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.

@TheDailyCarbunkle there would be deaths from other causes apart from covid with no lockdown - it’s not just deaths from covid that lockdown prevents. I don’t know why you don’t understand that. If the health service is overwhelmed, people die of all sorts of treatable causes. It’s not just about covid deaths.

The impact of lockdown is horrendous.

But if there was no lockdown, do you really think that all those currently closed businesses would be doing a roaring trade?
If Covid deaths were double, triple, five times what they are now and the hospitals were completely unable to cope (daily images and stories of patients being left to die in hospital carparks etc), do you really think we would all be cramming into cinemas and cafes? Do you think everyone would still send their kids to school even if they had the choice? Do you think every teacher would still turn up, never mind cope with reduced staffing due to sickness?
You're going to accuse me of hyperbole, but exponential growth is a bugger. We are hopefully approaching the peak of this wave at the moment, if there were no restrictions the increases in infections, hospitalisations and deaths would keep rising and rising, and the rate at which they rise would increase every day.

Of course, the worse it gets the more people would take matters into their own hands (if they could afford to) even without official restrictions.
So businesses, workplaces and schools would still be badly hit. Hard to say exactly how bad. But you certainly can't compare lockdown with life without covid. It's a false comparison. Even if your 500,000 figure is correct (where is it from?) then you would still lose many of those lives due to the economic effects of an unrestrained virus, in addition to the lives lost through both covid and lack of healthcare.

@tinselearedcow even WHO have advised against lockdowns!

'There may be a low risk of a child dying from poverty'

You really have no clue @StacySoloman do you?

Poverty is the number one killer of people, of all ages, across the entire world. And that's from the WHO, the same crowd who have advocated plunging people across the world into poverty: www.who.int/whr/1995/media_centre/executive_summary1/en/

If you believe poverty 'may kill' you really don't understand what poverty is or how it works. You also seem to believe that poverty won't come and get you at any point. I hope for your sake that you're right.

33amusedtodeath1 Why would anyone die because of lockdown? What nonsense is this? Staying at home does not kill people.
This, exactly. Lockdown only kills people if they become I'll and there is no NHS capacity to treat them.
How many people would die with no lockdown at all?

The virus causes the economic downturn, not the lockdowns. Stop reposting ridiculous made up figures.

I think some people live in a fantasy world where they believe there is some magical solution to the pandemic that won't cause death and hardship, but for some reason governments across the world are ignoring that magical solution and prefer to torture their citizens intead.

Sorry just to clarify in my post above... the "daily images" I referred to are NOT the current reality. I was trying to imagine what the situation would be IF there were jobs restrictions at all.

I just reread it and didn't want it to be misconstrued and panic anyone.

But not locking down would also fuck the economy over and cause poverty. There isn’t some magic solution that allows society to function as normal in a global pandemic. It just doesn’t exist.

Should say "No" not "jobs" 🤦‍♀️

I think this is the study op is referring to

It’s one of the first ones looking at the efficacy of lockdowns with real world data, not some wing and a prayer

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484

[quote BatmanBaby]@tinselearedcow even WHO have advised against lockdowns![/quote]
That's bollox too, they said they should only be used as a last resort.

@TheDailyCarbunkle

'There may be a low risk of a child dying from poverty'

You really have no clue @StacySoloman do you?

Poverty is the number one killer of people, of all ages, across the entire world. And that's from the WHO, the same crowd who have advocated plunging people across the world into poverty: www.who.int/whr/1995/media_centre/executive_summary1/en/

If you believe poverty 'may kill' you really don't understand what poverty is or how it works. You also seem to believe that poverty won't come and get you at any point. I hope for your sake that you're right.

What do you think the number 1 killer of children in this country might be if you can’t access hospitals? What do children die of in countries with no working health system? Diarrhoea is a big one. Deaths in childbirth is up there too.

@Bluegrass

One thing the invention of social media has been great for is to ensure that people feel completely comfortable in asserting with 100% certainty that they know better than everyone else how to respond to situations in respect of which they have literally no relevant skills, knowledge or qualification. It’s quite remarkable.

Half the time I doubt my level of knowledge about the work I’ve spent my entire adult life doing. I can’t imagine the freedom and joy a person must feel in having no doubts whatsoever regarding their position on complex topics that they’ve only just started to Google.

Finding solutions to complex problems is my job, I run a company doing it and the government ask me to do this job for them on a regular basis. So if you're looking for skill and qualifications, I'm one of the few people in the world who actually has them.

In my years of doing this job, the main issue I've come across is the same issue appearing on this thread the 'what's the alternative' answer. There is a total inability to just think beyond the immediate situation, to consider more creative solutions, to actually engage with the issues, rather than just taking a blanket approach.

Locking everyone in their house, killing businesses, denying children education, those are panic moves, understandable when nothing is known.

