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?

@DottyHarmer

It doesn’t matter how much you improve conditions; not many want to do it and staff turnover is huge. Having had both Pil long-term in care homes I know that even with excellent pay and terms of service, the bottom line (pun intended) you are dealing with wiping bums and feeding and cleaning people, by the law of averages often not very nice people. To imagine that every care worker is going to be a saintly vocational worker if only you paid enough is preposterous. The options are importing overseas staff infinitum (because it’s ok for them to do it), robots or some sort of national citizens service.

Well this is the thing, there are lots of jobs which have to be done but are boring/distasteful/carry some risk to the person doing them. Decent pay and a management structure which treats staff with courtesty and respect will go a long way towards recruitment and retention. And 'some form of national service' is an absolutely terrible idea - what the fuck will this do to the people who need the care if it's being performed by resentful benefit claimants who have been given the option of wiping arses or starving to death...

@QueBarbaridad

The solutions were always going to be ventilation, adequate PPE and sick pay

You don’t think reducing contacts might have an impact?

Not that I don’t think those things are important.

Actually 'reducing contacts' wasn't all that relevant apart from as a form of emotive scaremongering. If people who were infectious or ill could afford to take time off, if all workplaces and hospitality venues etc were properly ventilated and if those coming into closer contact with strangers as part of their jobs were given adequate PPE it wouldn't make a lot of difference if they interacted with five people or 50. There might have been some justification in short-term closures of religious services, concerts and indoor sporting events for example, but not the wholesale destruction of the events industry.

@Wreath21
You are talking as if people only catch Covid at work. The idea that numbers of contacts don’t matter doesn’t sound reasonable to me.
The only alternative to lockdowns that I have seen work is rigorous test, trace and isolate combined with tight boarder controls and other measures as appropriate when cases increase. You need decent sick pay or people don’t isolate. The government here were particularly reluctant to make any changes to welfare payments that might be permanent so it never had much chance. I don’t suppose we could have been as successful as Iceland, but we didn’t really try.

@Wreath21

So what I need to see/understand is the difference between this:

Nigel Farage has applied to change the Brexit Party's name to Reform UK, promising to focus on dealing with the government's "woeful" Covid response.
He said renewed lockdown would "result in more life-years lost than it hopes to save" and argued that "building immunity" would be more effective.
The party leader also said there should be "focused protection" from coronavirus for the vulnerable.

AND

An argument that explains to me very clearly why lockdown in 2020, was not needed in a very critical situation, when we had no vaccine, hospitals were on the verge of collapse, millions were dying and you could see the effect of no lockdown in Brazil/India.
I need to hear an argument that takes into account ALL factors.

• low income families in UK AND worldwide
• the 5.4 million that died and the projected death figure had lockdown not been implemented
• the many millions who couldn’t access adequate hospital care
• the impact on children, not only by lost schooling/social interaction - but ALSO the impact on children taking into account lost family members/adults/unhealthy teachers/a collapsing infrastructure that is unable to support children due to ill health

[quote Emergency73]@Wreath21

So what I need to see/understand is the difference between this:

Nigel Farage has applied to change the Brexit Party's name to Reform UK, promising to focus on dealing with the government's "woeful" Covid response.
He said renewed lockdown would "result in more life-years lost than it hopes to save" and argued that "building immunity" would be more effective.
The party leader also said there should be "focused protection" from coronavirus for the vulnerable.

AND

An argument that explains to me very clearly why lockdown in 2020, was not needed in a very critical situation, when we had no vaccine, hospitals were on the verge of collapse, millions were dying and you could see the effect of no lockdown in Brazil/India.
I need to hear an argument that takes into account ALL factors.

• low income families in UK AND worldwide
• the 5.4 million that died and the projected death figure had lockdown not been implemented
• the many millions who couldn’t access adequate hospital care
• the impact on children, not only by lost schooling/social interaction - but ALSO the impact on children taking into account lost family members/adults/unhealthy teachers/a collapsing infrastructure that is unable to support children due to ill health[/quote]

I don't give a flying fuck what Nigel Farage thinks about anything, the man is a dishonest, racist attention-seeker.

A new infectious, dangerous disease was always going to kill a lot of people whatever was done, not least because it simply wasn't and isn't possible for the majority of people to cage themselves indefinitely - really very few can be self-sufficient in terms of food; many have neither the space nor the money to stockpile even a fortnight's worth of supplies for any kind of 'circuit-breaker' and the supply chains would not have held up even if this had been considered and even though it would have only been a way to save the relatively wealthy.
The death rate was always going to be high because of inequality, and the decades of global neoliberal economics which consistently transferred wealth and assets from the poor to the rich, so public health systems were already struggling.
Some restrictions were probably necessary in spring 2020, and some of what was imposed was done with relatively benign intentions in a time of panic and confusion but all along, it was riddled with authoritarianism, superstition and moral panic. It was deliberately punitive; the plight of the poorest was pretty much disregarded and a great deal of the restrictions were unnecessary if not actively harmful - people need fresh air and daylight for optimum health, and all the nonsense about not leaving the house more than once a day was actively harmful to health, for example. Telling people to keep 6ft away from strangers when out and about would have been sufficient but that was all blown away in a mass panic about 'selfishness'.

