Would you comply.. Yes or no? Circuit breaker or whatever they'll decide to turn it into.

[MarmitesMyMate]

No explanation needed. Just a yes or no.

For me it's a hard NO.

I don't think we need a March 2020 type lockdown. But we need to address the current situation or else we will get overwhelmed services, and that would still be horrible.

@Svara

The vast majority have some immunity, it isn't March 2020

That isn't the issue though.

Enough don't have immunity to cause a serious threat to the NHS. Sufficient to impact on treatment for non-covid emergencies. That's the issue.

@Yuledo

We know Boris doesn’t care about actual deaths. He’s said about letting the bodies pile up. If there is a lockdown, it will be to keep the country going. To stop everyone catching it at exactly the same time. To keep enough doctors, nurses, paramedics, lorry drivers, energy supply workers, supermarket workers, bin collectors, teachers etc, so that society itself, doesn’t breakdown.

It’s not about the numbers of deaths.

To be fair, it never was about the number of deaths - previous lockdowns were explicitly about 'saving the NHS' and other essential services and ensuring they weren't swamped with cases/understaffed due to the 'pingdemic'.

And on the subject of deaths, they're not going up. There are fewer daily deaths from Covid at the moment than there were in early November.

@Mreggsworth
I think what you're describing is more a black death type scenario. The majority of working age people with covid are not ill enough for it to significantly affect essential services for very long and would not literally all be ill at the same time even in a worse case scenario. The close contact isolation rules we have had likely caused much more of an impact on running these services than people being ill with covid could have.

Lockdown did result in the closure of essential services (like schools, dentists, opticians and vets for non-essential treatment, health visitors etc.) for months. People could still get food, unless they were too poor to due to the affects of lockdown, and the lights were kept on but otherwise almost everything else was shut down.

The affects of lockdown are long-term. Emergency healthcare being overwhelmed is an acute issue which is why it has had more attention. Spending essentially all of the country's financial resources on locking everyone in their house for months at a time and destroying a huge part of the economy plus the mental and physical health issues and lost education which lockdowns have caused is clearly going to cause significant long-term issues which will impact on the quality and quantity of the lives of millions of people probably over decades. The government hasn't even tried to model this - they acknowledged the issues and then said it was too difficult to assess the affects.

We don't know what case numbers or healthcare capacity would have been like without lockdowns particularly with previous variants. One effect of lockdowns, for example, seems to be to cause large peaks on exiting the lockdown.

I do think we need to acknowledge that after every lockdown we have seen a surge of cases. You are artificially suppressing the virus. It doesn’t actually go away. Do you want this surge in cases in February? When the boosters that the vulnerable had in August/Sept are wearing off?

Since July we have been waiting for the lag in deaths to catch up. It didn’t happen. They are not going up. We need to focus on this. We are nowhere near the situation we were in last Jan.

Do you want this surge in cases in February? When the boosters that the vulnerable had in August/Sept are wearing off?

Good point. In fact boosters may only last 2 months. They only raise the antibodies temporarily. Especially as they're not targeting omicron specifically.

Yes @Blubells I’m worried about how long boosters may last, I’d read not that long.

Controversial. But reports (small study) today are saying vaccination plus infection is offering a huge boost in antibodies. These will be longer lasting. Now I don’t recommend people go out and get Covid obviously. We don’t know who will be seriously ill. However, if the NHS can just get through this wave. The huge number of cases may not be a bad thing if it gives the population a bit of a super immunity boost. Especially with Omicron. Lots of cases amongst the young and healthy, they recover quickly and get back to work with an immune boost. They won’t be reinfected for a while. Scientists in the meantime can work on better boosters/vaccines and drugs.

We really don’t want to be pushing this wave out or extending it for months. A sharp peak (as tough as it will be) surely will be better.

I would go with Whitty on whether a very sharp peak in cases would be a good thing. He seems to think not.

Yes and Whitty is tasked with the health of the nation. Not the impact of lockdowns on the economy.
So as much as I respect him he’s not thinking of the whole picture.

@herecomesthsun you therefore think a surge of cases in Feb when the boosters are wearing off for the vulnerable is a good idea? That fills me with horror.

Whitty is probably better qualified re understanding the impact on the economy than Heneghan.

