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?

Thank you. Lockdown was total bullshit.

Death was not everywhere. Stop with the melodrama. Older people at higher risk were more exposed and people working in healthcare would see more of that. But for the vast majority of the population, there was no risk of death.

@tpxqi my friend's mum has been mentally messed up by covid and they think it's permanent now. She hardly ever hugs her young grandkids and prefers seeing them outside and while she wears a mask. Very sad.

Yup sums it up.

This pretty much sums it up. If you can’t see it, you need help to get over your obsession with lockdowns.

Death on ITU was everywhere.
I didn't mean in the streets
ITU where all those vulnerable people went.... death was everywhere.

YABU

Theres been other surveys and stats produced that have said lockdown made an absolute negligible difference to death rates. Also it’s nearly 4 years ago and no one cares any more.

DH is a doctor and worked on Covid wards. Whole hospitals were converted to handle the numbers of seriously ill and dying Covid patients. Not all we’re old with pre existing health conditions. Many will also suffer with Long Covid for the rest of their lives.
Death figures were not exaggerated - one of my friends died primarily of a heart attack but Covid also appeared on his death certificate as Covid triggered a massive heart attack.

I’d say most people don’t care about the virus anymore but the damage from the overall approach remains

And I did obey the lockdown at the time because it was the law. Wasnt bothered about Covid or protecting the vulnerable, other people’s health is not my concern

part of the issue is when people dont understand all the science behind the reasons and only read eg snippets of news articles, or they listen to the local supposed "expert" that thinks they know more than the govt scientists.

I do wonder, when people say "Never again" just how strong they would feel about it, if/when an even worse virus came. Like if a virus killed 99.9% of patients and was as contagious as Covid. Would they still not want to lockdown? What if it was more contagious than Covid? I'm just wondering if there is a point at which those people would consider it the right thing to do?

Good point. Hopefully no more lockdowns no matter what, given the harms they caused.

Even with hindsight, I think lockdowns were justified and the right call.

At the time, and without the benefit of hindsight, it was more clearly the right call. Covid was killing in high numbers and, while people could theorize, nobody knew how it may mutate and progress. Even if the worst case scenarios did not come to pass (in terms of evolution of the virus), erring on the side of caution was the sensible course, particularly against the backdrop of widespread deaths.

What a selfish attitude!

I don't need to jump on any theories to justify my self-centred behaviour

I suppose we will never know whether lockdowns prevented deaths, or merely delayed them until covid was unleashed on a vaccinated population.

Likewise, we will never know whether the medical delays during lockdowns (eg cancer scans) hastened deaths that would have occurred anyway.

Just a few stats

Almost a trillion £ was borrowed and printed to pay for Covid. What do you have to show for it. Sky high inflation, an economy on life support and declining standards of living.

Inflation resulting from Covid spending continues to cause misery for millions.

Rampant corruption by the government to steal from the taxpayer in the name of Covid. Test and trace cost £37b. All of it stolen with nothing to show in return.

Almost half of spending in this country is taxpayers money through state spending. Civil service has never been larger. What do we have to show for it.

Over 5 million people on universal credit and many more who liked the Covid freebies so much they have made it a permanent lifestyle choice to nicer work again.

All this while every other thread on here complains about how nothing works, there is no money, blah blah. Why do you think that is. It’s because it was stolen from us because too many people were too stupid to question ghe lockdowns.

I honestly think the best way forward is to really learn from the mistakes made.

It does always make me when people talk about the elderly and how isolating it was for them, given how many isolated elderly people I saw pre and post pandemic, nobody seems that fussed about them all now ? And small babies and children learn most of their language skills from their parents surely ? Did everyone suddenly stop talking to them during the pandemic ?

Was the reaction to the pandemic perfect ? Hell no ! could it have been better ? Yes ! Were mistakes made ? Yes ! Can we learn from those mistakes ? Absolutely!

Lockdowns were ill advised from the start. No cost benefit analysis was done which would have revealed the tremendous harms done by locking down. Unfortunately those that were most vociferous in advocating lockdowns are now incapable of acknowledging the harms that have been done.

That was probably a postcode lottery as much as usual - not that that makes it ok.

Both my parents had cancer treatment during LD1.

Sweden has a much lower population density and their measures killed off a lot of the elderly.

https://www.preventionweb.net/news/did-swedens-controversial-covid-strategy-pay-many-ways-it-did-it-let-elderly-down

That’s not how nudge theory works. There won’t be more lockdowns. Plenty of other ways to steal the publics money. Like war for example.

@tpxqi - are you a virologist or doctor?

I obeyed lockdown rules but it scared me the thought of children being locked up with their abusers and I was right to fear that.

It was a despicable thing to do.
As was putting those medically vulnerable at risk would have been.

They should have fucking prepared for a epidemic/pandemic/fucking giant disaster before we had one. It was a clusterfuck that showed how disorganised our country is.
It was absolute chaos.

What matters now is we learn from it and never allow children to be locked up with abusers again and we do find ways of protecting the medically vulnerable.

We need to ensure that never again do we have a situation where social workers can't access at risk children.

No point kicking off at each others arguments on this one because you can't trump card vulnerable lives, you just have to protect them all and find a way. If it means spending money, spend it.

Money in this country is used in vulgar ways to make people of extreme wealth even wealthier, like that mobile alert everyone got etc, or not taxing massive corporations. There are ways to make money when some putrid bastards somewhere fancy a war, so let's agree that we can and should protect societies most vulnerable or honestly what is the fucking point?

Worse still those that did question anything were practically hounded. This site a good example of how people reacted.