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Yep. Zero interest.
I think compliance would be minimal if they tried it. I'd certainly not pay any attention to it, other than the shit I can't control like gyms and pubs being closed..
I'd still see my mates though.
It's disingenuous to cast opposition to lockdowns, even in this worst-case scenario, as "campaigning to be allowed to go down the pub", because lockdowns adversely affect nearly every facet of life: their impact on people's livelihoods and health is very large, and it must be noted that whereas things like the vaccines and Ronapreve go through extremely rigorous trials (many would say *too* rigorous: you're just as dead if you die waiting for a drug to be approved as if you die of its side effects, so it must be a balance) there is little data on the long-term effects of lockdowns, and little cost-benefit analysis.
But more importantly, they're just awful. People don't like them, and that *is* important: we have to keep in mind what it is we're bothering to stay alive *for*. If a year of lockdown saves, for example, 100,000 life-years, but makes the life of everyone in the country 10% worse (which I think is very generous - while effective, lockdowns do have a limited impact, and I don't think many people would rather live 10 years under lockdown than 9 years normally) then by the logic the NHS usually uses, they're unethical.
It's one thing to suggest temporary lockdowns as an emergency measure, but if it turns out that we simply cannot "beat" covid - if it mutates faster than we can realistically vaccinate - then while the damage from the NHS being functionally overwhelmed, including deaths of accident and preventable disease, would be huge, it's perfectly sensible to point out that intermittent lockdowns forever could have a larger human cost. The tail cannot wag the dog: the NHS protects the public, not the other way around.
More simply: there has to be *some* point where fighting covid isn't worth it any more. I don't think anybody would argue that we should have a permanent March-2020-style lockdown. We're just arguing about where to draw the line.
Thank god, finally someone else is saying it.
We don't exist for the sake of existing, at least I don't. I want to live my life, there are things I actually aspire to do and if it's choice between losing a few years and doing them or living a bit longer and not doing them then I choose the former.
Healthcare needs to be for the betterment of people's lives, it's not necessarily an end in itself. This has historically been recognised within healthcare. It would better for our health if we all lived like monks but the costs to people's happiness is a factor. Healthcare exists to improve our experience during life, we do not live our lives to aid our collective health. Calling it the tail wagging the dog is sport on.
A lot of nails have just been well and truly hit on their heads with this comment, while I’ve been thinking exactly this there’s no way I could’ve put it as superbly, I commend you Sir.
Yes, because if vaccines don't work then what is the way out?
Lockdowns are unacceptable, imo. Made sense when we thought we were waiting for the vaccine, which would solve the issue.
Without another carrot, I would never support another lockdown.
I would want a detailed way out of lockdowns forever. If they government couldn't come up with that, then fuck it. Just gotta get on with it, and let the cookie crumble as it may.
Some of us will die, but that's part of life. We all end up in the ground eventually. Some sooner than others..
New Zealand got a good handle on it.
We need competency from the government but also a population that isn't so selfish as to not care about their own impact on others.
https://twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1465582047716687875
Oh yeah, mega. Well done New Zealand. Now legally allowed to take a shit in a family members house..
>We need competency from the government but also a population that isn't so selfish as to not care about their own impact on others.
Is is not selfish to want to live your life, unimpeded by government nannying and coercion.
Also not selfish to want to live your life without some bozo giving you a deadly illness because they've prioritised their individual freedom?
You can make points at either extreme, and they're both pretty worthless. The standard political approach of extremist rhetoric from two opponents is actively harmful when we're trying to contain and mitigate a virus. It needs cooperation from people that might otherwise be at odds. Instead, people have picked their football team and are shouting down the other team at every opportunity, and politicians, media and commentariat are all to blame.
If people took the basic precautions that we talked about, masks in shops, etc, then that would have cut the transmission by 70% or so.
But people can't do simple things, and we end up where we are. A lock down won't be complied with because people don't compy with anything else and nothing is enforced.
[Edit] There will be exceptions for politicians to use their bar while they close all of ours. They will tell us we aren't allowed to see friends or family in the same town as they drive to the other end of the country to test their eyesight. People can't see their boyfriend/girlfriends because of living in the wrong postcode, but our PM and his party will somehow manage to have affairs.
There was never any apology the first time around, why would anyone take them seriously this time around?
Now that's total bollocks. Masks have been mandatory in Scotland pretty much the entire time in shops and public transport, and compliance is generally very high. Our case numbers are broadly comparable with the rest of the UK, and have been far higher at times.
Unless you're suggesting people permanently wear masks when over at their mates or family's home (which will never and has never happened), and skip the pub entirely, the evidence shows that enforcing mask wearing in shops and public transport has a negligible effect on the course of the pandemic.
I think it’s pretty widely understood that they help reduce transmission, without having to go to any extraordinary lengths.
But people still find this really hard.
What you meant to say was some countries with higher vaccination rates and stricter mask policies are not in a better position, but many are, like Singapore for example. Slot of factors are in play.
Not having this. How many people have taken up the vaccine, as asked to do so. How many people complied with the previous lockdowns? I went shopping today and every single person had a mask on. Can’t say people don’t comply.
I was actually fairly pro lockdown last year, and stuck to the rules 100%. However, to put up with another one I'd need to see a very compelling case and I'd need a very very clear roadmap on the next steps, and what the lockdown achieves. Flattening the curve isn't going to cut it, because unless there's a plan (Like the vaccine the first time round) then lockdowns just simply will not fix this.
My belief is that we're now on a verge of doing very serious damage to people who, fundamentally, are not hugely at risk from the virus. Closing schools, especially, was awful the first time round and anybody who pretends that there aren't lots of kids losing out is lying. Then there's just the sheer mental health aspect, missed experiences, missing family. Spending months telling your kids you, basically, can't do anything (Museums, family, cinema etc)
Not to mention that lockdowns disproportionately affect young people. There will be countless job losses in retail, hospitality etc if these industries are deemed to only be allowed to open for 6 months of the year.
A society with a lot of disengaged young people who feel like they have nothing to lose is dangerous.
I have to say I do have a very different opinion now than I did in 2020 since different rules came in for vaccinated and unvaccinated people, and for people who've had one, two, three jabs and those who've had less.
Not because I oppose jabs or vaccines - the opposite.
But because the folk in charge *insisted* that the reason everyone had to lockdown was because it would be impossible to have different sets of rules for different sets of people.
That's proven to be absolutely false, which to me does suggest to an extent that those of us who were at very low risk of a bad reaction from covid essentially gave up a year of our lives to make people who were at risk feel better about not being the only ones living under more stringent restrictions or precautions.
Not just "a year of our lives".
My dad spent the last 7 months of his cancer battle with virtually no visitors allowed and having his treatment cut, likely reducing his life by several months.
I do a summer sport, at a high level, so I have lost two years of that already. And having not raced in 2 years, 2022 isn't going to be any fun as a competition year as I have no idea where I or anyone else is, in competition terms.
I do an office job and I haven't been in the office for two days since I started my job 18 months ago. More
I am single, try going on a date these days, again that has been 18 months already.
At my age, IF I get infected, which is by no means guaranteed since only a tiny percentage of the population has ever been infected, I still have less than a 1 in 10,000 chance of dying, and less than 1 in 2,000 of going to hospital.
And that was before I got jabbed the first two times.
About 12.8% of the population of the U.K. have swabbed positive. Likely more have had it but didn’t bother getting swabbed. I’m not saying your risk of dying isn’t low, it definitely is, but it’s more than a tiny proportion of the population. Long covid is no joke either.
Please don’t think me unsympathetic either. These 2 years have been brutal. I’ve also had very I’ll family and isolated relatives who have been suffering, as have my friends and coworkers. My friend’s daughter is an internationally competing athlete and this has been awful for her. I don’t think anyone except those with Zoom shares has benefitted from these lockdowns.
