Sick of narrative that lockdowns were pointless

[Bagzzz]

I think lots of people are forgetting quite how scary the early days were, overwhelmed hospitals and exhausted (and now a lot burnt out) medical staff.

Many mistakes were made and some things that might have have been avoided but we know with the benefit of hindsight.
Scientists if not politicians were doing their best.

Maybe could distinguish later lockdowns but they weren’t done lightly either, knowing it would affect mental health and business.

Well there’s surely not much point going back over it now. FWIW though, I think keeping people from their families over Christmas and at funerals etc was pretty hideous.

Politicians ‘doing their best’ is hilarious.

I agree with you about folks forgetting how scary it was. There’s an air of expecting the masses to get sick regardless and just carry on. I wanted schools to close, for lockdown so that we could contain the virus but I didn’t understand why we did that and still kept airports open for so long without proper mitigation, why so late to lockdown etc. Even now why so lax with schools ventilation, where is our mass vaccination programme - it doesn’t make sense but that’s Tory incompetence and greed first - probably another thread.

I work in a supermarket with over 200 staff. We had our first Covid case in November, 2020, nine months after the first confirmed Covid case in Ireland. It was obvious very quickly that the lockdowns were a hysterical overreaction, yet our government continued with them for months on end.

Yup Tories did their best and carried on partying, contracts to mates, affairs and much more. Whilst telling the rest of us to stay the duck inside.

Lockdown and furlough is one of the reasons why we are fucked now still in a lot of areas.

The uplift was cruel to people when it was removed although with all the financial help now due to the cost of living and next years increase would have been cheaper to keep it.

Not all of us have forgotten how scary it was which was worsened due to the media and daily updates. I had cv back then and vulnerable to a lot more than just cv, and was shitting myself that I was going to die. So were my dcs who would have been orphaned.

Also didn’t understand why airports remained opened and relying on people to self isolate.

Closing down as we did put many children at risk of abuse. Those who went to school to escape were stuck 24/7 unless the school could convince parents to let them in, which was hard due to the news updates. Those in dv households were at an increased risk. These issues weren’t considered at all.

MH issues sky rocketed across all groups

The scare tactics continued with the mention of long covid without any mention that this isn’t confined to cv. Flu and pneumonia for example can have long term effects.

Lockdowns just isolated people and fucked up mental health.
A generation of children have anxiety and other issues.
Young children have no immune build up to normal viruses .
Some people are still scared to death of living a normal life.
People lost there jobs and houses.

I would never obey a lockdown again.

And the mask advice was a joke.
A manky old T-shirt wasn’t enough.

Lots of people had one mask regardless of the type and wore it throughout without washing it. Imagine if those in medical fields did this lol.

Neber mind the litter from the disposable ones. Although suppose those litter bugs did at least change the masks.

It's impossible to have reasoned discussions about lockdowns on social media. Despite the fact that over 80% of the public supported them, the less than 20% that didn't are very vocal and aggressive online.

Yup and their social interactions were also screwed as a result Grey.

IIRC all the negatives were discussed back then on this forum and were shot down for over reacting.

@AndEverWhoKnew I did support them at the time.
I followed every rule.
Looking back it was absolutely pointless.
Political people doing what ever they wanted while minions followed rules.

I think they had benefits and drawbacks.
obviously the point of them was to lessen peoples exposure, avoid lots of people getting sick at the same time and potentially lots of deaths.
As a blunt instrument they did lessen the number of infections happening all at the same time (although lots of people did still die and hospitals were still pretty overwhelmed)

However the fallout from that (healthwise) was That many illnesses/cancers etc were either not diagnosed, diagnosed after they had progressed to a more advanced level or in some cases people died. And now the backlog of patients awaiting care is still overwhelming the health service.

And the financial fallout was massive as well

But actually a lot of people were in favour of lockdowns. There were loads of pro lockdown posts on MN wanting stricter lockdowns, stricter longer isolation periods, calling people selfish for going to work etc

Tough shit if you're sick of it OP, people are entitled to disagree with you.

Personally I think it's far too soon to tell whether lockdowns were a net positive or negative, so I don't accept the view that they were pointless, but your narrative here is no better. As if it matters in the slightest whether our politicians were doing their best?!

Mmm and I think this is quite a common viewpoint. It isn't the case that everyone is in either one camp or another. I opted out quite early in the pandemic, but I didn't really question the initial lockdown. It should surely be pretty obvious that people's views about something before they've experienced it might be different to their views while they experience it and then after.

I did say scientists NOT politicians doing their best.

So the lockdowns worked then?

Fair enough on that part only, my apologies for misrepresenting you there. The rest however is bollocks.

Not this old chestnut again! Hasn’t this subject been done to death over and over on MN?

I think lockdowns were / are a policy disaster but the public/ media wanted them. The first one maybe justified but the later ones especially not.
I hope we never have another one ever again.
i’m convinced lockdowns were used as the virus affected the 50 plus age group. If the virus had affected children only then I can’t imagine for one minute 50 plus year olds being happy to stay at home for something they were not at risk from and yet that is what we did to children, teens and young adults.

I think it is true that the level of demand for lockdown made it inevitable, the first one at least.

Your distinction between the first lockdown and the two after it is an important one. I think most people agree that when we didn’t know what we were dealing with the lockdown was necessary, but it was the two after that that really caused the damage to peoples lives, businesses, mental health etc.

When people are still living with the negative consequences of those lockdowns and we can’t see any real benefit to them considering everyone has had Covid now, it is fair to question whether it was right that we were put through it.

I did at the time of the first lockdown, I was very worried.
All whipped up from listening to the mainstream media.
If I had known the government were partying then I would have had my eyes opened sooner..

People can change their mind, and I think alot of people have realised now how badly it effected our country for the worst.

A special mention here for the hypocritical councils who taped off benches and wanged on about protecting the NHS but now wont grit pavements to help prevent people slipping and falling and ending up in A&E so putting more pressure on the NHS

We see you oh yes We see you!!!

I think the issue is that something had to be done. The people I know who were against lockdown were also against any other kinds of mitigations (masks, distancing etc) and when they're asked what they would have done to stop hospitals being overwhelmed, they just kind of shrug and figure it's someone else's problem.

I think the initial lockdown (for a month/6 weeks) had to happen while scientists figured out how the virus worked, what would stop it and so on. Beyond that, I'm not sure. I expected the government to use that time to come up with... something. But it felt like we got to the end of lockdown and then they started wondering what to do next.

I also think they should have had much more in place for people who lived alone or who were sole carers for everyone else in the house (eg single parents etc).

I remember reading that the pandemic preparedness plan had alternative suggestions, but i don't know what those were - would be interesting to see.

When people are still living with the negative consequences of those lockdowns and we can’t see any real benefit to them considering everyone has had Covid now, it is fair to question whether it was right that we were put through it.

Yes, it's phenomenally important that we think critically about whether decisions made at various points were the right ones or not. That's why OP is so far in the wrong here: that has nothing to do with whether any particular scientist was doing their best or not. The problem with people who come to the conclusion that lockdowns were pointless (or any conclusion, actually) is that they're doing so before we fully understand the effects, not because they haven't had sufficient faith that lockdowns weren't done lightly. Whatever that means.

Or the public loos that taped off ever other sink and every other cubicle creating queues to use said loos and then said sinks. At least they were open I guess. Most were closed completed.
Big shout out to the queen for keeping all the royal parks loos open throughout