Questions for pro lockdown people

[SooziQue]

I have found myself a sceptic. Don't get me wrong, I believe Covid is a very real and nasty illness, I am pro vaccine and I have no time for 5G conspiracy theories and such like.

However, the evidence that we have, that is the hard data, not the computer models or predictions, just doesn't seem to show that lockdowns are worth the devastation they cause.

We can now compare like for like countries. The U.K. and Sweden, Peru and Brazil, Florida and California as well as many other states and countries which did and did not lockdown, are in similar hemispheres, similar temperatures etc. Denmark has even released a study after putting several counties into local lockdowns which has suggested they don't work.

I have seen (although not read them all) over 30 peer reviewed studies suggesting that strict lockdowns have little impact on mortality when compared with milder NPIs such as hand washing, limiting numbers meeting indoors (but not banning it), avoiding contact such as hugging and kissing etc.

There appears to be no noticeable increases in deaths after large "super spreader" events such as mass protests, the US Super Bowl, even the BBC admitted that there didn't seem to be a noticeable Christmas spike. Studies have suggested eat out to help out had little impact on the winter resurgence. In November the new strain spread rapidly and cases increased during the lockdown.

Now, we're following the exact same trajectory as Sweden who has imposed very mild NPIs.

I can get on board with having locked down in March as we had no idea what we were dealing with and I believe we could have possible been in a similar position to New Zealand had we acted much earlier (not the week suggested by the press but several weeks) including closing the boarders etc. However, I don't believe it is possible to now eradicate the virus. Particularly when we are mass testing the way we are.

Even if this virus was to completely disappear from the face of the earth, if the government went ahead as planned with testing on school children using LFTs which are known to have lower false positive rates than PCRs, we'd still be getting around 19000 positive test results per week.

I don't want any rude replies or anything, I am just trying to understand. I think, unfortunately, as a society we've all started simply choosing a side and sticking with it, never questioning or seeking to understand. I have questioned myself a lot over this issue and feel im sure I must be missing something. The more and more time that passes and that we remain locked down the less I understand so I thought I'd open up that dialogue.

Has anyone been a lockdown sceptic and switched sides?

Do people think any level of risk is acceptable? If the answer is no, what about flu risk, heart disease? Etc. If yes, how much? And how does the false positive rate impact your feelings about this?

Are people concerned about the false positive rate and the implications that poses for our future freedom?

My understanding is the vaccine doesn't stop people catching and spreading the virus. Does this mean that those in hospital who get the infection will still go down as a coronavirus death? Even when it was merely present but they were brought to hospital for different reasons entirely? Nosocomial spread is around 40 to 50% I believe. Does this not impact upon people's thinking regarding lockdowns?

1 in 6 over 85s die each year. How many people have lost relatives and loved ones this year anyway after being forced apart in the name of keeping them safe? A year is a long time when you're elderly. It's a big risk to assume you'll still be alive next year.

Ive never voted Tory.
Ive not been abroad since 1986 (the virus was spread by air travel)

I dont drink or smoke or do drugs. I havent had children.
Whats pissed me off is the psychological abuse that has been meted out to us and then the gaslighting (Cummings) u turns and chopping and changing.

Instead of threatening ppl with covid secure certificates to gain access to places here in this country like supermarkets, MPs should be asking their constituents how they are coping with lockdown and is there anything they can do. But nope. They would rather use bully boy tactics. And i mean Tories and Labour. Id quite like the basic of still having the electric ive already paid for. Because thats another thing @SooziQue With the focus on Covid the EON security hack hasnt even been reported on on the TV news. Two articles one in the Independent and one in the Guardian. One customer had to go into her neighbours home and sit there with her phone on charge to contact EON. Because she had her electric cut off through no fault of her own. Now as Covid is so serious youd think certain quarters would be interested in something thats a threat to public health wouldnt you. But no!

So either a. Covid isnt as serious as they are saying (im making a point btw not denying its serious) b. they arent interested when its a company to blame and are only interested when members of the public can be blamed. c. because its poorer communities on pre payment meters they just dont care which leads me neatly back to my first point. If they treat poorer communities like this why would they trust them over the vaccines.
Because if Covid is serious enough that you cant visit a family member but not serious enough that poorer ppl are being TOLD by a company to run around all over the place to try and get electric keys (which they then send out which they could have done in the first place) when we are supposed to be staying home or being TOLD by a company to go to your neighbours house to use their electric so it can be sorted out , its no fucking wonder it isnt being taken seriously. There is some MASSIVE gaslighting going on here.