He is exactly that, but planning a comeback I’ve read.

And with a lot of discontentment at the moment, my fear would be that he could get pretty popular.

I’d say it’s important to address rather than dismiss the issue.

I’m afraid I can’t see in your response - sufficient consideration for those who lost their lives to the virus - and those whose health was compromised by the knock on effects of having a health system that was unable to cope. They were not collateral damage. And the virus itself has killed more people in low income families.

Bit rich of you to talk about not showing sufficient consideration for vulnerable groups and people being viewed as collateral. Plus nobody else has any obligation to pretend they think Nigel Farage is as important as you do.

@Emergency73

He is exactly that, but planning a comeback I’ve read.

And with a lot of discontentment at the moment, my fear would be that he could get pretty popular.

I’d say it’s important to address rather than dismiss the issue.

I’m afraid I can’t see in your response - sufficient consideration for those who lost their lives to the virus - and those whose health was compromised by the knock on effects of having a health system that was unable to cope. They were not collateral damage. And the virus itself has killed more people in low income families.

I'm not at all sure what you actually mean about 'sufficient consideration'. By the time anyone was implementing measures, lots of people had died and were going to die, because the virus was already circulating (you don't declare a pandemic or even an epidemic when you've only got a handful of cases in one location). Your point seems to be that it's fine for people to be counted as collateral damage if they died of something other than covid during the pandemic.

“Lots of people died, and were going to die” that group can’t be dismissed, and neither can those whose lives who have been harmed by lockdown.

I think many millions more would have been harmed in 2020 without lockdown - and you think the reverse.

If you are right, I think there would be lots of good scientific evidence globally to support what you are saying - and I haven’t seen it yet.

I need to see this evidence - and I need to see it from good, reliable, scientific sources - because the only sources I’ve seen it from so far are those who value the economy over peoples lives.

I need to see this evidence - and I need to see it from good, reliable, scientific sources - because the only sources I’ve seen it from so far are those who value the economy over peoples lives.

But without a functioning economy people can't live any sort of life. It's all very well saying life is more important but what about those losing their jobs followed by their homes for example? We need to keep the economy running to live.

There isn't any good quality scientific evidence to indicate which was the least worst option at this point, and there won't be for a while yet. The pandemic hasn't even finished. By all means cite that as a reason not to accept the contention that lockdown caused more harm than it prevented, but by the same token the belief that it was necessary is also no more than a faith based approach at this point.

A thoroughly well balanced post, VikingOnTheFridge
The only thing I'd add is that, having chosen this route, it's unlikely government will allow anything authoritative to surface which might suggest it wasn't the best choice - and we've all seen how these "enquiries" are handled already

@Puzzledandpissedoff

A thoroughly well balanced post, VikingOnTheFridge The only thing I'd add is that, having chosen this route, it's unlikely government will allow anything authoritative to surface which might suggest it wasn't the best choice - and we've all seen how these "enquiries" are handled already

Yes, I can't imagine they're going to be very receptive to analysis about uneven application of coronavirus legal powers across the population, for example.

@Emergency73

“Lots of people died, and were going to die” that group can’t be dismissed, and neither can those whose lives who have been harmed by lockdown.

I think many millions more would have been harmed in 2020 without lockdown - and you think the reverse.

If you are right, I think there would be lots of good scientific evidence globally to support what you are saying - and I haven’t seen it yet.

I need to see this evidence - and I need to see it from good, reliable, scientific sources - because the only sources I’ve seen it from so far are those who value the economy over peoples lives.

As PP have said, really good evidence is in short supply, particularly as the pandemic isn't exactly 'over'. But 'valuing the economy over people's lives' is frankly a nonsensical accusation: the sort of snivelling bullshit that is always used to justify punitive, puritanical, damaging and unnecessary authoritarianism. There were multiple harms from lockdowns and not all of them were 'economic' (though that was a massive harm - do you think tanking the economy only hurts the rich? Did you not notice that both Brexit and lockdowns were fairly beneficial to the very richest? Go and look up 'disaster capitalism'...) Domestic violence, including fatal domestic violence, increased. Deaths among people with dementia increased enormously (I mean non-Covid deaths). And death and suffering among people with other dangerous health problems also went up, not least because of the view that the only thing that mattered was Covid, and if there was anything else wrong with you it would be 'selfish' to seek medical care, so loads of people just put up with the niggling pains or odd but persistent discomforts until the problem advanced so much it was untreatable. And poverty kills. For all the posturing about furlough, millions of people didn't qualify for it, or it didn't do them very much good (if you were on minimum wage, furlough was basically a 20% cut in your income, so you would probably end up appealing to the food bank... who had experienced a massive drop in donations.)

