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?

Hearing what was going on in hospitals - there were no beds, all staff channelled to COVID patients and the absolute sickest at that. Simply put, diagnoses were missed, but hospitals were dangerous places and choc a block. Where do you think people would be able to go?

Friends who worked through it in the health service are traumatised by what they saw.

I had a baby June 2020, traumatic birth with a lot of interventions. She's fine and a normal 3 year old. We obeyed lockdown rules, there was still plenty of ways to get out.

Oh come on. Sweden had at the time of lockdown 2020 approximately a population of around ten million people.

London alone has a population of ten million.

Not forgetting how big Sweden is compared to the uk in terms of land mass.

It is not hard . 🙄

Absolutely this

Utter bullshit

@Dymaxion that's not true, for social and language development pre-schoolers / little children must interact regularly with other children. It's just not the same from parents and even if it was the same, parents couldn't talk to kids idly as they went around the supermarket as they had to wear a mask or talk to them at the library / pool / play group etc as they were shut. The damage was huge.

One of my colleagues was in hospital for a fortnight and is still suffering from "long covid" now.

I obeyed and I still think lockdown was the right call. It was so bad that dome people with autism, ld or ds were put on dnr's and cpap machines were rationed. What would have happened without lockdown? Who else would have been deemed not worthy or medical intervention?

The covid wards and intensive care were overwhelmed, there wasn't enough staff, there wasn't enough beds and there wasn't enough machines.

Yes my grandad never came back from the deep effects of lockdown and died soon after.

You are being unreasonable, yes.

Well, I work in an industry that had to keep going. No hiding behind the sofa for us. Over 100 people working in relatively close quarters, we did what we could, but honestly, going out to work everyday as normal meant you largely ignored it.

How many people am I aware of that died, or have long covid? That would be zero. Not one single person, and we had a huge breakout long before the vaccines were thing.

Lockdown was need to delay the spread of infection and allow the hospitals not to be overrun. Of course there are long-lasting downsides, but everyone saw the footage from Italy. It's lovely to look back in hindsight and think it wasn't needed.

When Covid first hit the U.S., then-president Trump thought of himself and his ratings and popularity first. He lied, hesitated and did nothing to stem the tide of cases flooding the country.
As a result, close to 400,000 people died unnecessarily. All Trump had to do was be a leader, but he was too concerned about his “image.”
That’s selfish.

Nope. It was bullshit. And you were brainwashed by propaganda.

@Gingernaut the point is that Sweden avoided much of the long term collateral damage caused by mandated lockdowns, school closures and interrupted medical care etc whilst also not suffering an especially high rate of deaths from covid.

I think you have a valid point and I also think it is one of the many reasons why the lock downs and draconian measures were so wrong. If a really dangerous virus like the one you are describing came along, how many people have now lost trust and confidence in the government and health professionals due to their reaction to Covid? Would they be less likely to follow advice in the future? It's a bit like The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Other years pre covid elderly often died of flu, pneumonia. My granny a nurse called it the old people's friend. She nursed in London before the clean air act and said that was another killer.

We made so many mistakes worldwide that I hope we have learned from them.

I'm in Wales the government here absolutely used our lockdowns as political ammunition which disgusted many.

Exactly this. I wonder how many of the people on this thread have any experience of what it was like in hospitals
yes with hindsight it was baldy managed and the government wasted millions on dodgy contracts. At the time it was unprecedented and no one knew how te virus would act. We were watching Italy and New York and waiting with dread for the tsunami.
I’ve never experienced anything like it and I hope never to again. We had no effective treatments and the mortality rate of you went to intensive care was 70%. And yes people had ‘comorbidities’. Like diabetes, high blood pressure or being overweight. These weren’t people who were near death. And the families was the worst part, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, fathers and daughters. I saw so many people die. We went from 10 high care beds to 38. And 36 intensive care beds to 60. These were in theatres so then no surgery could be done.
So, yes there are many many unintended consequences from lockdowns. It should be reviewed and plans made for future issues. Money should be used to support those affected. And the dodgy government should give the millions back. But covid was terrifying if you were at the sharp end.

This post is a good example of how lies are told and facts spun.

Italy has one of the most acute cases of an ageing population anywhere in the world. In remote northern Italy, older people were dying Covid. Sad for their families. But absolutely not justification for locking down healthy, under 65s across the whole of Europe.

This is how stupid people fall for lies. Without considering the full picture.

Are none of you following the evidence in the public enquiry? We ended up in the mess we did because the government cocked it all up. Lockdown came to late, then had to last longer as a result of having allowed the virus to spread so far, and then the government double fucked it with stupidity like Eat out to Help out, which caused the second wave.

It's not really lockdown good / lockdown bad. It's about a political class with ideological beliefs that rendered them incapable of making the right decisions on the gravest matter of public health in living memory.

And look at the damage done. We better pray that it doesn't happen again because so many people have taken the wrong lesson and now think that lockdowns were pointless.

A 99.9% mortality rate for a quite transmissible disease? Everyone who didn't live incredibly remotely with the means to procure their own food would be fucked, whatever we did!

There is a good discussion to be had about people's calculation of harms and benefits for lockdown in another pandemic. But there's no point asking it about a disease that would kill most of us either itself or because we'd starved, got killed or died without our essential medication first.

Everytime the advert comes on tv about kid's mental health and how it's good to talk I think of lockdown. Apparently 40% of children have had a decline in their mental health, no coincidence that it's since lockdown.

The full impact will never be known, mental health, missed cancer/heart disease diagnosis, jobs lost etc.

I have a neighbour in her early 50s. She is, in my opinion, completely potty. She screamed, and yes I mean screamed, at DS1 a few weeks ago for walking past her house while she was gardening on the front. Apparently he should have told her he wanted to walk past so she could go inside until he’d passed. She was wearing two masks, a visor and some sort of head covering, a disposable apron and two pair of gloves. I stood and watched her take the lot off on the doorstep, bag it up and leave it outside before she sent her husband out to bin the bag (in gloves). She now has a sign on a post in the garden advising delivery people etc to knock and then retreat to the top of the drive so she can open the door to advise them where to leave parcels for disinfection. Tell me again about how lockdowns were for the best…

At the end of the day we were fighting a war against an new enemy that we did not know how to fight. Now (with hindsight) everyone wants to blame someone (Boris et al) who had to make sweeping decisions that some people did not like.

God know how the people of today would have reacted during WW2

Remember Wales government and Grandpa Drakeford forcing super markets to close off clothing section so shoppers could only buy ‘essentials’. The height of batshittery.

It turns out now that the Welsh government has been lying about NHS waiting lists. And also mismanaged all their budgets. How can anyone believe stats about Covid from these governments when they are now known to be lying about waiting lists.

this is a waste of time because it’s such ba complicated subject . You can’t just compare countries where the demographic is completely different .

We were not just avoiding deaths we were avoiding the hospitals being over run . And we had a colleague at work in his 20s where all three members ended up in hospital very seriously Ill at the same time. It was traumatic . I had to at rang a double family funeral .

I think the government had advice coming from all angles and were dammed if they did and damned if they didn’t .

Like if it was the virus from the film contagion. If it affected young people I think most people would. Though they would be sceptical at first.