Have people's opinions changed?

[MassiveOverthinker]

Just wondering really, if the last few months have changed people's opinion on how we managed covid in this country.

Anyone wondering if maybe fewer restrictions would've been better and if more draconian ones (often called for) were unnecessary. Anyone wondering if we needed to close schools, swab and isolate our kids, test and trace etc etc.

Or do people generally feel we did what was necessary at the time and are only okayish now because of weaker variants and higher vaccination levels?

Anyone feel less angry at the rule breakers, those who don't want to be vaccinated etc?

If it all happened again, do you think your response to restrictions would be the same, or would you be a bit more inclined to think "sod that for a laugh".

(Asking for a friend).

Not really during the second lockdown some schools were nearly full to capacity ,I don't blame anyone using "key worker " status although suddenly everyone was one it's just they either should have been open to all children ,or the very few, as it just made the whole thing a farce
As for the vulnerable children with an EHCP will automatically get a place ,that was frequently trotted out on here
Everybody forgot about special school, s where all children are vulnerable and they all have an EHCP ,
My sons special school was closed throughout both lockdowns

No, the virus has an innate understanding of whether the host was observing restrictions at the time and will act accordingly. Even if the person not adhering to the restriction was doing something objectively more safe than adhering to it, like people using informal childcare that led to fewer contacts than larger settings. It still knows.

No, the virus has an innate understanding of whether the host was observing restrictions at the time and will act accordingly.

Oh gotcha. Sorry, I wasn't aware. What moral virus.

This thread just shows some people are still batshit.
it’s made me hate the world. I always thought lockdowns were a massive overreaction and I still think they were. So many things that never needed to happen. I broke lots of restrictions, but I’ve also never had covid, so I don’t feel remotely guilty. Can’t spread an illness I’ve never had.

It really is a very clever virus.

Just like it knew not to infect people before 6pm in a pub...

Pretty much agree with this. Some of the restrictions we were supposed to be living under in Scotland were just crazy, and went on for so much longer than the rest of the UK. Except perhaps Wales where taping off non-essentials in Tesco was a particular low point.

Laws about not leaving your local council area for non-essential reasons were just ridiculous. Laws which made it illegal for my 12 year old to play with friends in the same school year because they were 11 and he was 12.

Lots of things are STILL crazy in my part of Scotland, all the local schools still have the social distancing banners on the railings and parents have not been allowed into schools for any reason since Jan 2020. I haven't had a parents' evening (even online) for my kids since autumn 2019.

Also hate the argument that if you struggled with the whole thing you're just lacking in resilience. My oldest child has had his last year at school ruined, his first year at Uni has been entirely online. He is very unhappy and isolated.

Yes, some of the stuff in Scotland was completely ridiculous. I suppose the masks having been dragged out for so long does at least serve as good real life evidence of how little use they were in the real world when Omicron came along, but that was about it.

I think the lowest point in Wales was a law being on the statute books allowing individual workers to be fined for working outside the home if the state thought their job could be done remotely. The worker. And this was implemented by a supposedly left wing Welsh government. In late 2021, when there was no excuse whatsoever for it. I'm not sure if anyone ever got fined on that basis, but the fact that the law existed was bad enough in itself.

I'm not sure if anyone ever got fined on that basis, but the fact that the law existed was bad enough in itself.

The law was never actually implemented , they backtracked (thankfully, because it was batshit).

But yes, big shout out to Wales for dreaming up the most goddamn ridiculous restrictions.

I think it was also the fear factor. Regularly shared stories on FB about people being stopped crossing from Fife to Midlothian to go to Ikea and being fined because it was non-essential. Mutterings from Sturgeon about closing the border, which prompted numpties to stand on the A1 at Berwick telling people entering from England to "fuck off back home".

Even if the stories were fake (except the banner at the border people, saw photographs of that) people were SO frightened of being stopped by the police or shamed on facebook that the fear kept them at home. I had a day's work at the other side of Scotland on a Saturday in Feb 2021 when everything was closed, I had my ID with me, printed off the email showing where I was going and what I was doing because I was SO sure i'd get into trouble. Never saw a police car at all, but the fear was real.

