Boris refused to rule out lockdown

[Puppylucky]

Boris Johnson refused to deny that he would consider lockdown again if the Covid Pandemic took an unexpected turn and now the papers are full of lockdown headlines again. Will we ever move beyond this?

Of course he can't rule it out, no one can as no one knows what will happen in the future.

@TheKeatingFive

Because for many people 'lockdown' meant you couldn't leave the house to to go for a walk or the shops or whatever?

So who is the official designator of what constitutes a lockdown and what doesn't? Let's consult the official body.

Oh dear. I questioned Keating. Which official body do you intend to consult? There are so many.

Which official body do you intend to consult? There are so many.

Are there? What?

Where exactly are all these lockdown headlines? I can’t see any.

[quote Dishh]@TheKeatingFive

Ffs it was still a lockdown. What's the point of policing the word like this?

Because for many people 'lockdown' meant you couldn't leave the house to to go for a walk or the shops or whatever?[/quote]
Lockdown for many meant they didn't/couldn't.

Teenagers - what's the point of going for a walk that doesn't include company from their friends?

Adults - including my elderly relative who couldn't because benches were removed and they couldn't walk a bit and then take a break.

• toilets were closed, making this particularly difficult for women and people with some disabilities

People could take a walk but were isolated and expected to live solitary existences.

• some places were incorrectly and heavily policed meaning a general level of anxiety that was detrimental to people's mental health.

@TheKeatingFive

Would people refuse lockdown if a new variant or virus was particularly deadly for children

Good luck getting any parents out to fulfil their essential roles if that was the case. I doubt lockdown would be an accurate term for what would happen then.

Exactly.

We're seeing a pattern with these conversations. Some people point out that the current conditions mean we're not going to see another Covid 19 lockdown because of the political and social context, ie that we can't afford it, the population wouldn't comply and no Tory PM is going to be able to implement one and keep their job.

The response to this is to then ask what would happen if the pandemic completely changed course, ie if circumstances change. I don't see a great deal of point in this approach myself, but if people want to talk about it, they need to remember that if one very important thing changes, so will everything else. There's no scenario available that involves both a significant threat to children and their parents continuing to go out and keep society functioning.

Of course he can't rule it out if it took an unexpected turn. I doubt it will happen as I along with many people wouldn't comply again unless for a more serious pandemic such as ebola.

No one can ever rule it out. A new, vaccine resistant strain would have to be dealt with accordingly.

Really hope that never happens.

He probably means if a new variant comes along that starts killing 50% of the population, and I think people would comply if that were the case.

He probably means if a new variant comes along that starts killing 50% of the population, and I think people would comply if that were the case.

But would they drive your ambulances and keep your shelves stocked with food is a more interesting question

Lockdown would be a very handy dead cat to keep around for when needed by the Government….

@Staffy1

He probably means if a new variant comes along that starts killing 50% of the population, and I think people would comply if that were the case.

If that happened, people would be out murdering each other and looting and we'd see societal breakdown. Lockdown would be the least of anyone's concerns. Look at some of the worst excesses during the Black Death, when that's around what the death toll was in Europe, and at least then they weren't all interconnected so could only observe what was going on in their immediate vicinity.

However, given that this is exceptionally unlikely, it's quite reasonable that Johnson didn't think it was necessary to consider.

@LindaEllen 'For the vast, vast, vast majority now, it's no more than a cold.' - do you know roughly what percentage of people it's no worse than a cold for? Thanks.

Haha, lockdown as long as you don't work in a hospital, supermarket or Amazon, if we have another one like last time, I doubt many people will comply.

*It was! I’m not anti the first lockdown, but it was true that some people went to work the whole way through because they had to in order to keep society functioning, and other people (I didn’t say everyone) stayed at home baking banana bread etc. You can’t say that didn’t happen! It did in my house - I worked from home and work was definitely quieter for a while, husband had to go in as usual.

It happened in your house so that is what lockdown was all about?

Everyone I worked with was busy despite WFH. Most of my friend group who were furloughed were home schooling kids. A good number we’re working hard to save their businesses from going under. The myth that anyone not out at work was sitting home doing nothing is way off the mark.

Rishi will no doubt try to court favour again by chucking around some more furlough money if there is one

Where exactly are all these lockdown headlines? I can’t see any.

There aren’t any. Unless @Puppylucky ever comes back to enlighten us as to where they all are.