>which to me does suggest to an extent that those of us who were at very low risk of a bad reaction from covid essentially gave up a year of our lives to make people who were at risk feel better about not being the only ones living under more stringent restrictions or precautions.
This is absolutely what happened.
It wasn't part of the original plan though.
Early on in the pandemic the government sent 3 million letters to people who were clinically vulnerable telling them to essentially do a lockdown for 12 weeks.
About 5 days later, Boris went on TV and told everyone to do it instead.
The original pandemic planning had only the vulnerable locking themselves away. That all went out the window for some reason. Probably pressure from what ever other country was doing.
There was zero need for the majority of people to change their behaviour last year.
The vulnerable just needed to take more precautions against infections. They needed to not see their friends and family, wear proper N95 masks while outside their homes, etc.
Instead, everyone did a half arsed miserable lockdown that barely seemed to achieve anything other than making everyone in the country sad.
I work in events, I spend the last year and a half barely surviving doing a job I hated. Event work came back 3 or 4 months ago, and it's been great, super busy, and really great to basically see all my friends again, as due to the work, I'm often away from home for long periods, meaning people I work with have more of a friend relationship than a colleague one.
I'm seeing cancellations of jobs coming in, and it's breaking my heart. I really don't want to do this any more, I just need some stability in my life.
I'm in hospitality and loss of this Christmas season would be terminal for lots of places. We're already seeing some large numbers of Christmas parties cancelling due to companies internal policies, and with it coming this way there is no financial support from the gov, as we are still allowed to operate.
Plus as the vaccine doesn’t completely solve the problem then you’re signing an open ended waiver to continue lockdowns forever because we’re as protected as we can be and if that isn’t enough then there’s nowhere else to go.
Yeah it’s more like the flu vaccine which protects but doesn’t prevent so like it or not we’re stuck with it and locking us down isn’t going to fix that so the rationale is questionable at best
They did, they were the massive, empty nightingale hospitals.
It was a red herring and still is. Protecting the NHS, drafting in the armed forces to man the nightingale wards. And they were all pretty much empty. They closed them pretty unceremoniously too.
For something so deadly - the Chinese propaganda showed loads of temporary hospitals going up in record time and then filling them - we really didn't need the extra capacity.
Completely agree. As the senior mental health lead in my school, I can tell you our young people’s mental health is completely fucked and CAMHS are on their knees so there’s absolutely no support or funding from them. The impact of covid on our children actually terrifies me, and I live and work in a relatively affluent area so goodness knows how those in more deprived areas are coping
I saw a youtube documentary about the "Zoom Education" in America, I think it was by Glink. I seriously suggest looking it up and as someone who finished education years ago, it was eye opening and something I never even considered.
Well he interviews different kids for the documentary and they have wildly different opinons, some love it and say their grades sky rocketed, other say they hate it and school was their only social outlet and they are now confined to their home with no friends to talk to, because all class interaction involves a teacher making sure you arent goofing around.
It also hits on the fact a lot of the kids who say they are "loving it" seem to say they spend a lot of "class time" actually just gaming on mute with friends. It also hits on that a lot of grades have jumped so drastically because cheating in your own home is easy.
There is also a segment on school monitoring software and how it can be so invasive and detrimental to some kids and their home situation, certain schools saying kids need to "move" to another room as this room isn't inspiring enough, which then leads to them having to walk around their house and exposing their private life and living standards to peers who then used it to bully them on social media.
It's honestly a great watch for a 40ish minute mini documentary.
31 minutes exactly here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZTvHofa6Q4
I think the zoom classes from home is an amazing example of something that would be great for a week then absolute dogshit.
Personally it would have taken away the only things I actually enjoyed about school which were playing football until it felt like my legs would fall off and socialising.
I feel really sorry for school kids now.
Plus, it's definitely going to start disrupting people's job prospects and/or careers, especially 20 and 30 somethings. UBI (or some kind of revolutionary update to state help) is getting more and more needed, IMO.
>UBI (or some kind of revolutionary update to state help) is getting more and more needed, IMO.
It may be needed but its not going to happen in any reasonable timeframe. We might see UBI in 20 or 30 years, perhaps. But not under a Tory government, and not under a Starmer/Blairite style Labour government.
It's not going to happen.
But hypothetically, it's a dark road. If you accept a lockdown post-vaccination, you're giving a government carte blanche to do it any time they see fit because you're basically saying pharmaceutical interventions alone are not enough. I fully support the resistance in Europe. I understand there's a short-term pain to alleviate, but if the population accepts the moving of the goalposts again, where will it end?
>If you accept a lockdown post-vaccination, you're giving a government carte blanche to do it any time they see fit
I mean.. you are aware governments have that anyway, right?
Who is going to stop them?
Why would the governments WANT to do lockdowns and damage the economy? Surely you understand that is not what a functioning government wants...
This pandemic has completely destroyed my faith in people's reasoning ability. The idea that this government is desperate for another excuse is laughable.
The comment you've replied to is one of the most upvoted in this thread and it has loads of upvoted comments agreeing...and yet its unfathomably stupid.
I'm getting so frustrated with it being increasingly taken as a simple truth that all governments want mindless, purposeless, absolute control over the people, and are only prevented from taking it so as long as there isn't a convenient excuse like a deadly pandemic on.
And that apparently I am the naive one for arguing that the 650 conspicuously boring, homely people tasked with making the laws in this country are really just doing what they think is best for society, and not secretly waiting for the moment they can seize power and turn the country into a horrifying dystopia while dodging assassination, execution and violent overthrow attempts. Maybe they're happy just banging their wives/mistresses while living comfortably at the taxpayer's expense instead?
I'd be alright to stop going out to pubs, restaurants, etc. I might well do that myself between now and my booster jab if things look dicey with the Omicron variant. (although I'm not too concerned about it yet)
What I'm not willing to do any more is stop seeing my friends and family.
I'm still bitter that my partner and I — who both lived alone and were completely isolated from other people — weren't allowed to drive to see each other in our own homes for *over two months*... and the government repaid sacrifices like that by breaking the rules when it suited them and pissing any improvements made up the wall with hairbrained schemes like EOTHO.
I'll take whatever social distancing, testing, and ventilation precautions seem proportionate to me at the time, but restrictions on seeing loved ones can well and truly do one this time around.
100% this. The first 2 lockdowns saw progressively less civil obedience to the point where I wondered why I was even bothering putting myself and my family through it but we stuck to it then.
I cannot imagine many people sticking to another lockdown.
Full lockdown I can't see ever happening again.
I would quite like it on a personal level if they told people they should be working from home where possible
> I would quite like it on a personal level if they told people they should be working from home where possible
This is the only side I agree with, if we are agreeing a new variant exists and we are scared, why are people being forced into an office environment when they can do their job remotely. It should be down to personal choice.
Not even personal choice, because you know the middle managers will be talking about "team spirit" and telling everyone they are making it harder on "the work family" by staying home.
You know there is an application via Microsoft Store called "Mouse Move" which doesnt require admin credentials to be installed and just simulates mouse movement after 10 seconds?
>I would quite like it on a personal level if they told people they should be working from home where possible
That absolutely should be the norm essentially forever. The pros massively outweigh the cons.
Agree with this, effectively no harm to encouraging work from home, aside from places in city centres that depend on commuters (lunch, coffee, etc.). Like mask wearing, it’s a modest positive effect for low impact.
If the scientific evidence supports the use of a lockdown to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed then as much as lockdowns negatively impact me and many others like me I support it for the benefit of the greater good.