And they have been all too ready to fine the public. A bloke up north got fined for going to his friends for a cup of tea. So why isnt this company being fined for leaving their customers with no choice but to break Covid restrictions and advising them to do so if they want the basic utility that is called electric!!

I agree with this. It would be very hard to look at data from across the world and conclude that a cycle of hard lockdowns over a period of a year is an effective way to save lives. Clearly it's a complicated data set in part because countries which happened to be badly hit by covid may have reacted with harsher measures but you still wouldn't expect so little relationship between measures taken and results if lockdowns were effective (UK was ranked sixth harshest lockdown in the world by a recent Oxford study and has one of the highest death rates). The data also does not bear out the people dying on the street, lights going off scenario which people often talk about or the idea that essential services would be more affected than they currently are in the UK if we hadn't locked down. It definitely doesn't support total bans on household mixing - most European countries haven't done this to the extent the UK has. Yet it now seems to be most people's implicit assumption that lockdowns save lives and that visiting your mum in her garden kills people.

I quite often see people say that things have been so bad with lockdown and this shows that they would be catastrophic without. But another way of looking at it is that for every additional covid death despite lockdown, the marginal benefit of lockdown decreases because there is an upper limit on the percentage of the population who would catch and die of covid. Ferguson initially predicted that there might be 20k deaths with lockdown - by this metric lockdown has completely failed as a policy. Deaths are 7 x that. The benefit of it is therefore at least 7 x lower than predicted. Ferguson also predicted that there might be 250k deaths with a protect the vulnerable strategy. I think that when deaths from covid and deaths caused by lockdown (including lowered life expectancy due to the economic consequences) are ultimately added together they will exceed that number.

There are lots of reasons that rolling lockdowns may not be very effective. In one day in lockdown the virus may spread less than it would without lockdown but this doesn't necessarily scale when you look over a year long period particularly as there may be a rebound effect when you open up. Let's say you have a bus driver who is exposed to 100 people each day. If 1 % of the population have covid and the bus driver has a 10% chance of catching it from an exposure they will, on average catch covid within 10 days. If, instead 1 in 1000 people have covid, they will, on average, catch it within 100 days. So they are still very likely to catch it within the course of a year even if rates are low even if their odds at each exposure are lower.

Some of the places where covid spreads best can't be closed e.g. hospitals and care homes. Lockdown measures may protect variants of covid spreading in hospitals, which are particularly likely to be more virulent, and favour more infectious strains (because only these survive social distancing and masks etc.). I don't know that any of the above theories are correct but it is more complicated than reducing social contact saving lives.

I think the theory of lockdown sort of makes sense but just isn't being born out in reality.

Lockdowns are one tool among many - they should not be used in isolation. Early in Melbourne's second wave, attempts were made to control spread using less restrictive methods, but that wasn't enough. Cases were still rising exponentially, so lockdown it was. This brought it to the point where we could control things in Australia with contract tracing etc.

I actually think it's an extremely complex moral issue, with no easy answers.
I'm certainly not a lockdown fanatic, and have really struggled with lockdown #3. But I also can't see a viable alternative to bring infections right down, and save the NHS from overwhelm. Until the majority of adults are vaccinated that is. Hopefully when that happens we'll be spared any further lockdowns.
I'm very willing to listen to alternative arguments, and of course recognise that lockdowns come with their own set of issues. I respect the OP as she's taking the vaccine. The anti-lockdown folks who are also vaccine refusers I do struggle with I'm afraid

Is anyone pro-lockdown? It’s bloody awful! But the alternative was worse.

The science guiding the government will be taking the various studies into account and balancing it all up. It’s not an exact, black or white situation. On balance they have decided that the evidence points to lock downs being the lesser of two evils.

In the face of something so new I’ll go with where the science leads.

What I do know is that this was a really tough winter for the nhs and staff in some areas are burnt out, traumatised and exhausted. I dread to think what it would look like without the restrictions we have had. We all need a functioning health service.

People saying the alternative was worse - how do you square that with other countries’ trajectories. It doesn’t seem still support this idea.

