What Would Happen Without Lockdowns

[Flaxmeadow]

Just that really. What would have happened if we hadn't locked down in March or if we don't have lockdowns now

One thing I have not been able to understand throughout all of this is why we have so few medical staff. Even when we built the Nightingales in the next breath people were saying we can't even use them because there are no staff. What is being done to remedy this? Is this because of medical students choosing to work in the private sector rather than the NHS? I know so many talented people who wanted to study medicine but couldn't get a uni place, so why aren't the no of uni placements being increased?

No it is not. Hardly any Drs and nurses work exclusively in the private sector

Medical school numbers are deliberately capped at the level the government thinks the country usually needs because it is expensive to train Drs and they don't want surplus. That's why there is no such thing as an unemployed Dr and medical schools are hard to get into.

It takes many years to train a Dr (or indeed a nurse) to the point where they can be useful in a pandemic. We can't just pull them out of the bag now we need more.

They did actually cancel the final exams and put all the final year medical and nursing students on the Covid wards 6 months early plus pulled everyone out of research posts and anything 'non-essential' and brought anyone who'd retired within 3 years back (some of them to their deaths in fact)

This time around they'll do that again and everyone will be moaning about their OP appt getting cancelled again.

My worry is the NHS. I work in the community so not even in the hospitals and we're all exhausted and unsure how much longer we can go on. The system is at breaking point, we have very vulnerable people on waiting lists who need to be seen but we can't get there because urgent work overtakes day in day out.

The email went round asking people to move to the nightingales, last time there were volunteers, this time no one in our teams has gone for it. Everyone's had enough.

Knowing what we know now about ethnicity and age I would strongly advise against some of my recently retired colleagues coming back even if they wanted to.

I also think there will be a worse staffing crisis this time around. The first time there was a blitz spirit and a lot of public support. Now we're just tired of it all and we no longer have public support. We're getting slated for cancelling other work and accused of being lazy and standing around. Plus NHS staff are as ground down by home schooling, not seeing family and partners losing jobs as anyone else.

Shortly the hospitals will be filling up and the shit will hit the fan. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it IS all made up and those reports from Italy were fake noos and we'll all be as lucky as Donald.
It would be lovely to be wrong about this.

Countries I could find that have not had a lock down are:

Turkmenistan and Tajikistan
I think we can discount those

South Korea which manages with very effective track and trace. All experts agree if we had this we would not need lock down. We don't have it.

Sweden- they didn't do nothing at all. They did implement social distancing just not full lock down. They did shout secondary schools and unis but not primary. They do not have the large population centres and density that the UK does. Areas of the U.K. that have done OK are rural eg Cornwall, Norfolk, mid Wales.
They did still have much higher deaths than their neighbours Denmark, Finland and Norway.

So they had less restrictions and more deaths but were not overwhelmed. Maybe that was right but it was definitely not nothing that they did and it might or might not have translated to a UK context.

Now we're [NHS] just tired of it all and we no longer have public support

This is one of the saddest things to read.

So many comments on social media now saying they won't follow the rules anymore. What's happening to us

@DougRoss yes but what I'm trying to say is there never seems to be a surplus of HCP anyway - we're always being told in the media that they're overworked, waiting lists are horrendously long, routine things get cancelled all the time as there just isn't the staff... So clearly to try and ameliorate this situation in the future we need to increase the no of uni admissions for medicine now. There won't be a surplus, it would be trying to reduce the deficit.

It's true though isn't it

I don't think people will be putting out the rainbows or clapping this time.

Might be wrong but I hear a lot more negativity about why did other stuff have to stop (so staff could be redeployed for Covid and so people didn't get infected at hospital- both very good reasons) than support these days

@oiboi
Thank you for your work.

The government deliberately train a few too few because they know we can poach some from overseas. Have you looked around an NHS ward lately and seen all the Philippino, Nigerian, Spanish nurses and the Indian Drs?

If the government trained more Drs and nurses they'd have to pay them as the NHS is pretty much the monopoly employer. Better from their POV to have the bare minimum and squeeze em till the pips squeak. Staff costs are the main costs of the NHS so the government can't afford to spend more and have it comfortably staffed.

Unless you guys want to vote for a government that will raise taxation that is???

The gov should raise taxes - take from the fat cats at the top who never pay their fair share. Thank you for explaining, dougross

@Flaxmeadow

Just that really. What would have happened if we hadn't locked down in March or if we don't have lockdowns now

Double, double, toil and trouble.

Some of the stupidity on here is staggering.