Whitty also has discussed the issue re the competing demands of health and economy at length.

To sum up, if we don't have functioning health and emergency services, it will really fuck up the economy because everything else won't be running either.

Yep and that’s the worse case scenario. They have to work with the worse case scenario as we’ve seen with the models.

I still think we hold firm and not push the wave out to February or prolong it for months. Not with the new information about the boosters.

Has Whitty said we need to lockdown? I haven’t seen that?

It's no coincidence that the latest variant , Omicron b. Is an anagram of No Crimbo!!

Also an anagram of moronic

Anyone else see this?

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/12/19/least-one-cabinet-minister-will-resign-government-opts-another/

“ Sir Graham said: “Ministers have got into the habit of thinking that they have a right to interfere in people’s family lives and livelihoods. They have no such right.

“What is more, the toll in terms of mental health, delayed treatment for other conditions and the catastrophic consequences for businesses, already shows this failed approach does more harm than good.”

Also good to see the difference between where we were last year irt hospitalisations and where we are this year.

This is why I really wonder whether any further restrictions are politically possible. Johnson won't survive much more.

@bumbleymummy

Anyone else see this?

An opinion piece behind a pay wall?

Well, I'm sure some people have seen it.

[quote Delatron]@herecomesthsun you therefore think a surge of cases in Feb when the boosters are wearing off for the vulnerable is a good idea? That fills me with horror.[/quote]
Well, I don't have information on the booster duration.

But I'm sure this issue will be factored into the advice given by Whitty , Vallance and JVT.

It would be plausible to get increased immunity accumulating with successive vaccinations. There is post infection immunity also of course but that comes with a higher cost of infection and death.

Another bonus of delaying infection is that there are excellent treatments from the look of it about to become available that are liable greatly to reduce mortality, which would be wonderful for cev people.

No way!

Understand if they shut shops, pubs etc there's not much we can do about that, but I will still see my family and friends. We're all vaccinated, do LFT's etc. The government keeps enforcing these restrictions on us while doing what they want, enough is enough.

Yea

@Chessie678

I'm not thinking of the black death. I know most working aged adults would not die from covid, but enough working aged people along with the vulnerable and the elderly would , which would
create a complete break down in services and the NHS. I'm not necessarily just talking about covid deaths, if the NHS crumbled deaths would pile up from road traffic accidents, heart attacks, strokes etc, from every bereavement theres then family and friends who stop working or become Ill themselves. The knock on effect would be much more anxiety provoking and distressing than that of lockdown.

Remember for a few weeks in Italy when bodies were left in corridors and families homes for days, that is a breif snapshot of what life would have been like without lockdown.

Nope we are the only people in our extended friends and family not to test positive despite being contacts >10 times. Already avoiding the oldies just incase but friends will always be welcome.

“ The knock on effect would be much more anxiety provoking and distressing than that of lockdown. ”

I don’t know that you can say that for sure. I don’t know if you saw my response upthread, but note I am talking about where we are now, and where the balance lies between the negative effects of locking down and not locking down. And I wonder if people realise what the first lockdown was like for some people. I see horrifying long term impacts of restrictions in my work. I don’t deny that many restrictions were likely necessary at that time, but now 20 ish months on we need to really think about which ones are meaningful and make an impact and which ones do more harm than good. I wish I could be so certain as you with this statement.

@RichTeaRichTea

“ The knock on effect would be much more anxiety provoking and distressing than that of lockdown. ”

I don’t know that you can say that for sure. I don’t know if you saw my response upthread, but note I am talking about where we are now, and where the balance lies between the negative effects of locking down and not locking down. And I wonder if people realise what the first lockdown was like for some people. I see horrifying long term impacts of restrictions in my work. I don’t deny that many restrictions were likely necessary at that time, but now 20 ish months on we need to really think about which ones are meaningful and make an impact and which ones do more harm than good. I wish I could be so certain as you with this statement.

I think it's a very good thing that you aren't.

@gettingolderandgrumpy

You know the answer to that from watching the news

If you don’t it not my job to ensure at this stage you are educated.

I will give clues

Vaccinated can transmit.
Even is O is milder than D
Transmission for much faster and move
The numbers will be huge
So even the small portion harms the NHS
Then people die of Covid and other things (the normal things that people survive from)

That’s how you are harming others