Lockdown will claim 560,000 lives. Are lockdown fanatics are killing people.

[Billie18]

Worrying reports coming out indicating that Lockdowns will end up claiming the equivalent of more than 500,000 lives because of the health impact of the 'deep and prolonged recession that they will cause. It has been obvious that restrictive lock down measures will impact on the health of the whole population but concern has been shouted down by those in favor of lockdowns. But will those ignoring the dangers of lockdowns on the entire population be responsible for killing huge numbers of people. Killing far more people than any virus.

It's a bit late now to think of lockdown alternatives. But equally recession doesn't necessarily have to mean 500k deaths. Why can't we use our ingenuity to help people now that we know where those problems will arise after the pandemic is over?

I know why tbh.

We are doing a lot of testing, more than most countries

We've got a death rate that's higher than most countries too. What's your point?

Balancing that Hate Mail link with Marina Hyde in lockdown deniers - www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/15/waves-britain-lockdown-sceptics-crisis-government?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other - much more entertaining and almost certainly more accurate

@Bluegrass yeah but "I've done my research, and on bollocks-i-made-up-to-sell-herbs.com it says this is all a lie, so it must be true". I just piss myself at all the links these people send. I also piss myself at the bullshit faction that say covid has an R0 higher than measles though...

What a stupid report. No wonder it's the Daily Mail and Spectator. Totally ignores years lost from people whose health has been impacted by Long COVID. Hell we are now finding Long COVID in kids.
Also we have no idea how bad the recession would be if Lockdown wasn't used as a means of controlling the virus and protecting the NHS

OP, what have you got, a gym or a nail bar?

What is trashing the economy bid this government's inability to be tough enough to eradicate the virus and close borders except through quarantine.
Compare Guernsey and Jersey - jersey did the same as us. Still a problem. Guernsey did aggressive test and trace including back tracing, closed borders except through quarantine - they have been living totally normally most of this year. New year's and Christmas parties, the lot.
Look at the countries who have gone for eradication - their economies are on the up. It's this whole "herd immunity of the young" bollocks tha is the problem and storing up problems for the future.

I have just read the daily fail link.
It doesn't even say 560 000 lives will be lost. It's a headline grabbing article.
The "expert" actually says that on average the economic consequences will lead to a few months of live being lost from each person.
He has then taken that figure, times it by the number of people in the UK to give the numbers of years lost by the population as a whole and divided it by 42 which is the average remaining life expectancy of an adult.
So it does NOT exactly say 560 000 people will die as a result of lockdown but some back of the envelope calculations to give the average numbers of lives lost based on an economic downturn leading to a shorter life expectancy of a few months.

Given that the daily mail also ran an article today saying that covid has slashed the average life expectancy of an adult by over one year (average 13 months) I calculate that to mean that 1.59 million lives are lost as a direct result of covid (and that is with the lockdown) so as you can see covid leads to over one million more lives lost than lockdown. I win!

Or maybe we could just agree that pandemics are devastating, there is no easy solution, everyone loses and governments all across the world have considered all the various options and the fact that they have all pretty much gone with the same one means it is the best one.

Calculations for those who are interested in how I calculated these mysterious bizarre figures.
lockdown - 34% of a year knocked off life expectancy. 0.343x 67 million (UK population) = 23 million years lost divided by 42 = 560000 (actually its 540000 but anyway)
covid - one year knocked off life expectancy . 67 million years lost (one year from each of UK population) divided by 42 = 1.59 million

As the Professor who did the calculation is a Professor of risk managment, he must now be able to see that the number of lives lost from covid is greater than that from lock down based on his own risk management calculations and life expectancy data.

It's not lockdowns causing extra deaths, it's a pandemic respiratory virus. Without lockdowns things would still be chaos, but No one would have been supported.

If Covid were allowed to run rampant it wouldn't only be Covid deaths that resulted, though. Already the NHS can hardly cope. Without lockdown many, many more people would be dying for lack of care.

You have a heart attack, or a stroke, or sepsis while the hospital can't treat you - good luck with that.

I agree lockdowns are a dreadful response - suppressing the virus and having excellent, quick testing, tracing and isolating so it doesn't get to the point that lockdown is necessary would have been a lot better.

See the very very many countries where that has happened - all of whom have lower deaths overall (from all causes - both covid and lockdown) and better economic outlook.

We're only in lockdown because our infection rate was totally out of control and our health service was very clearly going to collapse if we didn't. It's not a strategy, it's a failure.

