Is Lockdown generally something favoured by those who are generally left of centre/public sector?

[Treesofwood]

I would say I am definitely left leaning, and am also not in support of lockdowns as a strategy. Infact in some of my dealings on here I have been accused of being pro brexit, hard right. Why would that be? Can you be left wing and pro freedom or are the two actually mutually exclusive? And what does Brexit have to do with any of it?

It's not OK for cancer patients to not have treatment.

No, it’s not, but if the hospitals are full of sick Covid patients how will cancer patients get that treatment?

As soon as hairdressers opened, people had a hair cut.
As soon as pubs opened, people went for a drink.
I was in Nottingham on Saturday (Covid capital) and couldn’t book the restaurant we wanted (it was full). Couldn’t get a seat in a coffee shop

But these places aren’t the cause of the spike.
Schools returning was when the spike started.
I feel the hospitality industry is being made a scapegoat when pubs and restaurants have been open since July with no real problem but suddenly schools go back and infections rise and suddenly it’s let’s shut down the pubs etc again.

Let us target the real cause of this spike not target a convenient patsy.

Filming crowds of people dispersing onto the streets at 10pm and saying hospitality is the cause of the spread whilst not acknowledging that without the 10pm curfew people would have still been SD in pubs and restaurants and would have dribbled out on to the streets and made their way home over a period of a few hours instead of all at once.

We have eaten out regularly since pubs and restaurants have opened. Dp who was part of the shielded group goes to the local pub a couple of times per week. Just for his MH he needs to get out. We thought that if he had stayed in any longer he was beginning to show signs of dementia. He was definitely losing the plot.

Whilst financially countries that have had hard lockdowns seem to be financially better off, I do question what impact that has on the people.
I know more people through dc (Friend of a friend situations) who were in these countries when lockdown was imposed who have committed suicide because of the hardship lockdown than any of our family know who have died from Covid.

We are just one family. I wonder when this is over how many suicides and other deaths these countries will report as opposed to their Covid deaths.
I also forecast a spike in people with early dementia type symptoms. Do long term will their strategy actually save as many lives as they think.

That’s where the nIghtingale Hospitals should kick in. I know people are saying they can’t staff them, but we don’t know that yet. It would make sense to put people together in old-style “fever” hospitals.

And there will have to be triage. An 85-year-old with Covid does not trump a 20-year-old with cancer. It is enraging that Covid is the only disease now

I saw some people wanting answers - and compensation - because their great aunt had died of Covid in a nursing home. This woman was in her 90s and had advanced dementia. And when people were “clapped out “ of wards because they had recovered from Covid. Does this happen if you’ve recovered from a heart attack or septic toenail?

No-one will engage with this. It’s as though people can’t envisage a collapse of the health service, and can’t imagine a scenario where a significant proportion of people are too sick to work.

I don't think we should be so blindly accepting of the idea that lockdown is the only way we can stop a HS meltdown and that entire industries need to sacrifice themselves for this cause.

What are the government/HS management's ideas? What were the contingency plans? What work was done in the six months since March to prepare for this situation?

We have the Nightingales and that's a good start. Given how much of the HS's delivery is currently paused or online, surely that frees up resource to be redeployed. Surely there are schemes in place to fast track the training of those in other specialisms to help with Covid?

Lockdown seems like an extraordinarily costly solution to this problem.

I don’t know if im left or right can’t say I’ve ever cared about being left or right and which ones which I just like some policies and not others.... but I’d do another lockdown.

And there will have to be triage. An 85-year-old with Covid does not trump a 20-year-old with cancer. It is enraging that Covid is the only disease now

This is really the heart of it all. The lockdown just helps to relieve pressure on the NHS. It doesn’t stop the virus. The idea that all these political decisions ‘control’ the virus is nonsense. It just delays the inevitable spread which will occur again once you let people out. No one can tell us the aim of this lockdown and will it succeed in creating enough capacity to treat non Covid patients? If not, then I cannot support an aimless lockdown that has no clear objective or success criteria.

The NHS exists to treat sick people, if it can’t do that then something has gone wrong in the last few months when it had time to prepare for this difficult winter. And yes that includes tough decisions on triaging who and what is treated. I don’t agree that the nhs should stop cancer treatment to focus solely on Covid patients for example.

I know people keep saying that countries that have had a hard lockdown are now better off but I'd like to see data.
Off the top of my head.... Spain, South Africa. Both initially locked down very very hard. Both absolutely humped economically.

max an extra million unemployed in SA.

There was a study (I'm sorry I can't remember what it was but happy to look it up after work if anyone is interested) that showed that right wing people were more likely to be rule abiding/do what they are told by people in authority, that those who are left leaning. So I would expect the opposite (although could still be public sector!) and the anecdotal evidence from my circles would support this.

I honestly think people just properly following social distancing rules, masks and hand washing, alongside properly managed and enforced test and trace and a govt support package for shielding the vulnerable would be the most effective way forward.

I'm in Mexico and we have a left-leaning government. The epidemic is being handled by the experts, with an emphasis on making sure that no-one is denied medical treatment. We had our lockdown, but it applied to schools, places of work and recreation, not to individuals. We were exhorted, not forced, to stay at home.

