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).

How do people still think, in May 2022, that if people had just stuck to restrictions it would've shortened the pandemic? How does that square with the way in which Omicron came into being and spread?

Yes! Our local groups were full of this too. I still see the odd post pop up even now.

People tearing each other apart for walking on the beach, reporting neighbours to the police for going out more than once a day, etc

One bloke used to stand at a busy junction and count cars. He’d post his figures every day - how many cars had more than 1 person in and he’d estimate how many were on essential journeys.

I remember another poster banging on about her neighbour’s “constant stream of visitors” who turned out to be carers for the neighbour’s terminally ill mum.

My neighbour who would knock on your door and shame you if you weren’t out on NHS clapping night

My daughter had a complete mental health breakdown in April 2020, I couldn’t get her any help and I was scared she was going to harm herself. One so called friend told me to suck it up, at least she was alive, that DD should just pull herself together and it was “just one of those things” mental health was just collateral damage and I should be thinking about those dying instead. I haven’t spoken to her since.

I do wonder if these people look back and cringe and how they get on with their friends/family/neighbours now.

The way everyone turned on each other was quite scary.

Some of the rules, or at least the way the rules were interpreted, were quite mad - my daughter could spend all day in a classroom with her friends, but wasn’t allowed to walk home with them. The local police were shooing people off the wide, open beach, forcing them to walk in narrow lanes.

I think we did the best we could, with the knowledge we had at the time, but I’d never allow my daughters to be isolated like that again.

This year we lost a family member much too young because of COVID and his partner had a stroke (covid microclots) and has long covid. Disabled for the rest of her life. Both were in their 40s, antivax and previously fit sporty couple. They paid the ultimate price and I miss him immensely.

Just because the current strain of virus gives milder symptoms in some infected people, doesnt mean that a new more unpleasant strain couldnt emerge. Its a virus and its not going away.

I don't think the general restrictions were inappropriate based on what we knew at the time (which was absolutely nothing!)

I do think there were some specific restrictions that were batshit, ineffectual, and unnecessarily cruel, but those were the ones I thought so at the time as well rather than just in retrospect.

E.g. delaying the introduction of single person bubbles, the one way rule in shops, welsh govt ridiculous and last minute decision to only allow shops to sell "essentials" (and then the rationale of what essentials were), etc.

Still on the fence about whether masks (e.g the flimsy ones we all used rather than the ones in healthcare settings) were of any use at all, given that rates were higher in Wales and Scotland when we continued with them/were stricter about them than in England where they'd stopped months earlier.

Then of course there were the rules that were generally sensible but were completely misinterpreted by some members of the police and general public who felt like their opportunity to be part of the stasi had come at last - the police reporting people meeting with a coffee as having a picnic, walking in deserted areas 5 min drive away being wrong while walking on your crowded local streets was fine,etc.

And there were some rules where the intention was good but we will probably never evaluate whether they worked well enough to justify the pain/knock on consequences caused -I'm thinking stopping hospital visiting, people dying alone, reduction of funeral numbers, people dying due to suspension of treatment for anything other than covid, etc. Plus the linked mental health issues, effect on children etc.

I think the actions taken before vaccines were available were necessary. Afterwards, not so much.

I don't understand what makes now different to when we still had restrictions despite most people being double jabbed.

I still remember the person, right here on MN, who seriously suggested that people should be given a financial incentive to snitch on neighbours who had 'too many' visitors over Christmas.

Then all the accusations about people being 'selfish' for buying 'non essential' Easter eggs or lipstick.

Just a horrible time. I can't think of one good thing to say about it.

I think it's an understanding that restrictions weren't suppressing Omicron, compliance was waning and we also have a political class who are even less able to credibly advocate for restrictions than they used to be. Whereas back in early December when some restrictions were reintroduced, there wasn't as much real life evidence that they'd be ineffective. It's now undeniable. People are just no longer having it.

I think given where we were that lockdowns needed to happen, although some of the rules were nonsensical. I resented locking down too late, for impacts on deaths and illness (covid and non covid) and which meant locking down for longer. However, I struggle with normalising the level of death and organ damage we have now, rather than sticking to isolation and addressing ventilation etc.

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

Rule breakers or just people with different opinions to yours who made informed choices?

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

Well we all have the benefit of hindsight now and that makes it easy to criticise.
At the start of 2020 we had no idea. I think most of the restrictions were justified, if not to the letter, but the panic made common sense go out of the window. All the lockdowns should have started sooner and ended sooner.
Repeated lockdowns may have been avoidable if simpler precautions like ventilation and masks had been taken more seriously.

Our excess death rate seems to have been similar to other European countries with similar populations and better health care systems.

What worries me for the future is that when the next pandemic comes along people will jump to the conclusion that it's the same risk level as omicron is now and there will be low compliance with any mitigations.

Good point @ElenaSt
Just because someone chose not to get vaccinated does not make them a rule breaker. I think some people forgot/forget that.

Maverickess

"I think the measures were necessary at the time, but mainly so that the essential systems were in some way protected, like the NHS, social care, police, fire etc.
I do think though that if we'd been better prepared, reacted quickly and had properly functioning services in the first place, those measures wouldn't have needed to be so harsh.
That's what I'm annoyed about really, that if the services we needed to protect were in better shape, the measures that were intolerable for some would not have been needed. Ultimately though, that's the place we were at when covid hit and we couldn't do much else but try and work with what we had.

