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.

That's a tragedy. I'm not sure how to relates to the point I was making (about parents chatting endlessly on the internet when they could have been interacting with their kids) but that tragedy is indeed heartbreaking. Babies shouldn't be left in the bath alone under any circumstances but it does happen (and present wfh arrangements where childcare isn't put in place will continue to propagate situations like this) and I have nothing but sympathy for that poor woman.

I agree that more resources should be poured into the NHS. Don't think I'm an apologist for the lack of funding. I'm fact I'm reluctant to overblame lockdowns for issues that are due to lack of funding and you're playing into the hands of the wrong people if you engage in this.

You could have disclosed any troubling symptoms to your GP or HV in a phone call and you likely would have been brought in if it could have been sinister. I come from a family of GPs and they didn't stop caring about cancer symptoms during lockdown. The GP crisis and the rejected referrals preventing GPs from passing you on are actually funding problems and not lockdown problems.

I don't for one moment think it is alright that you didn't get your check up at the right time. However since you are against lockdowns which were designed to cap the number of Covid patients becoming seriously ill by delaying those illnesses until a vaccine could be found, I'm not sure what you wanted to happen. There isn't a pit of extra doctors to release in the event of a pandemic. The best they can do is attend to emergencies (of which elderly people struggling to breathe has always been a high proportion) and prioritise all patients with signs of serious illness, while trying to avoid infectious diseases spreading.

The point is also that although the NHS is overwhelmed now, it could always have been more overwhelmed. Patients could wait for longer and more people could die. Doctors are trying to "do something about it" and they were trying during the pandemic. There aren't enough of them. That's the problem. We weren't prepared for a pandemic and that knowledge was available to politicians years ago. Waiting lists were dire before Covid. Higher numbers of sick patients mean fewer health checks for you and your baby, or my baby, come to that.

What do you want to happen?

Oh well can you let my gp and hv know that they should have been available for a phone call. Because mine certainly weren't. I know that experience isn't unique.
Elderly people who can't breathe is nature. In emergency situations, the very elderly really ought to be bottom of the queue. Not an entire nation, almost an entire world, shutting down and doing without to buy them an extra year. Old sick people die. It's foolish to try and pretend otherwise.

My GP wouldn't refer me privately during lockdown. I have private medical care through work and asked for referral for a lump on my ankle and was told they weren't doing them. Thankfully I now have access to a private GP app so I don't have to bother them any more but it shouldn't be like that.

@Grumpybutfunny

Tou are assuming that everyone who is vulnerable can be self sufficient, have support from relatives etc etc.

A great many vulnerable people need support from those in the population who are mixing. How do
you protect them?

A great many vulnerable people are not ‘old’ - but have families of their own that they need to support.

A great many vulnerable people have jobs.

A great many vulnerable people form and integral part of our society.

You said in an earlier post that it should be illegal for the vulnerable and their families to leave the house.

You also said in an earlier post that prisoners should have their human rights taken away and made to participate in clinical trials.

Tow if the most disgusting comments I’ve ever read on Mumsnet.

And exemplifies the horrific attitude displayed by certain sectors of humanity, brought to the forefront by the pandemic.

Thank god the scientific consensus opinion was not to throw the vulnerable to the wolves.

@Reindeersnooker

"That's a tragedy. I'm not sure how to relates to the point I was making (about parents chatting endlessly on the internet when they could have been interacting with their kids) but that tragedy is indeed heartbreaking"

++++

The point here is that the mother prior to Covid normally worked in an office and presumably there was normally child care in place. Because of the lockdown the child care was not available (even though the child and normally young carers were at very low risk from Covid) and because of the lockdown the mother was forced to work from home (even though as a below 40 she was at low risk from Covid).

Had there been no universal lockdown this tragic accident would not have occurred, made worse by the point that neither mother or child was at a particularly strong risk from Covid.

Regarding your point about mothers "chatting endlessly on the internet when they could have been interacting with their kids", this is Mumsnet where parents seek advice raise concerns and have a moan. To be honest having seen some of the topics raised on MN over the years "chatting on the internet" about the impact of the Covid restrictions on our children seems pretty valid.