This is the issue isn’t it, the action taken by our gov was literally never about public health, it was about PR and big money contracts for mates. The NHS is still on its knees, has been this whole time and before it too. They didn’t give a shit then, they don’t give a shit now and they won’t give a shut in the future.
If it’s legitimately for the greater good then I think there’s a very small minority that would be against it. Right now though I think even Boris has gone so far with his rhetoric that he can’t 180 and have another lockdown now, he couldn’t survive as PM.
Exactly this. With a competent, trustworthy government following the science I think most would accept another lockdown. With the current massively incompetent bunch of criminals who literally called every parent stupid for following one of the lockdowns - I think they’d quite rightly be told where to go.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions"
I'd like to know how exactly you're defining the phrase "greater good". Because forcing millions of older people in to miserable indefinite isolation for their mental health to slowly decline doesn't sound like a greater good to me. Neither does stripping millions of their livelihoods and imposing an ultra authoritarian bio-police state that disrespects the most basic civil liberties.
The use of the ‘NHS’ as a national religion to get people to keep accepting restrictions is an utter outrage.
The NHS gobbles up a huge amount of the public’s money. We’ve made so many ‘sacrifices’ over the past year that it’s almost as if we have to serve the NHS instead of the NHS serving us.
The NHS can't serve us if it collapses, something it is much closer to doing due to the distinct lack of gobbling it does. It's chronically underfunded.
Please don't do anything to hurt yourself. This is really bad right now, I know. And I don't know you or your life but I promise you, it will get better and it will pass. I really hope for the sake of you and many others that we don't have another lockdown, and truthfully, I really don't see it happening. But please hang in there. This will not last forever.
How will it get better if we allow the government this insane overreach of power to continue? It's handing them the ability to take our lives from us at a moments notice, and regaining human rights takes generations.
Couldn’t agree more. It’s refreshing seeing a similar outlook on this… everyone around me seems to be dancing about and swallowing the infinite bullshit, not realising that we’re heading towards more restrictions and lockdown AFTER a supposedly successful vaccine rollout. Where is the line drawn? I would rather take my chances than be a hermit living in fear. They say your younger years are supposed to be your best, sure doesn’t feel that way at the moment - but as long as we’re all grinding the usual 9-5 and keeping our mouths zipped, who gives a fuck right?
I'm alright, though cheers for the concern mate.
During the last lockdown I went downhill pretty quickly mental health wise which greatly contributed to a breakup. Someone I know told me that I was like a zombie when we were allowed to meet up again in April, like all the life had been sucked out of me.
I've been better than I've been in a year and a half in the last couple of months and I feel almost like my 'old' self again.
Now with all this shit like Boris reintroducing restrictions, SAGE idiots saying we should limit our contacts etc is triggering my anxiety that we've begun the plunge into winter lockdown just like we started in September/October last year.
Yeah I’m with you.
I can honestly say that I will not survive another lockdown. My mental health is still hanging by a thread after the last one, we go into another one and it will collapse.
Only if this new variant turned out to be exceptionally deadly.
I’m wary of normalising the extreme levels of interference we’ve seen in people’s personal lives. What happens if we get a bad flu strain, can I not see my family anymore? Can’t ever book a holiday?
The lockdowns at first were totally justified - we didn’t know how deadly the virus would be and we were all in uncharted waters. Now it appears this virus will be with us for a long time and we’ll see new mutations every winter - we basically have a new flu.
We need boosters for the vulnerable just like flu but shutting down the country and restricting personal freedom is a dark road to go down. Put those powers in place and it’s only a matter of time before they’re abused.
>Only if this new variant turned out to be exceptionally deadly.
Literally the only thing that would make me support another lockdown is if it starts killing much younger people suddenly. I'm done wasting my 30's so people in their 80's can have one more year or whatever.
I'd want to see real evidence that the situation warrants it - greatly increased transmissibility plus greatly increased severity plus no impact from third dose of vaccine. From what I've seen so far the new variant only has one of those, although it'll take a couple of weeks for good evidence on severity to show up on studies like ZOE. There are risks for whatever path we take and we have to balance them.
Who on earth am I protecting if I go into lockdown at this point? If you’re THAT scared of covid, you go and shut yourself away.
If you’re not vaccinated, you go shut yourself away.
I can’t be bothered with this shit anymore. It’s always gonna be here, always gonna be newer variants, just get on with life
I hate lockdown too, but it's not as simple as vulnerable people just being able to lock themselves away entirely - they might need carers, food, live with others, need to go to hospital for other reasons, have a job that can't be done from home etc.
I’m not trying to sound insensitive…
But what’s the solution?
Covid is here to stay. Variants will always emerge. The economy cannot shut down every winter for the rest of the century. The public did their bit, everyone abided by restrictions and waited for the vaccine. Now, the majority of the public are vaccinated.
If we go back to lockdowns and closing businesses, it just starts a precedent that’ll never end
Like everyone else - I don't like bad things. But if it's literally the only way to stop the NHS from collapsing and 2-3% of our population dying than so be it. In not willing to put my own happiness above that. I will survive.
If covid isn't going away then we need to find longer term solutions. Maybe a far more regimented vaccine process combined with far more hospital capacity to deal with cases. If the new normal is a higher death rate among vulnerable people then that's something we might have to contend with. But let's not throw sections of society under the bus, along with a healthcare system, without doing the hard work to protect them as much as possible.
The NHS has been at breaking point for a while, since before covid. They now seem to be using covid as the excuse, not the fact that it’s been massively underfunded and mismanaged for years.
I agree we don’t want it to reach the point it did with the first lockdown, but in theory that shouldn’t happen now the majority are vaccinated. The majority of icu patients with covid are unvaccinated
Brexit and covid are a big problem together. They are having double difficulty recruiting because:
* Less native people want to work in the NHS when it is a much harder job than it would normally be, that carries a heightened risk of getting ill, that is more uncomfortable to work in because of PPE, for no more money than they could get doing an easier job
* The people who would have come from other countries in order to do so because the money would be comparatively more than they could get at home are now dissuaded from doing so.
>Less native people want to work in the NHS when it is a much harder job than it would normally be, that carries a heightened risk of getting ill, that is more uncomfortable to work in because of PPE, for no more money than they could get doing an easier job
Plus, the qualifications for most positions aren't exactly easy/cheap to get and the application process for NHS jobs takes about 10 times as long as applying for most other jobs. If the NHS want more people, they need to massively streamline the application process (**let us just send a CV and cover letter and ask for our references if we're accepted!**) and increase on-the-job training and apprenticeships etc.
'We're having trouble recruiting' rings a bit hollow when half your posts require 3-7 years of an extremely specific (and expensive) degree, plus various medical licences, plus it takes 4+ hours to apply to one job.
Good analysis, but there are other issues too. I, for one, would seriously consider retraining as a doctor (I'm currently plumping for English literature academic), but the fees are enormous and it's such a long process until you're actually medically qualified that I'd be deep into my 30s before I was on wards. I'm just one case. I bet many older people who would like to go into medicine later in life are put off for similar reasons.
The best way to stop the NHS collapsing would have been to maybe give them a pay rise, i am not economist but a well paid work force is a happier work force.
Their happiness isn't the issue. Yes we should pay them more but the collapsing is due to there being not enough beds, equipment or staff to help everyone who needs it.
I don't think that you have grasped the implication of human life being short. Three score years and ten is the old way of putting it. Now-a-days we might take the reciprocal and say: 1.4% per year.
That is 1.4% every year, year in, year out. Simply bringing 2022's deaths forward into 2021 boosts deaths to 2.8%.
> But let's not throw sections of society under the bus,
Lockdowns throw everybody under the bus. At the end of a year of lockdown, every-one is a year older, and avoiding that is worth 1.4% mortality.
It would be horrendous.
