Why is no one doing anything about this?! Where will we end up

[Christmasiscoming77]

The second lockdown and furlough until March..and then what?
We’ll have no jobs left, why is no one opposing this, before it’s too late?!
What will become of us all

@Christmasiscoming77

So, what do you suggest 'somebody' does about it? And who is 'somebody'?

@Legooo, I love to know that too. My DH and DS have chronic conditions and need access to their specialists at regular basis. The worst thing that can happen is for the NHS to get overwhelmed and all resources devoted to Covid. This is why I so strongly support the lockdown.

@Calmate

Funkypolar There's going to be a new world order, which is despairingly near. Find your faith everyone.

Could you please explain what you mean by this, in detail? Or are you just going to be yet another person who makes a vague comment like this but won't explain what they mean?

Or the rates dropped temporarily when 8m school kids and family had a week off. And they account for 0.5 of r.........….......................

@sst1234

So you are willing potentially to sacrifice 710000 people

1% of the population if it spreads at its current rate and we all get it ?!

People will die of other disease if we don’t have the lockdown as well ?

Perhaps we should sign a disclaimer

We don’t want to follow the rules so if we need hospital treatment we will refuse it so other I’ll people get the treatment they need.

It would make it easier for the doctors and nurses .

@annabel85

Do what about it?

It's an awful situation, but there's no easy answers, is there?

Even with all the restrictions, hospitals in major city areas are already on the brink, hundreds dying every day, thousands hospitalised.

There aren't any easy answers, unfortunately. We'd be a better place with an earlier lockdown in March, and a circuit breaker at the end of September this time to reduce the amount of infections before they increased so much. It's better to have a stricter, earlier lockdown which can be much shorter. This would have much less of a negative effect on the economy than the later, much longer lockdowns we have had. It is so frustrating. We all want this to be over, no matter which side of the fence we sit on. We need a decent test and trace system, and mass testing that works to nip any clusters in the bud.

The problem is, if you don't have restrictions or lockdowns, it won't lead to having normal healthcare as there will be a much higher number of covid patients needing hospital care. The healthcare system will come to a standstill, as there won't be enough capacity for covid patients and there won't be anything left over for any other patients. It isn't a binary choice of carrying on as normal and it will be possible to schedule normal appointments and procedures. There hasn't been enough NHS funding for decades so we aren't in the best place to weather any storms. They reach capacity in a normal winter, let alone this one.

Has anyone seen the breaking news? Admission by Downing Street the charts used to justify lockdown were flawed...

@sst1234

“More than £100 billion spent on govt support schemes, sorry taxpayer support schemes this year. Could be easily be re directed to NHS. China can build a hospital in a week, it’s not magic“

Do you have any idea how long it takes to train nurses and doctors , or can you magic them out of your unicorn world as well ?

We have the nightingale hospitals and hopefully they will be used if necessary , however that will mean diverting staff from other departments. I would have thought that is obvious.

@tortoiseshell1985

I wonder if someone Is giving boris false figures on purpose . He did not want full lockdown he wanted to keep it local

Why would he not believe the figures fed to him ?
Retribution for brexit?
And if the figures are not so bad why is Starmer and the Labour MP pushing for lockdown ?

It’s all very suspicious.

Or do you think the Denmark mutation was leaking and they did not want to scare the public. I see they have put Denmark on the isolation list very quickly .

@Legooo

Very true already happening in other countries that have no lockdown.

ECV here, no worries i will just roll over and die now, leaving my children without a mother, my full time job will be available then for someone who deserves it more....

oh and my husband wont be able to keep our family afloat financially without me as i am the higher earner, so they will be on the streets too.

of course at least im lucky enough to know im virtually guaranteed to be that 1% (which is of course an assumption) that will die. some people dont have that luxury and they might 'only' be disabled with long covid instead, or maybe a surprise death!

furlough has been extended to protect those jobs that wouldnt be able to survive, such as in the arts or travel industry, not as some nefarious scheme to extend lockdown for the shits and giggles.

I'm in the Netherlands, not a lot of covid deaths here at the moment, but too many hospitalizations. It's not the minority dying from covid that's the problem, it's all the people that will survive but still need weeks of hospital treatment. Lots of surgerys and other treatments have been cancelled.

@yelyah22

To be fair, furlough is designed to keep jobs - so I'm not sure it's true 'we'll have no jobs left'.

People ARE opposing it - there was a huge March in London last night.

I see little point in opposing lockdown, surely it is the best way to get the disease under control - if done properly.

Things will improve, there's no point worrying about it.

[quote Unsure33]@tortoiseshell1985

I wonder if someone Is giving boris false figures on purpose . He did not want full lockdown he wanted to keep it local

Why would he not believe the figures fed to him ?
Retribution for brexit?
And if the figures are not so bad why is Starmer and the Labour MP pushing for lockdown ?