In any situation the vulnerable would have to stay home including those with jobs and families it wasn't safe for them to leave the house if we had ten cases or a hundred cases pre-vaccine. We had friends in that situation, where the mum had to move out as she couldn't work from home leaving DH who was vulnerable to care for the kids. They survived and celebrated the vaccine success with a massive holiday.

We have no interest in living if we can't be self sufficient and have plans in place if we fall into that situation. We could live in a messy house without a cleaner for months and we could get food delivered that would be how we would have to survive. Our limit on help in old age will be a cleaner/gardener anything else we don't want to be here. No body can or should live forever, especially in a situation where they need more than basic help.

As for prisoners, I fully support the death penalty for most premeditated crime so giving them a pass to life imprisonment by participating in clinical trials would be getting off lightly for me. I include drug dealing etc in the death penalty by the way.

We are here for a fun time not a long time, our whole life is dedicated to giving our DS the best upbringing we can so he goes into adult life in the best possible position to raise our grandkids. I would not risk his future in anyway to protect our grandparents.

What about those of us where only one person is vulnerable? Should I have been banned from leaving my home as well (DH is older than me)?

No body can or should live forever, especially in a situation where they need more than basic help.

What if they are happy to accept more than basic help? Are you going to put them down?

Language is important and you keep using the phrase "a great many". There are not a great many of vulnerable people. A a percentage of the population, clinically vulnerable people don't even make 1%. Allowing non-vulnerable people to go about their lives isn't increasing the risk for vulnerable people. They can still self-isolate if they choose to.

Language is important and you keep using the phrase "a great many". There are not a great many of vulnerable people. A a percentage of the population, clinically vulnerable people don't even make 1%. Allowing non-vulnerable people to go about their lives isn't increasing the risk for vulnerable people. They can still self-isolate if they choose to

Not only that, the vast majority of people who would be harmed by Covid are NOT working age and generally not supporting their families. So it’s much easier to focus protection and resources on them.

We actually knew who was vulnerable and who was not once the cruise ship data came in, no excuse for acting as if everyone was equally vulnerable when we knew for a fact that wasn’t true.

Have considered Care home residents? patients in hospital, people, young and old, who need at home care to live independently?

And you want their families to move in with them? so how are the many working people who are their kids and may be essential workers, teachers, health workers, engineers etc go to work?

Let alone people who cannot buy a detached house to build a annex or who have family in other countries etc.

You live in a bubble thats for sure.

I think your idea of who is vulnerable is suspect, if they were all over 81 and in a care home, then you'd have a point but they are not.
Many lead full working lives with medication, many don't even know they were at risk from serious illness.

I'm fed up of the narrative that masks had any significant impact at all, but despite lack of evidence that's what a lot of people seem to want to believe. 🤷‍♀️

Language is important and you keep using the phrase "a great many". There are not a great many of vulnerable people. A a percentage of the population, clinically vulnerable people don't even make 1%

1% of 70million people is 700,000 people.

But lets say its 0.5%, 350,000 & this is just the UK, 1% of the EU pop. is 4.5m people.

These numbers presenting at hospitals would totally overwhelm the NHS & all other health systems, so we would have to leave them to die and or suffer.

I'm aware that was the point that you were making. It wasn't relevant to the point you were responding to. Yes, talking about lockdown matters is valid but complaining endlessly that it's ruining your child's life because they're so unsupported, while simultaneously arguing endlessly on the internet, suggests that you're not doing everything you can to parent them at a time when parents needed to be present. Just something I noticed.

So that's what you would have done. And all the not very elderly who needed oxygen? Were they also supposed to suffocate while you had your six week check?

I notice you have no suggestions but let em die. This is why you're not representing an electorate.

I think your idea of who is vulnerable is suspect, if they were all over 81 and in a care home, then you'd have a point but they are not

The majority of them were not of working age, no. Average age of death was 80+, age is the biggest risk factor BY FAR. So we absolutely do know who is vulnerable and who is not.

Many lead full working lives with medication, many don't even know they were at risk from serious illness

But most do not. They overwhelmingly are elderly people with several comorbidities. Quite easily identifiable.

For example, people 65+ make up less than 20% of the population in the USA but were 80% of the deaths. It was very, very skewed toward the elderly.

Society could have protected them by only allowing those groups to WFH or putting them on some sort of payout system for a few months of the first wave. Would have been cheaper than what they ended up doing anyway.

