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?

@CryingAtTheDiscotheque

Do you recall the news reports in the early days that there might need to be a lockdown but it was “too early” to do it yet? I suppose that must have been the herd immunity strategy in action.

A few things spring to mind

• Chris Whitty doing a chart showing a point and saying we go in here not earlier as we need to wait to get closer to the peak

• SAGE and general thinking that we should get the peak over before winter peak

• the numbers were out and there was a moment when they realised lockdown was needed with a week

It wasn’t that SAGE / other were calling for it earlier and it was ignored

Also on the report below I did watch Cummings interview and saw many of the same lines repeated in the media. I’d like better scrutiny on it all than this.

I didnt say SAGE or other scientists were calling for lockdown earlier - I remember those graphs. But I dont now understand the thinking behind them! Locking down when you get to the peak - that sounds all kinds of wrong now.

I think it’s because the strategy was centred around not overwhelming NHS rather than lowering cases in itself

So you only put the brakes in when that gets close enough

Otherwise you slow down the build and drag the same process out much longer - and at least they knew lock down would be incredibly difficult

So were Whitty/Valance/SAGE supporters of the "herd immunity" strategy that was suddenly dumped at the time of the first lockdown?

@CryingAtTheDiscotheque

So were Whitty/Valance/SAGE supporters of the "herd immunity" strategy that was suddenly dumped at the time of the first lockdown?

That was the standard pandemic plan afaik. “Lock down society until vaccine and cross our fingers that comes faster than any other vaccine in history” wasn’t really considered an option. So it’s not that they didn’t care if people got infected because they’re evil Tory supporters or whatever, it’s that they didn’t think preventing infections en masse was feasible.

@CryingAtTheDiscotheque

So were Whitty/Valance/SAGE supporters of the "herd immunity" strategy that was suddenly dumped at the time of the first lockdown?

It was surprising to hear in the Committee interviews that the plan was to do the whole peak pre winter

So not sure if the term was used but yes the initial plan was to let it run without suppression

But the numbers were out so they had to act

We would have overwhelmed NHS

@CryingAtTheDiscotheque

So were Whitty/Valance/SAGE supporters of the "herd immunity" strategy that was suddenly dumped at the time of the first lockdown?

Yes, I think so. See the video I posted upthread of Graham Medley (head of Sage's modelling team) discussing the herd immunity approach on 12 March 2020.

Also this is interesting from John Edmunds of Sage

mobile.twitter.com/MattGarrahan/status/1262865205832409090

Thank you - that second interview with Cathy Newman is a difficult watch! I genuinely find it difficult to keep the timeline straight in my mind (perhaps not surprising after 2 years), and had forgotten that SAGE were originally backing herd immunity.

Will you acknowledge that keeping schools open would have also been extremely shit, caused problems for children, including those vulnerable in other ways and still wouldn’t not have fixed the problem of kids in abusive homes?

I agree with this. I don’t know why it’s assumed that everything would be fine for children if schools had stayed open.

Back when we had no method of controlling serious symptoms and hospitalisations.

With Delta/Omicron, the vast majority - in fact, practically all the families I know that have had it - can be traced back to catching it school.

A struggling family I know - both parents were hospitalised with Covid, and they had no one to care for their 1 year old.

You’ve got to address that harm was caused to children by lockdown AND by an out of control virus that was effecting everyone who give support to children. Children cannot operate in isolation, they need a healthy community to support them.

If you don’t address ALL these harms, and also the fact that children were vulnerable pre and post Covid - then I think that’s clearly wrong, and it’s not going to have the best outcome for children’s needs.

I have just as many stories of families where children have suffered as a result of their caregivers contracting covid as I do families where children have suffered because their caregivers’ MH suffered during lockdowns and restrictions meant that support networks (which were supposedly being protected by lockdown? Is that what you’re saying? I’m not sure they have been preserved in many cases) were whipped away. These weren’t previously vulnerable children, they were made vulnerable by lockdowns. I know this because I am an HCP and I work with families. Is this more, fewer or the same number of children as would have been made newly vulnerable by covid due to different (or no) restrictions? I don’t know, I don’t claim to have the answers there. My husband is a secondary teacher, I am an HCP, I am talking from my professional and personal experience. My view is that restrictions could have been quite quickly done differently, in a way that allowed people to have some of the support and human contact needed to keep many more people on an even keel.

@CryingAtTheDiscotheque

Do you recall the news reports in the early days that there might need to be a lockdown but it was “too early” to do it yet? I suppose that must have been the herd immunity strategy in action.

