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).

Basically if you think MNHQ not removing a post = it's not ableist, well... 😂😂😂

That's interesting.

Clickable link to the article

and to the Twitter thread

Two scientists from Berne and Oxford looked at all NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions), including travel restrictions, masks, school closures etc.

Results: We do not find substantial and consistent COVID-19-related fatality-reducing effects of any NPI under investigation. We see a tentative change in the trend of COVID-19-related deaths around 30 days after strict stay-at-home rules and to a slighter extent after workplace closings have been implemented. As a proof of concept, our model is able to identify a fatality-reducing effect of COVID-19 vaccinations. Furthermore, our results are robust with respect to various crucial sensitivity checks.

My worry is when the hospitals start filling up, what other options are there?

I absolutely take your point, Sharrowgirl, but this only works if a) It's considered acceptable to trash everything else to protect the NHS, and b) that there's any point in pretending it's fit for purpose in the first place

Opinions naturally differ, but personally I don't consider either to be true. We're already seeing the hideous cost of focusing on just one thing, and with evidence starting to appear that even lockdowns made no difference, it's clear IMO that we need a different system - and no, not the US model before anyone says it!!

He badly chose some of his messaging - or at least his speech writers did.

"Some of you will lose loved ones" made large numbers of people lose their minds.

I actually think that we locked down because the public demanded it

I believe that was a factor, yes, and so much of it was driven by irresponsible media (social, print and broadcast)

I've posted this link before, but while there's also been plenty of reputable stuff it shows just how bad the drive for "the worst report" became, and unfortunately there remain those who'll believe whatever they read:

factcheck.afp.com/covid-19-real-images-wrong-context

I agree. Until he caved in to the MSM, for the first time ever I had a small amount of respect for him. But then, he caved, and that respect went back out of the window.

I still think that if it wasn't for the MSM and 24hr news, we wouldn't have locked down and possibly we wouldn't have thought of it as anything other than a particularly bad couple of years for respiratory viruses.

After all, let's not forget that our hospitals have regularly been overwhelmed during late autumn/winter/spring. Hell 18months before covid a doctor did have to make the choice between my son and another child taking the last PICU bed. (Not sure whether I should be thankful that my son was deemed to need it less and ended up in HDU instead).

Thinking about it 22years (almost to the day) before the first lockdown, my 5week old preemie had a cardio respiratory arrest, and there wasn't space in PICU for him, so he ended up in an incubator in a side room with constant 121 nursing. Nothing seems to have changed for the better in the intervening years, in fact I believe there is now even less capacity.
I've nothing but respect for doctors and nurses that saved both my children's lives, but the NHS has been broken for a very long time and those same doctors have had to make these life and death decisions over who needs an intensive care bed the most for all that time.

It was an absolutely ridiculous overreaction, I honestly cringe when I think about it.

Agreed, and yet, I think anything he’d said that wasn’t “never you mind we’ll make the pandemic all go away” would have caused that kind of reaction.

People just really really wanted there to be a thing the government could have done to make covid not be an issue. Wanted it badly enough to believe it was possible, if only the government was better. And some of them still think that.

It’s the flip side of the people who think we’d never even have noticed it was there at all if the media hadn’t reported on it - a deep-down conviction that the natural world just must be under our control somehow.

(I do think the government could have handled many things about it much better, including that first wave. But whatever they did would not have stopped covid killing a lot of people’s loved ones.)

I do think the government could have handled many things about it much better, including that first wave. But whatever they did would not have stopped covid killing a lot of people’s loved ones

And for me, this is the key to it right there. When something like Covid comes along the sad fact is that people are going to die; we all hope it won't be us or our loved ones and we all wish it wasn't so, but nevertheless there'll be deaths no matter what we do

Unfortunately the reluctance to accept this turned in some quarters almost into a demand for immortality - which is how we came to have reports from the BBC about the "tragedy" of a 93 year old's death. A deep sadness for their nearest and drearest of course, but a tragedy?

Oh god, nearest not drearest ... as errors go that one was pretty unfortunate

It's interesting how often accusations of covid denial or references to conspiracy theories are the reflex response to posters who are clear they aren't willing to assume lockdown was justified. We've had a couple of examples of that in this thread now.

(I do think the government could have handled many things about it much better, including that first wave. But whatever they did would not have stopped covid killing a lot of people’s loved ones.)

This is true. Goes back to the point about this being a question of which vulnerable people we were going to prioritise over others, which of the shit sandwiches we were going to eat.

Yeah, I remember the outcry over that photo of a pre-lockdown Downing Street whiteboard that said “who do we not save?” Like it came from a place of “mwahaha, who can we kill” and not “oh fuck.”

I also don’t consider either to be true. I’m not arguing for lockdowns, I’m against them as the price was too high. And it’s for that reason I’m musing on this because I don’t want to do it ever again.

But when I think back to when it was bad in India, people were pushing and shoving trying to get their relatives into hospital for treatment. A BBC report followed such a man and his mother died on a bed outside the hospital, waiting to get in. And the hospital had run out of oxygen anyway.

Maybe it wouldn’t ever get that bad here but my concern is when you’re faced with people dying in car parks outside hospitals and there’s no vaccine yet, what are your actual options?

A lockdown - especially one where the rules are arbitrary and unclear - should never be imposed on a "just in case it works" basis. Governments fell like a house of cards in this respect. Hardly any had the courage to let people exercise their own common sense.

And as other posters have said, there was nothing governments could have done to hold back the virus, much as people desperately and understandably wanted to believe it was possible.

Has OP only written one post or is my app playing up? There have been some quirks with it lately.

There is a long history of lockdowns and quarantines as a tool in managing pandemics.

Unfortunately, we can never know what the outcome would have been if there wasn't a quarantine or a lockdown. So in a sense, we can never say "Oh this definitely saved x many lives".

But we do know that limiting mixing in a pandemic can be very effective. It would be terrible if such measures could never be used in the future.

For example, the next pandemic that comes along might be of a disease with a higher mortality or might affect young children more. It is also the case that we won't know all the stats in the first few weeks of the disease.

We need to have these measures are part of our armoury against disease.

There's a long history of quarantines. Lockdowns of entire countries, rather less common. And the two are very different beasts. They should not be conflated.

Quarantining the sick had been a thing.

And the research does show that lockdowns/marks/etc did not make a difference.

"Lockdown" as it has been used the last couple of years has only been around since the start of 2020, when China started doing it.

Quarantine and isolation are not the same as lockdown. In this country it was mainly a word describing how prison riots were tackled.

We have never before made it illegal for people to visit their elderly parents, or to have visitors in their homes, or to hug loved ones or to shake hands, or to meet up with our partners for physical affection/sex, or to go out for some fresh air under the guise of tackling a virus.

Which is why it's so important we don't simply assume it should stay part of the pandemic armoury. It needs to be a more informed decision.

That IS the informed position x

Lessons from the history of quarantine - from plague to influenza A

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3559034/

obviously has to be used with intelligence and caution

however it would be rather stupid to say - a national lockdown of some sort should never happen again - because quite possibly it should, in the event of an appropriate situation.

it would of course be nice if that didn't happen

Some people do love a lockdown

not at all

just being realistic