Why do restrictions have to be introduced?

[Dancerinthedark01]

Vaccines were meant to stop the spread.

Vaccines were meant to prevent hospitalisation.

Fine - if they’re not working let’s admit that. Then I understand the need for restrictions again.

But if vaccines work why are we back in this position?

Ye SI know they are successful at preventing hospitalisation but less so at preventing spread which ultimately can transmit to the vulnerable. I’m double jabbed and can’t wait for my booster. Just wondering what is so hard for the op to grasp?? It’s for our protection fgs.

“Successful” is a relative term. Over 150 people are dying in the UK every day from covid.

Everyone keeps comparing it to January. I don’t care? I care that people are still dying, and that some simple measures in place such as ongoing use of face masks, would make this number smaller.

The stupid thing is, we were told around this time last year that vaccines would be the way out and back to freedom and some normality. Now we’re being told exactly the same thing and are expected to believe that?
Vaccines DID return us to freedom and normality! We have been living normally, shops and restaurants open, kids in school, etc. But that won’t last forever because vaccines wear off. If we want to stay in that freedom and normality then we need to have booster jabs, probably 1-2 times a year.

@Marelle

I didn’t sign up to the prospect of being vaccinated every 6 months I didn’t sign up for the Covid pandemic at all. Tough though innit! If we need twice yearly vaccinations to keep it under control and be able to live normally then I guess we have to accept that.

Lots of things in life I didn't sign up for: Injecting myself weekly with low dose chemotherapy for my autoimmune disease. Having a neurological condition. Having a stupidly shaped nose. Not winning the lottery.

One thing I've learned in life and pandemics is you've got to roll with the punches. Moaning about it is fine and natural, however - I do it all the time particularly about the lottery thing

I think people heard what they wanted to hear with the vaccines ,they are doing their job far less people are becoming unwell and needing hospital treatment ,but we were always told they would lose their effectiveness over time and boosters maybe necessary ,as for restrictions I distinctly remember Boris Johnson saying they couldn't rule out having to bring back restrictions,Id needed and there was always concern that we might be in for a rough winter the virus doesn't care that we have all had enough of it,I'm happy to take a Booster if needed so we can try and have a normal ( ish ) life .

@FlyLight

We spent the whole of last year being told children and young people don't catch covid, they don't spread it, don't get ill, no transmission in schools etc. Now suddenly it's them that are the problem. Agree with the pp in saying it should be a case of vaccinate the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with it. This disease is still mild for the vast majority of people!

I think we have always know children and young people can catch the virus 'and spread it ,hence closing schools, just that the vast majority will be either asymptomatic ,or have very mild symptoms.

The thing is that vaccines were the way out for the initial strain. Then Delta came along and although vaccines are still worthwhile, the virus is more transmissible and people still become ill.

BUT what some people forget is what it was like at the beginning of the pandemic: the scenes in Italy, people hospitalised here (eg Boris!) a d the virus running rampant through nursing homes. The vaccine has worked. It may not be 100% , but it has enabled us to carry on.

Btw, a big hiss and boo to the usual suspects on these threads who seem to be implying that a) vaccines are crap and b) the UK got it all wrong (as per usual) by vaccinating too early . Funny how some posters have this crystal ball - except that they never mentioned the too early thing at the start of 2021.

For those saying we were told a lie about children not spreading it etc, wasn’t it Switzerland, very early on in the pandemic, that were actively encouraging under 10s to hug their grannies! Now that was a risky strategy (luckily they didn’t have delta then)

@KimDeals

Over half a million people die in the U.K. every year

[quote GreenLakes]@KimDeals

Over half a million people die in the U.K. every year[/quote]
And normally we try and do everything we can as a society to avoid deaths which could have been prevented.

@Iggly no we really, really don’t. We certainly don’t take anything like the measures we have taken to prevent Covid, to prevent other avoidable deaths.

Vaccines were to stop people dying from covid. Nothing more.

