Interesting article in todays Guardian

[HelpfulMonkey]

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/06/covid-was-devastating-why-are-we-pretending-it-didnt-happen

There lots of debate on here so I thought people might find this interesting.
Does seem a lot of people want to brush Covid away and get on which is good, but it's also really important to know what actually went on and if anything dodgy happened so it can be avoided in future

Just realised I have posted two threads about this, crazy how it seems to get under the skin. I'm not Covid obsessed or anything - back to real life and hope the info is interesting.

It's interesting that the word 'lockdown' isn't used in that article once. You could replace covid with lockdown in quite a few of the sentences about people's suffering and the reluctance to understand it from others. That's a huge, huge part of the story of the last three years and our collective experience, but it isn't even acknowledged.

I think she's right that it's hard to memorialise something that's still happening, though. The story has nowhere near ended yet. It might look different when it has.

@BashirWithTheGoodBeard yeah, that's a really interesting way of looking at it.
I think real people get this and there is a sort of media bubble which isn't allowed to acknowledge or talk about it without being shut down in some way.

Hope your life is getting back on track after the madness anyway!

Yes I thought that article was really interesting. I also think no one is talking anywhere near enough about lessons that need to be learnt. I understand that people want to forget (I do too), but I've heard numerous experts say covid wasn't 'the big one' and we need to prepare for that.

@HelpfulMonkey

BashirWithTheGoodBeard yeah, that's a really interesting way of looking at it. I think real people get this and there is a sort of media bubble which isn't allowed to acknowledge or talk about it without being shut down in some way.

As opposed to pretend people? I'm just not sure what mean here. And who would try to shut down the "media bubble"?

*you

Hello @MeetPi, I think you are asking me a question but I don't quite understand it with the typo and whatnot?
Could you start again and I will answer as I can, sorry if that's a pain?

Gosh. I know there's a typo, but a added a correction. It's not that hard. I knew I shouldn't have bothered! Never mind, Monkey. Carry on.

I think there is a deliberate/considered editorial move to not talk about covid in the same way in media reports, its as if "living with covid" is the only narrative.

The washout from the true human experience cost of lockdowns was I think horrific, incalculably horrific. Was it worse than having a virus cut through a population with an unknown number of deaths as a result? I don't know. Truly, I don't know if the health service could have withstood it, care homes and hospital wards are still traumatised with pre vaccination swathes of people contracting covid and dying, with nothing they could do to stop it.

Time and talking help with trauma, but it affected different people in very different ways, i wish I could talk to my children about it - their lockdown experience needs an informed approach which I feel unequipped for.

Lockdowns caused far more harm long term than covid ever did or will do. Yes a short lockdown initially but not the length of time it went on for. And I speak as someone who knows people who died directly from covid- I'm 100% not a covid denier.

How do you know that lockdowns caused more harm, and what is the harm that was caused?

I think it's because people want to move on and look to the future. For a couple or so years all we thought and heard about was depressing covid, lockdowns, illness, vaccines and more. I agree there are lessons to be learned, but also people want to live their lives a little again without focussing too much about what consumed them so depressingly for so long.

@MeetPi I would genuinely like to answer your question?
Please don't take offence.

Real people as in people in every day life who speak freely and interact without the constraints on online communication, there is loads of censorship online.

Lots of people have an interest in controlling conversation online, MHRA, government, drug companies, people with a financial interest, the internet is a source of information for lots of people so if you can control that you can make money or get influence.
It's not a 'conspiracy', it's pretty obvious that lots of entities have an interest in manipulating the narrative in this area (even foreign governments trying to cause trouble as well) and there has been stuff in the papers about this: bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/2023/01/daily-mail-77th-brigade-spied-on-lockdown-critics/
It's a really interesting area:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9100573/

I think a poster here called "sunglasses on the table" was intimating something about this on here or something the other day but I didn't really understand it and they were being really obtuse and wouldn't spell out what they meant and it was a bit odd but it's an interesting area...

Do you think the media talk openly about this situation @MeetPi

I’ve got quite a severe vaccine injury. No medical establishment wants to discuss it. I’m just left in my own. This is why we need to keep talking, as well as all the horror of it.

I hope that a lot more becomes known about the long term effects of Covid (speaking as someone with long Covid), and that from there more is understood in general about post viral effects (eg ME may be caused by this). I hope that people start taking seriously the social responsibility of trying not to spread disease, wearing masks, not going out with nasty colds etc unless really no choice.

