What do you think should happen?

[Jourdain11]

Rather than, "we're going to lockdown again, aren't we?" I'm interested to know what people think should happen.

I think we should avoid lockdown at all costs. I'm also not in favour of restrictions being brought in, unless they are ones where it is clear that the benefits broadly outweigh the negatives.

If we need to have mandatory mask-wearing in public settings, proper masks should be provided at a set rate or free of charge. This would be expensive, but IMO would be a better use of funds than endless asymptomatic testing.

I do think that ultimately, asymptomatic testing needs to stop at some point. I'm not sure cases are such a useful way of measuring the impact of Covid any more and it creates a lot of public anxiety.

I also think that Covid has exposed a lot of health inequalities and these need to be addressed, so that the population can generally be in better health. Social prescribing is a good idea, but it isn't used widely or effectively enough.

I am against lockdown, closing school and work from home orders.

I am also against weird, pointless and ill-thought-out measures, like substantial meals, etc.!

I would be on board with localised restrictions if they were necessary.

@olivehater

It isn’t deranged to turn away care to the unvaccinated. If they have turned away the vaccine which is distributed by the nhs why do they suddenly want their care when they get sick from Covid?

Why should a cancer sufferer lose a bed to a selfish vaccine refuser.

That is not ethical to me. But obvs I know this will never fly. It’s just what should happen.

You can’t rank people like that. What if the cancer sufferer smoked for years and refused to stop despite medical advice? Or someone needs care due to an accident caused by their own negligence. Or someone who crashed their car because they were drunk. Or someone who could have had the flu vaccine but didn’t and now needs to be hospitalised. Decisions people make will be a factor in all sorts of illnesses and hospitalisation.

You can’t rank people like that. What if the cancer sufferer smoked for years and refused to stop despite medical advice? Or someone needs care due to an accident caused by their own negligence. Or someone who crashed their car because they were drunk. Or someone who could have had the flu vaccine but didn’t and now needs to be hospitalised. Decisions people make will be a factor in all sorts of illnesses and hospitalisation

Yep, is why the NHS priorities people due to need and not morals. Imagine rocking up to A&E and being triaged based on how you got ill/injured?

@CarlaH

Localised restrictions are pointless. People will just travel to where there aren't any and socialise there.

This. Plus, it's always biased towards keeping London open even when it was obvious they should have been in tier 3 last winter.

How can anyone be naive enough to think all CV should shield!? From my experience in schools, very few staff have it for just 10 days. More like 3-4 weeks. And blithely bring in supply ( who will also be shielding). My dd is in y11. She’s been fucked around at school for 18 months due to Covid. I don’t want random supply teachers drafted in to teach her. She’s already had enough in continuity.

More mitigations in school are the answer.

Incontinuity

Nothing. Back to normal.

it's always biased towards keeping London open even when it was obvious they should have been in tier 3 last winter.

I wish my area had done the same as London instead of kicking the can down the road. We'd be free now.

I never said I thought it could happen just that that’s what I think should happen.

It isn’t completely without merit. I read in the US there was talk of prioritizing the vaccinated for beds as they had a better chance of survival.

@olivehater

I never said I thought it could happen just that that’s what I think should happen.

It isn’t completely without merit. I read in the US there was talk of prioritizing the vaccinated for beds as they had a better chance of survival.

Double jabbed elderly are still dying here. They are more likely to die than someone half their age who is not jabbed at all.

The talk of saving Pret is very city-centric. Our commuter town seems to be doing quite well from the WFHers where previously it was dying.

It is indeed city-centric.

No one mentions how the little butty shops in the suburbs are booming.

You can’t rank people like that. What if the cancer sufferer smoked for years and refused to stop despite medical advice? Or someone needs care due to an accident caused by their own negligence. Or someone who crashed their car because they were drunk. Or someone who could have had the flu vaccine but didn’t and now needs to be hospitalised. Decisions people make will be a factor in all sorts of illnesses and hospitalisation.

But arguably we are ranking people... People aren't getting the non-Covid treatment they need due to how Covid has impacted on the NHS. It's all very well to say we should treat everyone, and of course we should if we can, but we seem unable to do that, and no amount of "but we can't do that" changes the reality.

Perhaps we need one every autumn to stop viruses in their tracks. After all hospitals getting overwhelmed in winter is not a new thing

Welcome to NHS healthcare..................which is dependent on you not seeing your mum every autumn/winter.

Secondly, if it was to happen how will it be enforced? Will the police be banging on the door demanding to come in and check who’s in my home? The police forces are so stretched as it is that I’d rather they were able to concentrate on real crime

I used the usual taxi driver to come home from my parents tonight. Nice bloke Very reliable. Always turns up when he says he will.

