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’s not what you saw. That’s just anecdote.

You need to look at the data

It’s all there

I think lots of people were back at work in the second lockdown which didn't help. I was off in the first one but was back by the second. But yes I was definitely not as strict in the second one. Mainly because the government deemed it safe for me to be at work treating many patients in a non urgent capacity every day (and also getting the tube to work daily), but I couldn't see my friend for a coffee outside? I could see her at my job though and chat 8 inches apart. But not outside. So that was ridiculous quite honestly.

That ad campaign wasn't about fear, it was about inducing guilt about putting others at risk.

it was the Govt that killed them by releasing patients into CH's

This. We saw care home staff trying to protect patients by living in caravans to avoid contact with their own families, then the Govt decided that hospital patients didn't need to have a covid test before being discharged into care homes and look what happened.

Residential home here the owner lives opposite my son. 27 of his residents died because the hospital was sending them home. He was in tears as were the staff. It was just awful. There was absolutely nothing they could do.

It will take years to analyse the data. Suicides from mental health issues caused by lockdown. Those who were unable to start cancer treatment because of lockdown; their cancer could have been curable if it was treated immediately but not if they had to wait. Those who avoided a&e out of fear.

The complete suspension of most medical care. It was a covid only service. How many deaths did that cause.

Honestly it is behind me know, I couldn't care less about covid anymore and who was selfish and who wasn't and should more have been done. I don't care anymore. My mums dying of cancer and I have bigger things to worry me than covid history.

Covid is still too emotive and political for an objective appraisal in government, the news media and the social media of countries like the UK and US. All we'll get for the next few years is partisan opinion and cherry-picked research being used to support entrenched beliefs.

Eventually we'll get closer to the truth, which I personally expect to show that early lockdowns made a significant difference, but late lockdowns did not.

Yes this is a good point. Maybe it needs to be assessed by those not defending decisions, which is what the enquiry will be.

And that’s before you get to who is missing from any list of speakers.

It’ll take dispassionate analysis with no personal connection.

people did the minimum, hence CV cases rising, if people obeyed the rules, cases would fall.

I'm sorry, even if people followed the rules 100%, it would not necessarily result in cases falling. I am not sure why you think it would.

Err where did i say i expected rates to fall? i didn't, the whole thing was a farce as we are seeing from evidence from the inquiry.

There are other studies into attitudes, a Kings College one showed general mistrust in Govt in the 2nd year of the pandemic.

Also are we talking compliance wearing a mask in Tescos or not meeting family/friends in private away from the public gaze? which was imho widespread.

If compliance was high, then Boris etc wouldn't have been pleading with us all for greater compliance and we should have seen at the very least, stabilised rates, we didn't or were the restrictions pointless???

As for anecdotal, yes but so was the study linked, it asked what people did!

You said they would fall in the sentence I quoted!

And you've just said, again, that they would have at least stabilized.

There is very little evidence for this with covid. Rates seemed to go up and down in waves with very little effect from restrictions.

And it's simply incorrect as an assumption. Restrictions will not necessarily halt or significantly slow disease. Sure, if every person actually had to stay in their home for weeks, never go out, never see anyone, etc, that might work. That is not actually possible though.

The first LD was very well supported, rates fell of a cliff, if people do not mix, transmission will eventually fall, its not rocket science!!!

That never happened with subsequent ones.... wonder why?

It's accepted that rates were falling before we started the first lockdown. Then spring came. It wasn't because we were good little citizens obeying the rules, and in the winter we were disobedient rule flouters.

What? only accepted by you

Rates in March 2020 rose dramatically, what are you on about?

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases

Lockdowns where everyone, or almost everyone, stays at home can have something of an effect, though as the pp has pointed out there were other factors.

But that kind of scenario is unsustainable for more than a short time (as in, maybe you get a week or so), and as soon as people start going out again, working, grocery shopping, seeing people who need to be seen, etc - it doesn't work any more.

If you look at the graph in the link i posted, infections stayed low into the summer (when we had a serious LD, which mostly was obeyed) and then went skyward when we had few restrictions in the Autumn, falling again as we went into spring/summer 2021, further LDs were imho largely ignored other than the closure of pubs etc

*People went to work, shopping & exercised throughout the first LD

it was the Govt that killed them by releasing patients into CH's

No it wasn't. People lived in care homes, hospital beds were needed, so they were sent home.

No they weren't checked for covid. But pre covid bed blocking was a massive problem and there was no point keeping elderly people in hospital if they were well enough to be discharged back to their homes. They weren't sent to random homes for the most part, they were sent back to where they lived.

