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?

Ask the kids in this article.

oh wait, you can’t. They’re dead.
https://www.sacpa.org.uk/2023/03/08/tragic-faces-of-kids-killed-in-lockdown-as-uk-faced-pressure-cooker-care-crisis/

https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2023/aug/04/covid-lockdown-england-child-abuse-jacob-crouch

What do you want explaining about Sweden?

They have (so far) 2,448 deaths per million population.
We have 3,363 deaths per million.
We're a far more densely populated island, so would expect anything infectious to go further, and that sort of difference would have been expected.

However Germany only has 2104 deaths and Spain who are only slightly more at 2603, and both of them had lockdowns, Spain being noticeably harsher than ours.

I'm not sure you can learn anything from that.

Also, I lived in Sweden through the pandemic. Perhaps should do an 'AMA', since we seem to get talked about a lot.

So OP you know "many" people who died of COVID?

Funny because I personally don't know any. And no, I'm not a Covid denier and yes I was fully jabbed and yes I obeyed lockdown rules until I really started to worry I was losing my mind. I wasn't prepared to totally lose it.

The difference is, blacking out your windows significantly lowered the risk of your house being bombed. Wearing a medical mask that's been in your back pocket/glove compartment for two weeks when you go in Tesco, does sweet FA.

They would have died a lot quicker if they had got COVID though, and it wasn’t a nice death.

People who lived alone

Well let's look at it another way - which countries increased life expectancy during the pandemic? Norway and Denmark. I don't know what Norway did but DK had lockdowns, WFH, homeschool (except for the SEN kids). Danish culture is big on the common good so most people were considerate. The PM even did a press conference especially for children to answer their questions. There was no furlough - lots got fired, got their insurance money, and were rehired when everything opened again. It led to a surge of people applying for various educational courses, a baby boom, and a lack of staff in hotels and cafes because all the young people got jobs as covid testers.

Oddly Denmark and Sweden were looking at each other saying wtf man? But both countries did exactly what their govts told them to do.

Who knows. There was no UK control group, impossible to say for sure what impact the lockdowns had. Obviously people are going to want to justify their own decision, whether that was to blindly follow the governments advice or to blindly break the rules. Everybody was metaphorically blind to the situation, it was unprecedented and even the government advice was largely based on guesswork. It’s pointless now to keep trying to find answers regarding how different things would have been if nobody had followed the lockdowns, or equally if nobody had broken the rules, we didn’t have answers then and don’t have them now. Anecdotally of course there will be people who followed the rules and think it saved a life or saw someone breaking them and think it caused a loss of life, but anecdotes aren’t the same as research. Theories can be made but we can’t know for sure because there were no control groups, no experiments to find out the impact of lockdown vs free movement etc within the UK population. It seems pointless to still be trying to vilify people who broke the rules now, especially when the government was the biggest breaker of its own rules. I don’t see what’s to be gained through going after individuals regardless of how closely they did or didn’t follow the made up rules during scary and unprecedented times.

@Lilacdressinggown that's not necessarily true at all, lots of old people got it and only had mild symptoms then were fine.

Covid deaths were over exaggerated to the point where it was a farce. Anyone who died within 28 days of being tested positive for Covid had this put down as their cause of death. Even if they died from a road accident. The lie was so blatant, yet people’s stupidity knows no bound and they still parrot on about Covid deaths. No one under the age of 60 without core morbidities was at any serious risk of death from Covid. It was obvious from the the start. If you couldn’t see it, you are beyond help.

If all that wasn’t enough, how about the fact that excess deaths since lockdowns have outstripped the covid period. The lockdowns have resulted in more people dying than covid itself.

Generations to come whose life expectancy has been reduced due to the economic harm that came from lockdowns, trillions of borrowing and money printing.

@Lilacdressinggown you don't know that. I personally know several elderly and very vulnerable people (my mum and aunt included) who had Covid and it was very mild. Lockdown isolation did my mum more harm than catching the virus did.

I know of five people diagnosed with cancer during lockdown, all were diagnosed late, all had trouble starting treatment, four of those including my DH are now dead. I nursed DH through his last few weeks pretty much alone because services were cut to the bone and everyone was too afraid to enter other peoples homes. I truly believe that, had he been diagnosed earlier, he would still be here.

Isolation and loneliness are known killers

As long as they didn't die of covid though right? Thats all that matters 🙄

My husbands granny was depressed during covid, it was awful to witness. If you'd asked her, she'd rather she died.

Absolutely!! Always find those who use the 'selfish!!! Me me me' shouts and accusations are the biggest selfish me me me types!

Australia wasn’t having lockdowns in 2022, we finished them in 2021 once the country was basically vaccinated.

gh.bmj.com/content/6/8/e006653

I remember reading this article.

Foolish claim. You don't know whether they'd ever had covid or not. Presumably everyone accepts that it was present in the UK well before the first lockdown.

The governments approach was fucked. VULNERABLE people should have stayed home. The damage caused to children was a price too high to pay.

It isn’t selfish to think for yourself. People like you were free to stay home to not breathe in my air…

It’s almost farcical when you see people walking around with masks still. And the you get the odd batshit thread on here by someone asking whether they should isolate because they tested positive for Covid.

Seriously, it’s scary that these people walk among us.

Most have no idea how it was working on critical care during that time.
2 patients in each bedspace, lack of ventilators, expanding into other areas. Having to look after 3or 4 when the ratio is normally one to one.
Nurses drafted in from other wards not critical care trained.

It was chaos, death was everywhere, it was distressing, stressful and I cannot every work through that again. If Lockdown slowed down the admission rate then that is a good thing as we were drowning

Or they'd have been poorly for a week and recovered (most likely scenario)

My 94 year old mother with stage 4 lymphoma has had covid 3 times (once pre vaccination) and only once did she need to be hospitalised (overnight and after being vaccinated and boosted). 88 year old FIL with heart disease has had it at least twice and 80 year old MIL with stage 4 bowel cancer has had it 3 times. Neither of them were especially ill.

I’m not suggesting that this anecdotal evidence means covid isn’t potentially dangerous, it clearly is but I’m surprised how often I read on Mumsnet the statement that if an elderly relative caught covid it would definitely kill them.