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.

No if r needs to be under 1 and schools are 0.4 then almost half the spread is schools. Pubs shutting and shops did bring the numbers below 1 to so they have to be spreading it too.

Where is the evdience that lockdown has reduced the flu numbers? Or are you speculating it is because of lockdown?

Isn’t there some theory about how seasonal flu spreads between the northern and Southern Hemisphere but lack of international travel means it hasn’t been imported? I read it somewhere but cannot remember where to post a link! Happy to be told it’s bullshit but I thought it was interesting.

@Billie18

Data from NHS England indicates that presently 111,901 beds are occupied in England of these beds 28,246 beds are occupied by patients with confirmed cases of coronavirus (information is not given for the reason they were admitted or what other illnesses or injuries they may be suffering or even if they became infected in hospital or were admitted because of coronavirus symptoms). In ICU 4,751 beds are occupied and 2,654 are occupied by patients with confirmed cases of coronavirus (again no further information is given).

Maybe there would be more without a lockdown but this is speculation. What we do know is that people will die in huge numbers due to the lockdown because the NHS is struggling to treat 2,654 patients in ICU and 28,246 patients with positive coronavirus tests in the whole of England. Flu (fortunately and miraculously) has been completely eradicated this year but in previous years some of the beds occupied by coronavirus patients would have been occupied by flu patients and winter is known to be a a busy time.

It is shocking that there are estimates that 560,000 people may be killed by the lockdown because the NHS can't increase it's bed capacity beyond these numbers during a national crisis when it's been known for nearly a year that it would be needed.

But even countries with much better healthcare systems and far more ICU beds per 100 000 people are still implementing lockdown (e.g. Germany) or struggling with many deaths and healthcare systems which are over run (USA)

The health service should be better equipped but that should be achieved by equipping it better. In the UK we have less hospital beds than most countries in Europe. Every year during the winter months we have reports that the NHS is overwhelmed and people are lined up in hospital trolleys. It was known that this winter would be a difficult one. Inadequacies within the NHS should be addressed by fixing these inadequacies rather than killing off more people wth a lockdown.

I don’t disagree that the NHS should be better funded. I also don’t think it’s unreasonable to be angry with the politicians responsible for it.

However.

The issue right now is what do we do with the resources we currently have? Even with infinite money, we could not suddenly double the capacity of the NHS tomorrow. So your last sentence is a false dichotomy - pure polemic, nothing more.

If the government had said, instead of lockdown we will let shops and schools carry on and divert the money that would have been spent on business support into improving the NHS, what is the likely outcome, do you think? And would it be better overall, than the strategy we’re currently following?

I don’t know, OP. I wouldn’t even know where to start in modelling and analysing that. I suspect that is true of pretty much everyone on this thread. But I like to imagine that the government do actually have some people advising them who at least have the first clue about how to model these things.

My simple-minded analysis is this: it would take weeks to provide more equipment, months to provide more facilities/update the oxygen delivery systems, years to train more staff. We couldn’t afford to wait for that to happen. Every single day, the infection rate was increasing.

We should be training more staff and paying the existing staff more too, of course. But that would not solve the immediate problem.

@eeeyoresmiles

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??? confused

And after months of this poster declaring grandiosely that lockdowns shouldn't happen ever, not even as a last resort, that's pretty much all they've ever offered as an alternative, ie nothing.

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.

But each of these examples would also happen due to too many local covid cases. In fact the more cases, the more fearful people are of accessing healthcare and dentistry, and the less likely the health system is to be able to treat them anyway.

It isn't just about numbers, it's also about how we get there as a society. Even if you could show that eg there would eventually be 50,000 more deaths with lockdowns vs simply letting cases rise (the only alternative actually on offer right now), the route to getting those 50k fewer deaths by avoiding emergency lockdowns would involve going through a period of chaotic closure of society, panic and disorder as people try and fail to get medical treatment, many more people dying at home, and a "bring out your dead" scenario for dealing with those deaths at home. It wouldn't be "life as normal other than for those with covid" - it wouldn't be life as normal for anyone and the trauma would be huge.

There's a ceiling on the number of patients hospitals can treat, and an uncontrolled epidemic would take us many times over that. I've seen no evidence as to how we could avoid this, if we just let cases rise at any point before vaccination is widespread. Proclamations about how its fine really, from an actuarial point of view the numbers will look better this way in the end (and remember we've no proof that's even the case), would be small comfort.

This. Excellent post.

@GhostPepperTears

Another thread in which people are just going to insult each other...

There's only so many times you can explain things to fuckwits before you get tired of their dangerous lies tbh

Where is the evdience that lockdown has reduced the flu numbers? Or are you speculating it is because of lockdown?

It's a welcome side effect of increased distancing, hand washing and mask wearing - turns out infection control measures work on more than one type of infection...

Flu (fortunately and miraculously) has been completely eradicated this year

Not eradicated exactly, but it's true that - even with more having the flu jab this year - the numbers reported are surprisingly low

Which reminds me that nobody's yet explained adequately why one airborne virus is still getting through and another not

@DameFanny

Where is the evdience that lockdown has reduced the flu numbers? Or are you speculating it is because of lockdown?

