Anyone want a perpetual lockdown

[beentoldcomputersaysno]

I often see posters accused of wanting continual lockdowns, despite their post not suggesting it. I often assume it's done to deflect or antagonise posters who suggest a health measure(s) to adapt to life post-2019. However, is there anyone who posts on this board that does want perpetual lockdowns?

@VikingOnTheFridge

You said that people wanting to know what you meant by using a term that in fact has multiple, very different definitions were nit picking. This was based on the grossly arrogant assumption that the definition you're familiar with is the only one in existence, that people in another society couldn't possibly use a word differently to you, and wouldn't have happened if you'd done a few checks or even bothered to ask. That's how low the bar was.

The very last words I'll say to you on this is - go back over the posts on this thread. This grossly misrepresents what I said.

There are drugs available in other countries that work to protect the immunosuppressed but our gov doesn't seem bothered to let us have them.

I had no idea this was the case, and I think it's appalling. Do you have a link to further details @TesOignons? I'd happily write to my MP - or is there a petition at all?

Incidentally I don't like wearing masks (this is partly because I generally have a toddler with me, and also at the moment they make my morning sickness worse). I would however never judge someone else for wearing one - I take the view that you never know what health conditions or worries someone has. In fact, before masks were compulsory, if I saw someone wearing one, I'd always be very careful to keep a good distance from them, as I'd assume that they either had a health condition, or were very worried. In neither case would I want to stress them out by getting close to them.

Yes, sorry wrong petition.

[quote PandorasBex]@VikingOnTheFridge

You said that people wanting to know what you meant by using a term that in fact has multiple, very different definitions were nit picking. This was based on the grossly arrogant assumption that the definition you're familiar with is the only one in existence, that people in another society couldn't possibly use a word differently to you, and wouldn't have happened if you'd done a few checks or even bothered to ask. That's how low the bar was.

The very last words I'll say to you on this is - go back over the posts on this thread. This grossly misrepresents what I said.[/quote]
I assume it's the swears that got me deleted, so I'll try again and be sure to stay within guidelines. Because it's actually really important you aren't permitted to claim this and it not be corrected.

Below are the exact words you wrote in response to me saying I wished people would be clear what they meant by social distancing because it has multiple meanings.

'It really doesn't in the context of this pandemic, and to claim so is simply being vexatious'

It's very, very clear what you meant.

I don't want a return to the restrictions in place this time last year, or anything similar. I'd like to work from home almost all of the time though, as I think I can do a better job and save time/money.

I do think some like it. One of my friends and her family are still in seige mode despite not having any underlying conditions and being fully jabbed. They don't see or do anything beyond country walks. Very odd way to bring up a child. And they're naturally warm outgoing people. I think they enjoy the covid lifestyle. Also, our next door neighbours never go anywhere or see anyone. They're shy introverts. Again, I think the covid lifestyle is easier for them.

@Emergency73

Selfishness is hardly a new characteristic of our politics. But what is striking today is how the politicians and commentators using it sneer at those who stand in their way. There is a cruelty to this politics that is breathtaking. The rightwing commentator Douglas Murray complained in the Sun on Sunday of Britons’ “terrible fearfulness”. He didn’t trace this to the fact that the country is mourning more than 150,000 Covid deaths.

Perhaps it's worth considering that many of those deaths were down to government policy, not individuals questioning the more arbitrary and demonstrably stupid rules. Don't forget it was the government who approved and encouraged the sending of infectious people INTO care homes, who were given almost no support for their staff or patients in terms of additional money or access to PPE. Don't forget the previous decade of asset-stripping and profiteering with regard to health and social care - OK, no government could have fixed that immediately once the pandemic was clearly approaching, but the Tories took steps to make that aspect worse. This is why the whole mess has been made into a moral panic, devoid of logic - keep the peasants busy blaming one another while we get on with picking their pockets. So every suggestion about how everyday life could be made safer was either ignored or those making it were bombarded with witless screaming about how they wanted everyone's gran to die (I'm talking things like HEPA air scrubbers, moving events outdoors, assessing workplaces for adequate ventilation rather than how 'essential' they were, etc). Because the Tories didn't want to enforce the provision of adequate sick pay, didn't consider low-paid key workers as human beings (oh, they're wonderful, they eat applause and pay their bills with it), couldn't be bothered with funding competent health and safety assessors to see that workplace ventilation was improved, etc. Even furlough, the great 'socialist-type intervention that helped so many' was designed to keep the middle classes quiet and stop them realising how awful and punitive Universal Credit was. Not only did millions of people find they somehow didn't qualify for it, but it mainly benefited large corporations rather than independent businesses.

I wouldn't say I want forever lockdown. I certainly hate the masks and not being able to go to the cinema and the hassle of going on holiday.

