To ask if we’re heading for another lockdown?

[TreeLine6]

So covid cases are rising and like clockwork, the likes of independent sage are back in the media calling for ‘protections’ like masks, isolation and social distancing to “avoid full lockdown”.

Is it time to reintroduce some measures like the rule of 6, a cap on large events numbers and maybe distancing and early closure for hospitality as independent sage are calling for?

Personally I feel that with vaccines and treatments, we are now in the best position we’re going to get with covid and would be very reluctant to comply with further measures, that themselves cause enormous harm.

Masks and social distancing and a ban on any non essential in person meetings ate back at my Trust. It's only been a month since masks were removed (for the second time). There are a lot of staff off sick with covid, which is the main issue I think. We do have slowly growing numbers of patients with covid, but it's the staff being off which is causing the most problems.

Why was it insane? What do you invisage the alternative would have looked like?

Honestly I can hardly be arsed. We confined millions of healthy people to stay in their homes, pause schooling, shut businesses, stop medical appointments. Cops interrogating young girls out on a walk in the woods. Couples moved from benches on beaches. For months on end.

Nobody can know what the alternative would look like but THAT was absolute paranoid shit and I feel we should never repeat it. No doubt you'll say it was necessary, plenty did. I'll never ever agree.

Even if they do, which I don't think they will,i doubt very many people will follow the rules so strongly. If the government didn't think the rules applied to them during previous lockdowns, why should everyone else have to follow them. I certainly won't.

Independent Sage etc have never gone away. They have been calling for safer indoor air since 2020.

This coupled with the BMJ and The Lancet also the head of RCN RC emergency medicine etc all calling for bring back simple measures to protect healthcare and reduce disease burden.

Other countries never removed their mandates OR have reinstated them months ago (E.g. Germany FFP2 masks on public transport).

Vaccines are protecting the worst of outcomes I.e. death but they are not preventing infections (people cannot work if they are too ill to work) and they are not preventing as much long covid (they offer a positive reduction but it’s not guaranteed protection).

Covid isn’t just the flu or a cold and a higher proportion of those infected have long term symptoms- we don’t know what the future holds E.g. chicken pox and shingles, Epstein-Barr(Glandular Fever) and MS. This is a mass disabling event and causing excess deaths from things like cardiovascular disease.

Go fast, go hard and get ahead is the best plan of action but we in the U.K. are ALWAYS on the back foot.
Small mitigations now E.g. opening windows/using hepa - not passing on infections you already have - and wearing a mask in the supermarket are not big things to do and do have an impact. (Masks do work).
This doesn’t necessarily mean not working - it means if you are infected and can work from home you do. It means if you can’t work from home but can work in a separate office from your colleagues etc do it. Not everyone can but it’s about tiny little things to prevent infections.

I honestly do not see us going into full lockdown again unless there is a terrible variant which looks unlikely right now. But look at the threads on Ambulance waits and Hospital and Testing delays. The NHS is on its knees and it won’t cope with flu and covid swarm this winter (or more it will cope but everything that’s already delayed will be further effected.)

Covid hasn’t gone away and will not go away - true. But there is a difference between making sensible choices to mitigate a pandemic and just putting a head in the sand because people are bored with living through a pandemic.

NO and for the resented that do not travel they can go to hell.

Absolutely not. I will not comply with the removal of my freedoms ever again- it’s was completely abused at catastrophic cost

The plural of anecdote is not data 🙄

Yeah let's just add another pile of misery on to our lives. Like someone said, the government didn't lock themselves down. All those people who got hefty fines for partying should be refunded.

we had what we think was Covid in December 2019

Did knock us out although I suffered badly with it, Ds vegan (17) was the worse. Dd was ill for about 3 days and up and walking around but recuperating for the rest of the week but then out and about and partying after that.
Dh meat eater of the family, (obese, cancer, diabetes and mid 60s) had 1 ill day and then was fine. His 93 year old mother tested positive for Covid in her carehome and had a slight tickle cough one day but it had cleared up the next.

DH has had his vaccines. I am allergic to them, Dd and Ds didn’t bother.

DD got Covid again. Found out when she went for her Covid test for work
She didn’t even know she had it and staying in was torture when you feel perfectly well.

I don’t know anyone who has had Covid this year.

I agree that some authorities took things too far and made up their own rules which were ridiculous, there was also a lot of misinformation online which people took as gospel ie can only exercise once a day or whatever. But on the whole as a novel virus which no one knew how to treat, no one had any sort of natural immunity to and there was no concept of who it would affect and to what extent it was necessary to have a lockdown of sorts. The issue, as always with our government, is how it was implemented, but it doesn't mean the alternative to a lockdown would have been better.

Medical appointments were stopped for good reason, if you're too ignorant to understand why that's a you problem probably.

Well what alternatives are there if we are to successfully avoid lockdown (which would decimate hospitality) and simultaneously "live with it"?
As a former hospitality professional I totally get your frustration, but this isn't about just now, just this winter, just one business sector, it's about how we learn to make better efforts and avoid the full lockdown as per the title of thread...

The problem is not going away, what's your suggestion?

You think Truss will ever order a lockdown? No way. She's deranged.

The cases most people will know of - or already do know of - will usually be relatively mild, so I honestly don’t think people (except for the few) will stand for it. In any case, enforcement of mask wearing was always a joke, at least anywhere around here. Anyone could say they were exempt, or just give you that aggressive ‘Fuck off!’ look, so nobody ever asked anyway.
Certain other countries were much stricter.

