SAGE say lockdown cycles could last several years

[IesuMariJoseff]

I can't believe I suddenly live in a world in which our human rights have become conditional based on hidden calculations around hospital capacity.

The first lockdown, I understood. The second, ok. Even now, I'll bare it. It's hard but the vaccines are being rolled out, it felt like the last leg.

Years? Fucking years?

Lockdown cycles don't mean months on end.

It could easily mean circuit breakers for 2 weeks if they see it taking off.

It could mean boarders closed as currently to stop new variants coming in.

There is lots of speculation and no one actually explains what they mean by these sentences and so we need to try not to assume they mean the worst.

@crispyy

I'd rather clap in my hands and shit than go on an overpriced, over-crowded and most likely rainy UK holiday.

I really enjoy a UK holiday, much better than the sheer hell that is airports, flying, jet lag and being ripped off in another country because you don’t speak the language well enough.

You're just doing it wrong, crispyy!

😂😂😂

HeadIsFucked me too and suddenly it feels like there's this big shifting of goalposts going on.

I don’t understand those who say treated or prolonged lockdowns won’t work, because people won’t have it and they will stop complying. How? Even if I felt this way I don’t have anywhere to go or anything to do as everything is closed! No choice other than to live like this, when all we have is the park.

It could easily mean circuit breakers for 2 weeks if they see it taking off

That in itself would kill the events industry (more) stone dead. The uncertainty would make it possible to insure any large events.

Treated = repeated

No choice other than to live like this, when all we have is the park.

People will see friends and families indoors. Probably you'll see more and more clandestine parties, illegal raves and "pubs". There will be more and more of a shift towards socialisation and that will cause massive criminalisation of ordinary people along the way.

@Moondust001

The experts on SAGE are not the only experts in the world. They can't even agree with each other, never mind all the other experts around. So I'd take a ton of salt with a lot of what they are quoted as saying.

TBH I think that some of these experts are enjoying their time in the limelight just a little too much. After all, when was the last time anyone hung on the words of scientists etc. Before the pandemic they were all perhaps recognisable in their field by other experts, but most people had never heard of them and had no interest in them. They certainly weren't wooed by the media for comments on a daily basis. And it won't be long before they all fade into obscurity again. I think some of them will do or say anything to stay in the limelight.

100% this. They are certainly not the only experts in the world and their models are not God given

"And I'm afraid that too much policy making has been driven by the fact that no one had the balls to stand up at the start and say to voters - people will die, no matter what we do. We'll try and limit the impact but there's no good choices here."

Curiously, Boris Johnson did seem to be heading in that direction (ish) that day in March - think it was the 12th March - when he said that more people would lose loved ones before their time. I think he may also have said that schools wouldn't close. A week later...And then five days after that....

@gallbladderpain but that’s my point , we need to massively increase resources so we can provide properly for the CEV . I am not just talking about Covid , we expend a huge amount of resources on the very frail which leads to horrible medicalised deaths and poor quality of life .

I most certainly am not a person who believes we should just let diseases rip and I have hardly been out in the last 12 months but I do think that we have to accept that death is a risk and an inevitability and that infectious diseases have always been with us and will continue to be. We need to build a health service to fit our needs because if we continue forever in lockdown we will be impoverished and will not be able to provide adequate healthcare at all.

They can close things but no chance will people be following lockdowns in the majority by the end of this year. It’s not our responsibility to ‘protect the NHS’. Fucking find it better and things wouldn’t be this bleak.

The constant moving of goal posts is destroying people’a mental health.

Fund it better**

This headline is from the daily mail. The daily mail is not a real newspaper. Therefore, let's ignore this story

"You could also fly into Dublin, take the train to Belfast and fly anywhere in the UK from there. People have been doing it so much that the British govt has now taken measures to close this loophole."

Iced that's interesting - what measures has the UK government taken? How would it go about it, I wonder - passenger declaration on any flight or ferry from NI to UK?

I remember when part of Prof Neil Ferguson's modelling back in March was published on the internet (might have been in the Guardian?) and it showed several waves over five (I think?) years and remember thinking back then "bloody hell, well this bit has been kept rather quiet!". I tried to find it again last week and it's completely disappeared, can't find any trace of those graphs online at all. Weird.