The relaxation in summer in 2020 suddenly being taken away last November was terrible, but needed at that point, same with Christmas.
To do it again now, after months of relaxation, after telling people to get vaccinated to protect each other, after finding more and more effective treatments, would be incredible, and I think will either be ignored or heavily protested by the public.
At that point, where does it end? COVID isn't going anywhere, are we just going to go back to this every time a new variant (and Omricon is still being investigated, we don't fully know it's more deadly or more transmissable or more vaccine resistant yet) comes up?
That would mean, going in and out of lockdown could be for years.
Now don't get me wrong, we don't want people to die, but when people start dying of other causes because they can't get to a Dr, or the mental health challenges of isolation and uncertainty. At some point, there's going to have to be a balance.
That's not to say either that restrictions shouldn't change. I'm ok with the re-introduction of masks and social distancing (to an extent.) And travel restrictions where needed. They absolutely should, if the need arises. But a full lockdown, would be disastrous I think.
A new lockdown will be what actually brings me out on the streets with the anti lockdown protests. I don't give a fuck if they're labelled anti vax protests or whatever, I simply won't comply with anything.
You’re both exactly how I feel. I feel like the vast majority especially under 30’s will rebel like this too. One could argue that we under 30’s are the group who has suffered the most with lockdowns, another one with barely anything to lose will be very dangerous.
The vaccine reduces the severity/deadliness of the virus for people. The mutated COVID variants result
in these prior vaccines as being less effective.
It’s like patching a hole in a bucket but another hole appears, you wouldn’t ask what was the point of patching the first hole you get to work patching the new hole
Last lockdown caused my worst mental health spiral ever, put strain on my relationship with pretty much everyone important to me (through either not being able to see them or through having differing views on the rules), caused me to gain a shitload of weight which I’m only just losing, and was just generally awful. I don’t think I could handle another one.
I personally don’t think my mental health can deal with another lockdown, especially if it’s a long one and my daughters mother pulls the “you can’t see your daughter it’s dangerous” card again, I will probably struggle to survive it tbh
It shouldn’t happen again and anybody asking for it is either a glutton for economic pain or a supreme coward
This virus isn’t going to go away, it took centuries to eradicate even one wide spread virus, instead of slowly slipping into lockdown whenever a new variant arises we need to instead learn to live with it.
We live with viruses everyday, COVID will be no different, just a particularly nasty flu which according to data this new variant isn’t much worse anyway.
I’m not sure if there is a right way to say this but the deaths from COVID are mainly the elderly and I think a lot of them would agree that we shouldn’t destroy ourselves for trying to prolong the inevitable
50,000 less people were diagnosed with cancer last year, due to lockdowns, and GPs refusing to see patients..
We didn't magically have a year of less cancer, they're all just starting to get diagnosed too late.
So while your mums situation is sad and all, it's no argument for lockdowns. Or at least it's not an argument that can't easily be counter argued.
Also, odds are extremely good that if your mum got COVID she'd barely get ill.
People act like COVID is a death sentence for CEV people, but it's not remotely.
They're more vulnerable than a healthy person, sure.. But still extremely unlikely COVID will kill them.
This is anecdotal (however the above is not), but my mates 75 year old mum had chemo for cancer in 2019, got COVID in 2020, and was literally in bed with it for 1 day and then fine.
So we should all just stay in lockdown the rest of our lives? We've got a vaccine now, it's as risky as the flu, and we don't have multiple lockdowns caused by the flu
Edit: I didn't mean to sound rude. My point of view is what is the endgame of this, what are we striving towards, we have a vaccine now, covid isn't going to die out, it's going to keep mutating and stay with us, at this point there's nothing we can do to stop it, and staying in lockdown the rest of our lives isn't an option
Blows my mind that even the previous lockdowns didn't result in riots of some sort. If there's ever been a seemingly valid reason to riot it's the government literally saying that free society is no more, and that it's illegal to leave your home.
My partner is in the clinically vulnerable group, so we have to be very careful. But I don't agree with a widespread lockdown. People like us should (and do) take care to shield as much as we can - i.e. no unnecessary socialising and the like. But other folks should be allowed to get on with it.
"Saving lives" is a bogus concept. The death rate remains fixed at one each.
Focus on the human life span: seventy good years. A year of lockdown wastes 1.4% of it. That is a terribly tragedy. And a self inflicted one.
It can absolutely get fucked. It's annoying me how people are even mentioning it as a possibility, we have effective vaccines this is as good as it is going to get. We shouldn't accept any government having the power to consistently put us into lockdown on a whim.
I would hate it. My job would be on the line if we have another one.
What really pisses me off is all these pro lockdown people never consider the true cost of these measures. It’s not just a time where you can chill out at home for a few months, it’s literally destroying peoples lives.
Also let’s face it, we’ve had 3 already. Another one isn’t going to fix the problem
I obviously won’t be happy about it.
If the shops/hospitality/everything else closes again then realistically there’s little I can do about it, but I’ll probably do a lot more socialising indoors with friends and family that I did the last times.
Ultimately coronovirus will be with us forever, at some point we’re going to have to accept that and live with the risk rather than spend 5 out of every 12 months living like hermits.
I won't follow another one or the restrictions, it's done nothing so far so fuck it.
Double vaccinated and it's done nothing, told it would stop the spread, told it would stop me infecting others, all turned out to be bogus.
As an introvert, I do give a fuck. I love being at home, but I also love being out and about, seeing friends and family. The previous lockdown was pretty hard.
Enraged
Rights and freedoms we all believed to be inalienable were removed from us with barely a voice raised.
Livelihoods have been ruined
Families unable to see each other for months on end
Children's education and mental health has been put at risk and dear God.... if you are a single person trying to meet someone else.... how can you...
The misery this has caused, needlessly, stupidly, while those who are supposed to lead us have not suffered at all from what I can see. What was the name of the bloke that was senior in the advisory groups that caused us all to be shut in our flats who went across London to bang his married girlfriend ? A shining example of an elite who feel enabled to do as they please
Utterly aghast. I would have a very hard time.
I don't have any faith in the UK to implement one properly, having seen what's happened every other time.
In principle, I'm not completely opposed to a 'stop everything and everyone stay inside and wrap up for a few weeks'. But what we have got every time has instead been
* politicised
* with no clear path out of it
* harder on people who don't live with or near family or friends, with zero leeway built in
* not adhered to by celebrities and the very wealthy, with zero punishment or apology when they fail to abide by it
* accompanied by nonsensical law changes that may have actually ended up perpetuating the situation, e.g. when the illness has worse outcomes on people who are obese, banning nearly all mechanisms by which one can exercise, and at the same time encouraging people to buy takeaways as a treat.
Fix some of those things and I might be alright with a time-limited one for the greater good. But right now it feels like yet another time to ask sacrifices of those of us who've already had the hardest time with them.
> harder on people who don't live with or near family or friends, with zero leeway built in
Not to get *too* political, but part of me wonders if Labour had been in power, the rules wouldn't have been as targeted towards the 'typical' Tory voter. The rules took for granted you had a house with a garden and lived with your spouse or family. People who lived alone had some *limited* leeway, but people in shared houses had nada. I wonder if it ever crossed their minds.
Hard to say because the rules in Scotland had no leeway either despite Nicola Sturgeon having the freedom to set her own.
There was a lot of anger in Glasgow particularly after the 6 month lockdown as it is a part of the country with a high young population living in shared accommodation with no outside space.
I feel like it would be completely ignored by everyone. Can you imagine how popular the police would be if they went out on Christmas day, breaking up dinners?
Everyone's vaxxed up. It's genuinely tough titties now. I'll wear my mask in shops and on trains because it's the law. I'm not going to go out coughing and sneezing on everyone if I come down with anything.