And, along with the low-paid service workers, the other category who were most likely to die of covid were care home residents. Because the government decided to 'protect the NHS' by sending infectious patients into care homes in order to free up hospital beds. People nipping round to see a distressed, lonely friend, or stopping for a chat in the street, were not the ones causing those care home deaths. Pious martyrdom in the form of caging yourself and denouncing your neighbours wouldn't have saved those people.

Again: it was always going to be a matter of sacrificing some lives to prolong others - but the moralising and the giving a green light to bullies and busybodies was never going to do any good. That's the key issue.

Lockdowns did hit the poorest, but so did the virus itself. So I can't understand the argument behind not protecting the poorest in society from the virus.
Deaths from suicide/fatal domestic violence across Europe - have they topped deaths from Covid? It’s not possible to predict the long term negative effects, but it’s also not really possible to quantify the lives it potentially saved. My gut feeling is that it saved more lives than were lost. And I’m referring here ONLY to the lockdown pre vaccine. I think once we had the vaccine, there was a way to control severe illness and hospital admissions.

Other dangerous health problems were impacted because Covid was presenting as the emergency in hospital. You cant just ignore a Covid patient in need of ICU care. This took resources/human resources away from other conditions - and from my experience - a cancer patient. This wasn’t because ‘the only thing that mattered was Covid’ - it was because the Covid cases were presenting as the immediate emergency and needing urgent ICU care.

The other problem is that most of the people here opposing lockdowns do allow there should probably have been some restrictions at some point but aren’t all that clear, or necessarily in agreement about which ones, so we can’t really compare what happened with any acknowledged alternative.

@Emergency73

Lockdowns did hit the poorest, but so did the virus itself. So I can't understand the argument behind not protecting the poorest in society from the virus. Deaths from suicide/fatal domestic violence across Europe - have they topped deaths from Covid? It’s not possible to predict the long term negative effects, but it’s also not really possible to quantify the lives it potentially saved. My gut feeling is that it saved more lives than were lost. And I’m referring here ONLY to the lockdown pre vaccine. I think once we had the vaccine, there was a way to control severe illness and hospital admissions.

Because the only way to 'protect' the poorest also involved throwing others of them under the bus. The poorest are no more a monolith than the vulnerable, and some of them have competing interests. If you don't get this, that'll be why you don't understand the argument.

And your gut instinct is neither here nor there really. Obviously fine to have a hunch, but it needs to be understood that it's nothing more than that.

@QueBarbaridad

The other problem is that most of the people here opposing lockdowns do allow there should probably have been some restrictions at some point but aren’t all that clear, or necessarily in agreement about which ones, so we can’t really compare what happened with any acknowledged alternative.

Here are the things which happened which did the most damage, and without which the death toll from Covid might well have been lower with or without lockdowns: The sending of infectious people into care homes The complete abandonment of testing and contact tracing in late February/early March 2020 The handing over of enormous sums of money to Tory cronies for inadequate and, in some cases, non-existent PPE Telling the public, in the first wave of infections, not to wear masks in crowded, unventilated areas.

Of course the other major factor, which admittedly could not have been fixed quickly, no matter who had won the December 2019 election, was the enormous harm that had been done to public health by the Tories, both via gutting the NHS and via allowing poverty and inequality to spread completely out of control.

‘Gut feeling’/hunch.

Based on what the scientific community/WHO have said about lockdowns which is - that in an emergency situation where hospitals cannot cope, in order to readdress resources - a lockdown is advised

Also based on the fact that the only papers I’ve seen that advise against lockdown are from the economic community, and controversial scientists such as Karol Sikora.

But I’m happy to read your definitive evidence what they don’t work?

The fact is that there isn’t any - either way. Do your hunch is not better than my hunch.

“Your hunch is no better than my hunch’ - that should read.

Exactly, nobody's hunch on this point is better than anyone else's and we don't know. Glad you now admit it.

Because it's entirely impossible to come up with definitive evidence when the pandemic isn't even over. The WHO have hardly covered themselves in glory over the last two years either! And good luck trying to separate out public health and economics.

Here are the things which happened which did the most damage, and without which the death toll from Covid might well have been lower with or without lockdowns:
The sending of infectious people into care homes
The complete abandonment of testing and contact tracing in late February/early March 2020
The handing over of enormous sums of money to Tory cronies for inadequate and, in some cases, non-existent PPE
Telling the public, in the first wave of infections, not to wear masks in crowded, unventilated areas.

Yes.
I would add delay at every stage. Cheltenham Festival, Liverpool Madrid, advising people not to go to the pub.
Although certain measures shocked me and didn’t seem justified, I blame delay more than anything for the length and depth of the restrictions we had.

No but out of politicians, economists, the scientific community - I would put my faith in the scientific community. This is a virus - so virologists/a professor in mucosal infection and immunity - I’m going to listen and put my faith in what they say - rather than an economist. Yes you can separate out - in terms of which expert you are inclined to listen to.

@QueBarbaridad

I was going to say the same! Yes @Wreath21 I agree on all those points. The government were not proactive. They dithered which made lockdown a LOT more harmful. But I still think it was needed.