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?

Then you were very unusual as the statistics showed that during almost the whole of 2020 suicides fell. Lots of threads on here about it as the anti lockdown people claimed people were killing themselves when the statistics showed that to be a myth

Weren't the covid wards separate from the non-covid wards? So covid patients wouldn't have been in your icu because you were treating non-covid patients? Or is that not how ICUs worked then?

Same drs (anaesthetists) cover both icu wards ... but yeah we had a hot and cold icu to segregate. Was awful the amount of 20-40ish year old post hangings/overdoses. That and end stage alcoholic liver disease presentations we definitely saw the MH side of lockdown too

Also, suicide is correlated strongly to poverty and other QOL metrics like housing crowding. And we know that lockdown hit the poorest hardest.

So your ICU might have been in a suicide hotspot caused by low income, small flats without gardens, minimal access to parks, all the stuff people upthread said made lockdown a misery for them.

Thank you for working to help those people recover.

Wiltshire isn't really somewhere I'd associate as being deprived, it's a pretty market town cobbled streets, tons of open space, lovely parks, hardly any flats anywhere tbh.

Very posh middle class patient cohort... hence something we found v unexpected. Fortunately most of those survived unlike our covid cohorts

I'm surprised by that too. I had visions of inner-city Liverpool.

the same eugenicist troll says that it was all lies anyway

The ageism and ableism shown by some on this thread would be shocking if I was new to Mumsnet.

That and end stage alcoholic liver disease presentations we definitely saw the MH side of lockdown too

Is that a normal ICU cohort where you are ? we used to care for them on the wards back in the day ? Similar demographic to your hospital.

And, upon ending its Zero Covid policy, the Chinese government adopted the narrowest definition of a Covid death in the world, so that it included only those who succumbed to respiratory/pneumonia type symptoms, so excluding those deaths from heart attacks, liver failure, etc.

Its widely accepted that the Chinese government massively underreported Covid deaths.

For those on here who don’t think we had a pandemic plan. We did. It had been carefully considered over ten years. It didn’t include lockdowns nor school closures. It was totally disregarded in March 2020. With tragic results.

Yes, I heard that too. Although I thought it was Cameron's government who walked away from the pandemic plan much earlier. I confess I might have got my time scales mixed up though.

Yes, there was a plan for an influenza pandemic (a different but similar beast). It did, in fact, provide for school closures but you are correct that it did not provide for lockdowns.

The fatal flaw, though, was the underfunding of the NHS which meant that it wouldn’t be able to cope with a serious pandemic even with the implementation of the UK’s pandemic plan. This was brought to the government’s attention in 2016 (the Exercise Cygnus Report) but no remedial action was taken. Insufficient beds and PPE shortages were among the concerns raised.

Having failed to properly ensure that the NHS would be able to handle a serious pandemic, when Covid 19 emerged the previously-prepared pandemic response plan was inadequate in the circumstances, and that’s why more serious actions had to be taken in order to protect the NHS.

In terms of planning, the UK was one of the most prepared countries. Unfortunately, it failed to ignore warnings that it wasn’t in a position to effectively implement its plans.

It was a bit like having a thorough fire safety plan but not bothering to actually source fire extinguishers.

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/24/lockdowns-face-masks-unequivocally-cut-spread-covid-study-finds

Sweden:

Had a health care system that could cope

Had one of the highest vaccine uptakes in Europe

If you agree with their model, you have to apply their reasoning on a global scale

That model did not work in India/Brazil

If you feel their model should only apply to certain countries and not others : you would end up with massive global inequality. The countries with healthcare systems that could cope would prosper, whereas those that couldn’t would collapse. The rich = richer, poor = poorer.

To tackle a pandemic you need to think on a global scale : and I think most lockdown critics fail to consider this.

The fact that most of humanity was in lockdown ‘allowed’ one maverick European country to be different. But would Sweden’s model have worked on a global scale - particularly in countries with under resourced healthcare systems? No.

Anyone else reading/ listening to the Covid inquiry ? Facinating. All this is discussed John Edmunds and Neil Fergusson's evidence is particularly interesting.

An interesting read on a country that didn't lock down - Brazil. In fact, Brazil took the 'let it rip' approach that many seemed to favour on MN at the time (and still do). Here's how it's worked out so far.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19pandemiccinBrazil

You do realise that no matter the cause of death, if someone died within 28 days of having covid the cause of death was being registered as covid?

It depends on which state you were in. Life in WA went on pretty much as normal (barring the first, early covid lockdown), because state borders were sealed.

SIL took her own life because of lockdown, she didn't die of Covid.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic_on_suicide_rates

Suicide cases have remained constant or decreased since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Except for my Aunt then, who with Covid, was sent back to her carehome and my cousin had to threaten legal action for them to write Covid on her death certificate.

But that's irrelevant to the suicide statistics. And rather insulting to bereaved families if you truly believe that someone slashing their wrists and bleeding out was recorded as dying of Covid. This myth has been debunked time and again. Yet the Covid deniers continue to peddle it.

Try a search on the threads from back then and educate yourself.

So your cousin essentially blackmailed them into writing something they didn’t believe it to be? Very sorry for your loss but this just confirms made up statistics to me.

This is the factual information about recording deaths. It isn’t true that Covid would appear on the death certificate automatically. (DH had to certify many deaths throughout the pandemic).

ONS counts a death involving COVID-19 as a death where COVID-19 is mentioned on the death certificate. Doctors are required by law to certify the cause of death 'to the best of their knowledge and belief'. This means the medical professional believed COVID-19 had been involved in the chain of events that led to the death. Testing could inform part of the information provided by the medical professional, but they could also use other information (such as symptoms and x-rays, for example). This means that someone could have COVID-19 on the death certificate who may not have been tested for COVID-19. Also, in some cases, the person may have tested positive for COVID-19, but the medical professional believed that COVID-19 did not play a part in the death. This means COVID-19 would not appear on the death certificate.

They will be on wards until they get to the point of organ failure beyind ward capacity eg we need to take over their ventilation or blood pressure support infusions or dialysis machines. Definitely not our normal cohort barely ever saw ALD in icu in that hospital outside of covid

Looks pretty similar to the UK. Got there differently, but a 1 in 300 mortality rate. Geopolitically, for many countries, it wasn't about worrying about the domestic population but getting a jump on your rivals.