Quick question what are the parameters that other countries use when declaring a death due to Covid?
As I understand in the UK any death where a patient has tested positive for Covid in the last 28 days is recorded as a Covid death.
Does that mean if Joe Bloggs on his way to work got hit by a bus & died on route to hospital, but because he'd also had Covid very recently (tested positive 26 days ago but now recovered) does that mean he's actually recorded as a Covid death rather than just a road traffic crash/accident death? Even though it wasn't Covid that killed him.
If this is correct then is this why our Covid death rates are so high?

I think it is at this point it’s hard to make comparisons with other countries trajectories. There is such a variety of variables that are likely to effect it. Population numbers, distribution of population Eg. Are they clustered around cities or spread out more equally? The type of living accommodation, family groups, transport, weather, social behaviour (loads of these), types of jobs, physical health of the population, age distribution , method of care of the elderly off the top of my head and there will be many more.

It’s very complex and I think it would take ages to do a systematic review of all then studies and factor in all the things that needed to be considered and I don’t think enough time has passed yet for that to be done effectively.

I’m not reading the research anymore as have got to the point that for my mental stability it’s best not to.

What I don’t understand is where this lockdown fanatic thimg comes from? Who are these fanatics. Obviously we all live in our own bubbles but I don’t see anyone opinion the media or on social media being fanatical, it’s a case for the overwhelming majority that they feel lockdown is the least worst option. Yes there are a few who have embraced it and are seen saying how great it is but to focus on them ignores the huge numbers gritting their teeth and getting onwith itbin silence.

I'm not so sure anymore either. I can't seem to decide what I think anymore! The latest lockdown has made me fed up. Yes I think it's been damaging. Was it worth it? I'm not so sure. I just don't know anymore!

So did that trend that started before Christmas (according to the BBC) see a rise after Christmas or not?
That's what a spike is.

I'd like to see some suppressed data too. Might be difficult, what with it being suppressed mind.

So what would have happened with the hospitals, OP, if we had allowed it to run unchecked through our population?

Hi, I haven't read the full thread yet but to answer a few questions before work.

Yes I have seen the A&E queues. I am also a doctor albeit one that is now getting old and has worked in general practice for almost a decade. However, my local A&E was closed just a few years ago due to the hospital being "full". Overwhelmed nhs services are not new. I am not denying that the nhs is struggling. As it has struggled for the last several years at least. This is due to bad government funding. The governments pandemic preparedness strategy has been shoddy if it didn't prepare for this. In addition, in my local hospital at one stage nurse absence was almost 40% due to self isolation measures. There's a lot more to this current struggle than simple "Covid". It's the whole strategy that has been put in place and which, with nosocomial spread at the rate it is at, aren't working.

To the poster (sorry can't remember username) who is also a doctor, you are the only doctor I have encountered (this wave) that believes the lockdowns are necessary apart from one of my friends who has not yet given me a good argument beyond "the nhs would have been overwhelmed". Admittedly I have only got into this with close friends and colleagues but that includes 8 doctors from across several different specialties as well as their spouses and four colleagues. I meet quite a few nurses who believe in the lockdown but again I haven't seen a compelling argument.

Regarding the link I posted, I posted it because I was specifically asked to post those links. I have also looked at data from "the other side" where possible and have been underwhelmed. The vast majority of these studies supporting lockdowns have been based on computer model "what ifs" and have ignored the data from other countries.

To the poster with the graphs showing infections reducing after Xmas. Correlation is not causation. I can see what you're showing me and yet Sweden has the same exact curve without the lockdown.

And I don't believe deaths would be lower without a lockdown. I believe they would be the same. Perhaps slightly more Covid deaths but perhaps outweighed by fewer suicides, delayed heart attack treatment etc. So no, I don't think being open would reduce deaths. Nor do I believe it would dramatically increase them.

Will reply more throughout the day as time allows.

I have attached my own graph if it works.

I am interested in the fact that Sweden seems to have had similar trends to us but I am equally interested in why for instance other Nordic countries are doing better than Sweden

Have seen a few explanations for this including dry tinder, as it's known. There have been fewer deaths in Sweden in recent years due to milder flu seasons, therefore a larger population of elderly patients who were "due" to die.