It's a welcome side effect of increased distancing, hand washing and mask wearing - turns out infection control measures work on more than one type of infection...

It would be good to have some evidence in what you are saying

I have heard scientists offer various explanations including that covid has taken out flu because it is more contagious - in a battle of the viruses, so why do you think it is lockdown when coronavirus is still spreading easily

Can we have a tin hat wearers corner, MNHQ?

Or delete this sort of bollocks as soon as it appears.

@DecemberSun

Can we have a tin hat wearers corner, MNHQ?

Or delete this sort of bollocks as soon as it appears.

Call it out if you see bollocks

Why does everyone have to agree with you?

@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.

😂😂 couldn’t agree more!

When I wrote on another coronavirus thread that covid will kill more people who haven't had the virus because of the delays in treatments for cancer ( for example) I was told by one contributor that I was peddling a ' misconception' despite the fact that the news programmes often interview people who were meant to have had life saving operations last summer and all were cancelled. It makes sense to me this will be the case , sadly. :(
A few people have said they have tried the private route but that isn't always available now either.
It is worrying and with the waiting list now longer than ever it'll be ages before they can realistically catch up.

Covid is more infectious than flu?
Flu has a shorter incubation then covid, so reduced mixing makes it more likely that you'll develop symptoms before you next go out?
Caution over covid stops people going into work with mild symptoms that turn out to be flu?

All of these are possible explanations. Why not ask an actual medic rather than the tin foil hats on here?

With the waiting list now longer than ever it'll be ages before they can realistically catch up

It could be even worse than that if the "it'll never end" crowd catch on - I'm only waiting for the suggestion that everyone stays in even when the pandemic ends, because the NHS is now overloaded with the catch-up

And thanks, DameFanny - some interesting thoughts there

Call it out if you see bollocks

People do call it out, time and time again - see the thread below for one of many examples. Yet people like you simply ignore them and continue to repeat the bollocks. You are entitled to your own opinion, even if it's bollocks, but you are not entitled to make up your own 'alternative' facts.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4061881-We-must-stop-making-policy-based-on-PCR-testing

Lockdown isn’t stopping cancer diagnoses. Covid flooding hospitals with seriously ill people is stopping cancer diagnoses. If we ended lockdown, that problem would be even more extreme.

I don't know how many times we can make this point. It's as if those who are lockdown sceptics simply cannot see the sheer sense of it, or just refuse to listen because it would not suit their personal (usually libertarian) agenda.

Yes, lockdown is awful. But it is the only option right now, with what we have facing us. There is no use whatsoever in ruminating on how the NHS should have been better resourced (it absolutely should) and how the government should have established better track and trace, closed borders etc etc. There is no point using these things in an argument against this lockdown right now.

Because if we hadn't locked down at the end of December we would be in an even greater mess which would have terrible, longstanding repurcussions throughout society for years to come.

More so than lockdown's effects.

Surely it's plain as day to see.

I'm not sure everyone realises that no lockdown would NOT mean routine elective surgery going ahead as usual. Routine surgery going ahead as normal, fast enough to reduce waiting lists, needs low enough infection levels that staff are available and the patient can be kept safe from catching covid in hospital. (Catching covid when having some types of surgery is very dangerous for the patient.) No lockdown right now would mean sky high infection rates (and even if there was to be a natural peak, do we have any reason to think it will be soon?) and the higher they get, the longer it is before rates get low enough for normal healthcare to start up again.

The most dangerous pandemic our world is facing right now is people posting bollocks "facts" on the internet.

Lol. Given it is impossible to run regression on that many variables, it's impossible to say with any certainty or accuracy how many people will die because of lockdown. We'll also ever know how many would have died if we'd taken the no-fucks-given Brazilian approach. Although I guess Brazil gives us a good idea. Too much data, too many variables, too much panic.

Sorry not yet read full thread but it's in the Daily Mail. It is a conversion of an estimate of how many years a recession might have off everyones life.
I have my suspicions that if you did the same for the effect of COVID on the population would be higher.

Lockdown is a last resort when too late, half arsed policies have failed. It didn't have to be this way.

Lockdown will claim equivalent of 560,000 lives' because of recession www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8925425/Lockdown-claim-equivalent-560-000-lives-health-impact-recession-cause.html?ito=native_share_article-masthead

Because we wouldn't have had a recession if we had just let Covid rip...

[quote CoffeeandCroissant]Call it out if you see bollocks

People do call it out, time and time again - see the thread below for one of many examples. Yet people like you simply ignore them and continue to repeat the bollocks. You are entitled to your own opinion, even if it's bollocks, but you are not entitled to make up your own 'alternative' facts.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4061881-We-must-stop-making-policy-based-on-PCR-testing[/quote]
I could say exactly the same to you, though.

That’s how it works. Science isn’t just one view, especially in this circumstance.

Fwiw, on the thread you’ve posted (which is against the rules and I thought you were all about the rules) I’ve still not been convinced of the efficacy of PCR testing. We still don’t have false positive data, we all know people who’ve been tested positive and negative in the space of 24 hours, and importantly we still don’t have clear data on how cases are recorded. We are doing a lot of testing, more than most countries, and there is very little reporting of how we record our data, eg. On people who have multiple tests in a week.