lethal complications) you want as well.

For me, it's as little as possible.

@notevenat20

Well as a vaccine is months off, if ever, what will they do after that lockdown? Lockdown forever?

For the long term there are only two alternatives. Either there is a significant medical advance or we decide to live with the risk. It’s early enough that we are all hoping for the first but in 6 months it will be clearer if that hope was forlorn.

I am not sure lockdown is really the right term for the new restrictions it seems they will put in place. Is shutting pubs at 10pm really a lockdown?

Shutting pubs at 10pm is pointless, it'll be all day benders on a weekend from pub to pub... it'll send the spike up not down

Is lots of,short lockdowns really the answer? Especially as people will still be expected to go to work and school - which means there will still be an awful lot of household mixing going on all the time.

And for every time there is a new lockdown increasing numbers of people become more jaded and start to break them rules.

I'm sure the government know this - hence them keep adding things to the 'law' bit to make activities illegal . They believe people are more likely to follow rules that are now law than guidelines.

And even right now, outside of local lockdowns, it lives are still restricted hugely if we follow,all the guidelines and rules.

We can't be within 2m of family and friends if they don't live with us for example. How many real life people, not just MNetters, are following that truly? How many people are still - 6 months on - not giving their best friend, their mum, their grandchild, their boyfriend, etc a hug when they see them? None contact isn't sustainable for 6 months, let alone longer.

How many people will truly not mix at Christmas regardless of rules that might be brought in?

I was pretty strict with rules due to being vulnerable initially, but I admit I am more relaxed with certain things and I simply can't continue to be so strict esp now back at work. I can say with 100% certainty that I will continue to see my 18y dd regardless of rules once she leaves for university next weekend. Not a chance she won't be home for Christmas. I'd happily risk any fine to ensure she can be with us.

This rolling lockdowns and constant adding of local restrictions is simply not sustainable. Even the strictest of rule followers I know of in rl are not able to keep going much longer. Human nature won't let us be constantly apart without contact for months and months.

Everyone I know these days seem to be having more days of sadness and upset than ever before. I know no one who is genuinely happy and full of beans right now. Everyone is just that bit fed up and it's getting worse,

When people are saying "shield the vulnerable" I'm now hearing "fuck the vulnerable" to be honest. As others have said, it's impossible.

I think periods of loosening and tightening of restrictions is probably what we need to prepare ourselves for.

My mum is classed as vulnerable. She's 73 and asthmatic. Her mother and uncle died of COPD.

She has decided to assess her own risk. Therefore she's still doing things, but taking precautions. e.g we went out for lunch yesterday and ate in the pub garden, and she put on her mask to go in to the loo, and I did all the bar ordering. She's seeing friends, but outside. She's seeing her grandchildren, because she's decided on balance, she would far rather see them than not.

She's a textbook "vulnerable older adult" but theres really no need for her to shut herself away from the world unless she decides she wants to.

I'm certainly not thinking "fuck her". I'm respecting her decisions.

I don’t think it’s about ‘fucking the vulnerable’ at all. We have a very clear idea now of exactly which groups are at risk from this virus.

We also know that the vast majority of people are at no or very low risk. It makes much more sense to offer those at risk the opportunity to shield (fully funded by the state) than destroying the whole economy again.

No risk of what? Death? What about long term illness, heart problems, liver failure? Blood clotting issues? Do you have the statistics on those? Perhaps you could send me over a hcp you’ve redeployed from the other end of the country to go through the figures with me?

@Nellodee

Of course a very small number of young and healthy people will have serious outcomes. But this is no different from any other virus. The figures currently show that only 307 people under the age of 60 have died who did not have severe underlying health conditions.

And it seems like the government has gone one better than my NHS mobility proposal- they’re bringing in thousands of nurses from overseas - with 6500 from India on the order book already.

I have seen you ripped apart on other threads for stating that long term effects are no different for COVID than any other virus. Since you ignored their well argued take downs, in not going to bother digging up the same arguments again. You won’t listen and you’ll continue to spit your misinformation on future threads whatever I say.

@Nellodee to be fair to @Ecosse the long term effects data tends just to be for Coronavirus not how it compares with other viruses because we simply dont know.

And that is part of the problem - we don't know how it compares to other viruses in terms of proportion (scale is obviously massively up on this) because we have never studied them on the same level. A lot of the time these things are caused by an (un)known virus.

Which makes it scarier because we dont have anything really to compare it to

Periods of loosening and tightening restrictions (particularly around socialising and curfews) whilst keeping as much of the economy and schools open (including the hospitiality sector) is a workable plan if you can get the balance right. Personally I think this is a solution.

A national lockdown is not and will only cause as many problems as it solves

Perhaps the problem is the definition of "lockdown" then. Over here that word has been avoided and the discussion is of stage 1 restrictions, stage 2 restrictions and there are defined trigger points. We have had tightening and loosening here. The Queensland border was open and then shut again. Numbers of people allowed indoors went up and down. People generally seem accepting of this.

I think expecting life to go back to "normal" is unrealistic.

I think we all have a duty to take precautions and limit interactions where possible, regardless of what the rules are.

We do already know that the longer lasting effects with SARS-COV2 occur more frequently, and are much more often to be at the severe end than with other viruses.

This is only becoming apparent now, a few months after the first peak.

@SexTrainGlue

We do already know that the longer lasting effects with SARS-COV2 occur more frequently, and are much more often to be at the severe end than with other viruses.

This is only becoming apparent now, a few months after the first peak.

Yes agree.

There's going to be denial of covid and long covid, but the facts will emerge regardless.

You mean like the denial of CFS/ME that has always occurred.

@Quartz2208

Yes, there is always denial from some. We have to just ignore them. Hopefully with long covid the medical establishment will not be in denial as many doctors were with CFS. It appears doctors are listening quite early on this time.

I have an allergy. I also have a relative who doesn't believe in allergies . Denial is everywhere.

Interesting... DS got his college calendar last week and I wondered why it says they have two weeks off at October half term instead of the one week they had last year.

Some colleges do do 2 weeks off in October anyway... it is a horrible term. But could be this too.

Who knows with anything whether they know whats happening and have told people or kust dont have a clue...

His college has done 1 week for the last 5 years (other DC attending in previous years).
So, a change this year.