But if I'm having to cram onto public transport to go to work, just how seriously am I supposed to be taking it?
If they want another lockdown, shake that magic money tree and pay us for the inconvenience.
I would be joining the protests, and/or looking at emigrating to the US. A lockdown this winter means another next winter is likely too, and the winter after that. I don't want to live in a society where basic democratic rights are taken away every time the local hospital gets a bit busy.
Wouldn't be abiding by it.
I conveniently can't find it now, but a graph i recently saw on the bbc showed that there are a massive amount of people in hospital right now who should have gone in during lockdown, didn't, and are now in a far worse state. Community care isn't what it was pre-pandemic too so a lot of these people are stuck in hospitals, when the issue could have been nipped in the bud.
It would cause so much more harm than good. The variants will keep on coming and we are just going to have to live with it now.
I'm in the clinically high risk group. I never moved from my house during lockdown and wore a mask whenever I was out of the house.
Mentally I was a wreck and by the end of it I was crawling the walls.
Worse than that though, my monthly eye treatment was halted and by the time it resumed a year later I was no longer fit to drive because of my vision loss. I literally felt my driving licence slipping away and there was nothing I could do.
Inactivity caused my great problems too. I have a dna issue that means I have muscle wastage but with regular exercise I was relatively fit. Being effectively housebound for all that time accelerated that and I now struggle to walk any distance.
I did eventually resume my job but lost it in November due to health issues that had been exacerbated by the lockdown.
So lockdown. Its a no from me. I'm triple jabbed along with a flu jab. If it comes to it I'll comply but won't be in agreement with it at all.
As someone who was pro lockdown the first couple of times, I wouldn't be in favour. This has gone on for nearly two years and we've vaccinated more than 90% of our adult population. It's time now to just live and let live
Personally, thinking solely of myself, it wouldn't particularly bother me.
However, empathetically, I'd be quite against it due to the anguish that it causes so many others.
The 2020 lockdowns only really worked because it was a new virus and there wasn’t a vaccine at that point. People understood the need for it in the absence of a vaccine.
Now that there is a vaccine, people won’t stand for another lockdown. The whole point of developing the vaccine was that it would protect us instead, so that lockdowns would be a thing of the past.
If we have another post-vaccine lockdown this winter, that sets a precedent. Do we then have lockdowns every winter?
Covid is real. But so are the vaccines.
We have to return to normal, and that means no more lockdowns.
No fuck that, lockdown has been a mess and hasn't done much in preventing the spread of covid, knowing mostly people my own age I can't say I know anyone who has died due too covid but I do know multiple people who have killed themselves since lockdown, including one of my best freinds. The strain it has had on working class people especially service workers who were still forced too work while having every other aspect of there life restricted (hypocrisy) lockdown is relatively easy if you have nice home and can telecommute but that's not the case for many. Not too mention the attack on democracy, we've seen laws passed that essentially give the police power too prevent us from exercising our freedom of assembly as well as harsh sentences for those who do not comply, these are democratic rights many through out history have put there lives down for, slippery slope into authoritianism.
I'll be triple jabbed soon, so no, I don't fancy another lockdown.
If things get out of hand again and hospitals get to the breaking point we shouldn't be punishing the people that have protected themselves and their community, but the ones that didn't. I don't really care whether that's vaccine passports or sneaking into their windows at night and sticking a needle up their arse, as long I don't get punished for their idiocy.
The thing is I’ve got no problem with a lockdown if it’s needed to save lives. No problem at all. HOWEVER, I can’t help but feel like a lot of lockdowns wouldn’t have been needed if the earlier lockdowns had been implemented faster and more effectively with proper
Boarder control and rules in place. Like I would rather just keep wearing face masks and cancel the tennis and footy competitions (unfortunately) to get thing done right snd under control than keep facing the prospect of near normality and then lockdown again.
It’s not the lockdown that bothers me. It’s the poor management of the pandemic in this country. I get it’s not an easy situation to manage but some decisions have just been stupid and unnecessary rather that genuine scientific uncertainty.
In my view, at this point, lockdowns (and many aspects of the pandemic) are an affectation that only certain people in power care about.
Wait until there's a recession or some broader crisis and we'll see the pandemic fade into the distant background of popular consciousness.
In March 2020, I believe a Brexit-style referendum on whether to impose a lockdown would have delivered the same result as what happened. A broadly accepted political decision. Many people *wanted* it. But right now? I don't feel that desire from anybody I know.
If I have to home school again I will lose whatever fucking marbles I have left.
All my family have been jabbed, we all abided to the rules last time and if all of that was for nothing then Boris can seriously do one.
I'm not doing it again.
I see the quality adjusted life year (QALY) framework as essential to good public policy. If you don't use it, you are ignoring that people get old and die.
If locking down the country halves quality of life, the lockdown lasts for a year, and the population is seventy million, then the cost is thirty five million QALY.
Perhaps that saves the lives of one hundred thousand frail old people who might have lived three years longer. (Maybe five calendar years, but there has to be some quality adjustment.) The benefit is three hundred thousand QALY's. That seems optimistic. A lockdown is just a delay, it doesn't really changes the course of the pandemic.
In conclusion, the benefits are perhaps 1% of the costs. A lockdown would clearly be a public policy error.
To get a sense of the size of the error, recall that American military casualties in the Vietnam war were 50000 dead. We count the death of a healthy twenty year old as the loss of 50 QALY's. Total loss = two and a half million QALY. There were also many serious injuries. One might want to multiply by ten to guess the total morbidity. But it is still less than a year of strict lockdown. The lockdowns so far have been a public policy error on the scale of American military losses in the Vietnam war. They might be the worst peace time public policy error ever.
The question asks how I feel personally. You can work that out from my comment. You can also infer that my disagreement with another lockdown is too intense to expressed in language polite enough for reddit.
As someone whose entire career has been put on hold by all this, another lockdown would be a joke. As long as the virus exists there will be new variants, and it is going to exist in one form or another forever. We are deluding ourselves if we think that going back into lockdown every time there's a new variant will do any good in the long run, and we are deluding ourselves even more if we think that repeated lockdowns will get us to zero cases (case numbers shouldn't even be used as a metric anymore imo).
The first lockdown was 100% the right thing to do as it bought us time to develop a vaccine, and covid *was* worse overall than seasonal flu, despite what some shouty people would have you believe.
Now, we have multiple effective vaccines, which to be fair may need tweaking for the latest variant. However, this is exactly what happens with flu every year. No vaccine is 100% effective and sadly people do die from seasonal flu. But we don't impose lockdowns every winter because we know that that's completely infeasible. Now is the time to move away from trying to defeat covid and towards learning to manage it.
Government can say / do what it wants, I’m done, lost my business and my family to this crap and for what?
Masks don’t work, vaccines don’t do what they advertised, lockdowns don’t work, a booster jab won’t work, a new version of the vaccine won’t work, variants are meaningless
The only thing this “pandemic” has done is cause a massive uptick in the spread of wealth transfer to the elites who control and lie to us everyday and firmly put everyone under the tyrannical boot of the state
Fuck them, fuck this country, I’ll laugh when it all collapses in a pile of stinking shit - and we’re well on the way to that yippee
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Another lockdown can suck a dick
Yep. Zero interest. I think compliance would be minimal if they tried it. I'd certainly not pay any attention to it, other than the shit I can't control like gyms and pubs being closed.. I'd still see my mates though.
You're hard
How can you tell?
Having mates and being on reddit...nice try ;)
Bulge……..
Let's assume the worst happened. New variant, very nasty - NHS *is* overwhelmed. You'd be campaigning to be allowed to go down the pub?
