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 a U turn afaik, but I think as time progressed his focus was more on the shit quality of the governance. He's had a lot to say about how it was poorly written, unclear legislation, often at odds with guidance leading to inevitable confusion, and extremely unevenly enforced.

I have just signed a petition to stop the China loving WHO assuming control over every country's pandemic response in the future. I shudder to think what that would look like

YY @HesterShaw1 I remember the complaints on here about ppl actually shitting on the beaches.

It certainly did. We were fortunate in this small town in that ours, which are run by the Parish Council, were reopened pretty quickly.

That certainly wasn't the case everywhere though and local councils seemed to decide that people who were out and about would no longer need to use the toilet!!

In reality, they just wanted to get away without paying the cleaners for as long as possible.

Fucking ludicrous.

IMO it will have reduced mixing because a) fewer people were in the shop as you could only buy certain things and b) people would have been there for less time and c) fewer staff would have been needed to take care of those items.

Except those people were ordering their non-essential things online instead, so there was more mixing happening in less visible places like warehouses and distribution centres…

I think earlier on, a lot of us fell for the idea that if we just did certain things for a little while we could prevent most people being exposed to covid. I was pretty sure we couldn’t back at the start, but then so many official sensible scientific people said we could (remember “Scotland nearly eliminated the virus in summer 2020”?) I thought okay they must be right, that’s good. Haha no. Any infections our restrictions avoided were only ever being deferred to another time or shifted to another place.

Oh God the “flocking to beaches” era.

Remember how VE Day mixing was going to cause a huge wave? I’m sure it’ll kick in any day now…

The other ridiculous thing was department stores such as our local M & S who kept their fitting rooms closed for ages, but their toilets were open.

Whilst I was glad to see the toilets open when the public ones were still closed, what I didn't like was that people were using them as a fitting room. Clothes were being tried on there, dropped on the floor etc. They would then go out and put what they weren't buying back on the rack. Hardly the most hygienic of practices anyway, whether for Covid or anything else.

It caused a lot of queues in a confined space. Just open the bloody fitting rooms FFS!

"This! I remember someone really going to town about the selfish people going to the local beach - so many people the car park was full. Now, the only way they knew the car park was full was because they had tried to get parked. But of course their journey to the beach wasn't selfish, just everyone else's. It was laughable"

And absolutely everywhere was 'rammed'.

Leading to all those sn posts, as in 'My town was absolutely rammed today. Am I the only one who remembers we're in the middle of a pandemic?'

And it's always 'the middle of a pandemic'. Never three quarters way through, for example.

There was an obvious political and class element to the imagined 'VE Day spike' too.

Like in shops.

They are selfish panic buyers

You are sensibly stocking up to minimise shopping trips

I have just popped out to pick up a few essential bits and bobs and omg Tesco was RAMMED, what we need in this country is a proper lockdown.

...and deferring infection is a good idea in some circumstances

• to allow time for the population to get vaccinated
• medical advances reduce the death rate greatly as time goes by
• to avoid the risk ofneeding a respirator at peak demand, when you might not get one
• all this much more so for the elderly or CEV

@HesterShaw1 can you please post a link as I'd like to sign it too 😀

..whereas I'd entirely support a coordinated global response to a pandemic based on health priorities.

You might not be so keen on a coordinated global response to a pandemic based on political or financial priorities.

Yes, and I’m not arguing that deferring them until after vaccines or until there’s enough health system capacity is a bad idea.

However - the idea that by avoiding infections now, we aren’t just deferring them until later but rather waiting covid out until it goes away, is still out there despite everything we now know. I know people who are still shocked - shocked! - to see others are out at parties or travelling or going to pubs without masks on because “don’t they know covid is still out there?”. And people who still cling to the idea that if we’d only locked down “properly”, we could have stopped most people ever getting covid forever.

I wouldn't. How could we be sure it wouldn't be dictated too much by countries like China.

@LeftFootForward
You might be surprised at how much health priorities and business or financial priorities fitted together at the worst points of the crisis.

Chris Whitty (who has economic as well as medical qualifications) always emphasised that you couldn't just ignore the health issues and carry on with economy as normal etc.

@herecomesthsun as an ex-nurse I'm not at all surprised at how much health priorities and business or financial priorities fitted together at the worst points of the crisis.

That doesn't mean I'd want the WHO to have control over a worldwide pandemic response though.

I’d worry that it’d be dictated too much by rich countries like us, who can structurally and financially manage things like national lockdowns.

It’d be a global scale version of all those lockdown arguments where people couldn’t see beyond the end of their own noses. “Well I’m perfectly happy picking up my hobbies again on furlough while DH works from home in the home office and we spend lazy summer afternoons drinking Peroni in the garden. I don’t see why people are whining about doing this for longer? We’re all in the same boat!”

'Granny killing' is so funny if you're in a low risk demographic and the effects of Covid are some 'retro' entertainment to you, like they are for @SexyLittleNosferatu ... CEV people still exist. We are part of society too. As are elderly people, who are still at increased risk. As are all the people who've been bereaved during the pandemic.

Must be nice to look back and regard phases of the pandemic as retro. The risk is still there for some of us, and your heartless, selfish behaviour is just as unpleasant as it always has been. (Yes, I did say 'selfish'!)

And yet it seemed completely beyond the clever people in charge that, while we do indeed need healthy people to run a healthy economy, shutting down schools, leisure centres, gyms, sports clubs parks and other outside spaces which are essential for people's physical and mental health and forcing people to stay inside, might not be the best way forward. Have you not seen the latest obesity statistics? Particularly depressing and troubling are the childhood obesity statistics.

This country would have fared much better if your average Brit was fitter, slimmer and had a better diet. Apart from Boris mumbling a bit about his bad case of Covid being worse because he was fat, his few well publicised bike rides, and a few adverts showing fat happy people exercising, our public health campaign has stumbled to an absolute halt. And now they have backtracked on their own proposals for limiting the sale of junk food and BOGOF offers. And why? Because of the "cost of living crisis", which has been made worse by the fact that we're now having to tax the fuck out of people to pay for them staying inside for all those months.

You honestly couldn't make this shit up.

I tried but it was deleted. Forgot the Rool.