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?

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?

Children were vaccinated to reduce transmission to vulnerable people.

The vaccines (plural) weren't experimental when they were given to children, because they were given to me and thousands like me who volunteered for clinical trials such as ENSEMBLE2 first. I didn't put myself at unknown risk of what was for me at that time an experimental vaccine in order for anti-vaxxer conspiracy peddlers to tell lies about it after the trials were over.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia

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

+++*

There is a very clear link between falls in GDP and increases in mortality rate.

In addition the increases in mortality rates are particularly felt in the poorest and increases in infant mortality.

So yes money can't resurrect dead people but it can prevent them dying in the first place.

We were in danger. My colleague in his forties, when recovered enough, sent us a selfie from his hospital bed. He was no longer intubated but still on supplementary oxygen. He continues to suffer the effects of long Covid.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia

Children were vaccinated to reduce transmission to vulnerable people.

++++

If that was the case and given that the efficacy of the Covid jab is negligible after 270 days (hence boosters) then why aren't children getting the Covid jab now.

Economic prosperity at household only improves health outcomes to a certain point. Once everyone in the house is eating well and warm and able to access primary, preventative, and emergency healthcare easily, the benefits follow a diminishing returns pattern with increasing income.

At a national level, money has to be distributed directly or indirectly to the poorest to improve their lifespans. In this country, NHS spending is a key part of that distribution because it means that the poorest can access healthcare easily. A comparison of GDP and lifespans between the USA and UK illustrates the difference between a rich country that shits on the poor and has little public healthcare funding and a rich country that also shits on the poor but funds primary and preventative healthcare for all.

Overwhelming the NHS, which the ICU doctors on here have indicated was happening at at least local levels despite lockdowns, would have had a similar effect on the poorest Brits as cutting an American's effective income so that they couldn't afford to book a GP appointment about that lump or persistent cough. And because healthcare staff can also die of Covid and are hard to replace, putting NHS staff at greater risk of contracting Covid also risked the NHS in the long run.

In short, harming the ability of the NHS to treat patients is as damaging to the poorest as a fall in GDP, if not more so, because there's no such thing as a "health bank" but there are food banks. Lockdown was to protect the NHS and it was at least partly successful.

Covid, like most respiratory viruses, randomly mutates often. The mutations that don't kill their hosts get spread, the ones that kill their hosts die out. This is how evolution works. Over time, the Covid strains circulating get less fatal and mass vaccination becomes less cost-effective than targeted vaccination of at-risk groups, just like with flu.

The colleague who was intubated had never had his life endangered by flu. Covid in Summer 2020 was vicious enough to hospitalise him and put him on a ventilator for eight days. I doubt that the Covid strains circulating now would have that effect.

Sorry, not buying it.

He was an outlier

We are all constantly in danger from all sorts of things. Epstein Barr virus for example. I could catch that tomorrow and develop MS or other conditions.

The vaccines have been shown not to prevent transmission, they can lessen the effects on the individual but don't remove the infectivity of particles shed by a vaccinated and infected person.

Technically speaking they are still experimental, they have been granted an emergency use licence, which is granted to a drug that does not have full data but needed for deployment in an emergency situation.

It will be years before all the data is in to really assess the benefits and harms (if any) of these drugs, in 10 years time the pharmaceutical industry and medical profession will have the much needed longer term data.

The people who think that regulations shouldn't have been brought in, and people would have done what people in Sweden did, and "been responsible", do you know who would have gained out of that?

Insurance companies. Where I work, we hire rooms out. On the 16th March about 50% of our hirers cancelled for the foreseeable future and on the 17th March, all but a couple of the rest.
That was the majority of our income gone after April 2020 (looking at a month's cancellation), and very little returned until September 2021.
However we were insured against pandemics, so once lockdowns were formally brought in, we could claim lack of earnings-not the full amount but a percentage*. If it wasn't for that, there would have been a good chance of the business going bankrupt as there were still bills and maintenance that needed doing.
Theatres, for example, would have had the same issues too.

*The insurance company even then tried to argue that hiring wasn't banned and we could have kept hiring to groups smaller than 6 people, but they lost.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia

An economic downturn has a number of effects on people’s lives through increased unemployment, decreased employment, reductions in income and wealth, and increased uncertainty about future jobs and income. The health effects caused will differ across generations, regions and socio-economic groups. Groups that are vulnerable to poor health are likely to be hit hardest, falling disproportionately on children, young workers, low-income families and women.

It is too simplistic to assume mortality rates are just a function of healthcare funding or access to healthcare. More simply the poorer you are the more likely you are to get ill.

As for saving the NHS the economic cost of the lockdowns and covid measures mean that there is less funding available for the NHS, meaning that yes the lockdown and covid measures may have prevented the NHS being overrun in the short term but at the cost of being overrun in the long term by increases in chronic illness combined with less funding available for the NHS.

Strange you should say that - I have a pal in the same job and he says exactly the same

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

Absolutely fascinating stuff from a psychological perspective I imagine, but not wholly unexpected @Lovesocksie ? You will have seen smaller versions of the same sort of behaviour control over the years in various public health campaigns ?

