Why can't we just have a full lockdown for 2/4 weeks and get it over and done with?

[Betty94]

Hello,

First I'd like to say I have been incredibly lucky and fortunate enough not to have had covid or have had any of my friends or family affected by it (apart from DH being made redundant) but I know how serious it is and the illness itself is devastating but I also feel the impact it's having on the economy and mental health is equally as devastating and it really does feel like we're living half a life -

I know the priminister is making an announcement tonight about going into "tier 3" which means pubs and gyms will be closed for 4 weeks (to six months) but I don't understand the point of it - what's the point of closing pubs and gyms but letting people mix at schools and work etc like you can't even meet with your own family (or you'll get accused of killing grandma) but mixing with people when you don't know where they've been and children mixing, you can't really expect kids to know to social distance or for teenagers to even care, they don't think about consequences ( I don't think I would have cared as a teenager as they tend to live in there here and now)

I just don't understand why we can't go in a full lockdown for 2-4 weeks, I understand the cost of that wouldn't be brilliant but people can still work from home and they can keep essential shops open like supermarkets so they wouldn't be paying as much as they did in March-June etc because surely if it carries on as it is then it's going to cost more in the long run (apparently tier 3 could last for six months but the virus won't be gone then)

Maybe I'm just being naive and stupid but I really don't see any other option - not going to the pub or the gym will not slow the virus down - I don't know what do people think would need doing so we can have some normality ? I know our opinions don't really matter and the government will do whatever they want really but I just wondered what other people thought

Been there, done that. How do you think it will be different this time, apart from being even more detrimental to people's mental health?

@midgebabe

Interested in what is meant by the phrase learn to live with it

To me that means sorting out testing and supported isolation, virus suppression

To others it seems to mean " I'll live with it and other will die, so be it"

I'd appreciate it if people could indicate which form of learning to live with it they mean

Your description isn't learning to live with it. Your description is learning to live this shite half life.

Living with it is accepting people die. Like they do of other viruses. Every. Single. Fucking. Day.

@midgebabe

Interested in what is meant by the phrase learn to live with it

To me that means sorting out testing and supported isolation, virus suppression

To others it seems to mean " I'll live with it and other will die, so be it"

I'd appreciate it if people could indicate which form of learning to live with it they mean

I agree with you but people will still die either way.

They didn't have lockdowns for polio or TB, although they did close swimming pools (in fact it was a reason a lot of the lidos disappeared)
Looking at the websites of derelict places online (I am a weirdo) I always wondered why there were so many closed lidos.

Now I know, thank you

As a household we think it was here Oct/Nov due to illness in the family that required hospitalisation and included all the symptoms
Somewhere online there were satellite photos of hospital car parks in Wuhan going back years.

Up until about last July 2019 same patterns for years.

Then massive numbers of cars starting appearing in these hospital car parks, some cars stayed for months.

The reasoning was that people had the virus then.

However, a paper by members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), obtained by The Times and due to be published today, challenges his position. It shows that a two-week full lockdown, with stay-at-home orders and school closures, from October 24 could reduce deaths for the rest of the year from about 19,900 to 12,100. Hospital admissions could be reduced from 132,400 to 66,500.

Please forgive me the photos I referred to and the scientific paper regarding them has been criticised by many as not being as definitive as I may have made out.

Sorry

Because lockdowns don't eliminate a virus. They slow transmission if people follow the rules but at some point things need to open up at which point cases rise (expected) and government panics and starts bringing in restrictions again.

The other harms / indirect harms of lockdown shouldn't be dismissed. Children not getting a proper education, economic impacts, job losses, mental health crisis, suicides - and for what? It will be the young that pick up the long term burden of all this and frankly, a lot of the attitudes I see towards the young I see on here are appalling.

This opinion piece sums it up for me www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/13/lockdowns-mental-health-sacrifice-pandemic

At the end of the day Covid doesn't actually kill that great a % of the population and does not warrant this degree of panic. Sorry if this seems heartless but there are loads of other conditions that cause people to die and we don't lock down for these. In the 2017 to 2018 winter period, there were an estimated 50,100 excess winter deaths in England and Wales, probably because of the flu. We didn't lock down then.