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 is which is why Save the Children made the recommendations they did.

I’d like to see them implemented.

Yet another example of posters on the internet dismissing stuff they don't want to hear as right wing, conspiracy, Us For Them etc. Trying to promote a divisive binary "you're either for us or against us" narrative

Except the Save the Children report didn’t say ‘never lockdown again or use restrictions when faced with a pandemic’. They stated it should be used as a last resort and they made sensible recommendations about protecting children’s welfare for future pandemics.
Like I said before - there is a stark difference between 1) learning from this lockdown and improving outcomes for the future
and
2)twisting the words of the words of the report to support an anti lockdown, anti restrictions, anti science type argument in favour of libertarian politics.

No they’ve just said what to put in place on behalf of children and young people, which is pretty much what I wanted so I’m glad to see it somewhere else.

As for people asking for no more lockdowns in the future. Well we learnt how hard they are, how damaging they are and maybe not everyone will want to go back. It depends on the pandemic though. For Covid risk maybe not, for other risk I couldn’t say.

Yes I wish people would stop harping on about Sweden in a misleading way. 'Ooooh look at Sweden they didn't lock down they just let it rip! And they did better than us!'

Completely missing the fact that Sweden doesn't have such a whiny, individualist population and instead has an attitude of social cooperation and collectivism and felt a moral responsibility to do the right thing for each other.

The people I personally knew who squawked the loudest in lockdown weren't in fact the most vulnerable and oppressed in society but rather the most indulged and entitled who were furious not to be allowed to go skiing or visit their second home! Especially not for those old, sick people!

Sweden never closed schools for younger children and had a lower death toll than the UK (which had some of the longest periods of school closures in Europe).

Whatever your opinion is of “whiny” British people the evidence from Sweden and a number of other countries / territories doesn’t support mandatory lockdowns as a valid pandemic response when all the other costs and consequences are taken into account.

I remember reading on a thread in the dark lockdown days "never was so much given by so many for so few" as in a reverse of the Dambusters.
Think this was in response to a shrieking response to someone suggesting only the cev have to isolate and all the services brought to them of 'if I have to isolate everyone else should too'.

The vaccine, as you correctly say, primes our bodies to clear the infection.

One of the consequences is that we fight it off faster, so are infectious for a shorter time and therefore have less time to infect others. Hence, vaccination indirectly reduces transmission rates.

The flu is a well-understood virus with a vaccination programme to protect the mist vulnerable.

The coronavirus, when it first appeared, was a complete unknown. We knew that people in China were getting very ill and dying and that was the extent of our knowledge at that time.

You can't compare a strategy for a novel pandemic with a strategy for a well-understood seasonal virus.

True, and it would be lovely if it worked that well, alas the main benefit of the vaccine is reduction in severe infection, it doesn't do so well against mild and moderate infection, which tends to manifest as a nasty bug, with lots of coughing and spluttering and hence potential for transmission.

Don't get me wrong, the development of a vaccine that actually works to any extent towards a coronavirus is a huge achievement from a scientific standpoint, but it's a long way from a total solution as of yet.

it doesn't do so well against mild and moderate infection, which tends to manifest as a nasty bug, with lots of coughing and spluttering and hence potential for transmission.

I had really hoped that covid would cause a permanent cultural shift away from going to work with colds and instead keeping your germs at home. But, capitalism has other ideas.

If you are going to cite Churchill please get it right. The quote mentioned referred to the fighter pilots of the Battle of Britain and not the bombers known as the dambusters.

I thought everyone stayed at home these days. It’s known as wfh.

But on a serious note I think we would all be better off if we stayed at home when we were ill. I also think that a policy of paying sick pay for those who had to isolate would have been a better and cheaper way of dealing with covid than furlough. It would also have made it easier to recover the economy if we hadn’t allowed people to get used to not working.

The important phrase here is “when it first appeared”. Yes it was a novel virus that we knew nothing about. But our strategy/panic didn’t stop as we learned more about the virus and about the effects of lockdown.

I humbly stand corrected, but the sentiment is the same.

Better sick pay would definitely help
If people are only getting SSP you can’t blame them if they don’t test and don’t stay off work
A lot of people who get full pay when sick,particularly in the public sector,forget that not everyone gets paid
Particularly with the cost of living crisis ,if it’s a choice between staying home or going to work and pay the mortgage ,I know what so would do

Sweden has much smaller class sizes than the UK. Average primary class is 16 pupils and average secondary is 22. Lots of secondary schools did a mix of home and in person classes so that only half the school were in at any given time.

The average class size of a UK independent school is also in that ballpark and there was no difference whatsoever between covid infection rates in state and independent schools.

@Louloulouenna

Thats a massive over simplification because

• Sweden had an otherwise compliant population and one of the highest vaccine uptakes in Europe. They did start to introduce mandates closure of upper secondary schools as the pandemic worsened, so were following scientific guidance in other ways
• they had a health care system that could cope better than many other countries
• a similar no lockdown strategy did not work in India/Brazil
• the fact that half of humanity were on lockdown ‘allowed’ them to be different - but if you applied no lockdown as a global strategy to tackle pandemics, you’d end up with massive m inequality : the richer countries coping far better than the poorer countries.
• a global pandemic needs a global strategy

Don’t get me wrong, I am not an advocate of no lockdowns or covid measures whatsoever, just that in advanced economies such as Britain, the extended lockdowns and in particular some of the longest periods of school closure of any country were not justified in terms of the collateral damage and who was actually at risk from covid. Clearly some action was needed in order to prevent the NHS being overrrun.

I still don’t understand why the government wasn’t specifically warning people of the dangers of obesity given that age and obesity were the two highest risk factors and we knew this relatively early.

I don’t think you can compare Britain with Brazil and India but think you can compare it broadly with other European countries.

Am genuinely curious as to why Sweden seems to be such a uniquely compliant country.

Am genuinely curious as to why Sweden seems to be such a uniquely compliant country.

I think it's about trust and our collective mindset. We comply because we trust the decision makers to make the best decisions for all of us. With covid the politicians took a step back and left the decisions to the health experts. We knew that if Anders Tegnell told us to do something it was based entirely on the science and in our best interests. So we'd do it.

If we'd have had Boris Johnson at the helm we'd have questioned everything.

Also we have the tools to be able to comply. Stay home if you are sick - our SSP is 80% of pay, many employers pay the difference and there's no culture of 'ploughing on'. Keeps kids home if they are sick - very easy to do as SSP also covers when you're off because your child is sick.

The system makes it easy for us to comply.

We were compliant here.though

Just with more closures on top. I prefer your list

Yea that did frustrate medics somewhat. Can only assume the basis of fear of being seen to fat shame at a time gym etc shut

Boris mentioned it in his "out of icu" speech that his weight may have played a role at least

It definitely scared a lot of nhs staff into dieting

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