No, this was going on with public health people everywhere, at least outside of totalitarian states. It was standard teaching in public health.

Remember that it wasn't an exact science to know when covid had actually arrived in a place. That's not unique to covid, it's true with lots of illnesses. And back at the beginning testing was a lot more difficult, often there was no local testing.

At the same time, if they started lockdown before the virus arrived, that would mean that people's capacity to follow those kinds of rules would be used up without any need. Keep in mind, the thinking was that restrictions might be able to be maintained for six or eight weeks. So if they started a week early that was a wasting a good chunk of that time.

So public health authorities were really concerned not to start until the right time.

@noblegiraffe

just a feeling in your waters?

And the fact that schools remained open to vulnerable children, in acknowledgement of the fact that they needed to be in school?

Why are you ignoring actions and asking instead for mere words?

I’m not saying it was enough to prevent problems and I’m not saying that there weren’t major problems in implementation. But when the alternative (keeping schools open) was also shit, for very, very many reasons, what exactly did you want to happen?

Will you acknowledge that keeping schools open would have also been extremely shit, caused problems for children, including those vulnerable in other ways and still wouldn’t not have fixed the problem of kids in abusive homes?

It's just plain wrong to claim schools remained open to vulnerable children per se. They remained open to some vulnerable children, those whose vulnerabilities were known about, acknowledged and in some cases appropriately statemented, and excluded many others. There is a vast difference between the two.

And I'm asking you for words because you chose to wade into a discussion about whether something was acknowledged despite you having no evidence, and because the actions you claim support your argument don't. It simply is not the case that because the state made some, inadequate provision for some vulnerable children this means they weren't fully aware that the lockdown would cause harms to children, particularly vulnerable children, as a cohort.

As for the last, no I won't acknowledge that because it's both strawmanning and incorrect. School closures in themselves created and worsened some problems that would not have existed otherwise. All this 'fixed the problems' nonsense is an argument only made by people who want to minimise the impact that the school closures they support had, as though the inability to make everything better means it's fine to make things worse.

In summary: you took exception to a discussion about it actually being entirely foreseeable that school closures would cause harm, it merely being expedient not to acknowledge this at the time. Whether or not you think the closures were justified doesn't affect either of these facts.

I don’t know why it’s assumed that everything would be fine for children if schools had stayed open.

It isn't. That's just a convenient strawman for people who don't like discussion of the harms that school closures caused and would like it to go away.

@LyricalBlowToTheJaw

But similarly another straw man could be seen to be: focussing purely on harms caused by lockdown, while dismissing/not addressing the potential harms had we not had lockdown.

All these factors need to be considered.

@LyricalBlowToTheJaw

I don’t know why it’s assumed that everything would be fine for children if schools had stayed open.

It isn't. That's just a convenient strawman for people who don't like discussion of the harms that school closures caused and would like it to go away.

True

Even leaving aside schools, we should remember that mixing with people outside of your household was criminalised for long periods of time (contrary to the position in some other countries). There was a period where it was illegal for a child to play with another child outside if they were young enough to need supervision from their parents due to the rule about only meeting one person. For only children that meant that there were months of time where it was illegal for them to play with another child.

Plus children were removed from the support networks of their wider family and their parents were left without that support so you had situations where parents had to work alongside providing childcare and homeschooling and couldn't get any support from family with that.

These mistakes from the first lockdown were mostly repeated in January 2021.

Children's sport was effectively banned for long periods of time. There is a group of four teenagers who play football in a field outside my house. I remember thinking last year that technically what they were doing was a criminal offence, though thankfully no one stopped them.

The "science" presumably recommended these sorts of measures because there was a tiny chance that children playing outside would increase covid spread. But clearly if you considered wider science e.g. even as basic as exercise and play being important for children's health, you would come to a different conclusion.

If schools had been closed but there hadn't been any attempt to ban household mixing, particularly outside, the impact would likely have been less (though still highly damaging for most children).

[quote Emergency73]@LyricalBlowToTheJaw

But similarly another straw man could be seen to be: focussing purely on harms caused by lockdown, while dismissing/not addressing the potential harms had we not had lockdown.

All these factors need to be considered.[/quote]
No it couldn't. That isn't what a strawman is. When someone is strawmanning, it means they're intentionally making up an argument and attributing it to someone else because they find it easier to argue with. That's what Noblegiraffe was doing there.