In addition, it's worth remembering that low Covid deaths are not the be all and end all. Particularly in the long term. Have Sweden suffered more Covid deaths now but will, in the next five years, suffer fewer mental health problems, deaths related to the economy, missed cancers, heart attacks left too late. Will their school children fare better because they were kept in school? Etc. It's a balance. Covid is not everything.

I note that a lot of the papers quoted were published April 2020 or earlier than now so use very early data and not looked at the entire year on 2020 or early 2021 at all......

The clinical trials which led to the vaccines being approved for use showed that they were effective in preventing symptomatic Covid, and completely effective in preventing serious disease and death - no hospitalisations, no deaths. There is now real-world data which confirms this - efficacy well in excess of 90% in preventing symptomatic Covid is being shown. Hospitalisations and deaths, there have been some, which is to be expected in a larger group including many older and sicker people than the trial group. But still over 98% reduction in hospitalisations and deaths.

My point regarding the vaccines is more to do with incidental findings. The vaccines were not tested well amongst the elderly and vulnerable populations. My point is that although they may have mild or asymptomatic disease, will the people that have the virus, should they go to hospital for an unrelated cause, still be coded as a Covid death? As a sizeable chunk of spread occurs in hospital, what will the impact of this be? I'm not saying the vaccine are not effective. I believe they are and have had mine. However, that won't stop the above from happening. If in winter, as is likely, there is a surge in hospital acquired infection, even if it is asymptomatic, what will the implications of that be? On the statistics, on our freedoms etc.

I hate lockdown. I hate reading all these threads about 'pro-lockdown fanatics'. Do you think the death rates would have been better if we hadn't locked down? If all the hospital beds are full of patients with Covid and there are no beds left for anything else do you think that people would survive emergencies that two years ago it would be really rare to die from? Like appendicitis? When the beds are full, where do you put the cancer patients? Do you think that not locking down would have improved the care of patients with cancer? When the Covid rates are really high, people are too scared to go to A&E with their heart attacks and are staying at home and dying, so many could have survived if we had properly suppressed the rates.

The whole point of these lockdowns was to take some pressure off the NHS so that it could continue to function. The other countries you are comparing to don't have free healthcare at the point of contact. They don't have the financial constraints we have. The NHS has been chronically underfunded for years and people keep voting for this to continue.

Just further to this, it is not and should not be the duty of the public to protect the nhs. The nhs should be sufficiently funded AND staffed to protect the public. This is a governmental issue and accepting the sacrifices we have made to "protect the nhs" is a completely mind blowing idea for me. We should be able to do both. Pandemics are not new. My point is that I believe without lockdowns we wouldn't have seen significantly more cases or deaths. When you think about what is currently open (hospitals, supermarkets, schools, construction, takeaway food, delivery services, factories and so on), we're not even really locked down. It's simply that the things we enjoy have been taken from us such as allowing our children to see grandparents or attending their gymnastics classes or going for a meal on our birthdays. We can still get a meal and take it home. Prepared by ten people sweating in a kitchen together. We just can't eat it in a restaurant with a friend who we can see for a walk. People are mingling indoors all over the place. Hospital workers in supermarkets with those on furlough. How many people, as a percentage of the population, can genuinely say they have come into contact with nobody else at all for the past year? Other than those who were already isolated and lonely beforehand. And what about the many people who have "followed all the rules and seen nobody" that have got the virus anyway? What has the lockdown achieved?

Last year I sent a referral regarding an 18 year old boy. They bounced that referral back as "non-urgent". I referred him again (again, urgently) after his mother telephoned telling me how much distress the issue was causing him. Again, my referral went nowhere. I referred him in April. By august he still hadn't been seen and he killed himself. This is the reality of what is happening. And this isn't a one off or an isolated incident. I could tell you ten similar stories. Cancer diagnoses are down. Screenings are down. Mental health issues are up. My friends who are surgeons are seeing things they've never encountered before in their careers because it's never been left to get to that stage until now because the nhs basically closed its doors in April and people were frightened into not attending. This is only going to get worse thanks to the delays. As I've mentioned, many practices are being told to see "urgent" things only when so much of general practice is preventative, or incidental findings. What will the knock on effects be? The psychological warfare inflicted on the population of this country is responsible for people's non-attendance, not Covid. Our response to the virus is responsible for much of the misery caused not the virus itself.

