Why not a short VERY strict lockdown now to nip in bid so to speak??

[shesellsseashells99]

Would it not make sense to act now with a very strict national lockdown for maybe 2 weeks? Instead of waiting until everything is out of control again....

This is really starting to get irritating.

Viruses don't work like this. You would literally have to physically lock every human being on the planet into their houses for 2 weeks for this to work. So no police, doctors or emergency care, utility workers if you electricity goes off or your water pipe bursts, no shop workers for supplies. Even if you did that and somehow succeeded in every person, including opportunistic criminals, staying in their sitting room, it would need to be 3 weeks to ensure everyone is no longer infectious.

I dont get how we are 6 months into this and people still dont have common sense when it comes to how to approach an infectious virus. This idea things can just be 'controlled' and 'eradictated' just shows how arrogant humans are. We are not able to control everything. Nature is capable of beating us.

Actually, I think the government are building us up to having a “circuit break” at some point soon. I’m dubious about whether they’ll put it to good use. It will bring cases down a bit though, but the effect won’t be long lasting. I think we’ll need another one a few weeks after that.
I’m bloody annoyed they screwed up the whole “get cases low over summer and sort out test and trace” thing. Instead, they pushed it to the limit, made hay while the sun shone, didn’t build any where near enough excess into testing capacity and just all round screwed up as usual.

Sorting out the testing is the key, not short, sharp lockdowns.
As another poster said, Covid has a long incubation period and it would have to be at least six weeks or nothing. Remember late March/April after lockdown, it took a good three weeks to start to see the numbers fall because of the incubation period.

Testing and tracing and sorting that fiasco out is the key here. A teacher I work with has taken a week off school, and it took 3 days to book a test (the testing centre refused to test because the code given was wrong - this happened multiple times in our area, and made local news) and when he finally got a test, it was over 72 hours to get the result.

The government are now going to fine people £10k for failing to self isolate after being contacted by Track and Trace because many people are ignoring advice to self isolate. But with such a delay getting results (after a long time trying to book a test) the emphasis must be on sorting out the testing, not fines.

We have only been back at school two weeks and four teachers have been off for far longer than they needed to be because of the slow testing system.

If the virus continues to grow as it is, we won't have enough teachers in school to keep open. That could happen within a month.

Fucking hell, yes, let's have a Melbourne style lockdown, for a few weeks. Then let's have it again in a few months time when it inevitably resurfaces. Then lets do it again when the fifth, sixth, seventh and eigth waves come. And when every functioning part of the economy, every individuals mental health, every thing that makes life worth living is permanently fucked, lets congratulate ourselves for suppressing a virus so terrifying it leaves 99.9% of people alive and kills less in a year than cancer carries off in a few months. Where do I sign up.

@Blackforesthotchoc

Fucking hell, yes, let's have a Melbourne style lockdown, for a few weeks. Then let's have it again in a few months time when it inevitably resurfaces. Then lets do it again when the fifth, sixth, seventh and eigth waves come. And when every functioning part of the economy, every individuals mental health, every thing that makes life worth living is permanently fucked, lets congratulate ourselves for suppressing a virus so terrifying it leaves 99.9% of people alive and kills less in a year than cancer carries off in a few months. Where do I sign up.

I know. You’d think it was fucking Ebola with all the hysteria.

Pointless

We have to accept we can’t control everything in life

The way I see it there’s a middle way. We need to do just enough to keep the most of the economy and as much education as possible going, whilst ensuring we don’t lose control of hospitalisations and we end up back where we were in March. We know where the risks are much better now. Eating in a socially distanced, well ventilated restaurant or going shopping with masks and using sanitiser are pretty low risk activities... We shouldn’t need to stop that kind of stuff - it’s disproportionate and pointless. The focus should be more on clamping down on behaviour that does actually cause its spread. Big parties and businesses not operating taking Covid seriously for their employees should
be the focus, along with sorting out testing.

@solidaritea

There are lots of reasons for saying no, but some people here seem unaware that several hospitals are near capacity again. Something does need to be done to prevent them becoming overwhelmed. I'm in the "we have to live with the virus" camp overall, but we can't live with it if it overwhelms the hospitals. We will be in the situation of people dying who could easily have been saved (dying of covid and of other things).

The NHS may have to increase capacity in the medium term, but this takes time to train doctors and nurses.

Do we not still have Nightingale hospitals sitting about empty?

We might well have Nightingale hospitals. What we don't have is staff to
work in them.

.... lets congratulate ourselves for suppressing a virus so terrifying it leaves 99.9% of people alive and kills less in a year than cancer carries off in a few months.

I don’t want another lockdown, but trying to argue against one with false figures and spurious comparisons only plays into the hands of those who want to take drastic and counterproductive action.

There are various places where deaths are already 2 to 3 times higher (even 10 times in one Italian village I believe) than the 0.1% you quoted.

And deaths have clearly been suppressed by the restrictions put in place (albeit I accept there is an argument they will cause more harm than good ultimately). If we’d let it rip through the 2.2m shielding, it’s hard to believe casualties wouldn’t have been far higher.

It doesn't even look good on paper, unless it's actual full isolation of everybody - including to their families, otherwise 14 days isn't even enough to guarantee it's made it throughout a single home. So it doesn't eradicate it, it just resets the starting number at the end of the lockdown to something lower than at the beginning, but at the cost of decreasing compliance with any later individual isolation, which is much more important, as they'll actually be a case.

It would probably work, not to eradicate the virus (because some transmission amongst carers and essential workers is inevitable) but to choke it back to June levels and give us more breathing space over the winter.

But two weeks probably wouldn’t be enough - it would need to be long enough for everyone who is incubating it at the moment to go through it and everyone in their household who catches it from them to become uninfectious. It would probably need to be four weeks rather than two.

Also I don’t think you’d get compliance. You’d need a lot of active policing to stop people having house parties.

Ha ha, fancy thinking you can nip a virus in the bud

@SqidgeBum totally agree. The arrogance of us humans is breathtaking !

The death rate is slowly rising, and there is no evidence of the virus getting weaker, possibly because of the age of those infected. Not sure a two week lockdown will make a lot of difference though.

It just delays the inevitable. There is no need for a full lockdown

Why not read the endless threads that have been posted with this "idea" before creating another?

MN ideas on a "very strict lockdown" seems to be middle class people working from home while ocado deliveries/amazon etc continue to come as required.

How would it work? At the most it would delay a spike in cases but in reality a short lockdown would probably make zero impact on cases. It has been shown time and time again that ample testing and a good track and trace system can slow down transmission. We have neither. That is the problem.

Spain had a much stricter lockdown than us. Didn't work.

Lockdowns clearly don't work. The virus isn't going anywhere, the government needs to pull its finger out and get a decent track and trace system and support people financially to isolate if they need it, because some people on low incomes are just going to carry on going to work if they can't afford to isolate.

I think it's a good idea. Although not that strict eg school and work still open (although wfh if you can) It wont necessarily reduce cases over the long term but I'd hope that the government could use that time to get on top of testing and we could be probably tracking and tracing people as that's what we need to be doing really effectively to live with this.

What kind of idiots think two weeks is going to fix this?

I cannot cope with the stupidity

Sp pause it now whilst weather still nice and death rate really really low....what then gave another lock down in November, December January and February.....

No to a national lock down

@iamusuallybeingunreasonable

What kind of idiots think two weeks is going to fix this?

I cannot cope with the stupidity

Exactly...so many idiots around calling for national lick down....people have to work, children need education

Lock not lick.....