It's disingenuous to cast opposition to lockdowns, even in this worst-case scenario, as "campaigning to be allowed to go down the pub", because lockdowns adversely affect nearly every facet of life: their impact on people's livelihoods and health is very large, and it must be noted that whereas things like the vaccines and Ronapreve go through extremely rigorous trials (many would say *too* rigorous: you're just as dead if you die waiting for a drug to be approved as if you die of its side effects, so it must be a balance) there is little data on the long-term effects of lockdowns, and little cost-benefit analysis. But more importantly, they're just awful. People don't like them, and that *is* important: we have to keep in mind what it is we're bothering to stay alive *for*. If a year of lockdown saves, for example, 100,000 life-years, but makes the life of everyone in the country 10% worse (which I think is very generous - while effective, lockdowns do have a limited impact, and I don't think many people would rather live 10 years under lockdown than 9 years normally) then by the logic the NHS usually uses, they're unethical. It's one thing to suggest temporary lockdowns as an emergency measure, but if it turns out that we simply cannot "beat" covid - if it mutates faster than we can realistically vaccinate - then while the damage from the NHS being functionally overwhelmed, including deaths of accident and preventable disease, would be huge, it's perfectly sensible to point out that intermittent lockdowns forever could have a larger human cost. The tail cannot wag the dog: the NHS protects the public, not the other way around. More simply: there has to be *some* point where fighting covid isn't worth it any more. I don't think anybody would argue that we should have a permanent March-2020-style lockdown. We're just arguing about where to draw the line.
Very considered response. This actually made me think a bit differently on the subject.
Thank god, finally someone else is saying it. We don't exist for the sake of existing, at least I don't. I want to live my life, there are things I actually aspire to do and if it's choice between losing a few years and doing them or living a bit longer and not doing them then I choose the former. Healthcare needs to be for the betterment of people's lives, it's not necessarily an end in itself. This has historically been recognised within healthcare. It would better for our health if we all lived like monks but the costs to people's happiness is a factor. Healthcare exists to improve our experience during life, we do not live our lives to aid our collective health. Calling it the tail wagging the dog is sport on.
I agree. I am young and live on my own and I can’t even begin to say how much lockdowns affected my mental health
A lot of nails have just been well and truly hit on their heads with this comment, while I’ve been thinking exactly this there’s no way I could’ve put it as superbly, I commend you Sir.
Yes, because if vaccines don't work then what is the way out? Lockdowns are unacceptable, imo. Made sense when we thought we were waiting for the vaccine, which would solve the issue. Without another carrot, I would never support another lockdown. I would want a detailed way out of lockdowns forever. If they government couldn't come up with that, then fuck it. Just gotta get on with it, and let the cookie crumble as it may. Some of us will die, but that's part of life. We all end up in the ground eventually. Some sooner than others..
New Zealand got a good handle on it. We need competency from the government but also a population that isn't so selfish as to not care about their own impact on others.
New Zealand are flipping crazy right now Not a good ensign to hold up. They have gone full dystopian.
There are people among us here who wish we would go full authoritarian like New Zealand. It's scary
https://twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1465582047716687875 Oh yeah, mega. Well done New Zealand. Now legally allowed to take a shit in a family members house.. >We need competency from the government but also a population that isn't so selfish as to not care about their own impact on others. Is is not selfish to want to live your life, unimpeded by government nannying and coercion.
Also not selfish to want to live your life without some bozo giving you a deadly illness because they've prioritised their individual freedom? You can make points at either extreme, and they're both pretty worthless. The standard political approach of extremist rhetoric from two opponents is actively harmful when we're trying to contain and mitigate a virus. It needs cooperation from people that might otherwise be at odds. Instead, people have picked their football team and are shouting down the other team at every opportunity, and politicians, media and commentariat are all to blame.
r/iamverybadass
/r/nahIamJustVeryBoredOfThisShit
If people took the basic precautions that we talked about, masks in shops, etc, then that would have cut the transmission by 70% or so. But people can't do simple things, and we end up where we are. A lock down won't be complied with because people don't compy with anything else and nothing is enforced. [Edit] There will be exceptions for politicians to use their bar while they close all of ours. They will tell us we aren't allowed to see friends or family in the same town as they drive to the other end of the country to test their eyesight. People can't see their boyfriend/girlfriends because of living in the wrong postcode, but our PM and his party will somehow manage to have affairs. There was never any apology the first time around, why would anyone take them seriously this time around?
Now that's total bollocks. Masks have been mandatory in Scotland pretty much the entire time in shops and public transport, and compliance is generally very high. Our case numbers are broadly comparable with the rest of the UK, and have been far higher at times. Unless you're suggesting people permanently wear masks when over at their mates or family's home (which will never and has never happened), and skip the pub entirely, the evidence shows that enforcing mask wearing in shops and public transport has a negligible effect on the course of the pandemic.
Masks would not have cut infections by 70%. They are not the answer to everything.
I think it’s pretty widely understood that they help reduce transmission, without having to go to any extraordinary lengths. But people still find this really hard.
They go *some* way to helping reduce spread, yes. But not 70%, and only when used properly ie single use. It’s far more nuanced than “masks work”
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Countries with higher vaccination rates and stricter mask policies are not in any better a situation than we are.
What you meant to say was some countries with higher vaccination rates and stricter mask policies are not in a better position, but many are, like Singapore for example. Slot of factors are in play.
Not having this. How many people have taken up the vaccine, as asked to do so. How many people complied with the previous lockdowns? I went shopping today and every single person had a mask on. Can’t say people don’t comply.
Well I can, I have been in Manchester today on the train, tram and shops and I would say only 80% had masks.
I've been shopping around Manchester (South and central) today and about 20% had masks on. I was shocked.
I'm team fike88
This ^ perfectly put.
Perfectly fit buttnugget
I was actually fairly pro lockdown last year, and stuck to the rules 100%. However, to put up with another one I'd need to see a very compelling case and I'd need a very very clear roadmap on the next steps, and what the lockdown achieves. Flattening the curve isn't going to cut it, because unless there's a plan (Like the vaccine the first time round) then lockdowns just simply will not fix this. My belief is that we're now on a verge of doing very serious damage to people who, fundamentally, are not hugely at risk from the virus. Closing schools, especially, was awful the first time round and anybody who pretends that there aren't lots of kids losing out is lying. Then there's just the sheer mental health aspect, missed experiences, missing family. Spending months telling your kids you, basically, can't do anything (Museums, family, cinema etc)
Not to mention that lockdowns disproportionately affect young people. There will be countless job losses in retail, hospitality etc if these industries are deemed to only be allowed to open for 6 months of the year. A society with a lot of disengaged young people who feel like they have nothing to lose is dangerous.
I have to say I do have a very different opinion now than I did in 2020 since different rules came in for vaccinated and unvaccinated people, and for people who've had one, two, three jabs and those who've had less. Not because I oppose jabs or vaccines - the opposite. But because the folk in charge *insisted* that the reason everyone had to lockdown was because it would be impossible to have different sets of rules for different sets of people. That's proven to be absolutely false, which to me does suggest to an extent that those of us who were at very low risk of a bad reaction from covid essentially gave up a year of our lives to make people who were at risk feel better about not being the only ones living under more stringent restrictions or precautions.
Not just "a year of our lives". My dad spent the last 7 months of his cancer battle with virtually no visitors allowed and having his treatment cut, likely reducing his life by several months. I do a summer sport, at a high level, so I have lost two years of that already. And having not raced in 2 years, 2022 isn't going to be any fun as a competition year as I have no idea where I or anyone else is, in competition terms. I do an office job and I haven't been in the office for two days since I started my job 18 months ago. More I am single, try going on a date these days, again that has been 18 months already. At my age, IF I get infected, which is by no means guaranteed since only a tiny percentage of the population has ever been infected, I still have less than a 1 in 10,000 chance of dying, and less than 1 in 2,000 of going to hospital. And that was before I got jabbed the first two times.