Hmm I’d say more like one of the best ‘experiments’ to bring out every armchair psychologist/pseudo expert : to gather on social media complete with a bit of a heavily biased anecdotal evidence that doesn’t reflect real world data.

Some people on here suggested reading about the nudge theory much loved by Cummings and others. It was so obviously used in the pandemic.

"Coronavirus: the politics of Cummings’ cull | Counterfire" https://www.counterfire.org/article/coronavirus-the-politics-of-cummings-cull/

To an extent. But this one surprised even seasoned public health experts who thought that under no circumstances would people accept the types of control they were proposing for the amount of time they went on.

Lockdown did far more harm than good in my opinion.

To children’s education, mental health and social skills that all has lasting effects.

To vulnerable disabled people who were isolated.

To those living with domestic violence who were locked up with their abuser. To those children who lived with that.

To children who has neglectful or abusive parents that suffered under the radar with no one to check on them.

Yes some lives may have been saved from covid but at what cost? I wouldn’t be surprised if the death count as a result of lockdown measures is higher.

@WestwardHo1

Sorry, not buying it.

He was an outlier

We are all constantly in danger from all sorts of things. Epstein Barr virus for example. I could catch that tomorrow and develop MS or other conditions.

I'm not sure what your point is here? It is well established that 'Long Covid' is a post-viral condition. Yes, we are always in danger of developing post-viral conditions, some worse than others. (And trust me, you don't want to develop MS, so I'd prefer you don't use it for your dismissive agenda.)

@Electro79

The vaccines have been shown not to prevent transmission, they can lessen the effects on the individual but don't remove the infectivity of particles shed by a vaccinated and infected person.

The infectivity of particles?

What do you mean by this exactly, Electro?

“The Royal Society researchers concluded that lockdowns and social distancing measures were the most significant intervention, with some studies suggesting they could have reduced the reproduction number of the virus by more than 50 per cent.”

If “lockdowns don’t work and were a mistake” which UK political party also takes that stance?

Does consensus science also agree that lockdowns don’t work? Or if disease X arrived on our shores - should we be prepared and be learning from this pandemic?

If you have a virus causing a high fatality rate, no method of control and collapsing hospitals (impacting all services including maternity, paediatrics, A and E) then you need to take action.

The fundamental building block any society is its health and safety. When that is secure, then you can achieve quality of life and economic wealth.

The ability of a viral particle, or virion, that spikey ball we saw depicted in every TV news report about covid, to infect another person once it has been shed from it's host.

Most vaccines don't prevent these particles being infective, because the vaccine primes our own immune system to clear the infection from our body, it does not damage the particle structure such to prevent it from infecting another, the shed particle is just as capable of setting up a new infection regardless of the vaccination status of the host in which it was replicated.

Is this in relation to the most effective behaviour and control comment in pp

That’s established by now

@WhalePolo

"The fundamental building block any society is its health and safety. When that is secure, then you can achieve quality of life and economic wealth"

+++++

Actually the fundamental building block of any society is the economy. The stronger the economy the greater the funding available for a health care system. For example the healthcare system in Somalia is not as advanced as in say Germany due to the difference in funding. The same principle applies to everything else the state provides from education, social care etc and yes the greater the economic wealth then the greater the quality of life.

++++

“The Royal Society researchers concluded that lockdowns and social distancing measures were the most significant intervention, with some studies suggesting they could have reduced the reproduction number of the virus by more than 50 per cent.”

Absolutely forcing people to stay in their homes will definitely reduce the transmission of any contagious disease whether that be Covid, the flu or even common colds.

The issue however is whether the societal and economic damage caused by the lockdowns and other measures will result in more harm and including deaths in the long term than the lives it saves in the short term.

For example the flu kills on average 25,000 people a year in the UK. This figure could be significantly reduced if we had a lockdown each winter. But no one would seriously suggest this because although it would save lives it would come at an unacceptable cost to society and the economy.

@1dayatatime The UK locked down hard for around 3 months, our LD was acknowledged at the time as not being as tough as some in Europe, yet they have not seen the issues we have post CV, look at our waiting lists? our public services just have no resilience, anything out the ordinary and they collapse.

The UK has had and still has a pretty good economy, yet over time, our public services have been worse than comparable countries, why is that?

Health or Economy? neither comes first, you can't have one without the other, we are in danger of having neither.

The problem with all these post LD threads is people have short memories, a new virus which no one knew anything about, Italy with a far better health service than ours, was over whelmed.
Also, the economy would have been hit even worse, noone goes out and spends money with an unknown, possibly deadly virus, doing the rounds.

So LD was an absolute necessity, the problem we had was Boris Johnson and apparently his wife....as we locked down again and had silly tiers, other countries opened up, the Tour De France took place in July 2020, we cancelled so much and messed about with schools and Uni's, i mean fining students £1k for having a few friends round? locking them up in 'halls????wtf?

We ve fairly effective vaccines for Flu, not comparable with pre vaccine CV.

For example the flu kills on average 25,000 people a year in the UK.

I don't think this is true of Influenza, are you adding in all the people who die of pneumonia as well @1dayatatime ?