Your argument is that without the lockdown hospitals might have been overwhelmed. My argument is that without it we don't know that they would have been and based on the data from the rest of the globe there are many suggestions that it wouldn't have been. However, due to the lockdown the above harms have been caused and are continuing to occur and will become much more apparent over the next decade.

In addition, if it is about protecting the nhs

1. Why did we first vaccinate those who are more likely to die than those more likely take valuable icu beds?
2. Why are we still in lockdown now the cases have fallen, hospitals are coping, there has been no world data showing a massive surge thanks to gentle societal reopening and the vulnerable are mostly vaccinated... yes we are coming out of lockdown but at a ridiculously slow pace. It's weeks before we're allowed to SIT OUTSIDE with someone. Months before any tangible freedom is returned to us.

@Chessie678

I agree with this. It would be very hard to look at data from across the world and conclude that a cycle of hard lockdowns over a period of a year is an effective way to save lives. Clearly it's a complicated data set in part because countries which happened to be badly hit by covid may have reacted with harsher measures but you still wouldn't expect so little relationship between measures taken and results if lockdowns were effective (UK was ranked sixth harshest lockdown in the world by a recent Oxford study and has one of the highest death rates). The data also does not bear out the people dying on the street, lights going off scenario which people often talk about or the idea that essential services would be more affected than they currently are in the UK if we hadn't locked down. It definitely doesn't support total bans on household mixing - most European countries haven't done this to the extent the UK has. Yet it now seems to be most people's implicit assumption that lockdowns save lives and that visiting your mum in her garden kills people.

I quite often see people say that things have been so bad with lockdown and this shows that they would be catastrophic without. But another way of looking at it is that for every additional covid death despite lockdown, the marginal benefit of lockdown decreases because there is an upper limit on the percentage of the population who would catch and die of covid. Ferguson initially predicted that there might be 20k deaths with lockdown - by this metric lockdown has completely failed as a policy. Deaths are 7 x that. The benefit of it is therefore at least 7 x lower than predicted. Ferguson also predicted that there might be 250k deaths with a protect the vulnerable strategy. I think that when deaths from covid and deaths caused by lockdown (including lowered life expectancy due to the economic consequences) are ultimately added together they will exceed that number.

There are lots of reasons that rolling lockdowns may not be very effective. In one day in lockdown the virus may spread less than it would without lockdown but this doesn't necessarily scale when you look over a year long period particularly as there may be a rebound effect when you open up. Let's say you have a bus driver who is exposed to 100 people each day. If 1 % of the population have covid and the bus driver has a 10% chance of catching it from an exposure they will, on average catch covid within 10 days. If, instead 1 in 1000 people have covid, they will, on average, catch it within 100 days. So they are still very likely to catch it within the course of a year even if rates are low even if their odds at each exposure are lower.

Some of the places where covid spreads best can't be closed e.g. hospitals and care homes. Lockdown measures may protect variants of covid spreading in hospitals, which are particularly likely to be more virulent, and favour more infectious strains (because only these survive social distancing and masks etc.). I don't know that any of the above theories are correct but it is more complicated than reducing social contact saving lives.

I think the theory of lockdown sort of makes sense but just isn't being born out in reality.

So many excellent points, this is a brilliant comment, thank you. Entirely how I feel about the situation. 3 weeks has morphed into a year and it just doesn't add up. Fully supported the three weeks. Also supportive of mild mitigation strategies as mentioned. Harsh lockdowns, ensuring that 1 in 6 people over 85 have died alone and without seeing their loved ones this year is not worth it!

In the face of something so new I’ll go with where the science leads.

This is not where the science leads though. As shown by this thread, there's a lot of conflicting science. I have attempted to look at both sides and have not yet found anything compelling in the harsh lockdowns work argument. I do however find the alternative, that lockdowns don't really achieve much, much more convincing.

"The science" until this year has stated that lockdowns are ineffective and there is no point using them to stop viral, airborne pathogens. This was the governments planned strategy. The lockdown and everything that is happening now isn't The Science. It is an experiment that has never been done before and which appears to be failing.

@SooziQue I am the GP you quoted above. I actually agree with you, it shouldn't be the public's duty to protect the NHS, it should be properly funded.

