Do you think that at times what we have referred to as ‘the science’ has got it wrong?

[MarshaBradyo]

I’m thinking about the many times people said well it’s going to go badly wrong and the science backs this up

But a few times this hasn’t happened

July opening
Omicron and not doing ‘circuit breaker’ and not ending in lockdown
Not getting close to best case for omicron

And so on - maybe other examples

What do you think - was it unnecessarily pessimistic?

I understood the need for caution when re-opening schools. What was wrong, in my opinion, was leaving some children for so long with no school contact. I had one DC in one of the cherry picked years back in school full time in June 20 my other DC didn't step foot in school from March 2020 until Sept 2020. So no that didn't help me (& a lot of the other parents I know) get back to work as we were still wfh while homeschooling.

But I understood they couldn't all be in school all the time to minimise contacts and socially distance. I understood why the schools had to go remote in Jan21 as I knew school staff (and most of the general population still remained unprotected). I remember seeing the news of teachers and teaching assistants dying of Covid before we had vaccines.

Think what frustrates me somewhat is the ‘lockdown had no effect’ articles are from the economic community. And often claim to be something they are not. E.g the ‘Johns Hoskins’ study was not actually endorsed by the university itself, it was not peer researched, it was written by ‘professors’ who had a history of using social media to spread misinformation, and it conveniently weeded out the scientific evidence - and had questionable definitions of lockdown etc.

I don’t see that so much from the scientific community. There tends to be more care, and more honesty, more transparency.

And what also frustrates me when the ‘lockdown did more harm than good’ purports to ‘care for the community’ - as it’s goal. That’s simply not true. It’s nothing other than a survival of the fittest - which uses/misuses the needs children/vulnerable dishonestly to achieve its goal. If we had a strongly economic government in power - EVEN more economic than our current Tories - the focus would be on lining pockets, and there would be far less funding for social care.

Don’t worry @Emergency73 it’s early days, there’ll be plenty of peer reviewed reports coming out over the next decade about the harms of lockdown. Precisely because people care about the impact on children, those that lost businesses etc. Nothing to do with survival of the fittest. I had on the surface a very cushty lockdown but I feel very strongly how unfair the whole thing was. Some people sitting at home getting paid, with large gardens to exercise in. Then those with small children in flats not able to go outside? Awful.

The reason there will be study after study on this is that we must never use lockdown again as a continual tool to suppress a virus if the negative impact outweighs the benefits.

We need that information. Maybe we’ll never know the true story. It was claimed that we’d actually reached the first peak before we locked down in March. We can’t prove that though.

Of course we should have more funding for social care/mental health. That’s a separate issue. You can be anti-lockdown but care about those issues too.

I also think women suffered disproportionately throughout lockdown and this was proven. More likely to lose jobs due to juggling homeschooling and kids. Let’s not sweep all those issues under the carpet.

It was claimed that we’d actually reached the first peak before we locked down in March. We can’t prove that though

Eh? Cases/hospitilisation kept climbing long after the first lockdown began @Delatron

I remember something on the peak being just before

Wouldn’t know where to look though for the data

Iirc it was due to tracing back from deaths peak on April 8th in terms of time lag

@MarshaBradyo

I remember something on the peak being just before

Wouldn’t know where to look though for the data

The data is all publicly available @MarshaBradyo

You can clearly see cases continuing to rise beyond the inititation of the first lockdown restrictions, and that's even with mass testing not currently in use. We had not reached the peak pre March 2020 as @Delatron claims.

There is a lag with hospilisations true, but even with conservative estimates of this built in, it's obvious that the increased number of cases post lockdown were causing increased rates of hospitlisation.

I think it's incredibly important to discuss the adverse consequences of lockdown and the current evidence base, but why do this whilst simultaneously not accurately describing the context in which they were implemented? (and not equally considering the direct and indirect adverse consequences of allowing cases to rise incredibly high)

I’ve added the date for deaths peak so if you go back to cases what date is it?

I clearly remember being surprised at the fact

I was one of the people who were part of overall behaviour change in London, so it stuck in my mind that the cases date was then

@MarshaBradyo

I’ve added the date for deaths peak so if you go back to cases what date is it?

I clearly remember being surprised at the fact

I was one of the people who were part of overall behaviour change in London, so it stuck in my mind that the cases date was then

Recorded data (limited by lack of testing) demonstrates cases peaked around April 14th 2022

So well after lockdown measures were first introduced.

ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?facet=none&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=~GBR

April 2020!!

Yeah the virus was in a certain trajectory I think it reached that early April? And the argument was that lockdown was too late to affect that peak it was already ‘bedded in’. So keeping everything closed until July was pointless..

It’s one argument. An interesting one!

On a trajectory and reached the peak early April. Was it April 6th? Lockdown too late to impact that.

We weren’t testing so how would anyone know how any cases then?!

Hospitalisations and deaths come later. After the peak of cases.

The virus had been circulating unchecked since Jan... it would have peaked April anyway. Yet we stayed lockdown until July. Big mistake.

My point is lockdown takes a while to bring down cases. So you’ve proved my point if cases peaked April 14th. They would have done that without lockdown!

This was the article on April 21 re deaths peak www.itv.com/news/2020-04-21/coronavirus-peak-in-deaths-happened-april-8-ons-data

So cases wouldn’t peak after deaths?

I remember the discussions on it as I felt a bit put out that big efforts had happened just after peak

Yet we stayed lockdown until July. Big mistake.

Depends on how you define lockdown which is usually thought to be the stay at home order.

People who couldn’t work from home were told to go back to work 10th May. You were allowed out for unlimited exercise, and sport with your household. Primary schools opened to targeted year groups 1st June and shops reopened on 15th June.

Peak deaths was 8 April 2020, 16 days after lockdown. Peak admissions was 1 April. According to the dashboard.

Given how limited testing was, any estimate of cases is just that, an estimate.

Just to add the article was written on that date but talking about April 8

Interesting that peak admissions were April 1st.

Even June was too late to be opening things.

@Delatron

I’m yet to see it. The only ‘lockdown did more harm than good’ studies I’ve seen come from the economic community - or the book by one scientist recently who also has a controversial background.
The ‘trustworthy’ scientists - those who aren’t claiming to have qualifications that they don’t, those who appear to genuinely care about saving lives, those that have decent, respected careers - aren’t now gathering on mass to say ‘lockdown caused more harm than good’.

Unless you can link me to a decent study by a trustworthy, robust, peer researched source.

Well we’re only just coming out of this. Of course they don’t have any decent peer reviewed studies! It takes time. And the full impact of lockdowns probably hasn’t even been realised yet. This is obvious no?

That evil/ irrelevant ‘economic community’!

It’s wide ranging and early days, but it covers all harms - economic, social and educational.

I assume people will focus on it but it will take time