Wonder if lockdowns will just be a thing?

[Wrensrobinsandsparrows]

Does anyone else wonder sometimes if jan and feb will just become months where schools and businesses close and the year will adjust accordingly? I know, probably not, but I wonder.

@llanfairfechan

We have not had one lockdown at all, just a series of restrictions. Nothin remotely like Spain in March/April 2020, or Australia, or New Zealand.

I don't expect anything like the level of closures seen between January and May 2021 to be repeated in early 2022, or any future years.

What, do you mean in the U.K.? We’ve had lockdowns..

Yes in the UK, we could go for a walk, go to work if not an office, go shopping. Spanish children could not leave their house.

@llanfairfechan

Yes in the UK, we could go for a walk, go to work if not an office, go shopping. Spanish children could not leave their house.

Yes that was very bad re children. Shouldn’t have happened.

I’d still say we had lockdowns when schools were shut too and all we had was the exercise per day and food shop.

@Livelifeinthebuslane

I still don’t think she should be paying 9k a year to train as a nurse though, just my opinion. She should be trained, whilst receiving a decent wage and tuition fees paid for. My mother and sisters are all nurses and have advised many people not to train under the current system, particularly when they will be paying back their loans for years to come.

A large percentage of current cohorts are younger students which is no bad thing, but lacking in diversity when traditionally older student nurses brought lots of useful life experience to the table.

They never should have cut the bursary, and the 5k grants are nothing but a token gesture.

We've had 3 lockdowns in England - I know as I was unable to work as my place of work was closed - gyms - and was not eligible for SEISS as too recently self-employed. Just because we can go to supermarket or a walk does not mean there was not a lockdown. It is one thing to be locked down but another to have no money because of criteria being used - no way can we keep locking down. People have killed themselves, lost homes, got into debt. I read on here so many people who can work from home and get stuff delivered and who don't bother with restaurants/pubs/cinemas/gyms are quite happy with restrictions.

@Stopsnowing

It would have been sensible to have had circuit breaking lockdowns during school holidays

Circuit breakers are utterly useless so no i wouldn't.

I still don’t think she should be paying 9k a year to train as a nurse though, just my opinion

I don't disagree, I was just making the point that there are still lots of people who want to do it. My DD has been working for the NHS for a while but not in a clinical role, and I think will find it strange to be learning and living with people just out of school, but it's what she wants to do despite my efforts to persuade her to get an apprenticeship!

@llanfairfechan

I will let all the people I know who died (not from Covid) or killed themselves know that we did not have any lockdowns in the UK.

@Livelifeinthebuslane

From what I can gather the applications this year have gone up for adult nursing, however 3-4 years ago the applications hit rock bottom for nursing which in hindsight was clearly a terrible thing to happen as it coincided with what would have been 2020s cohorts qualifying year.

Mental health and learning disability nursing is also struggling to recruit in many areas.

Good luck to your daughter.

@Katie517

OP who do you suggest will pay for this? And do you actually think people will accept that 2 months of their year are lockdown months, you know screw any children or adults that happen to be born in those months they are destined to a life without birthday parties. What a ridiculous post.

Birthday parties? Odd priority.

Birthday parties? confused Odd priority.

Not for kids and young adults.

No OP. Humans aren't built to live in lockdowns. I imagine compliance will be severely limited if they try this again and it's only going to be increasing cost for diminishing returns from here on in.

We have not had one lockdown at all, just a series of restrictions

🙄

What the actual fuck do people think they are achieving with comments like this? Pointless, stupid hairsplitting.

It was illegal for me to see my elderly parents. That is plenty stringent enough thanks very much.

In some ways the UK lockdowns were lighter than other countries but in other ways they were worse. The rules on mixing in private households in the UK were very draconian and few countries went so far as to ban people seeing their family in their own home for such a long period.

I think there was a study which found that the UK had the sixth harshest lockdown rules in the world at one point.

What Spain did to children was abusive in my opinion not to mention completely pointless.