I also feel that lockdowns should not be a tool to keep this virus under control. After the first lockdown we should have had a proper test, track and trace system in place, everything has happened too slowly. The infection is just left to grow exponentially and then we end up in these shit lockdowns. If the government had increased the list of symptoms last year when we knew that there are many more symptoms than cough/fever/anosmia that would have helped. A firebreak in September probably would have helped.

I don't know where you are in the country but with our practice population (mostly BAME and deprived) we had people die in ambulances waiting to get into hospital. We've had a disproportionate number of patients (mostly male, diabetic) die. Far more deaths of Covid than anything else. For us we've been able to breathe a sigh of relief now as numbers have dropped massively. This needs to be the last lockdown. It will be interesting to see how vaccination affects things. I don't think this situation will repeat every winter because I hope the government will eventually learn from previous mistakes.

@TracyBeakerSoYeah

Quick question what are the parameters that other countries use when declaring a death due to Covid? As I understand in the UK any death where a patient has tested positive for Covid in the last 28 days is recorded as a Covid death. Does that mean if Joe Bloggs on his way to work got hit by a bus & died on route to hospital, but because he'd also had Covid very recently (tested positive 26 days ago but now recovered) does that mean he's actually recorded as a Covid death rather than just a road traffic crash/accident death? Even though it wasn't Covid that killed him. If this is correct then is this why our Covid death rates are so high?

Yes, this literally was happening. People were being coded as Covid deaths months after a positive. This is why Carl Heneghan (also a lockdown sceptic) lobbied the govt to have the 28 day limit introduced. I would imagine that even now there will be a not insignificant proportion who die of other things going down in the statistics. This is what I mean when I ask what will happen once everyone is vaccinated but we are still testing, finding positive cases (whether false or very mild cases) and then those people subsequently die? Will these be Covid deaths?

@FoolsAssassin

I think it is at this point it’s hard to make comparisons with other countries trajectories. There is such a variety of variables that are likely to effect it. Population numbers, distribution of population Eg. Are they clustered around cities or spread out more equally? The type of living accommodation, family groups, transport, weather, social behaviour (loads of these), types of jobs, physical health of the population, age distribution , method of care of the elderly off the top of my head and there will be many more.

It’s very complex and I think it would take ages to do a systematic review of all then studies and factor in all the things that needed to be considered and I don’t think enough time has passed yet for that to be done effectively.

I’m not reading the research anymore as have got to the point that for my mental stability it’s best not to.

What I don’t understand is where this lockdown fanatic thimg comes from? Who are these fanatics. Obviously we all live in our own bubbles but I don’t see anyone opinion the media or on social media being fanatical, it’s a case for the overwhelming majority that they feel lockdown is the least worst option. Yes there are a few who have embraced it and are seen saying how great it is but to focus on them ignores the huge numbers gritting their teeth and getting onwith itbin silence.

Agreed but comparable country comparisons can be made as well as inter-country comparisons. Denmark closed down several counties and kept several open and noted that it didn't make much difference.

You can't argue with stupid.

Well, you can, but I'm learning not to bother

To the poster with the graphs showing infections reducing after Xmas. Correlation is not causation

No, but when there is an excellent correlation and a good explanation that goes with it, we can infer causation.

Take the secondary school infection rates. They were soaring before Christmas. Most infected subset of the population. The infection rate peaked on Christmas Day, a week after secondary schools broke up, and have plummeted since. Secondary kids are now the 2nd least infected subset of the population.

Further test: Secondary schools were also closed for a week in October/November. Infection rates in secondary school pupils also dropped in that time with a week lag and then started to rise agin.

Correlation does not prove causation, but what is your reasonable alternative explanation for that data other than 'closing secondary schools works to reduce the infection rate in secondary school pupils'?

@WitchesBritchesPumpkinPants

You can't argue with stupid.

Well, you can, but I'm learning not to bother

Ain't that the truth.

For those who don't know, Carl Heneghan is another Great Barrington supporter.

For those interested in graphs and figures the year long threads on here are excellent.

Phew, the OP has gone to a lot of effort and I applaud them for that. Sadly all they have done IMHO is rehearse the arguments that have been dragged out time and time again, right down to the hit by a bus/car crash-recorded-as-covid-death trope. There is nothing new here.