@MotherOfPuffling but what would 'no choice' be seen as this could be quite ambiguous?

Someone who couldn't survive on statutory sick pay, or couldn't afford to pay for shopping deliveries. Would their going out to shop or going to work with a cold be OK as it has been for ever?

I've heard that too. I wonder if that might be a causative factor though? Because obviously restriction fatigue is a huge deal, and we currently have a population who as a consequence of the last three years are, shall we say, not going to be universally receptive to public health messaging.

That doesn't matter so much now, given that there isn't really any public health messaging to the general population that would make a difference at this stage (I'd distinguish that from encouragement for people in booster eligible groups to take it up). It could very well do so in the future though, if nothing changes.

I'm very much of the view that we need to scrutinise the actions of the last three years very carefully so we can get the best idea possible of whether the restrictions based approach was the right one. But I can also see how people might not be receptive to that being done now.

@MagpiePi lockdowns caused harm by;

Disruption and restricted access to immediate healthcare, management of long term conditions and screening for diseases. Just this one in terms of excess deaths over the next decade could be more costly in total lives lost.

Impact on children and young people, opportunity cost of that year of no enrichment like school trips, limited socialisation, home environment pressures, mental health impact, University placement bottlenecks, substandard online "learning".

Economic costs for individuals unable to earn.

That's before you go into the individual stress, family fracture, isolation of older people.

I suppose the question to ask is, if faced with this scenario again would we support a similar type of lockdown, and under what circumstances is it advisable.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow you're absolutely right about vaccine damage, it should be discussed far more openly - no medical intervention is absolutely risk free which is why that education and actual free choice is so important, so everyone can weigh up their own risks. The down side is that collectively the human species is spectacularly poor at assessing risk with short term costs usually outweighing long term benefit in our minds. Also those most likely to benefit from an intervention are likely to be the most hesitant about having one, so there is that delicate balance.

I think they sort of learnt lessons from tamiflu, but these are publicised well after the time events occurred (decades). However we've got pretty good systems which capture and act on this information, but while its a good system to prevent future events, I think its poor at helping those who have had adverse reactions.

The lockdowns caused damage but the real damage was done by acting too late and not being strict enough with the lockdown we did have.

We had lockdown light to begin with which made it drag on longer, the initial "3 week lockdown" could have been more realistic if the rules were tighter and strictly adhered to, borders closed to non essential travellers, non essential shops/businesses closed or wfh, etc. Many people could have coped with a severe 6 week lockdown but the more it dragged on people got fed up, mental health suffered and hospital admissions and deaths were still rising and we all know the government didn't really care.

The mixed messages, constant rule/guideline changes were hard to follow but it didn't need to go on as long as it did if we had tackled it head on at the start.

@Timeforabiscuit @chergar

Thank you both for your posts which explain things better than I can. Also amount of suicides& DV in lockdown, knock on effects carrying on from that & people losing jobs etc, people's addiction problems and ongoing MH problems suffering. Also people's immune systems are now shot to shreds due to lack of general mixing & overuse of hand gel. Seeing it now with bugs now getting out of control strep a etc.
Sorry can't unbold my text and other people explain it far better than I can it's a very complex issue.
Oh yeah and lockdown killed my Nan. She was fine before lockdown, in a care home but well enough to hold a conversation, a year with no visitors whatsoever and she died alone from a stroke. Knowing my Nan she would have rather had covid and died 6 months earlier but had daily visitor's in that time. She hated being alone.

This is another interesting article in the Guardian, reviewing a book about shame and stigma during the pandemic.

www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/07/covid-shaming-shifted-focus-from-uk-government-failures-study-says

It looks like it'll be covering some important stuff.

I suppose I mean ‘no choice’ in a common sense way, so if people don’t need to go shopping because they can get (and afford) deliveries of what they need for a week or so, and don’t have to go out to eg take children to school (children are germ factories anyway - mine is at least!), and have work that they can do at home or they get full pay when off sick, and no one needs them to go anywhere, then they should ideally stay home when suffering something contagious. I don’t think that can be enshrined in law of course, just that it would be a good thing to generally have as part of the ‘social contract’. Does that make sense?

If people do need to go out, then wearing a mask so they reduce the likelihood of spreading disease (if they can, I know some people can’t for many reasons) seems a sensible idea.

There was an interview with Dr Fauci on the news the other night. He was clear that we need to focus on the long term effects. Not just long covid either. He said we need to be preparing for a surge in conditions such as Parkinson's as that's what happened after the Spanish Flu.