@Prescottdanni123

People who do test positive for HIV can live healthy, normal lives. Because we have learnt to live with it

It’s true that, thanks to research, we now have medication which prevents HIV developing into AIDS and give HIV positive people a near normal life. Fantastic.

And hopefully, with research and time, we will have a combination of vaccines and treatments which reduce the death/disability rate from Covid to near zero. And then, living with it will be the life we have always known, with a small number of annual deaths.

But we are not there yet.

“Living with it” at the moment means either some degree of restriction, especially when a new variant comes along, , or if we don’t have the restrictions, then a large number of deaths. Not just from Covid, but from all the other things that will go untreated while the hospitals struggle to cope with all the Covid cases.

So, will lockdowns just be a thing? I don’t think anyone can be sure, but I do think the Government really want to avoid them. So if it does happen, it will be because they really can’t avoid it, and it will be as short as possible.

And the best way to avoid them is to adhere to whatever lesser restrictions are in place and get your boosters.

There has to be a serious conversation about NHS investment.

@HopefulHetty

I mean you would have thought those serious conversations would have happened by now?

Fucking absolute numpties though Tories, no other words to describe them.

Absolutely.
Feels like groundhog Day. And it oughtn't to at this point.

No simple answer I'm afraid my answer is it depends.

If we had adequate mitigations i.e. masks in all indoor settings, minimum ventilation standards in all public buildings enforced by local authority, ventilation in schools, financial support to isolate, high rates of vaccination across the world (i.e. remove patents from vaccine) then no we would not end up in a position where we need lockdowns every year in the short to medium term future.

If we keep doing nothing them acting surprised when cases get out of control then yes we will need them.

In the long term Covid is likely to become endemic but we're a way off that yet. It's up to us really how we proceed for the next couple of years. Boom and bust or steady control.

@Wrensrobinsandsparrows

But they don’t, necessarily, do they? AIDS didn’t, for instance.

Eh?!? Wtaf

Of course they will - hey what's another 2 trillion pounds next year and every year thereafter? Who needs civilisation and a functioning economy?!

I think you have a point about January/February actually. They're really miserable months - hospitals are stretched every year, suicides are a lot higher and climate change is going to hit the UK hard in those months (as is already happening). Not lockdown exactly but maybe more of a WFH culture until Spring.

It’s an interesting concept and no doubt not off the table if these annual winter waves are to continue.

I’ve been saying this for a good while now but we’re going to have to accept we can not live with Covid untamed relying only on vaccines. It’s just not possible no matter how hard we try to ignore it or wish it away.

Yes people will suffer, businesses will have to adapt (gyms for example would see a rebound from a spring reopening) and it won’t be easy at all but it’s a discussion and reality we will need to have and face soon if we are to move on and regain control of our lives.

Winter lockdowns, a total overhaul of the NHS infrastructure and a rethink of the education calendar must be considered in order to provide a semblance of stability and positive outlook for the country as a whole.

Covid is here to stay whether we like it or not, there’s no escaping this fact. We can either remain defiant and insist it adapt to us (which it won’t) or we gain the upper hand and change our behaviours to adapt to it.

Otherwise this hamster wheel just keeps spinning.

We certainly have an unsustainably low number of hospital beds.

@Chessie678

In some ways the UK lockdowns were lighter than other countries but in other ways they were worse. The rules on mixing in private households in the UK were very draconian and few countries went so far as to ban people seeing their family in their own home for such a long period.

I think there was a study which found that the UK had the sixth harshest lockdown rules in the world at one point.

What Spain did to children was abusive in my opinion not to mention completely pointless.

In Japan it's against the law to lockdown yet they've handled the pandemic so much better than many other countries. There will be lots of reasons why of course, less poverty, better hygiene and health service but still interesting.

I don't think so, hopefully not anyway! It had occurred to me though that as schools are a big driver for spread, would it not be a good idea to restructure the school year for the time being so that there are more frequent, shorter holidays instead of the massive long one in the summer. Children would get the same number of schooling days per year but with built-in 'circuit breaker'-type holidays every few weeks to stop Covid spreading too widely in any one setting. No doubt it would cause all sorts of problems I haven't thought of and it's probably a crap idea 😆