[quote Peaseblossom22]@gallbladderpain but that’s my point , we need to massively increase resources so we can provide properly for the CEV . I am not just talking about Covid , we expend a huge amount of resources on the very frail which leads to horrible medicalised deaths and poor quality of life .

I most certainly am not a person who believes we should just let diseases rip and I have hardly been out in the last 12 months but I do think that we have to accept that death is a risk and an inevitability and that infectious diseases have always been with us and will continue to be. We need to build a health service to fit our needs because if we continue forever in lockdown we will be impoverished and will not be able to provide adequate healthcare at all.[/quote]
Its not possible. It is completely impossible to separate CEV people from everyone else, while we let a virus run rampant and people are in hospitals with it, the medical staff live in communities with the virus and then suddenly we have to attend hospital for a non covid reason and get contract covid from the people who are living their normal lives. I've got a very young child, we aren't immune to illness we have spent a lot of times in hospital we have dealt with all manner of respiratory diseases...they have known treatments and are well understood though so they don't present as high a risk as covid does despite what all the experts on mumsnet would have you believe and they are also not running rampant infecting thousands of people at any one time.

There's just no possible way to expand hospital capacity and keep it completely covid free in the ways people would suggest. After what has happened this year I doubt there will be thousands of people wanting to take a job in the NHS for starters and its been plagued by staff shortages long before covid came along.

The vaccine is the best thing we all know this, if the vaccine works and reduces serious illness in the vast majority of the vaccinated then that is the answer. Unfortunately for us it is not the answer until they roll out vaccination to children but in the meantime we cannot afford to allow mutations of the virus that could evade vaccines to become dominant in the country otherwise the fantastic efforts of the vaccination programme is destroyed. As more people are vaccinated worldwide and hopefully transmission decreases as a result of that then it lessens the chances of mutations as well.

"After this lockdown I am seeing my family as normal. I'm not doing it again. Life is too short to not see your family. I refuse"

And do they all refuse?

*Mind you that could have been the projection without any vaccines or effective treatments....

@xmasmob

They can close things but no chance will people be following lockdowns in the majority by the end of this year. It’s not our responsibility to ‘protect the NHS’. Fucking find it better and things wouldn’t be this bleak.

The constant moving of goal posts is destroying people’a mental health.

Hopefully the doctor in the NHS says to you someday 'its not my responsibility to deal with whatever your problem is'

So seeing your family is ‘abhorrent behaviour’ now.

I feel like I’ve crossed into the twilight zone. Wtf is wrong with people? We are humans. We need connection with our loved ones. This ludicrous bullshit has gone on long enough.

"We need to build a health service to fit our needs because if we continue forever in lockdown we will be impoverished and will not be able to provide adequate healthcare at all."

Though to have a health service that could have treated everyone who would have needed hospital without a lockdown might mean a massive expansion in health spending. (Although we don't really know, as we don't know what the numbers would have been without lockdown). And you don't even know what health care the next virus will need - will it be ventilators and oxygen, or something completely different next time?

On the other hand, unless you assume this virus is a one-off that won't recur for 100 yrs (which is of course possible), there is an argument for spending the £400 bn cost of lockdowns (more than that by now?) on maintaining health care capacity in advance instead, ready for the next one. Perhaps the staff could be multi-skilled and working in other areas of hospital care most of the time, but with ICU training kept refreshed as well. Expensive yes, but then so has this series of lockdowns been!

@gallbladderpain

So you will live like this for years? Lockdowns?

They pretty much already have. They weren’t there last year when my brother needed a brain scan because they were too busy with covid. He was ‘following the rules’. He’s now dead.

They weren’t there when my DD had an eating disorder and she was kept on a waiting list for years. We paid privately as the wait for therapy, she’d also likely have been dead by then.

It’s not the doctors fault. They are underfunded. We need to fix that. And lockdown and destroying the economy isn’t going to help that.

@gallbladderpain to be clear, he paid privately for a scan and got his cancer diagnosis. Didn’t help him as he still died but he needed them and they said no. Covid was more important.

@gallbladderpain GP said ‘in normal times I’d refer you for a scan but at the moment it’s not worth it.’

Lifes too short for lockdown? Maybe if you are young and healthy, but not for the people you may infect because you 'wont do' lockdown.