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.

@SirMingeALot

"It will also depend on what's considered important to model, which is political just like all covid policy has been."

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I forgot that one! Also who is paying for the modelling. Honestly you could come out with any conclusions you wanted (or paid for!).

A similar argument can be used on the Covid death forecasts at the start of and during the pandemic. With the exception of weather forecasts I have a strong scepticism of forecasting accuracy especially where it involves human behaviour.

Pandemic death forecasts were described as "following the science " and they were not "one true science" but best guesses. Even Niall Ferguson admitted his forecast of 500k covid deaths was wrong because he had not taken into account human behaviour in seeking to avoid catching Covid.

In addition there was a perverse incentive at the time for modellers to produce the worst possible outcome which will encourage lockdowns. If for example you said there would be 500k deaths without restrictions and the end result with restrictions was say 200k then you can claim that 300k would have died without the restrictions. If you predicted say 100k deaths and there were no restrictions and also 200k died then as a modeller you would be heavily criticised and your reputation/ future work in shreds for getting it wrong. Lastly rightly or wrongly there is competition in medical forecasting and the modeller giving the most pessimistic horrific outcomes will be more listened to by the media and thence politicians.

That is why in my opinion that because we had the type/ duration of lockdowns we did, no one will ever know what the impact would have been of stricter lockdowns, less strict or less lockdowns or no lockdowns at all. It's just subjective opinion.

Yes it was petrifying for a lot of us at first, did it need to be, no, were lockdowns for the non vulnerable a mistake? Yes. and we are paying for it now.

Just to clarify, I'm not talking about our situation now or what covid has done. The point about societal collapse is in relation to different, more virulent potential pandemics affecting children more seriously. There's no basis to assume the response to covid tells us anything at all about such a different scenario.

In terms of concluding that lockdowns can and do work, let's assume for the sake of argument that lockdown was indeed the best course of action open to us when tackling covid 19. That tells us nothing at all about whether it would be the case in other pandemics. In particular, it doesn't address the question of how people would behave if more of them felt they or their children were at greater personal risk. We cannot simply assume that the factors that needed to be in place for lockdowns to work as they did in 2020 and 2021 would be replicated in the future.

But they were pointless. The NHS is still shit. My kids are playing catch up. We still can't get a GP appointment. Hospitals are still full of elderly people who don't need to be there.
What did we achieve other than buying granny a couple of extra years? And at what expense?
We saved lives and protected the NHS only for it all to fall apart anyway.

Because the vulnerable do not exist in a vacuum. They're not just the elderly who live alone. They're children who need education, they're parents with children at home, they're pregnant women, they're people who need to visit hospital regularly. You can't possibly keep vulnerable people safe unless you limit the spread of the virus everywhere. That is why we locked down.

I see Sweden mentioned a lot. Sweden is a vastly different country to the UK. Swedish people are different. I have a Swedish friend who likened it to a country full of introverts. When told to stay indoors, everyone just shrugged and said they didn't want to go out anyway. Stricter restrictions weren't needed because Swedes don't see it as their human right to pack themselves into a pub, lick strangers and drink until they fall over.

We need to not conflate vulnerable to covid and vulnerable per se. They're not at all the same thing. Some people were made vulnerable because of the response to covid. Some people were vulnerable because of both covid and lockdown, others weren't vulnerable on the basis of either.

Where did I say only the elderly are vulnerable? That's why I said 'coordinate and control' the amount of money spent could have done this I'd have thought could have planned this.

How insulting 🤨

The NHS is falling apart because the Tories are making it fall apart. Covid has simply hastened the inevitable due to years of Tory neglect.

Do you remember the 90s, when waiting times came right down? That was due to funding and a concerted effort to get on top of the problem.

@Bicurator

And inaccurate as well.

www.statista.com/statistics/755502/alcohol-consumption-in-liters-per-capita-ineu/

The UK is not the heavy drinking country it is made out to be.

Sounds a bit miserable tbh

☺️ I also have never ‘licked’ any stranger

@Bicurator

"☺️ I also have never ‘licked’ any stranger"

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😀

@Numbat2022 Do you remember the 90s, when waiting times came right down? That was due to funding and a concerted effort to get on top of the problem

The 90's had a Tory government under John Major until 1997.

But that's my point.
Any defense of lockdown seems to centre around protecting the NHS and saving lives. Did either of those things really happen?

I don’t think you can defend the removal of civil liberties to ‘protect an underfunded public service’ regardless of the outcome. It’s supposed to be used for extreme situations such as war, not to stop a teetering health service from completely losing control so the tories can go ‘See? See? It isn’t underfunded otherwise how did it cope with that?’

So if drug resistant and vaccine resistant polio was rife in schools, would you have this attitude? Maybe google polio pre vaccine.

Lockdowns are a tool in the arsenal, along with hygiene measures, social distancing etc. Some things went too far like people dying alone, but it's easy to forget how scary it was. Bit like childbirth.

Maybe they mean they wouldn’t tolerate/observe a lockdown in equal circumstances again?

@purpledalmation but it isn't and it won't be.
So you have no logical valid point 🙄🙄🤦🏻‍♀️

@purpledalmation given how polio can present as a cold, some of the 'covid is just a cold and we refuse to acknowledge that it isn't and will ignore longer term impacts' crowd would probably refute the longer term effects of polio too.

They do where in the area of the UK where I live. Not live in but regular visits throughout the day.

It's being reported tonight that half of the passengers on flights coming in from China to Italy are testing positive for Covid. So we'll see what happens when there's no lockdown soon enough. At least there's a vaccine this time.

news.sky.com/story/covid-patients-no-longer-have-to-quarantine-in-hong-kong-as-restrictions-are-lifted-12775498 Half of passengers on China flight to Italy have COVID - as US becomes fifth country to tighten restrictions on Chinese travellers

Reread that - stats are based on two flights to Milan