I am not sure what was meant to happen instead. Their beds in hospital were needed for other people.

As for vaccines, they usually mean that you are protected from getting the illness and passing it on - immunity can wane and you need a booster.

But the covid vaccine meant you would be less ill and less likely to need hospital treatment and/or die. Quite different (and there was absolutely no need for vaccine mandates).

Well, if we didn't have such a terrible number of beds per capita, they d never have been sent to CH's untested ot not at all.

What happened to the Protective arm around the elderly?

The Govt may as well of taken them outside and shot them, unbelievable you defend this policy, some CHs were threatened with funding cuts if they didn't take patients, others with financial incentives.

It's really 'interesting' (not the right word but cant think of a correct word) seeing those types of campaign pictures as it just echos perfectly my thoughts and bringing it all back from months of drowning in death and by far the worst experience of my career to date. Words just cant explain how so so awful covid icu was. The public have no idea as shown by this thread

The complaints of having to stay indoors in warm cosy housing watching extra TV ordering junk food as wanted etc is nothing compared to say war time sacrifices.

My new neighbours decided to have a lockdown party in peak 1st lockdown between about my 5th and 6th 13h shift and I so nearly lost it with them to turn the music down so I could sleep

It's so so tough I remember my then 87yo nan almost crying saying what was the point in being alive when blind living alone and seeing my parents for 5mins a week to drop food supplies off

But the comprehension of how much of a risk to the entire healthcare system being overwhelmed is just lost here. We had patients stacked on trollies in boots the pharmacy store. We had spread sheets of how many litres of o2 every patient in the building was on. Which we would have to intubate sooner than we would in non covid times just to reduce o2 demand on the building. ive never in my career come across the alarm we heard so frequently of inadequate o2 supplies.

So yes I get it was totally totally crap for all having freedoms restricted. but i promise you it was a million times harder to be on the inside

I think it was a disgrace sending them back untested. At the time we wanted all screened and if positive isolated in local hotels or such like with appropriate support for their care needs until they were negative. But ignorance is bliss hope they don't have it and infect all their fellow housemates just to make space was not the right thing to do (should have utilised all the nightingale hospitals that were unfit for purpose

This seemed to be a mistake that was made in a lot of different countries. I think it was really a bit of a miscalculation.

But also, there became a kind of, not over-emphasis, the media seemed to stoke, in the general public, an unrealistic sense of how viruses of all kinds go through care homes for the elderly. It's actually really common for a flu or other respiratory illness to go through places like that and take a real toll - but it's important to note that "flu" etc aren't listed as the cause of death in most cases. It's often listed as heart failure.

A lot of people aren't very realistic in understanding that when an elderly person goes into care, they are likely to die within the next two years, even less than that in some kinds of care. Their health is frail, only going downhill, and a virus will be the factor that pushes some over the edge. Just as an example, one study looking at yearly mortality rates in nursing homes put them at 33%. So that is an average of 33% of the people in the home every year.

Now, with things like a virulent flu, sometimes care homes will quarantine to some extent. But there have always been realistic limits on that. You can't shut people in, away from family and the outside world, for more than a short time. And you also cannot keep a virus like that out. It will get in, and it will get in every year, and that's just how it is.

There is an argument that it was sensible to have these homes locked down until the vaccine, but not a watertight one. Yes, people died in that year, but ended up dying, not only from covid but from all the normal things that kill people in care homes, in horrible conditions without loved ones, or spending their last days in an institution instead of being allowed to go out and do normal things, enjoy the outdoors, and so on. Just as an example, one study looking at yearly mortality rates in a nursing home put them at 33%.

Not sure how that same sentence got in there twice? Oh well.

We had a woeful lack of testing for months in the UK. The lies at the door of the policitions who knew by the end of January what was likely coming and what was needed but didn't make any moves to sort it out.

@Rudderneck Yes my mum worked as a Nurse in a CH for many years, chest infections were the usual cause of death.

However, you seem to dismiss these 2 years (average) of extra life, for many families, it is a life time and to be treasured (averages also hide vast differences)

Also, most patients sent into CH's (from hospitals) weren't there originally, they were just old, in hospital for a variety of reasons.

So not only was CV allowed into CH's they put zero control measures in, they didn't tell the CHs of the risks, indeed they lied about them BUT on top of all this and perhaps the most unforgiveable, was not allowing the families to see their loved ones.

How anyone can defend how the Govt behaved is beyond me, especially as we know now, the restrictions they put on everyone else, they totally ignored themselves.

I don't care what other countries did, its irrelevant.