@AlexaShutUp

I'm usually the last to defend Boris, but he's right on this. He would be very foolish to rule out the possibility of any future lockdowns because we can't know what the future might hold. Personally, I think another lockdown is highly unlikely, but it's common sense to acknowledge that we'd have to consider it if there was a very dangerous new variant that was evading vaccine protections... or even a new virus altogether. Nobody has a crystal ball. What is the point of making promises that you might eventually be forced to break if the circumstances require?

I think we need to move on as a society from obsessing about the potential for further lockdowns. That option will always be on the table because it has to be. It doesn't mean that it is imminent, and in the meantime, we should get on with our lives and stop banging on about it.

I agree. No one could loathe him more than I do but I see nothing wrong in what he said.

@BoredZelda

*It was! I’m not anti the first lockdown, but it was true that some people went to work the whole way through because they had to in order to keep society functioning, and other people (I didn’t say everyone) stayed at home baking banana bread etc. You can’t say that didn’t happen! It did in my house - I worked from home and work was definitely quieter for a while, husband had to go in as usual.

It happened in your house so that is what lockdown was all about?

Everyone I worked with was busy despite WFH. Most of my friend group who were furloughed were home schooling kids. A good number we’re working hard to save their businesses from going under. The myth that anyone not out at work was sitting home doing nothing is way off the mark.

for goodness sake, I said “other people” not everyone. You said “that’s not what happened” so I said “it did in my house” not “it happened in my house so it happened in everyone’s house”. Many of my friends had a good time during that first lockdown. Many didn’t. Self employed friends watched their hard work go down the toilet. Those with kids really struggled with wfh and home schooling. At no point did I say that everyone who was at home was doing bugger all.

Of course lots of people had a hard time, but it cannot be denied that some people enjoyed the enforced downtime, there were plenty of posts on here where people admitted to enjoying themselves. My husband was fighting a brain tumour during the following two lockdowns and the isolation was awful, I’m not saying we all had a jolly - the point I was making was that we would not have the level of compliance that we did during the first lockdown, when SOME people stayed at home and weren’t busy while others went to work, because to get that level of compliance again the virus would have to pose more of a danger than it currently does. If it did become that much more dangerous, we would see civil unrest because people would not want to stock shelves, drive ambulances, keep the power on etc.

For lockdowns to work, they need to hit a very specific sweet spot (for want of a better term) between people being scared enough to comply, but not to the degree that they'd refuse to do their essential roles.

The original covid epidemic was probably pretty unusual in achieving that balance. It was helped significantly by the behavioural scientists and their techniques, which I suspect we'd be a little wiser to in the future.

But change the parameters, even a little bit and the whole scenario changes. Higher death rates in the working population and/or children and it would get very nasty very quickly.

@TheKeatingFive this is the point I was trying to make but not managing it as articulately as you! I just cannot see the specific circumstances of the first lockdown happening again.

And as WorryMcGee points out, doling out money so that people could stay at home and go on bike rides and cultivate their sourdough starters aided compliance very significantly.

While in a dire situation, I'm sure the money would be found again, it's really not something we can just resource without exceptionally good reason.

I just cannot see the specific circumstances of the first lockdown happening again.

Totally agree

X post there

for goodness sake, I said “other people” not everyone.

In which case, there is no difference between lockdown and not lockdown in that respect.

Right now there are people who go out to work and people who don’t. People who are busy and people who aren’t. Not sure why you would make that a lockdown specific thing unless you were implying that most people who weren’t going to an office, were at home baking banana bread.

@BoredZelda

Where exactly are all these lockdown headlines? I can’t see any.

There aren’t any. Unless @Puppylucky ever comes back to enlighten us as to where they all are.

Dunno about headlines, not been out or seen a printed newspaper today, but it's been reported. I saw it trending on twitter yesterday too.

www.independent.co.uk/news/health/boris-johnson-covid-variant-lockdown-b2054098.html

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-08/u-k-s-johnson-refuses-to-rule-out-further-covid-19-lockdowns

These were just the first two that came up on google, cba linking the rest.

I don't personally think it's a huge story myself though. Politician gives only answer he realistically can when asked about something that's very unlikely to happen. He can hardly point out that if we get a variant similar to what we've had so far neither his MPs nor the public will have it, a moderately worse one means essential services will collapse without key workers, and if we get a really bad one history tells us that a good chunk of the population will be out looking for scapegoats to massacre. So what else was he going to say really?