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?

This is why calling other people selfish because of preferred policy response is stupid. We were faced with a situation where lots of people were going to suffer whatever we did, and nobody is morally better for caring more about those vulnerable due to covid than those vulnerable due to restrictions, or vice versa.

Huge damage done to children. A massive error to shut schools and nurseries.

Every school now seeing massive issues with emotional regulation, language ability and behaviour problems right from reception. This is going to have a ripple effect through time with more and more people reaching adulthood unable to function well in society.

There’s no right answer. That’s what makes this debate both difficult and unsolvable.

We got into a position where the only way to stop the NHS from becoming overwhelmed, and hundreds of thousands dying horribly, was to impose deeply damaging and costly restrictions. Both the problem and the solution were almost equally awful.

We were just unlucky that Covid emerged at all.

I said at the time that there would be excess deaths but not all those deaths would be from covid, they would be lack of treatment for other illnesses, suicide. I only know of one person who died of covid, despite knowing many people vulnerable to it. However, since lockdown I’ve known of two people who committed suicide. Both were women with young children.

I followed the rules throughout but it’s selfish to see this was a multifaceted problem and there would be excess deaths either way.

I thought it at the time. Finally a report from Save the Children said the same. We didn’t have a decent voice for children.

Large country but small population - not many large cities with people living in close proximity to each other.

You do not just assume it is not going to be bad and ignore it, no. But you also do not burn down a house because there is a mouse in the kitchen, which is pretty much what the UK did.

I do not believe it resulted in less human suffering. I do not even believe we saved lives overall. Instead, we sacrificed children and young people with the potential for long lives, to prolong the lives of mostly elderly people a few months, perhaps a couple of years.

My grandchildren will still be paying the bill for this. For some here, their great-grandchildren will. We have amassed debt akin to that we accumulated fighting the world wars. We have not long finished paying off that. The country's finances are fucked for generations. We could have done so much with that money.

Still maintaining "AGREE WITH ME OR YOU ARE SELFISH"

You were wrong - get used to it

@Flamingogirl08

i’m so sorry. This should never have been allowed to happen.

@Flamingogirl08 my dad went through something very similar and it was made 100 per cent worse by ludicrous lockdown rules and I also think had it been normaL times he would have lived - my sympathies.

Both my grandmothers have suffered enormously because of the covid lockdowns and it's had a knock on effect to both of them which neither have recovered from. They've just gone more and more downhill.

They are both very different characters but being isolated for such long periods, it was cruel and for them not worth it.

Can't help but feel this isn't uncommon.

Yes, I gather the explanation for Sweden was that they were better at behaving in a responsible way and respecting rules on that front, and they have a society that is much more reciprocal than ours.

This makes no sense, the UK obeyed a lockdown so did behave responsibly and followed ‘orders’. This stupid myth that the British don’t behave in a responsible way when we were locked in our house for months is ludicrous.

What is that supposed to mean? Sweden did horribly and many people died who would not have. They demonstrably did worse than other surrounding countries.

Lockdown might have saved lives from Covid (though possibly not) but it also shortened many lives and dramatically reduced quality of life for most of the country. The economic issues we are seeing today are at least partially due to lockdowns and were entirely predictable. There was no effort made to balance avoiding deaths from Covid with the negative impacts of lockdowns.

The young were generally most impacted by lockdowns and at no significant risk from Covid - I don’t think children owe it to adults to give up a year of education and most other normal aspects of life in the hope that this unproven policy might slightly decrease spread of a moderately dangerous illness.

And a lot of the rules were draconian and unnecessary. We had a long period where people who lived alone were not allowed to see another person face to face. And grandparents not allowed to see grandchildren, even to meet new baby grandchildren. I spent five hours in labour alone and me and my baby had basically no postnatal care. My nursery says that they still see the impact of lockdown on 3 and 4 year olds. And these children are now growing up in households which are much poorer than they would have been without lockdowns. The long term impact is huge and was barely discussed.