People who are vulnerable - and vaccine refusers - will just be obliged to take their own precautions - or not bother and risk the consequences.

What makes the clinically vulnerable feel safe is infected people wearing masks. It isn't much to ask so that they can take part in society as well.

I don't think there will be another lockdown but there will be some partial closures of schools. There has been one here already due to infected staff.

It's silly to say you won't comply you will have no choice.

Many people are still working from home because they and their bosses like it that way. No going back from that.

Very much doubt it unless a far more deadly strain emerges.

I'm happy to wear a mask in places like clinical settings where folks who cannot be vaccinated have no choice about exposure. Would also expect my employer to accomodate very vulnerable folks a bit as part of their stated values.

Beyond that, up to individuals to make own risk assessment - whether it's whether to get a booster when available, avoid crowded areas, shop in person/on-line etc.

Well I am delighted for your mother; no one wants anyone to suffer.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveytechnicalarticleimpactofvaccinationontestingpositiveintheuk/october2021
www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(22)00320-6/fulltext

I just took these from a project of one of my Year 13 students.

Whilst you have anecdotal evidence for this we have lost 2 family members, 2 colleagues and have students who lost parents, siblings and countless older family members. Out of 7 parents who died between both my school and DPs, only 1 was vaccinated and she had other complications compounded by COVID; most deaths occurred before vaccinations, but the last was anti-vaccination and the child has spoken to me at length about is as she was the one first testing positive in the family. It has taken a huge amount of work with her to stop her blaming herself for her mother's death.

Everyone had different experiences of COVID. We are in the North West, teaching in Manchester and Bolton. If you followed any news you will know the impact that COVID had in these areas, with high levels of infection, hospitalisation and death. Honestly, I struggled with my own mental health, with my DP being rushed to hospital several times, to holding a teenager tightly to stop them hurting themselves as a response to their mum dying, or collecting a student from a class, walking them to the front desk knowing that they were going to say goodbye to an older sibling in ICU.

My experiences are nothing like those who worked from home in a quiet corner of the country, and I wouldn't use my experiences to justify any particular response to rising COVID levels. But I will use them as a warning. It was awful for many. It was also fine for many. Lockdown is not the way to go but using small measures to reduce risks should be the way forward.

I really, really cannot do that period of time again. Nor can many who work in care, the NHS, emergency services, education, etc.

I am replying as someone who is still basically shielding as advised to medically.

i don’t think another lockdown is the answer.
The answer is mask wearing in medical situations and acknowledgement that covid is still here and how long covid has decimated the NHS work force.
They need to acknowledge that covid is airborne and they got that wrong at teh start. All the bollocks that you couldn’t meet in your garden but could in a covid secure pub fuck off with that. I wanted to meet people in my garden and outside but couldn’t but could in a crowded pub. Bonkers.
Hospitals need to be redesigned for all single rooms with filtered air.
Some hospitals are currently punish staff who swab their patients for covid and told to stop testing patients.
Hospitals are truly shit at infection control. Shared patient toilets are grim and have you seen the state of the floors and walls and skirting and underneath a mattress or in the ECG lead monitor clips.
Going on a cruise ship and pumping air from one room to another is asking for trouble.
Everywhere needs investing in air filtration systems.

But mainly for people to acknowledge that we don’t need another lockdown, but the first one was justified as as many of us that lost jobs etc from it, more so would have from the loss of life without it whilst it was worked out what the fuck was going on.

GP numbers are going to keep decreasing now. People are exhausted and worked to the point of death and are now quitting or moving abroad and the ones remain get more shit when waiting lists go up. Magically telling GPS to see patients in 2 weeks won’t bring more appointments out of thin are. Friend in Germany walked into a minor injuries unit and no queue and they are horrified at the situation over here.

But stopping screening of hospital inpatients on wards with vulnerable patients? Well that’s just shit.

I don’t think we will lockdown, no. But hospital beds are getting taken up with covid patients again and having read the ambulance thread last night you can see why people are suffering for hours on end waiting to be treated - ambulances are just sitting outside A&E waiting whole shifts to offload one patients. Have a heart attack at home? You might be dead before an ambulance gets to you.

There are definitely more people wearing masks around here, and the majority of under 50s haven’t had a jab for several months now. I think it’ll be a rough winter, medically.

No. No one would comply anyway.

I was at a hospital appointment a few days ago. Big signs about sanitizing hands and wearing masks. I was the only person in the waiting room with a mask on and I didn't see anyone using the hand sanitizer. I felt sorry for the staff.

Not in my trust - and the local alliance of Trusts have come down off emergency status this week as the admissions peak has tailed off again. Issues are the usual lack of suitable social care placements, staff turnover in placements meaning things that were settled for residents fall into disuse, and people still in crisis from the aftermath of all the lockdowns.

We're back to full face to face inductions as well which all the staff are overjoyed at - have the silly chairs on distancing dots for some sessions of restraint training which is fucking ridiculous when later that same day and we're literally strangling each other!

We're not seeing these swathes of staff off sick with it either - the ones who've come down with it have done so after going off on annual leave to somewhere warm and sunny and haven't contracted it at work but on holiday.

Never going to happen.

Only on MN do I see this constant trying to whip up covid panic. In RL, barely anyone even mentions it.

Were the staff wearing masks?

Really? I'm really not seeing the evidence!! Even my unvaccinated 81-year-old mother had no symptoms.

Is she a vegan runner too?

Agreed. Also don’t know of anyone who has it, has had it recently, or anyone still testing. Went to GP this week, no staff were wearing masks either.