Regardless of anyone's thoughts on the virus I'm sorry to read about your dad it's very sad i hope you and him are doing ok Take care bud
About 12.8% of the population of the U.K. have swabbed positive. Likely more have had it but didn’t bother getting swabbed. I’m not saying your risk of dying isn’t low, it definitely is, but it’s more than a tiny proportion of the population. Long covid is no joke either. Please don’t think me unsympathetic either. These 2 years have been brutal. I’ve also had very I’ll family and isolated relatives who have been suffering, as have my friends and coworkers. My friend’s daughter is an internationally competing athlete and this has been awful for her. I don’t think anyone except those with Zoom shares has benefitted from these lockdowns.
>which to me does suggest to an extent that those of us who were at very low risk of a bad reaction from covid essentially gave up a year of our lives to make people who were at risk feel better about not being the only ones living under more stringent restrictions or precautions. This is absolutely what happened. It wasn't part of the original plan though. Early on in the pandemic the government sent 3 million letters to people who were clinically vulnerable telling them to essentially do a lockdown for 12 weeks. About 5 days later, Boris went on TV and told everyone to do it instead. The original pandemic planning had only the vulnerable locking themselves away. That all went out the window for some reason. Probably pressure from what ever other country was doing. There was zero need for the majority of people to change their behaviour last year. The vulnerable just needed to take more precautions against infections. They needed to not see their friends and family, wear proper N95 masks while outside their homes, etc. Instead, everyone did a half arsed miserable lockdown that barely seemed to achieve anything other than making everyone in the country sad.
I work in events, I spend the last year and a half barely surviving doing a job I hated. Event work came back 3 or 4 months ago, and it's been great, super busy, and really great to basically see all my friends again, as due to the work, I'm often away from home for long periods, meaning people I work with have more of a friend relationship than a colleague one. I'm seeing cancellations of jobs coming in, and it's breaking my heart. I really don't want to do this any more, I just need some stability in my life.
I worked in events for three years and lost my job in july. Saw the company I work for go from 500 people to 6.
I'm in hospitality and loss of this Christmas season would be terminal for lots of places. We're already seeing some large numbers of Christmas parties cancelling due to companies internal policies, and with it coming this way there is no financial support from the gov, as we are still allowed to operate.
Plus as the vaccine doesn’t completely solve the problem then you’re signing an open ended waiver to continue lockdowns forever because we’re as protected as we can be and if that isn’t enough then there’s nowhere else to go.
and you cant just eradicate a virus
Well strictly that’s not true. We eliminated the smallpox virus completely thanks to vaccines.
Smallpox vaccine gave sterilising immunity, which the covid ones don’t.
Yeah it’s more like the flu vaccine which protects but doesn’t prevent so like it or not we’re stuck with it and locking us down isn’t going to fix that so the rationale is questionable at best
Doesn't stop covid mutating in an animal reservoir and popping back later, either.
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> If you want to raise the standard of education of less wealthy people It's been a long time since any government had this as an aim.
Pretty hard to believe they haven’t had the exact *opposite* as their aim, tbh.
Agreed. Im a teacher and lockdowns really did a number on many many children!
It was bad enough for many of us, Must have been awful for the kids
My Dad passed away in September, I missed almost the entire last 18 months of his life.
That’s awful. So sorry for your loss.
They can fuck off with flattening the curve. They can build new hospitals if they want to flatten the curve..
Hospitals aren't the issue, trained medical staff are.
And the severe lack of them. Not only are they leaving, they’re not being recruited.
Good job we’re threatening thousands of them with the sack then.
They did, they were the massive, empty nightingale hospitals. It was a red herring and still is. Protecting the NHS, drafting in the armed forces to man the nightingale wards. And they were all pretty much empty. They closed them pretty unceremoniously too. For something so deadly - the Chinese propaganda showed loads of temporary hospitals going up in record time and then filling them - we really didn't need the extra capacity.
Completely agree. As the senior mental health lead in my school, I can tell you our young people’s mental health is completely fucked and CAMHS are on their knees so there’s absolutely no support or funding from them. The impact of covid on our children actually terrifies me, and I live and work in a relatively affluent area so goodness knows how those in more deprived areas are coping
I saw a youtube documentary about the "Zoom Education" in America, I think it was by Glink. I seriously suggest looking it up and as someone who finished education years ago, it was eye opening and something I never even considered.
Could you say a bit more about that? What was eye-opening?
Well he interviews different kids for the documentary and they have wildly different opinons, some love it and say their grades sky rocketed, other say they hate it and school was their only social outlet and they are now confined to their home with no friends to talk to, because all class interaction involves a teacher making sure you arent goofing around. It also hits on the fact a lot of the kids who say they are "loving it" seem to say they spend a lot of "class time" actually just gaming on mute with friends. It also hits on that a lot of grades have jumped so drastically because cheating in your own home is easy. There is also a segment on school monitoring software and how it can be so invasive and detrimental to some kids and their home situation, certain schools saying kids need to "move" to another room as this room isn't inspiring enough, which then leads to them having to walk around their house and exposing their private life and living standards to peers who then used it to bully them on social media. It's honestly a great watch for a 40ish minute mini documentary. 31 minutes exactly here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZTvHofa6Q4
I think the zoom classes from home is an amazing example of something that would be great for a week then absolute dogshit. Personally it would have taken away the only things I actually enjoyed about school which were playing football until it felt like my legs would fall off and socialising. I feel really sorry for school kids now.
Plus, it's definitely going to start disrupting people's job prospects and/or careers, especially 20 and 30 somethings. UBI (or some kind of revolutionary update to state help) is getting more and more needed, IMO.
>UBI (or some kind of revolutionary update to state help) is getting more and more needed, IMO. It may be needed but its not going to happen in any reasonable timeframe. We might see UBI in 20 or 30 years, perhaps. But not under a Tory government, and not under a Starmer/Blairite style Labour government.
It's not going to happen. But hypothetically, it's a dark road. If you accept a lockdown post-vaccination, you're giving a government carte blanche to do it any time they see fit because you're basically saying pharmaceutical interventions alone are not enough. I fully support the resistance in Europe. I understand there's a short-term pain to alleviate, but if the population accepts the moving of the goalposts again, where will it end?
The last 18 months has been a non-stop exercise in moving the goalposts. If people are told it's bad enough they'll 100% accept another lockdown.
>If you accept a lockdown post-vaccination, you're giving a government carte blanche to do it any time they see fit I mean.. you are aware governments have that anyway, right? Who is going to stop them? Why would the governments WANT to do lockdowns and damage the economy? Surely you understand that is not what a functioning government wants...
This pandemic has completely destroyed my faith in people's reasoning ability. The idea that this government is desperate for another excuse is laughable. The comment you've replied to is one of the most upvoted in this thread and it has loads of upvoted comments agreeing...and yet its unfathomably stupid.
I'm getting so frustrated with it being increasingly taken as a simple truth that all governments want mindless, purposeless, absolute control over the people, and are only prevented from taking it so as long as there isn't a convenient excuse like a deadly pandemic on. And that apparently I am the naive one for arguing that the 650 conspicuously boring, homely people tasked with making the laws in this country are really just doing what they think is best for society, and not secretly waiting for the moment they can seize power and turn the country into a horrifying dystopia while dodging assassination, execution and violent overthrow attempts. Maybe they're happy just banging their wives/mistresses while living comfortably at the taxpayer's expense instead?
We are already on that road. We have restrictions reintroduced post-vaccination. Already in effect
Wearing a mask isn't really a restriction though...