He was attacked tonight. A while before he came to pick me up. A group of drunks tried to drag him out of the car, put a huge dent on the passenger side which will cost £600 to fix. He called the police They wouldnt come out and told him to come to the police station. Quite how he was supposed to do that i dont know. If he got out of the car they would have set about him, If he had tried to drive off to the police station and injured one of them HE would be the one in trouble.

If they start enforcing new or regurgitated restrictions round here there will likely be a revolt after things like this!!!

Good analysis here, plus in the comments Jeremy Farrar chipping in:

mobile.twitter.com/ewanbirney/status/1451945802646138887

I'm another in the "nothing" camp.

We have never ditched the masks in Scotland and they make not one jot of difference to rates/numbers. Same as social distancing - my son is s first year at Uni and has THREE classes on campus (socially distanced) between September and January.

Concentrate on the vaccinations, the boosters, getting through to the (according to Travelling Tabby) 12% of the population who are eligible for the vaccination but who haven't had it.

Leave the rest of us to get on with it.

Huge effort to make the vaccine rollout to teenagers work ASAP.
Make sure everyone has their booster as soon as they are eligible to do so.
Extend the booster programme to 40+
Vaccine passports.
Those who refuse to have the vaccine can stay at home.

Learn to live with it.

There needs to be more resource behind the vaccination campaign. Where I live, the one surgery that covers the town has decided it can't do vaccinations this time round, as they need to catch up with the backlog of treatment that they've now got. Therefore (apart from the housebound/nursing homes) we'll all have to trek off to other towns, which effectively rules out anyone who doesn't have their own transport/can't book online/is a bit frail and confused/can't get time off work etc etc. So, if you replicate that up and down the country, you can quite see why they're not charging through enough vaccinations at the rate they were in the spring. There quite clearly needs also to be more support in hospitals and social care for all the reasons people have been talking about in this and other threads. The only problem is that the only people who can fix all of this is the government, and - on their recent record - that's unlikely to happen. It's much easier for them and their spin-doctors to pit us all against each other in fairly pointless arguments about masks and vaccine passports and social distancing.

Doing nothing is a positive option

What I think should happen is long term investment in stuff that will benefit everyone not just in relation to CV

So, huge investment in preventative health care. Helping the population stay healthier and fitter in general to reduce all illness, not just covid.

Investment in health and social care so that the NHS isn't permanently on the edge of just coping.

Too late now but I also think there should have been investment in helping create outside spaces for people to socialise in (think that has been mentioned by a PP) Instead of 'eat out to help out ' there should have been incentives for businesses that could to expand their outside space.

Investment in schools to have smaller classes and more time outside for PE and things like forest school. Would help with catch up as well as transmission. Getting people other than teachers involved in schools- so specialists in things like music, dance, sports. Would also create employment in a sector that's been hard hit by restrictions and create a broader, holistic curriculum that should benefit children's mental health.

I'd probably also introduce a basic income (I'd have done this in 2020 instead of furlough.) It would make it easier for people to isolate if necessary and adjust to changes in work patterns.

Have a proper risk/benefit of restrictions - making people especially stay at home and be less active and healthy and more isolated creates all sorts of long term problems.

Unfortunately most of my solutions are a bit 'I wouldn't start from here ' so what I'd actually do know I don't know!

I'd be on board with masks and WFH.
Absolutely not on board with school bubbles. It was so restrictive in my DC school, it was pretty miserable for them and they've been robbed of enough already. They are so much happier this year at school now the rules have been relaxed.

Oh, and they need to speed up the vax for teens, give them 2 doses not one.
Give every adult a 3rd dose asap as there is now very clear evidence for hugely increased protection.

I think Nothing should happen. Sincerely hope government holds its nerve.

@RolloTomassi

I think Nothing should happen. Sincerely hope government holds its nerve.

Best hope you and no-one you love needs healthcare over the winter, eh?

Nothing and stop testing and only stay home if symptomatics as with other illnesses. We have thrown everything at this and now we have to live with it and should be able to do so especially as we are able to accept a vaccine to protect us from severe disease/hospitalisation. The knock on effects of further lockdowns are just too severe on other care e.g. oncology diagnosis, likely more severe flu and RSVs etc due to not being in regular contact with people.

What we need to do is look more critically at how the NHS can be funded. It's such a treasured institution that noone has dared tampering with the funding aspect but perhaps we do need to introduce a low-level charge (with a ceiling so that those with chronic diseases aren't disadvantaged); that would stop the huge number of people who go do the doctors (insisting on antibiotics - resistance to a/biotics being a major issue) for minor colds.