I also think that everyone will have a different view based on how they were affected.
If you got covid, were mildly affected but lost a lot financially from lockdowns you might feel they were too harsh, but if you were in a position to not be too affected (or it saved you money) but were negatively affected by the virus itself, you're going to probably feel the restrictions were what were needed or maybe not enough.
Thousands dying a day could be an acceptable price to someone - until it's someone they love or themselves, and so many people losing everything could be an acceptable price to someone else - until it's them that face it.

The blame though was something else all together, I saw a lot of people expecting others to understand and adhere to what they thought was right without giving the same back. That for me, was the main problem."

All of this exactly!

@LeftFootForward Just a bit ignorant and/or selfish. Just a bit...

@ElenaSt The 'informed choice' to put other people at risk based on silly rumours...

Yeah, views on this very much depend on people's individual priorities and experiences. I think the more wide the understanding of that, the better. Unfortunately, some people have been encouraged and facilitated to think their selfishness and priorities are better than other people's, particularly in the first year or so of the pandemic. Which made the whole process of coming out of restrictions more challenging, I think.

@ArcticFoxy You can be as scared of the truth as you like, but the reality is, it is selfish.

That's not the 'reality', nor is it the 'truth'.

It's simply your opinion. And like a certain part of the anatomy, we all have those.

@RedPepperJelly Not getting the vaccine is a selfish decision. Obviously you were lucky to not be too unwell when you did contract Covid, but that doesn't mean you made the right choice.

@IcedPurple Incorrect.

How do people still think, in May 2022, that if people had just stuck to restrictions it would've shortened the pandemic? How does that square with the way in which Omicron came into being and spread?

@AppleandRhubarbTart you didn’t ask me but I’ll have a go….

There was a period restrictions were reducing numbers, that’s what we locked down for because we didn’t have the resources to cope with the numbers projected to need them (there’s a separate argument to whether or not you individually give any weight to the projections), indeed in 2020 we couldn’t cope with the resources we had and the numbers who needed them hence PPE was a battle to procure globally and we had various industries trying to make ventilators and CPAP machines.

Then we had a period with the above restrictions and vaccinations that did reduce infections significantly against the variant in circulation. Lifting of restrictions was dependent on hospitals coping and people were largely looking to vaccinations to achieve that.

Then Omicron came along, vaccinations had minimal to no effect on infection but did protect against severe illness and death significantly alongside Omicron revealing itself to be a generally milder variant. We remained with very few mitigations in place and restrictions were generally only seen in certain high-risk settings. This progressed to no restrictions and very few mitigations that we see remain today.

Some have changed their view along with the changing situation and some haven’t, but it’s not entirely incorrect to surmise that following no restrictions or mitigations certainly wasn’t helping get the infection numbers down at various points and the high hospital admissions is what had us in the harshest measures. It wouldn’t have ended the pandemic but it certainly may have contributed to the length of the need for such restrictions.

Given how hard many people have found the last couple of years I’m not surprised to find people holding grudges even though it was unlikely the few dissenters had a major impact on the way things went. As a country we had very high compliance but who knows whether those who rejected mitigations caused a lot of damage or none at all. We don’t, but we can see the progression of the effect that mitigations did have at various points. It’s debatable whether they prolonged the issues but we unarguably reached the limits of our healthcare capacity for respiratory illnesses a couple of times.

@runnerblade95 Why on earth would anyone judge someone who got vaccinated? ie got a perfectly safe vaccine to protect themselves and the wider community.

The unvaccinated, on the other hand, absolutely deserve a bit of judgment. Sure, it may not be comfortable to hear, but ultimately it is a selfish decision and it stems from nothing more than ignorance.

I appreciate the effort @Cornettoninja but the premise is still plain incorrect. What you've done is moved the goalposts a bit: some of the things you say are true, but they don't actually justify the claim made. They don't address the fact that the effectiveness of individual restrictions varied widely either, that some were obviously idiotic and potentially incentivised more risky behaviours. That's the problem with treating restrictions as one whole rather than as a group of different measures.

On the subject of not knowing about the impact of ignoring restrictions, one thing we do know for certain is that some of them led to deaths. There's no understanding of that shown in the post I quoted. With that in mind, people need to think carefully about any decision to moralise. They might get told things they don't want to hear.

Even the current strain is a bit of a bastard. I had it in April. Very mild, a bit worse than when my allergies kick in but no where near as bad as a cold. But the sting in the tail is an absolute fucker. The symptoms were all gone within a few days but now, 4 weeks later, the fatigue is still killing me. I can't even walk up a flight of stairs in one run, I have to stop half way for a moment.

I wasn’t trying to to justify anything I was attempting to explain a mindset and how it’s still in existence in May 2022. In all honesty, wherever you fall on the spectrum of opinion around past events it’s largely redundant now things have moved on. I just found the post and your response interesting 🤷‍♀️

The OP is an abstract, it asks about opinions - feelings really and feelings and opinions don’t need evidence to back up their existence, they just are. It definitely adds weight and credibility if they have them but they don’t need them to exist.

I do think different now for sure. I look back & think it was all a bit insane! I think 2020 was reasonably justified. We knew nothing about it etc but the more we learnt, some of the restrictions were just daft. This idea you couldn’t go & sit in a park. You couldn’t go to the beach. We know that no viruses spread easily outside, so it was ludicrous looking back. Being fined for driving somewhere nice for a walk, insane! This snitching on your neighbours, bloody awful. Mine reported me for going out for 2 walks a day.. I had a newborn baby who would mostly only sleep if I pushed her round in the pram. Plus I was stuck at home with a toddler & a newborn. I’d have gone insane without a couple walks away from the chaos. Safe to say, I told her exactly what I thought & never spoke to them again. Knobs.