Of course I wouldn't want anyone to suffocate on my behalf. But all these sacrifices we made have been futile. We have had ample opportunity to make improvements but they have not materialised. 2 years on things are still just as shit. You can't have a functional society or healthcare system where everything other than covid is an afterthought.
What would your suggestion be? None of us ever go anywhere or do anything again just incase we make someone else sick or "steal" a hospital appointment from someone else?
Beyond the first few weeks, lockdown was a total farce and the cost is not justified.

What you are effectively saying is those over 65 can lock themselves away, in the UK, thats 11m people.

You don't actually say how this would be done, nor how you cope with 10s of millions off sick with what for many is a quite a severe illness, requiring 2 or 3 weeks off work and then there is the people who will go onto to get long covid, which at present is around 2m people.

I asked about care homes, how do you keep CV out of those when staff are coming in daily and often work in more than one home or hospital.

Then there is the fact that you can catch CV quickly after recovering from the previous infection.

But most of all, your theories fall down because no other country did what you think we should have done... if it were so simple, we'd have had other countries doing so but we didn't - wonder why?

Again.... Interesting you now class being over 65 as "elderly" and what about the 20% of deaths that weren't in over 65 bracket?

Thats 200k people with a LD, without one? how many?

What you and others need to realise is that without Putin/Ukraine, we'd have recovered easily from covid and LD's

You're conflating lockdowns with making improvements and you have no actual ideas, other than to put forward startlingly utilitarian statements that you don't want to be carried out in practice! Lockdown was useful in preventing the NHS from being overwhelmed and it saved many people from being seriously ill until after they had a vaccine, leaving doctors alive and able to treat some other conditions. (Don't forget perfectly healthy medics were dying due to a high viral load without proper PPE). Covid patients were given priory because they desperately needed oxygen. Every effort was made to reduce the number of Covid patients so they wouldn't exist to take your health system away. We do not live in a society where we leave the "very elderly" or "quite elderly" to die (unless they live in a care home it turns out, which was quite rightly considered outrageous). Our efforts were moderately successful but the were significant negative outcomes for everyone. It wouldn't be accurate to say it was futile.

In other news, our NHS is in awful shape and has been for years. It was always going to get worse - the reasons for this were there before Covid.

What you are effectively saying is those over 65 can lock themselves away, in the UK, thats 11m people

No, I’m saying it’s their choice, but as most are not working, their decision to self-isolate will have less impact than working age adults.

You don't actually say how this would be done, nor how you cope with 10s of millions off sick with what for many is a quite a severe illness, requiring 2 or 3 weeks off work

Most people who tested positive did not actually need two or three weeks to recover, they merely followed mandatory quarantine procedures. It should have been advised in general that if you are sick, stay home. Otherwise you can go in.

then there is the people who will go onto to get long covid, which at present is around 2m people

I doubt they are so sick as to drop out of the work force. Long Covid is totally overblown, the last refuge of the covidian.

I asked about care homes, how do you keep CV out of those when staff are coming in daily and often work in more than one home or hospital

This is probably the only space where routine testing makes sense. Something akin to what was done in Florida: www.floridadisaster.org/news-media/news/20220106-governor-ron-desantis-puts-seniors-first-for-covid-tests/

Basically it’s just putting resources into care homes and prioritising them for treatments/vaccines.

One of the great shames about the US vaccine rollouts was that healthcare workers were vaccinated before the elderly, which in hindsight was not as effective as directly vaccinating the elderly.

Then there is the fact that you can catch CV quickly after recovering from the previous infection

And? You can, but most don’t. Hybrid immunity has been enduring for most, data from Qatar backs this up.

But most of all, your theories fall down because no other country did what you think we should have done... if it were so simple, we'd have had other countries doing so but we didn't - wonder why?

Sweden did it—and were totally demonised for it. Yet they fared better than the UK, France, Spain …

Several US states like Florida and Georgia rejected lockdowns from early on and again, were totally slated in the press. But they have performed just as well as heavy lockdown states with less
collateral damage.

But Sweden did worse than other Nordic countries didn’t it?

Long Covid is not overblown. Fake news from you there.

Sweden a very different country and the comparison is meaningless and disingenuous.

'Long covid is totally overblown'
What other illnesses are overblown and do you have anything factual to back up your er 'facts' with?