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?

What happened in the third world? Countries or regions where there are few medical services , and very little social security ? Where people tend to live at very close quarters, with poor sanitation facilities? Social distancing would be a fantasy.

I expected to see horrendous reports of devastating death rates , bodies literally ‘piled high’ . Remembering the crisis of HIV/AIDS in many places, I expected something worse. As far as I could tell, this did not occur, although it is difficult to access reliable data now that thé WHO is not an impartial organisation. So why didn’t Covid have the same effect there as historical pandemics? Is it something to do with the age profile of their populations? #

Unlike many PP, I don’t blame the Government for the initial response. Virtually every developed country followed the same route, many with more draconian measures than we adopted. On the party political side , I remember the Opposition calling for longer and stricter lockdown when relaxation was suggested, so no prizes there.

We also forget that many citizens were demanding more stringent measures, and actively policing their neighbours’ compliance. So while I personally would have followed a more relaxed regime, I’ m not sure it would have been universally welcomed.

I think what Covid showed was the prevalent terror of death, not just for oneself ( an understandable although ultimately futile concern) but as a concept for ‘everyone’. I also think that that terror was seized upon by many institutions as an opportunity to move closer to a totalitarian control of the population , which many governmental and nongovernmental institutions find very attractive.

#I’ve just remembered that I have an acquaintance with mission connections in a very deprived third world country, so I shall try to find out .

Lockdown crapped up your kids' University lives while you sat in the sun? but 'them's the breaks'. What a joke

I don’t know either way but many aspects of lockdown sere unnecessarily cruel and ridiculous. I often think about single parents living in tower blocks with no garden access. No way should these people have had an hour a day outside. Utter nonsense. Elderly people on their own/people dying alone/giving birth alone. Utterly preposterous. Disgraceful decision making

This is a good point @BeethovenNinth. There are lots of things we could've avoided doing and still locked down. Nothing to say people couldn't have been encouraged to spend lots of time outdoors. In England, we never had the one hour a day rule, although they did in Wales, but people like those you mention often needed more than we got in order to facilitate them in exercising. Elderly people with no gardens who need to sit for regular rests if out walking, for example, needed to be told this was fine.

Obviously you've said you don't agree with hard lockdown, so this doesn't apply to you, but I'm always surprised people who think it was the right thing to do and want it to be an option in future pandemics aren't more keen to make this point. If I felt that as strongly as some posters, I'd be spelling out how we could get it less wrong, in order to try and keep people onside with the idea!

No, you “do better”. Covid was obviously real as a virus. The whole pantomime that went with it was a con. Couldn’t care less if you find that disrespectful, it’s the truth.

Mumsnet has been pretty well taken over by Covid deniers. There are a lot of antivax conspiracy theory types who hide it under the guise of posts like the ones on this thread, not coming right out to say they think Covid was a hoax, but downplaying it.

Case in point.

You can't argue with conspiracy theorists who believe Covid was "a con."

@Neurodiversitydoctor

You obviously don't work in education or child development then. I have been doing this job 15 years, I have never seen such profound and unrecognised developmental delay. There has been a massive increase in speech delay of children entering reception up to 25 -50 % in some areas, it was always more like 10% before. It's not just the speech, they aren't toliet trained, they don't eat with cutlery, they can't share. For those babies born into deprivation at the end of 2019, I'm not sure they will ever catch up. So many of those vital first 1,000 days were spent in isolation.

I apologise, but some of this doesn't make much sense to me. Who is responsible primarily for toilet training and basic skills training? Isn't it parents and guardians? Why would lockdown and isolation change this profoundly?

@Fatcat00

No, you “do better”. Covid was obviously real as a virus. The whole pantomime that went with it was a con. Couldn’t care less if you find that disrespectful, it’s the truth.

Why did most countries put in place much the same mitigations then?

Xmas 2019 my DIL had it as did the rest of her family, she ended up in hospital medics were baffled by the cough. She had cleaned for Chinese visitors in their Airbnb.

Early 2020 DS in university halls had it as did everyone at university he said. A few went to hospital.

Planes flew around the world students returning from Christmas and New year breaks. Skiing holidays.

So it was far too late to shutdown really . If we had done it sooner I do think that it would have helped.

I think a lot of it is parents struggling at the same time too, isn't it? And then also DC from families facing particular challenges generally benefit particularly from things like playgroups that weren't in place during the lockdowns. DC who entered reception in 2022 and 2023 would've been those where there was interference with free nursery hours, and obviously we provide that for a reason. Am not in child development though so no doubt @Neurodiversitydoctor could give a more comprehensive explanation. This is just what I have heard from people I know working in schools and nurseries.