You took one for the team bothering to read the Mail @JS87

People will die if we lock down, people will die if we don't lockdown.

Given that many of you have an oracle's insight into how much better it would be if we don't lock down, can you tell me the figure if we let the NHS get overwhelmed? Covid deaths, non Covid deaths for those who could not access treatment, suicides of those people who are traumatised by all this, knock on affects to economy, jobs etc. Go and Google what it what was like in the past when we did not have the health care we have today.

There is less flu because there was a vaccine in September, all primary kids, all over 65yrs, anyone with a risk factor and all healthcare workers were vaccinated before the season began.

Of course there is less flu with vaccine then lockdown.

It's a balancing act. Deaths and hardships whatever we do. I think we made the right choice.

At this point what the long term affects on deaths will be no one knows. You definitely can't put a number on it yet.

Looking back we will at least know we did the right thing to try and save lifes.

@DameFanny

You took one for the team bothering to read the Mail *@JS87*

Haven’t RTFT but people often seem to compare lives lost to the disease with lives lost to economic consequences of lockdown. But they fail to factor in the economic consequences of the infection rising exponentially without lockdown...a huge number of the deaths from economic consequences, maybe even more, would be occurring anyway, just alongside more deaths from covid and more deaths from non Covid conditions as the NHS was even more overwhelmed.

@Coffeeandaride all over 50s were invited for a flu jab.
@DameFanny I googled it and it came up with the DM LINK. It hurt sharing that.
@NoOneOwnsTheRainbow you call that a solution. So we just let people die gasping for breath as they are old or are BAME or have a pre existing condition.
Or not bother to treat the RTA victim as they will probably due anyway or the child with brittle asthma

There's a very simple solution to all this. To decide Covid is incurable and unavoidable (which it largely is) and to let hospitals carry on as they always have, dealing with the things they can deal with. Worldwide as a planet, we don't have the resources to deal with it. So we shouldn't. Countries are making promises (about protecting people) that they can't deliver on then blaming the public when those promises are shown to be insubstantial.
On top of the lockdown effects on humans, literally no one has asked the question, what is the environmental impact of isolating all the oxygen for oxygen tanks? And all the disposable PPE? What is the damage being done to children when they or their loved ones die in hospital fires from all this oxygen being exhaled everywhere? There have been so many hospital fires because of the lunatic way of going "we must save everyone by not saving anyone at all".
The average age of death due to Covid is 84.
Average life expectancy all told in the UK for children born in 2018 (it's gone down last year) is only 81.26.
The people dying of Covid are already on borrowed time.
What are we saving?

Bold fail

@Rosehip10

Let me guess OP you think "we should shield the vulnerable and the rest of us crack on"

Can you explain why you think this isn’t a valid solution?

If it is possible to lockdown the whole of society, then why can’t it be possible (easier even) to only lockdown a section of it?

It’s like asking to borrow a tenner from someone, them saying no, they can’t afford to lend £10, so they will lend you £100 instead.

It’s just an illogical argument.

@Inkpaperstars

Haven’t RTFT but people often seem to compare lives lost to the disease with lives lost to economic consequences of lockdown. But they fail to factor in the economic consequences of the infection rising exponentially without lockdown...a huge number of the deaths from economic consequences, maybe even more, would be occurring anyway, just alongside more deaths from covid and more deaths from non Covid conditions as the NHS was even more overwhelmed.

Deaths from Covid fall Mainly in the older population, deaths from lockdown fall more evenly throughout the population.

The death of an 81 year old is 1 life year lost. The death of a 40year old from suicide represents a loss of 42 life years and is therefore far more of a loss to society.

We don’t lock down to protect the people in lock down. We lock down to prevent overall spread. If we lock down less people, we prevent less spread. Vulnerable people still need services, they live with people who aren’t vulnerable. If you have locked down less and have higher rates of spread, you haven’t protected them at all.
But this is all very obvious and has been stated many times.

There are mental health effects from Coronavirus as well as lockdown. According to a recent bmj article, 50% of icu staff were suffering from symptoms consistent with ptsd, severe depression, or problem drinking. I very much doubt they are all over eighty years old.

Deaths from Covid fall Mainly in the older population, deaths from lockdown fall more evenly throughout the population. The death of an 81 year old is 1 life year lost. The death of a 40year old from suicide represents a loss of 42 life years and is therefore far more of a loss to society
Which is why the elderly should have been locked down and protected/quarantined.
Where I live they were determinedly taking their ‘permitted daily exercise’ and scowling at parents out with small children.