All Essential medical services as in hospital treatments, GPs, midwife app etc should have carried on as normal had the gov provided proper high grade PPE to the healthcare workers but they didn’t instead of giving them cheap rubbish face masks that have no proper seals on the face. A lot of PPE got binned because they were not the correct specification. Million of pounds worth…. No one is talking about that either anymore.

I worked in the middle of covid and was exposed to covid countless times but never caught as I personally managed to source and pay for high grade masks which cost me a small fortune. I ended up catching covid when the mask mandate was no longer in place and I was vaccinated so I took the mask off.

Masks work. We could have protected and kept the whole of the NHS going and functioning had they prioritised the NHS and saw the tsunami coming in January/feb 2020- Yet they kept playing it down until April.
So no, it’s not lockdown to be blamed it’s the lack of planning for disasters
and the inaction for months when they could have stockpiled all
the PPE needed to keep our NHS functioning.

YABU for not posting this in the covid topic which I, and many others, have hidden.

My husband refused to adhere to any of the lockdown measures, wouldn’t mask etc. he was utterly vilified, and I found it very uncomfortable at the time. But now, I’m so so glad he didn’t bow to the nonsense. He insisted the kids were in school and did as much normal things as possible, let them have social interaction and play dates and they have thrived. Friends with children the same age are still struggling to get their kids up to speed and living normal lives. He’s also had numerous apologies from people who were shitty to him at the time, they now see he was exactly right to do as he did.

Looking back, it almost seems like a dress rehearsal by the government to see how utterly unquestioning and obedient we would all be. Thankfully I think many people now would never ever subject themselves of their family to that nonsense ever again.

The way people carry on on these threads you would think that we were the only country to have had a lockdown, when in fact the UK was one of the least draconian countries where lockdown was concerned.

Italy/Spain had restrictions meaning that no-one could go out except every other day to do shopping.

no outdoor exercise,
In Spain the elderly were essentially left to die in care homes, literally. There was a hideous story in the news of how dozens of bodies were found in one home.

New Zealand pretty much closed their borders for two years.
Australia were still having lockdowns as late as last year.

South Africa banned the sale of alcohol and cigarettes as well as instigating lockdowns.

So by comparison we actually had it easy.
And the reality is that this was unprecedented. Nobody knew how this would pan out. Nobody had ever done this before. Whatever any government did it would ultimately have been wrong.

It’s so weird - it’s only ever on MN I hear about these swathes of people who died from COVID due to people being selfish and going out for longer than 15 mins or whatever during lockdown (or whatever other part of the ridiculous rules you wish to blame )

I don’t know anyone in RL who died from COVID and no one I know knows anyone who died from COVID. There were some very old people with other health issues who died during COVID that I heard of and COVID was named on the death certificate but frankly they were in very ill health anyway and flu would’ve been deadly for them.

Why are you wanting to re-hash all this anyway OP? It’s done. People die every day from terrible things.

And yes, Sweden.

taking a bow 😂

"Selfish"

Yawn.

Children being abused in the home and people with cancer and other serious life threatening illnesses, waiting for operations that were delayed due to the lockdowns causing them to die. Oh and wearing masks has definitely had an effect on how long we stay poorly for now for just things like colds and viruses. I complied with the first lockdown because everything was kicking off and noone knew anything about covid so it was a scary time, but I live in the country so I was extremely lucky and able to get out and about for hours on my bike. I can't even imagine how hard the lockdowns were for people in the cities! The other lockdowns were a complete joke to be honest and we are all paying the price for it now.

Both things can be true:

1. people who behaved selfishly were really annoying;

2. lockdowns weren't actually very effective.

The UK had some of the longest periods of school closures of any country.

People like OP failed to think for themselves and swallowed what they were told and now feel a bit stupid because they know they were duped. Lockdowns were a terrible decision and the harms far far outweighed the benefits.

If you get it wrong, you don’t double down on it, you change your position. Unless of course you loved being babied by the government during the lockdowns so much that you’re having withdrawals symptoms now.