But I would like to see the continuation of being able to work from home, more flexible working.

Also I worry about the elderly and vulnerable (I'm vulnerable). I think Covid is a greater risk than other illnesses and it will still be a while before we can really see it as just another illness.

Poverty has always been a greater health risk than Covid, though. Malnutrition will fuck your health up for the rest of your life, even if you reach a point where you can get adequate food.

@Wreath21

I agree with you on every single point. I’m addition - we’ve hoarded all the vaccines, if you consider poverty on a global level.

But why are they there? We put them there.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

And I’m not sure our response has been dramatically different from other Western nations. And the factor that we all have in common? Individualism. Except we have a particularly individualistic leader in power.

And we, as the people - are we truly better? I’m hoping that some of the views on here are still in the minority - but they read like something straight from the ReformUK manifesto.

I feel the same re extreme views in other direction.

Minimising hardships and missing the reality of life for many over the pandemic.

It’s sad to read, but probably an extreme form of self protection and defensive stance

@MarshaBradyo

I feel the same re extreme views in other direction.

Minimising hardships and missing the reality of life for many over the pandemic.

It’s sad to read, but probably an extreme form of self protection and defensive stance

Yes, absolutely.

Collectivism is the correct response to a pandemic.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has been characterized by marked variations in prevalence, mortality and case fatality across nations. The available evidence to date suggests that social factors significantly influence these variations. The sociological concepts of individualism and collectivism provide a broad explanatory framework for the study of these factors. There is evidence to suggest that cross-cultural variations in collectivism may have emerged via a process of natural selection, as a protective mechanism against infectious diseases. As a test of this hypothesis, this paper examined the association between indices of individualism and collectivism and the prevalence, mortality and case fatality rates of COVID-19 across nations.

The conflict is right there in the opening words of the document that founded the United States of America. Everyone has a right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Few would disagree with Thomas Jefferson’s declaration of principle. But what happens when life and liberty come into conflict?

Plainly, liberty must have some limits. And the coronavirus pandemic, posing a threat to life that can only be fought by collective actions to which some won’t consent, revealed that few in the Western world knew where to put those limits, or even what they meant when they talked of liberty.

“A lot of people abuse the idea of liberty and they present it as a fine sounding concept that in fact is just a placeholder for something else that concerns them or bothers them. It’s a fine sounding placeholder for saying that they will do what they want to do and get out of my way.”

An individualistic response to Covid would result in many many millions more dying worldwide - is that acceptable so that those who are still living have a better quality of life and freedom?

But of course, only the sort of collectivism that ignores everything other than covid. We can't be having a form that takes into account the harmful impact of lockdowns.

Collectivism is the correct response to a pandemic.

But collectivism doesn't have anything to say about whether our actions are for good. And there's no getting away from it: many of the measures have been highly questionable.

To make a few examples, sacrificing our children's education, spending on measures in ignorance of a means to pay, measures with benefits skewed towards those older and already better-off.

Collectivism without criticism and oversight is at best naive but benign, and at worst harmful and corrupt. Seems our version has been more the latter.

There's been a definite increase in tankie rhetoric on this forum in the last week or two.

Like the "put cheese in coffee" comment that was never actually said. (What was said was that cheese is a good source of calcium)

Interesting! It's been mentioned so many times that I assumed it was true, but having done some searching you're right. It was first mentioned by a poster called Teacupdrama on 30 April 2020. Initially it was just a thing 'some idiots' were suggesting, no source. Then the same poster started popping up on threads everywhere claiming that someone on MN had suggested it a week or so ago.

To answer the OPs question, no I don't want continual 'lockdowns' (I call them restrictions as most people were able to leave their house and do things such as food shopping). I do want some measures whilst around 80,000 people each day are diagnosed with Covid, and over 100 dying daily. Measures based on medical evidence not the need to keep 80 or so Tory MPs happy.

We have come full circle, then, with someone saying they want restrictions not lockdown . When should restrictions be lifted, @northumberlandavenue ? What covid infections/deaths are ok? Or perhaps none are? What restrictions do you have in mind?

Fwiw I am very happy to continue with mask wearing, especially in hospitals/at the doctor’s and particularly in winter.

My memory of the original “cheese in coffee” suggestion was that it was a thread about how often anyone needed to go shopping, with some very firmly of the view that nobody should be going out more than once a week.

Discussion got into what happens if you run out of milk mid-week and surely milk was an essential, someone (seriously) suggested that cheese was a perfectly good source of calcium if you didn’t have milk, and someone else said “doesn’t taste as good grated into coffee though.”

But i also remember that as the thread where somebody genuinely was talking about going hungry rather than going out shopping more frequently during lockdown, which is pretty sad really.