I did enjoy Sturgeon's attempt to prevent people from Scotland travelling to Greater Manchester in summer 2021. Quite how she imagined that was going to be enforced, one dreads to think. Did she envisage GMP harassing anyone with a Scottish accent?

Absolute nonsense.

"Granny at the till" could have worn a FFP2 mask if she wanted to protect herself from the virus, rather than relying on strangers with bits of cloth over their faces, which never "saved" anyone.

My dad was in a care home in November 2017. He had Alzheimer's but then he caught a cold from someone, which turned to pneumonia, and then he died. No one "killed him".

Pretty much agree with this. Some of the restrictions we were supposed to be living under in Scotland were just crazy, and went on for so much longer than the rest of the UK. Except perhaps Wales where taping off non-essentials in Tesco was a particular low point.

Agreed. Children at home for months? Run out of stationary for the never ending home schooling and the endless crafting? Your five year old has run out of new books?

Tough. Buying more spreads the virus.

I grew up in Wales. It was always at the back of my mind that I'd return there one day. No fucking way.

Although you could of course buy from Amazon, rather than supporting local smaller businesses, so that was fine. Naturally, the people working in that particular delivery chain were magically unable to contract or spread covid.

Wales banned Parkrun at one point too, didn’t they? Bonkers.

Wales banned Parkrun at one point too, didn’t they? Bonkers.

oh yes. Nuts

Parkrun I’m Scotland was barred for 518 days!

In sorry

Appreciate this post is a few days ago but yes, very much all of this.

Here in Scotland our government decided in May 2020 that schools would be part-time, from August, for a year. My kids would be in two days a week and be given ‘home learning packs’ and worksheets the other days. Other children in other areas were down for schedules like three days a month in-person. That was the plan for the whole academic year, from August 2020. At the time, we were down to under 200 cases a day.

There was a huge outcry, mostly from parents, and the government backtracked to say not for the WHOLE year and then backtracked again to drop the idea entirely. But at the time, there were people saying it was sensible and so many people I knew in England saying they wished their government was doing this. And now we never talk about it, and so many of the people supporting it are all pretending they never wanted schools closed in the first place, now the consequences are known. I still wonder if I was living in a parallel universe for a while there.

For myself I feel I was far too naive in thinking that governments would roll back measures as soon as they could and/or if they weren’t working. I don’t think most of the measures taken should have been legally compelled at all, now that I’ve seen what happened when they were.

It was banned for a while but even we had it back by winter 2021, when Wales banned it again in response to omicron.

They did not! It was barred from March 2020 to august 2021 here (which is just utterly ridiculous)

@KnitPurlKnitPurl Happened in the town centre Tesco in Braintree Essex November 2020 The upper floor was blocked off in front of the escalator by pallets of Christmas chocolate. It wasnt just Wales. I did film a video of it (making sure i kept the staffs faces out of it as its not their fault) in case of any gaslighting or rewriting of history.

A lot of shops in England had blocked off upstair areas as these items weren't deemed essential, M&S very cannily moved all their better selling stuff to the ground floor of our local store so there was a good selection of clothing for the whole family and housewares near the food section.

Did this utterly ridiculous behaviour prevent a single death from Covid I wonder?

Reducing mixing overall will have reduced spread and reducing spread will have reduced serious illness and death.

Isolating which lives were saved by which specific action is going to be impossible.

If the water supply is polluted by a lot of sewage, do we ever know which individual turd specifically caused which deaths?

I was referring to the taping off of aisles containing what were deemed to be "non essentials" from people who were in the shop anyway.

I understand the principle behind "social distancing" (ridiculous phrase). However I'm willing to bet that any vulnerable/elderly person who continued to live through the Covid pandemic can't attribute that to someone else not buying crayons in a shop they were visiting anyway.