There would be more cancer deaths than there are now if the virus was left to it's own devices.
Even if the death rate is "small" there are a lot of people requiring intervention.
If it was allowed to just tear through communities on the basis of not everyone would die. Then the hospitals wouldn't cope and even more surgeries/ treatment would be cancelled. Far more than when they were cancelled in a more controlled manner.
Unless some posters think that the covid patients who don't end up dying shouldn't have access to the health service.
No mechanical ventilation, no cpap?

Covid isn't as simple as you have it and you're asymptomatic or you die.
There are a lot of very poorly people somewhere in the middle. They wouldn't disappear if we all just carried on.
I honestly don't understand the thinking of some people.
It is ridiculous.

Like PPs I dont know what the answer is but agree we could not have had the virus go through society. What I have found shocking is that this has been going on less than a year and as a country have not been resilient enough to pull through it together at a time when we can talk to friends and family via video calling. I could understand it more if it had been going on for a few years but less than a year seems so ridiculous. At the beginning it felt like everyone pulled together for the good of society but now not so much.....

Several US states like Utah and Iowa never had a full lockdown. They’re reporting a huge spike in deaths and hospitals filling up, and we are only in October.

Britain is far more similar to the US than Sweden but none of the deniers here want to look in that direction to see what happens when you continue on as “normal.”

Well said @Carrotcakeforbreakfast. Like you I think some of the stupidity is staggering, some people really have no clue. (Speaking from a country which had lockdown and is now pretty much back to normal).

Why ask an open ended question when you clearly have a firm opinion on it and then tell anyone with an alternative opinion to you that they are wrong

If there'd been no lockdown then there would have been far more deaths from Covid, the NHS would have been overwhelmed, people would have struggled to get any deliveries as many would be off sick, there would be far more people with 'long Covid'. People who were ill with cancer or other long term illnesses would likely die as there'd be no shielding, other than what people might do in the panic. There really would have been panic, I believe.

There would have been recriminations as to why it was allowed to happen, terrible public anger. Remember, if there had been no lockdown we would not have the luxury of knowing what the 'other path' with lockdown would have looked like. Instead of the current conspiracy theories there would be different ones, those that say this was all planned, i.e. to leave the virus to run through the population and kill off the weakest.

The economy would suffer from the huge hit in productivity and smaller businesses would close. Mental health would still suffer. Honestly, I don't see any of this as a better alternative to what we are going through now. There really is no easy way out of this.

Flaxmeadow As you said yourself it is an airborne virus that spreads asymptomatically. How are we supposed to control it? Unless you can stay alone in your house and outsource all your risk to others eventually you will come across this virus somewhere. Then whether you catch it or get ill with it depends on many things some of which are also not under our control.
My younger daughter was one of those medical students that was graduated early and has been working in the NHS since April. She finally brought covid home a few weeks ago and despite being shut in a house with her isolating none of the rest of us caught it. No idea why as no social distancing was going on at all, we had accepted that we would get it. There is much more to the spread of covid that we don‘t yet fully understand and we have just the illusion of control not the reality. The one thing that we are lucky about is that the young seem to be barely touched by it.
I would tell everyone healthy and young to live life as normal and advise the elderly to be careful. I wouldn‘t fine people or make laws, but would support those that needed to isolate financially and tell people with symptoms to stay at home and away from the vulnerable.

@Strawberrypancakes

People who need and want to shield should shield. Everyone else needs to get on with it.

My 90 year old nan said she can’t love this life anymore. She would rather risk it.

My job is hanging by a thread. (As are SO many others)

Our children need normality.

36k more people will die of cancer this season due to lockdown. That’s not okay. People who had good prognosis, have died.

More than 36k would die if the NHS collapsed due to staff being off sick with covid and the vulnerable staff staying at home shielding!

@DougRossIsTheBoss

The government deliberately train a few too few because they know we can poach some from overseas. Have you looked around an NHS ward lately and seen all the Philippino, Nigerian, Spanish nurses and the Indian Drs?

If the government trained more Drs and nurses they'd have to pay them as the NHS is pretty much the monopoly employer. Better from their POV to have the bare minimum and squeeze em till the pips squeak. Staff costs are the main costs of the NHS so the government can't afford to spend more and have it comfortably staffed.

Unless you guys want to vote for a government that will raise taxation that is???

Actually the doctors union has in the past refused to increase training places in medical schools. Even Labour didn't massively increase medical school training places!

36k more people will die of cancer this season due to lockdown

Bollocks. But quite a few will die if the rates are so high they are too terrified to go near a hospital and do ignore symptoms- or if they catch cv in hospital or during treatment.

Hospitals wont work proprrly and will not be safe places to visit if cv is rampant.