It’s all very suspicious.

Or do you think the Denmark mutation was leaking and they did not want to scare the public. I see they have put Denmark on the isolation list very quickly .[/quote]
I've honestly no idea but ultimately these are lives they are playing with

Funkypolar There's going to be a new world order, which is despairingly near. Find your faith everyone.
......
That has all been said before, Funkypolar, many times over many years.

We will live through this, or most of us will if we are not ill, and come out the other side. How about thinking like that rather than indulging in conspiracy theories.

This is the thing, I’m not sure things are ‘Conspiracy’ theories anymore. I never buy into any of that crap, but from a few weeks in, something seemed not right and it hasn’t ever since. People are starting to see that more and more, but it’s happening very slowly. I’m no covid denier, I had it back in March and am still suffering the consequences on and off, but I still feel something isn’t right. I don’t believe there will be jobs to go back to, I don’t understand why they’d throw that much money into all this, the figures, the facts on paper are extremely low to justify this. We seem
to have been fed complete fear all along, something isn’t right and I’m really worried for my child’s future.

And that’s before we even look at all the new laws being pushed through, what is happening?

This isn’t intended as a scare mongering post at all, I’m just an ordinary mum who senses something very wrong and I’m really concerned it’s not being seen.

But what is your working solution then? It's so easy to say what you don't want, but can youthink through what you do want? Letting Covid just spread will mean more teachers ill, meaning less schooling, meaning less parents that can go to work, meaning jobs go bust. Letting covid spread will mean more people in hospital, meaning less beds and less possible treatments for other people/diseases.

Please tell me your solution?

[quote Unsure33]@sst1234

So you are willing potentially to sacrifice 710000 people

1% of the population if it spreads at its current rate and we all get it ?![/quote]
vs all those with illnesses with higher death rates - yes. COVID is not a sacred cow where everyone must be protected at the expense of more people dying of other illnesses.

I think "where we end up" is going to be a divided society with one group who were barely affected by the pandemic and the second group having lost everything. There will be a large overlap with people who were already wealthy before 2020 however not necessarily. People who earned modestly but had a lot of savings would also make it through the pandemic relatively unscathed.

The prepper and frugal living communities, often dismissed as paranoid or hippie-ish have effectively been preparing for this crisis their entire lives. Young professionals, families & business owners who were already being squeezed by living costs and had no savings or lots of debt/mortgage will take the full impact of the crisis.

Agree with the previous poster, furlough means a very high chance of redundancy. A friend works in HR and has been fighting tooth and nail with the board of directors to keep furloughed staff. Strangely enough, the company CAN afford to keep them on but simply don't want to. Many businesses see this as an opportunity to radically restructure and cut their costs.

I absolutely support lockdown as a means to keep the health system working, but it also seems like politicians have decided to grit their teeth and trigger chaos for the chance that things will regrow more efficiently than before. It's almost like a manmade form of evolution. Companies that radically trim their staff and working environment will generate far more revenue for the economy 5-10 years down the line. Individuals who survived the first pandemic with their jobs or businesses intact will be "rewarded" with more senior roles or influence.

@CoffeeDay

But Boris does not want full lockdown . It is the scientists and Labour that are pressurising him .

He wanted local lockdown and to give it a chance .

What is he supposed to do .... no lockdown and he is putting money before lives. Lockdown and he is putting covid above other illnesses .

He is between a rock and a hard place with Starmer ( who won’t be responsible for the debt) guilt tripping him .

Hope you have also read the 'Any other NHSers planning to leave?' thread. That might give you some idea of why it's worth making an attempt to prolong the capacities of the NHS again to buy time, even if it is looking after only a small percentage of people who are affected by covid worse than others. Add to that the effect of covid on the experienced working population within the primary care settings itself, who are at much greater risk of too much viral load than most people in the normal scheme of life now, and this will not be something we can just fix.

There probably will come a time when the balance will tip in terms of herd immunity, making evidence-based decisions about care and the point of it to certain age groups (or while we're at it, how about certain socioeconomic groups, would you be happier with that or does that prick your conscience?) and all that, but it's not now because we do not know enough about this, and it is not that stark. Look up the principles of evidence-based anything. Where's our evidence coming from, in medical terms? How far through do you think we realistically are and what will be the game changer?

Blame the government if you wish, but don't expect them to be able to wave a wand and make the care situation anywhere near equal to the task, if we lose too much of the only front line who is currently trained to work on it, fight it, push the research on it onward.

The answer to your question OP is that yes some people were doing something to stop lockdown. Sunak and the Treasury fought against it tooth and nail and delayed it for 6 weeks until it became completely unavoidable. And a fat lot of good it has done them.

But if we don’t choke the virus back a bit we will find ourselves in a situation where there will be literally no NHS beds for anyone, no matter how desperate the emergency.