I'm centre left and on the fence about another lockdown. I would be pro lockdown IF I thought the government would use the time to sort out test and trace, mixed learning provision in case of local closures, sensible economic relief for the hardest hit sectors and a workable exit strategy. As it is none of that will happen so I don't think its the right strategy. The problem is that no lockdown leaves us with no strategy at all.

A great many people working in the public sector are far, far closer to all of this than the general public. the public sector is not just teachers and the NHS

@TheKeatingFive

No-one will engage with this. It’s as though people can’t envisage a collapse of the health service, and can’t imagine a scenario where a significant proportion of people are too sick to work.

I don't think we should be so blindly accepting of the idea that lockdown is the only way we can stop a HS meltdown and that entire industries need to sacrifice themselves for this cause.

What are the government/HS management's ideas? What were the contingency plans? What work was done in the six months since March to prepare for this situation?

We have the Nightingales and that's a good start. Given how much of the HS's delivery is currently paused or online, surely that frees up resource to be redeployed. Surely there are schemes in place to fast track the training of those in other specialisms to help with Covid?

Lockdown seems like an extraordinarily costly solution to this problem.

Sure, but we’re here now, and there’s no TT &I system that works. We don’t have time for one to be established. The government squandered the summer. Spaffed it up the wall, if you will.

We have Nightingales, but no staff. We can hardly staff the hospitals we do have, what with the years of cuts and now increasing sickness. Not to mention the staff are exhausted.

The NHS exists to treat sick people, if it can’t do that then something has gone wrong in the last few months when it had time to prepare for this difficult winter.

What exactly should it have done? It can’t train people intensivists in a few short months, and it’s not allowed to afford to hire them anyway. The “failings” of the NHS are a political choice by the government.

People to be intensivists.

I’m middle left, and anti lockdown. I am getting increasingly impatient with people who talk about «the economy» as if it is somehow separate or removed from society. “The economy” pays for everything - from pensions to healthcare to education. None of these vital public services would exist if private taxpayer laws were unable to crest wealth. Yes, it’s unfairly distributed etc and there would be a lot more to go around if the big big earners paid more tax, but to talk as if it’s optional? Something that should somehow be put on hold while we sort this out? Incredibly naive and ignorant of how our society works.

I'm left wing and have no idea whether another lockdown/stricter measures are a good idea or not. I am much more concerned about people's mental health, loneliness and well being than I was in March.

waves
I'm left wing, anti Brexit, anti lockdown.
Have never voted Tory, (usually labour, but sometimes green and once lib dem after the Iraq war)

But these places aren’t the cause of the spike. Schools returning was when the spike started.

I may be wrong, but I read the comment you were replying to as one that was talking about how people respond to rising rates, rather than the causes of the rising rates. And it's undeniably true that there are evidently lots of people who don't regard rocketing recorded numbers as a reason not to engage in economic activity. We can see that in the local lockdown areas: I am in Manchester and the pubs here certainly haven't stayed empty since reopening.

There is a cohort of the population who will do everything it is allowed to and more, at the moment, whether that is objectively a good idea or not. If the virus goes sufficiently unchecked, there potentially comes a point where so many people are ill, have tested positive or are isolating that hospitality, grooming etc can't function properly for lack of staff. But the point at which people stop coming of their own volition is speculation.

crapple aye.
I didn’t mention likelihood of transmission or otherwise.
Simply saying that I don’t buy the notion that people will stay home as cases grow (thus buggering the economy).
That doesn’t seem to be the situation in the U.K. or the US.

I mean they wouldn’t have to close the pubs if folk were afraid to go, would they?

@MaxNormal

I know people keep saying that countries that have had a hard lockdown are now better off but I'd like to see data. Off the top of my head.... Spain, South Africa. Both initially locked down very very hard. Both absolutely humped economically.

Spain's economy was already in a bad way. The southern eurozone was financially a mess. In any event Spain's lockdown did work. Until they opened up their borders (and let us in). For a lockdown to be successful (and ultimately shorter) the borders need to stay shut (excepting imports like food, and with proper quarantine for essential travel)for a time after lockdown eases.

SA was already struggling financially. And you don't even want to think about how much of a mess they'd be in if they'd left Covid to run unchecked.

People who think we should just throw our hands up and say oh dear oh well. What do you think will happen to the economy with am uncontained virus running through? How much do you think that will cost?

@HelloMissus

I mean they wouldn’t have to close the pubs if folk were afraid to go, would they?

No but they would have to close them if the staff were unable to work through illness.

Spain had one of the fastest growing economies in Europe prior to lockdown @SheepandCow. There is also no evidence that the rise in cases there was caused by tourists.

The increased transmission was because of things opening. Given that we cannot just keep everything shut indefinitely, it was going to happen at some point. Lockdown is not a sustainable or long-term solution.

Lockdown will help get the numbers under control.

Then we are going to need to be very careful how we open up to manage the situation over the winter. We will need SD, masks etc and schools we need a rethink if they are going to stay open.

I'm afraid wishful thinking that everything can just go back to normal isn't going to work.