What you mean is that you would prefer the issue to be framed differently. That's fine, although not actually relevant to the discussion she took issue with, but it isn't strawmanning.

Children's sport was effectively banned for long periods of time. There is a group of four teenagers who play football in a field outside my house. I remember thinking last year that technically what they were doing was a criminal offence, though thankfully no one stopped them.
The "science" presumably recommended these sorts of measures because there was a tiny chance that children playing outside would increase covid spread.

Yes that was nonsense @Chessie678, I think. Catching one of the early strains of Covid outside was virtually impossible, unless you were chatting at close range with someone for some length of time. Someone running past you, or walking their dog or even stopping to chat briefly unless they sneezed into your face? Nope.

DD2 said it was on a par with your chances of getting hit by lightning – so OK it could happen but no one decides whether to go outside or not based on the likelihood of being hit by lightning on any given day!

Bold fail, sorry.

@LyricalBlowToTheJaw

I don’t know why it’s assumed that everything would be fine for children if schools had stayed open.

It isn't. That's just a convenient strawman for people who don't like discussion of the harms that school closures caused and would like it to go away.

Patronising, Lyrical, to someone in school working with kids trying to fix the harms that school closures caused.

Some people would prefer not to answer the question "what exactly would you have liked to happen?" as an alternative to school closures given the reality of the situation on the ground in schools at the point that schools closed.

Patronising, Lyrical, to someone in school working with kids trying to fix the harms that school closures caused.

Some people would prefer not to answer the question "what exactly would you have liked to happen?" as an alternative to school closures given the reality of the situation on the ground in schools at the point that schools closed.

The fact that you work in a school doesn't mean you aren't strawmanning. As for it being patronising, it's difficult to tell someone they've pulled something out of their arse without coming across that way really, but the solution to this problem is for you to stop doing it.

Anyway, you will not do your usual trick here of trying to turn every statement you find inconvenient into a WAAAAH YOU MUST SET OUT A FULL ALTERNATIVE PLAN IMMEDIATELY IF YOU WANT TO SAY ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT THE DOWNSIDES OF LOCKDOWN. You clearly imagine yourself to be making some kind of salient point here, but the reason I won't be answering it is twofold.

One, I think the jury's still out on the issue anyway, and two, people are being entirely reasonable to point out that we knew about the various harms of school closures at the time simply as a fact in itself, regardless of where they stand on whether those harms were worth it. You have, in your decision to tell us that actually this was acknowledged at the time despite you having no evidence, only served to prolong discussion of a fact you clearly prefer to sweep under the carpet. Which is actually pretty funny...

People sought to lessen the harms to vulnerable kids by keeping schools open for them, pastoral staff and teachers spent hours on the phone to kids and parents, school staff drove round delivering food and supplies to vulnerable families. This clearly shows that there was concern, but you’d prefer to pretend that no one gave a shit 🤷‍♀️

No point in discussing if you won’t even acknowledge basic points like things that actually happened.

@noblegiraffe

People sought to lessen the harms to vulnerable kids by keeping schools open for them, pastoral staff and teachers spent hours on the phone to kids and parents, school staff drove round delivering food and supplies to vulnerable families. This clearly shows that there was concern, but you’d prefer to pretend that no one gave a shit 🤷‍♀️

No point in discussing if you won’t even acknowledge basic points like things that actually happened.

You're answering the question you want to answer here, not the one that was actually mooted.

Let's set this out again, because apparently it's hard.

What RTB and I were discussing was the fact that it was known that there would be harms caused by school closures at the time the decision was taken, that there didn't need to be any previous experience of lockdown to understand that, but that this wasn't acknowledged for reasons of convenience. We both agreed on this point. Note the specific mention, before you waded in, of 'the ones who have abusive and/or inadequate parents are expected to stay at home with them without the usual protections of school and routine'. That's a direct quote from me upthread.

You, for reasons that remain a mystery, waded in to tell us that it actually was acknowledged. When asked for examples of this being acknowledged, you failed to supply any.

You claimed that because some efforts were made to help some vulnerable children, this somehow affected the point that it was known at the time how negative and widespread the impact would be on children who were being denied the protection of school and usual routine, but that it wasn't acknowledged.

This simply doesn't prove what you claim it does, which is why you keep trying to move the goalposts and pretend that people are arguing that nobody ever cared at all about any vulnerable children. The children being talked about were those being denied the protection of school and routine, ie by definition not the ones for whom efforts were being made and were of some use. You misread.