We certainly don’t take anything like the measures we have taken to prevent Covid, to prevent other avoidable deaths

It has never been about preventing deaths - that is just a side effect. Lockdown came about because it was recognised that left to it’s own devices, covid had the potential to destroy - albeit temporarily - the functioning of civilised society. The more people getting sick, the more people need a hospital bed, the less able the system is to deal with genuine medical emergencies and the preventable deaths that would ensue. On top of that, without restrictions, we run the risk of essential workers getting sick en masse which equals issues with food on supermarket shelves, delayed repairs to water/gas/electric/phone services, the closure of pharmacies, non-working social services, non-functioning of the courts, less of a police presence, etc etc. When that happens, you have panic set in, crime, food shortages, rioting. That is way harder to come back from than asking people to stay at home and initiating a furlough scheme. We forget how frightening it was in the early days and because the worst didn’t happen we assume that it wouldn’t have happened. It most definitely could have happened,

Absolutely, @Getawaywithit . It seems people have very short memories.

@RafaIsTheKingOfClay

"Eradication or zero covid were options but we’ve probably missed the boat on those. Not because it wasn’t possible, but because of lack of willpower to do what was necessary. "

++++

I'm sorry but you really are kidding yourself that eradication or zero Covid was ever an attainable option.
By the time Western Governments even knew of its existence it was already rampant across China and probably starting in parts of the West.

It's a coronavirus of which there are 7 in circulation, one caused SARS, one caused MERS, one caused Covid and the other four cause common colds. On that basis you have as much chance of eradicating Covid as you do of eradicating the common cold.

@KimDeals

“Successful” is a relative term. Over 150 people are dying in the UK every day from covid.

Everyone keeps comparing it to January. I don’t care? I care that people are still dying, and that some simple measures in place such as ongoing use of face masks, would make this number smaller.

Cutting out junk food and sugar would also cut lots of deaths out every day.

Stopping cars cometary would save countless lives.. .

Shall we do these aswell?

Some of these responses remind me a bit of 'Black Lives Matter' followed by some saying 'All Lives Matter'.

Shall we do these aswell

Using your logic, shall we ditch seat belts? Stop all vaccinations, not just covid ones? Stop food hygiene measures? Forget medicine altogether? Revert back to survival of the fittest?

@Iggly

Shall we do these aswell

Using your logic, shall we ditch seat belts? Stop all vaccinations, not just covid ones? Stop food hygiene measures? Forget medicine altogether? Revert back to survival of the fittest?

Obviously my reply was tounge in cheek. Although banning smoking, alcohol and fast food would save count less lives but everyone isn't desperate for us to save those preventable lives... why is covid so different.

The reason we don't stop those things is simply money. No different with covid. The more restrictions we have the less the economy will grow.

@Tuba437

There's a pretty obvious difference between individuals icing individual unhealthy lives and the spread of a contagious disease.

Plus the healthcare implications of a rapid increase in COVID cases - even if we had a ten-fold increase in smoking overnight we'd have time to plan for the consequences in 20+ years' time.

Icing = living ()

SARS one and MERS are not currently in circulation and if they pop up we try very hard to stop them. That's not to say I think eradication was possible for SARS-Cov-2, but I don't think it's quite true to say that there are 7 coronaviruses in circulation.

I do agree with a previous poster about the fact that we didn't do everything we did just to prevent deaths. If Covid had killed people neatly and suddenly like a heart attack then we would probably have tolerated even more deaths, to be honest. What was seen as completely intolerable from the point of view of keeping society functioning and sane was the potential chaos of hospitals, businesses, education and services overwhelmed ten times over, things like people fighting to get into hospitals to steal oxygen for family members because they'd have no hope of getting any any other way, lots of people dying at home who would have survived with some treatment even if they didn't need ventilators and so on. Now that would have had a hell of an effect on children's mental health. Vaccines mean that we shouldn't ever be in danger of that again, although that doesn't mean rates can't still creep up to a point where services are overwhelmed enough to do a lot of damage.

The vaccines are a kind of flood barrier which we didn't have last year, but that now needs shoring up with boosters as it's beginning to let more water through - not as much as last year, but enough to it could do a lot of damage still. So we might have to go back to putting more sandbags everywhere temporarily, and maybe in some places even long term, but we're still benefiting massively from the flood barrier.

@Tuba437

The reason we don't stop those things is simply money. No different with covid. The more restrictions we have the less the economy will grow.

Profit above people? Wealth above health?

And that pretty much sums up the problem with our society and economy.

And I will add. This government has put the wealth of a few individuals above the health of our nation (like many other countries).

They’ve under funded key national services such as the nhs and social health care so that they cannot cope with covid. So we end up with lockdowns.

If they’d restructured the system better to invest in the NHS, then we’d not have had such a shit show and needed lockdowns. Same for so many countries across the world.

The capitalist system we have is broken.