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

Does anyone have links to this research ?

"Did the forcing people to stay in their homes and closing workplaces and schools slow the spread of a contagious disease and prevent illness and deaths?"

Absolutely it did

Did the forcing people to stay at home, closing workplaces and schools result in a greater number of deaths in the long run and massive societal and educational damage "

Absolutely it did through missed cancer diagnosis, increase in cardiovascular deaths, mental health illness. Massive backlog on the NHS. Children's education permanently damaged. Plus £500 billion of additional debt that means there is no money available for fixing this damage.

Quite simply it was a choice of:

Do you save one life today but that will mean the loss of 5 lives tomorrow or do you accept the preventable loss of one life today in order to save 5 lives tomorrow.

And Governments around the to varying degrees chose the former because Governments only care about the short term and not the long term (that's another Government's problem) and through mass hysteria made possible by the internet and social media.

Right now flu and associated pneumonia cause more deaths each winter than Covid ever does. But no one in their right mind is suggesting we shut down the country for 3 months in order to reduce flu and pneumonia deaths.

Lastly this was all clearly explained at the time by a lot of people who were shut down as either covid deniers or anti vax. So it is most definitely not a case of hindsight thinking.

I had to respond to this utterly stupid comment. Some of us still wear masks because we are medically vulnerable to Covid. I don't ask others to wear them. I wear them for 6 weeks after hard-core immunosuppressive treatment because I have very little immune system left, can't get vaccines for 4 weeks afterwards and don't especially want any more lesions on my brain if that's alright. Covid gave me a few new ones last time and that was plenty thanks.

I wear a mask because for those weeks I'm very at risk but I don't sit at home because I'm a working parent with clients to see. They don't bat a fucking eyelid at me wearing a mask because they're not complete fuckwits at this stage after a global pandemic and they realise that yes, some of us will always be more at risk from things like Covid and flu.

And yes I will indeed be 'walking among you' but frankly I'm very lucky to be walking at all, I wasn't for a while after Covid relapsed the underlying condition I didn't know I had.

I would like to know, with the benefit now of hindsight, what country fared best through the Covid pandemic.

Sweden, at one point was being heavily condemned for its policy which differed very much from its Scandinavian neighbours.

Who was right ?

So how would you have saved the world then?

Are you a expert in managing pandemics, viruses etc etc?

Right now flu and associated pneumonia cause more deaths each winter than Covid ever does. But no one in their right mind is suggesting we shut down the country for 3 months in order to reduce flu and pneumonia deaths.

I am not sure that is completely right ?

https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/influenzadeathsintheukbetween2012to2022

People complaining about others wearing masks are being twats. Nobody has any idea what the rationale of a random stranger is.

Did you know from the first time the virus was mentioned what the world should do and what would happen? Or is this with the benefit of hindsight?

Routine health visitor visits were stopped
Nurseries closed
Informal support networks disbanded.

I want to make it really clear I am not talking about middle class DCs doing potato prints and turf trays with their furloughed parents and zoom calls with granny.

I am talking about either single parent families or families where their only employment might have been insecure and not eligible for furlough or a keyworker. Older siblings no longer at school and therefore getting fed at midday, digital poverty. Do I need to go on ? If you really can't see or understand how that might impact a child's development I don't know what to say. This is how between a quarter and a third of children grow up in this country.

I’m the same, I don’t know anyone who died from Covid.
That’s anecdotal of course, but I do wonder about those people who claim to know many who died - are they talking about people the personally knew or cases they heard about on the internet?
We followed most rules apart from the particularly silly ones.

@tpxqi

"It’s almost farcical when you see people walking around with masks "

+++

Wearing face masks is common practice during winter flu / cold season in the China / Japan etc way before Covid became a thing.

It serves two purposes of stopping you getting a cold / flu / covid etc and secondly if you do have a cold / flu / Covid it stops you spreading it.

I have no issue if people choose to wear one I just object when it is compulsory.

We have two friends who died of Covid. One in his mid 50’s and the other early 70’s - neither had any pre existing health conditions. Both died in the first year of Covid just before the vaccine rollout and we will always wonder if lockdown had happened earlier (as we now know it should have) and they’d had at least their first vaccine, perhaps they would still be alive.

How do you know that it saved one at the time then 5 later?

I do agree it was a choice and a very difficult one. How many people were hospitalised is probably a better indication not only deaths as if they had been unable to get treatment even for something not covid related it would have been carnage.

gh.bmj.com/content/6/8/e006653

This is a really interesting read for anyone on either side of the debate. Information like this is important for future planning.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/howcoronaviruscovid19compareswithfluasacauseofdeath/2022-05-23