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?

It was a new virus. Nobody could see into the future and it was impossible to know for sure what would end up having been the best approach a couple of years down the line.

Yes, we can look back now and say we should have done this or we shouldn't have done that but nobody knew how it was going to turn out long term and I think over caution is generally better than under caution when assessing a new situation.

I did certainly agree with caution at first and that is wise.

When the chief advisor to the government and the top epidemiologist in the country broke the rules, I think some of us knew that at that point it was obvious they didn’t believe the need for the rules but carried on trying to control the public anyway.

We didn't see my DD for 6 months as she lives in a different region and we were all told to stay in our own regions, which we nearly all did. After that we were allowed to meet up but did it outside. Christmas was the first meet up inside and it was just us whereas normally we'd have a full house. We had all the windows open and the ventilation system on full power, so it was bloody freezing seeing as it was Sweden. Would probably have been warmer to meet outside.

No, it's not as clear cut as that.

Being alive at all costs isn't something we normally apply.

I like the way Lord Sumption puts it, "There's more to life than the avoidance of death".

So if a government minister (or someone else prominent) is caught speeding, would that mean that there’s obviously no need for speed limits?

Cummings, Ferguson and others did the country a great disservice by undermining public confidence but to think it ‘proves’ we didn’t need the rules just doesn’t make a lick of sense.

The rules were there to slow the rate of infection. A small percentage of people breaking the rules is not going to have anything like the same effect on infection rates, nationwide, as there being no rules in the first place.

But that's entirely missing the conclusion people drew from their actions. That they weren't scared. The lie we were told again and again and again was that we were all at risk - anyone can get it, anyone can spread it etc. We were told we were all vulnerable to grave illness and death, and there were alarming stories told of marathon running fit people in their 40s and 50s etc dying gasping on ventilators. Then when it became clear that no, we were not all equally at risk, ever more brazen attempts were made to control the population and to make them feel personal responsibility for other people's health (and for the failings of an underfunded, mismanaged health service), even young teens and children. Don't kill granny, look them in the eyes etc.

It was shameful.

All the while the government demonstrated very nicely that it didn't give a shit about anyone's lives, including those young people and children and people living on their own and all those others. They just didn't want to look bad. They didn't want scenes like were broadcast from Italian hospitals being broadcast in the UK in turn.

It was nothing to do with "protecting the NHS and saving lives" and everything to do with optics. They showed that very clearly.

And THAT'S why people lost faith.

So far as I know, anyone could get and anyone could spread it? I’m not sure what part of that was a lie?

I wasn’t in the UK during the pandemic but I recall it being widely known, quite early in the pandemic, that certain demographics were far more at risk of serious illness and death than others.

I agree that lockdown may not have been necessary (or could have been much shorter) with a better-funded NHS though. That isn’t just hindsight either; that the NHS would not be able to cope with a serious pandemic was raised in an official report a few years prior to COVID-19 emerging.

@WestwardHo1
Totally agree that’s exactly my point. I know one minister breaking rules didn’t matter, it was the fact that they knew it was lies and they weren’t scared. Nor should we have been.

It was the daily death and case count. It was very effective.

M

As a psychologist, one of the best experiments on human behaviour and control I have seen.

My teen DC took his own life during Covid.

You can all fuck right off if you're ever going to try to get me to conform again!

Same here

(more from behaviour change angle)

My goodness just saw this, how awful I’m so sorry

@SunflowerBlues
I’m so sorry. I work in mental health/ education and the whole thing was an absolute disgrace.
Thinking of you and your child xx

Anyone can get it? i remember vividly the 26yo Italian guy I intubated early on. He died. Away from all family.
Many many many 30 and 40yos died. Many of my colleagues have died

no clue where you come up with "gasping on a ventilator" - to be on a ventilator you have a plastic tube put between your vocal cords. One cannot gasp with a piece of plastic in one's vocal cords

It was a scary time to be in icu . We are very used to patients coming through icu on 3 pages worth of drug charts from all their diabetes kidney disease high blood pressure...the people we were admitting were on nothing. Literally nothing. That's what made us scared for our lives. The common theme of the young is severe severe obesity but no yet formal medical diagnosis

So yes you are clearly incredibly ignorant. But I'm glad you are as you won't be subjected to the same ptsd of living through it that we are

I'm so sorry, sadly one of many.

Oh yes that was the message that was put about at first before everyone lost their bloody minds. I distinctly remember Whitty laying it out in very measured terms right at the start.

That messaging soon changed though, when they starting thinking people might not be scared enough to change their behaviour. Hancock was on record saying that they needed to terrify people, wasn't he? That's when the fear and guilt messaging started, and that's what ran and ran. But ironically they caved into pressure to lock down because people were agitating for one - because they were so terrified by what they had seen in the media and on social media. Yet now it turns out that those strange images of healthy young people allegedly collapsing in the street in China might not be all they were cracked up to be.

It was a very murky business and I don't think it will ever be untangled.

I am not arguing with anyone can get it and anyone can spread it, by the way. Yes we could all get Covid. What I am arguing was the way people seemed to believe - through the fear messaging - that we were all at terrible risk (outliers excepted). We were not all equally at risk.

The common theme of the young is severe severe obesity but no yet formal medical diagnosis

Making everyone feel terrified and yet not publicly acknowledging the severe obesity connection seems very odd too. There were the pictures in the media "My healthy sister/brother died of Covid - please take it seriously" etc - and the photo showed someone who looked very far from healthy.

No one seemed to want to acknowledge this.

It wasn't lies though.

That the top epidemiologist in the country broke his own recommendations doesn't disprove the beneficial impact of lockdowns in lowering transmission rates. Some doctors smoke. If a doctor tells you not to smoke when he's on 20/day himself, is he lying to you about the risk of smoking, or to himself that somehow he won't be harmed by it?

Some people have a sociopathic ability to separate what they do personally from what they tell others to do. This makes them hypocrites and risk-takers and at the same time what they are telling us to do is correct.

No it's not. Money can't buy a dead person's resurrection.

That's a very dogmatic and unnuanced and pretty immature way of looking at things. Sounds like the kind of stuff people were spouting in 2020 before they wised up what it actually meant when they piously said "if it saves one life it will have been worth it". Having had a parent kept alive long after he should have been allowed to slip away, I like many others know that there are worse things than death.

Perhaps the use of the word "lies" that you quoted from @Lovesocksie 's post should have been "exaggerations". The risks to the vast majority of people were purposely exaggerated after the initial Whitty statement that for most it was a mild illness.

For example, when it all started gaining momentum and the fear was rampant, my sister and I were very scared for our mum - early 70s with asthma and a history of respiratory illness. Like almost everyone, she did get Covid and she was fine. Yes this was after she had been vaccinated, but restrictions and the fear narrative persisted well after most people had been vaccinated didn't they? Remember the controversy about vaccinating children? People saying how SELFISH it was not to get your kids jabbed with an experimental vaccine for an illness that barely affected the majority of them?

Sorry if I was unclear, I don’t mean lying about the benefits (or not) of lockdowns but lying about the danger we were all in.

No way would those men have put their mothers/ grannies/ children in danger.

A Dr smoking whilst advising you not to smoke, yes I understand. But the Dr smoking won’t kill you. We were led to believe we would literally kill people.