Myths re lockdown was wrong

[Betsyhilton]

Just seen someone on another thread basically trying to claim that lockdown didnt reduce deaths. The contested John Hopkins survey seems to be encouraging people who basically behaved selfishly, ignored medical advice and did what they liked to now claim retrospectively that they just knew lockdown was wrong.

AIBU to think these are just basically selfish irresponsible people who ignored official advice at the time because it caused them inconvenience and are now jumping on any theory to try to justify their self centred behavior?

@Didshejustsaythatoutloud do you work and do your patients and all their contacts live in a fully aseptic environment? How do they manage and did they manage with all the other viruses pre covid?

I AM a Chinese scientist. Don’t tell me what my culture is or isn’t. Ignorance at its finest.

Lockdown was a financial and social disaster, as for covid, it did exactly what previous pandemics have done in terms of waves of infection, diminishing in severity over a period of 3 years and now finally starting to show the beginnings of a seasonal bias, this mirrors practically every respiratory pandemic for which any records survive. The early waves bring a lot of death, thats just a sad fact of life. The first lockdown may well of prevented or deferred some deaths, but actions thereafter seem to have done very little other than causing significant collateral harms.

Have you worked with Westerners much? Culture is a comparative thing.

My point being that what we see as "face-saving" might not seem that way to you, just as you might think that some of the things we consider normal are odd to you.

Eeermm, people get ill aside from their primary illness and have to attend A&E!! .

A simple analogy isn’t mental gymnastics. I’m sorry if simple concepts are beyond you, but I’m sure you’re a really great scientist.

It's not really.

Study after study has shown the most important thing to protect against mental health problems is a very strong, close knit community life. And also that when people do suffer mental illness the outcomes are miles better in those scenarios.

This has been known for many years.

To be honest, the only one shrieking and hysterically beating their chest on this thread appears to be you.

The outcomes for physical health conditions are miles better when the patient has a supportive community.

But just as a supportive community can't stop you from breaking a leg or being born with spina bifida, it can't stop you from developing depression or being born autistic.

My autism assessor literally told me that I was born autistic. Claiming that it's environmental in origin is basically blaming my parents for somehow bringing me up the "wrong way" when its glaringly obvious that I inherited my autism from my dad.

Also, supportive communities don't have to be geographical. The Women's Network where I worked during lockdown invited a speaker to talk about autistic women and girls and, because it was lockdown, it was all on Zoom. I wouldn't have been able to tear myself away from the workshop for long enough to go to a physical seminar, but WFH I was able to dial in and attend. It was that that prompted me to consider that I might be autistic and ask for a diagnostic assessment.

My goodness, people are arguing that China OVERstated the number of Covid deaths?

Just loopy.

You are selfish and irresponsible. You’re also misinformed - not everyone who kept their toddler at home for a year has damaged their development. My child is thriving - and he saw no-one but myself and DH for a year due to shielding.

They probably should have let covid run its course. The world does benefit from such plagues, natural disasters and even wars to help with population control and reduce strain on resources. Sad though it is for the individuals concerned.

Same poster on another thread thinks that all famines are man-made. Obviously unaware that drought and cold snaps are completely beyond human control. Has never been an allotment gardener, much less a farmer. We are not dealing with an informed individual here.

Whilst you are correct in saying that you can't develop autism, it is something you are born with, the same cannot be said of depression and anxiety, some people are more pre-disposed to develop those conditions, but everyone has the potential to develop them given the right conditions.

Lockdown dialled up anxiety to 11 for many people. I have suffered from anxiety most of my life and am used to it, the lockdown and covid strangely had no effect on my baseline, but many who I know who previously suffered no anxiety have overtaken me and are still on medication/receiving treatment today.

Without lockdown the NHS would have been completely overwhelmed, hard-working NHS staff would have been mentally and physically destroyed and many more of the general public would have died. Anyone denying this is a thick twat frankly.

I'd argue that for some people, depression and anxiety are inevitable. For example, autistics living unsupported in a neurotypical world. I certainly can't remember a time before suicidal ideation, as in, wondering how much it would hurt if I [redacted method to avoid mod deletion] and was I brave enough to face the pain if it meant never going to (primary) school again? So I'd argue that I was born autistic and probably also born depressed.

Yes, actually, the research does show that a close knit community can prevent many mh problems, particularly things like depression.

Autism isn't a mental health disorder so it's pretty irrelevant here.

Would they be 'bedwetters' still if the mortality rate was high and it was mainly effecting children? Would you still sneer and refuse to lockdown, if lots of children were dying? I'm just curious to know the limits of people who say "Never again" Does it mean never again for a similar virus or never again no matter the severity and who it was killing?

Wise up. They were the sensible ones.

You were both selfish and foolish.

On the flipside, a dysfunctional community, such as an abusive family or a cult, will make anxiety and depression worse.

Research also indicates that for autistic people, masking to interact with this "supportive community" causes anxiety and stress and that we get feelings of worthlessness when we get social interactions with neurotypicals "wrong".

I'm going to stick with very structured hobbies and otherwise isolation. It works for me.

Possibly in the first lockdown, although there is pretty compelling data to show the infection rate was already peaking by the time it was introduced in march 2020. Infectious respiratory diseases create peak and trough "wave" patterns of infection irrespective of what we try to do to contain them due to the poorly understood concept of so called "herd immunity" better described as population immunity, which kicks in to temporarily inhibit spread of a given disease causing a fall, this then wanes or is countered by variation and increases again.

You know they have lost the argument when they become so invested that they start researching your threads. Obsessed much? It’s not healthy and certainly doesn’t do much to back up your intellect. Try harder.

people can say or think what they like but unless they were working in the front line dealing with huge number of patients in respiratory distress - they are just unfounded opinions.

yes for sure harm was done. the lockdowns could have been more well planned and targeted. they also could have started earlier and entry into the country better regulated. and the bottom line is we have one of the lowest number of beds per 100 000 people in all of Europe so our ability to deal with the crisis was very poor.

there is good hard data out there, but the media spins it as they like.

and it does not help when the public's believe what they want to, just because they think it was x, without studying all the available information.