After nearly 10 months, these moves are no longer acceptable. They create problems, they kill people. And yet no one can seem to think beyond covid, that's the total focus. It's typical of what I see all the time in my job.

I could come up with a solution, with the right team behind me. It would definitely be better than lockdown, because lockdown is the most destructive and least effective solution possible.

[quote BatmanBaby]@tinselearedcow even WHO have advised against lockdowns![/quote]
Oh not this again.

What Nabarro actually said was: “We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus. The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”

Note the words “rather not do it” as opposed to “should not do it” or “will not do it.”

It is pretty staggering on this thread that people are unable to process that lockdown has an impact on life and deaths

The question we should constantly be asking is if these measures are doing more harm than benefit. Lockdown is not the only solution we have, despite what many think

Why would anyone die because of lockdown? What nonsense is this? Staying at home does not kill people.

Plenty of people will (and have) die(d) because of lockdown. Some examples are -

• Without being able to go out or access the correct support , some people with MH problems will commit suicide.
• Without a smear test (either because it was cancelled or they felt discouraged to go) some people will not know they have cervical cancer, until it is too late to treat.
• Without dental check ups, some oral cancer will go undetected, the the person will die.
• A person with a heart problem misses their apt because they are too fearful to go to a hospital..

Those are more immediate examples but a recession or depression and resulting poverty levels with cause many more.

All that said I am still at a loss of what the solutions are. As pp have said without lockdown , the health service will collapse (it's on the verge of it now!)
A lot of the countries that are living more normally had much stricter border control but we missed that opportunity nearly a year ago, and once the genie is out of the bottle, it cant be put back.

What’s your solution?

@hamstersarse

It is pretty staggering on this thread that people are unable to process that lockdown has an impact on life and deaths

The question we should constantly be asking is if these measures are doing more harm than benefit. Lockdown is not the only solution we have, despite what many think

Other than the Chinese style surveillance and local lockdowns mentioned above (although they also started with very strict lockdowns to reduce numbers) no other alternatives have been suggested?

@StacySoloman How effective do you think the NHS will be during the biggest recession since 1929? Do you think with reduced tax revenue, and an unhealthy, exhausted population, the NHS is going to thrive?

Of course lockdown is a devastation. But governments all over the world would not deploy them unless they had no other option. Interesting how there are always a few people on Mumsnet who think they could do it better than virologists, epidemiologists and economists all over the world working together.

When there is an acute situation in front of you you have to deal with it. When people are trapped in a burning building it is humane to try to save them, not to stand around ruminating on the fallout of going in there and long term effects. Hospitals are being presented with acute cases, and without lockdown the amount of these would rise in staggering measure, and completely overwhelm. The fallout for all sectors of society would be catastrophic, and governments have weighed this against the fallout of the lockdowns. No one (well, hardly anyone) is suggesting lockdowns have no effect. It is and will be awful. I know this for myself and for many others. But there are no other workable solutions, and whenever we ask minimisers to provide one they are unable to, they just accuse us of lacking imagination.

What is a workable alternative, OP?

And what noblegiraffe said. I contend that deaths without lockdown would be even (probably far more) than deaths with lockdown.

I am guessing that the issue for many people who take this position is that they do not see these deaths as ones that matter as much as others. Those pesky vulnerable, getting in the way.

@hamstersarse

It is pretty staggering on this thread that people are unable to process that lockdown has an impact on life and deaths

The question we should constantly be asking is if these measures are doing more harm than benefit. Lockdown is not the only solution we have, despite what many think

So what do you advocate instead?

And please do not think that I do not understand that deaths arise from poverty.

My point is that there is no reason to expect they would be lower with no lockdown, as the consequences of healthcare collapse are dire. Plus the effects of chaotic economic collapse are worse than (semi) planned and (semi) mitigated hiatus.

All the arguments on this thread have been rehearsed a thousand times on MN. Minds aren't going to be changed on this thread, pointless arguing, so I am out!

Good to see people like BatmanBaby still misrepresenting the WHO position on lockdowns.

What that should say is that they don’t think they should be the “primary means” of controlling this and that that they would “rather not” do them. However they accept that, whilst they clearly bring problems of their own, they can be an essential tool (for example bringing short term relief to a health service and to health workers on the verge of collapse).

I guess it is easier to just type “the WHO are against lockdowns” though.

[quote TheDailyCarbunkle]@StacySoloman How effective do you think the NHS will be during the biggest recession since 1929? Do you think with reduced tax revenue, and an unhealthy, exhausted population, the NHS is going to thrive?[/quote]
Will it be better than nothing though?

So really your argument is that although you don’t have a better solution than the teams of top scientists working on this worldwide, if you only had the right team behind you you’re sure you could think of one???