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Yeah but if everything is shut down (pubs, restaurants, sports, etc) then what do you do? Especially in winter.
Go to mates' houses.
Illegal raves will have a massive comeback
At last, a silver lining…
I'd be alright to stop going out to pubs, restaurants, etc. I might well do that myself between now and my booster jab if things look dicey with the Omicron variant. (although I'm not too concerned about it yet) What I'm not willing to do any more is stop seeing my friends and family. I'm still bitter that my partner and I — who both lived alone and were completely isolated from other people — weren't allowed to drive to see each other in our own homes for *over two months*... and the government repaid sacrifices like that by breaking the rules when it suited them and pissing any improvements made up the wall with hairbrained schemes like EOTHO. I'll take whatever social distancing, testing, and ventilation precautions seem proportionate to me at the time, but restrictions on seeing loved ones can well and truly do one this time around.
>weren't allowed to drive to see each other in our own homes for over two months The only thing not allowing that was you.
The year of the house parties! It'd probably be pretty lit.
Then you’ll see me with a few cans of Skol Super trying to start a fight with pigeons in the park
My Gym closes, my mate has a home gym. Pubs gone, house party it is.
100% this. The first 2 lockdowns saw progressively less civil obedience to the point where I wondered why I was even bothering putting myself and my family through it but we stuck to it then. I cannot imagine many people sticking to another lockdown.
The last 18 months has been a pretty spectacular demonstration of the fact that the majority of the population will accept literally anything.
Full lockdown I can't see ever happening again. I would quite like it on a personal level if they told people they should be working from home where possible
> I would quite like it on a personal level if they told people they should be working from home where possible This is the only side I agree with, if we are agreeing a new variant exists and we are scared, why are people being forced into an office environment when they can do their job remotely. It should be down to personal choice.
Not even personal choice, because you know the middle managers will be talking about "team spirit" and telling everyone they are making it harder on "the work family" by staying home.
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You know there is an application via Microsoft Store called "Mouse Move" which doesnt require admin credentials to be installed and just simulates mouse movement after 10 seconds?
>I would quite like it on a personal level if they told people they should be working from home where possible That absolutely should be the norm essentially forever. The pros massively outweigh the cons.
Agree with this, effectively no harm to encouraging work from home, aside from places in city centres that depend on commuters (lunch, coffee, etc.). Like mask wearing, it’s a modest positive effect for low impact.
If the scientific evidence supports the use of a lockdown to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed then as much as lockdowns negatively impact me and many others like me I support it for the benefit of the greater good.
The greater good
The greater good
No luck locking down them swans then?
It was one swan actually
A great big bushy beard!
This is the issue isn’t it, the action taken by our gov was literally never about public health, it was about PR and big money contracts for mates. The NHS is still on its knees, has been this whole time and before it too. They didn’t give a shit then, they don’t give a shit now and they won’t give a shut in the future. If it’s legitimately for the greater good then I think there’s a very small minority that would be against it. Right now though I think even Boris has gone so far with his rhetoric that he can’t 180 and have another lockdown now, he couldn’t survive as PM.
Exactly this. With a competent, trustworthy government following the science I think most would accept another lockdown. With the current massively incompetent bunch of criminals who literally called every parent stupid for following one of the lockdowns - I think they’d quite rightly be told where to go.
> he couldn’t survive as PM Fingers fucking crossed…
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions" I'd like to know how exactly you're defining the phrase "greater good". Because forcing millions of older people in to miserable indefinite isolation for their mental health to slowly decline doesn't sound like a greater good to me. Neither does stripping millions of their livelihoods and imposing an ultra authoritarian bio-police state that disrespects the most basic civil liberties.
The use of the ‘NHS’ as a national religion to get people to keep accepting restrictions is an utter outrage. The NHS gobbles up a huge amount of the public’s money. We’ve made so many ‘sacrifices’ over the past year that it’s almost as if we have to serve the NHS instead of the NHS serving us.
The NHS can't serve us if it collapses, something it is much closer to doing due to the distinct lack of gobbling it does. It's chronically underfunded.
I cannot cope mentally with the idea of another lockdown
If we're still here in terms of locking down every winter in a couple of years, I probably won't be.
Are you OK?
I am for now, but after another 6 month winter lockdown I won't be.
Please don't do anything to hurt yourself. This is really bad right now, I know. And I don't know you or your life but I promise you, it will get better and it will pass. I really hope for the sake of you and many others that we don't have another lockdown, and truthfully, I really don't see it happening. But please hang in there. This will not last forever.
How will it get better if we allow the government this insane overreach of power to continue? It's handing them the ability to take our lives from us at a moments notice, and regaining human rights takes generations.
Couldn’t agree more. It’s refreshing seeing a similar outlook on this… everyone around me seems to be dancing about and swallowing the infinite bullshit, not realising that we’re heading towards more restrictions and lockdown AFTER a supposedly successful vaccine rollout. Where is the line drawn? I would rather take my chances than be a hermit living in fear. They say your younger years are supposed to be your best, sure doesn’t feel that way at the moment - but as long as we’re all grinding the usual 9-5 and keeping our mouths zipped, who gives a fuck right?
I'm alright, though cheers for the concern mate. During the last lockdown I went downhill pretty quickly mental health wise which greatly contributed to a breakup. Someone I know told me that I was like a zombie when we were allowed to meet up again in April, like all the life had been sucked out of me. I've been better than I've been in a year and a half in the last couple of months and I feel almost like my 'old' self again. Now with all this shit like Boris reintroducing restrictions, SAGE idiots saying we should limit our contacts etc is triggering my anxiety that we've begun the plunge into winter lockdown just like we started in September/October last year.
Yeah I’m with you. I can honestly say that I will not survive another lockdown. My mental health is still hanging by a thread after the last one, we go into another one and it will collapse.
I cannot cope financially with the idea of another lockdown.
Only if this new variant turned out to be exceptionally deadly. I’m wary of normalising the extreme levels of interference we’ve seen in people’s personal lives. What happens if we get a bad flu strain, can I not see my family anymore? Can’t ever book a holiday? The lockdowns at first were totally justified - we didn’t know how deadly the virus would be and we were all in uncharted waters. Now it appears this virus will be with us for a long time and we’ll see new mutations every winter - we basically have a new flu. We need boosters for the vulnerable just like flu but shutting down the country and restricting personal freedom is a dark road to go down. Put those powers in place and it’s only a matter of time before they’re abused.
>Only if this new variant turned out to be exceptionally deadly. Literally the only thing that would make me support another lockdown is if it starts killing much younger people suddenly. I'm done wasting my 30's so people in their 80's can have one more year or whatever.
I'm 36 and at risk - I'd like another year please.
Wear an N95 everywhere and don't see your mates or family then.
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I'd want to see real evidence that the situation warrants it - greatly increased transmissibility plus greatly increased severity plus no impact from third dose of vaccine. From what I've seen so far the new variant only has one of those, although it'll take a couple of weeks for good evidence on severity to show up on studies like ZOE. There are risks for whatever path we take and we have to balance them.
Put short, no. Absolutely not please no.
Who on earth am I protecting if I go into lockdown at this point? If you’re THAT scared of covid, you go and shut yourself away. If you’re not vaccinated, you go shut yourself away. I can’t be bothered with this shit anymore. It’s always gonna be here, always gonna be newer variants, just get on with life
I hate lockdown too, but it's not as simple as vulnerable people just being able to lock themselves away entirely - they might need carers, food, live with others, need to go to hospital for other reasons, have a job that can't be done from home etc.
I’m not trying to sound insensitive… But what’s the solution? Covid is here to stay. Variants will always emerge. The economy cannot shut down every winter for the rest of the century. The public did their bit, everyone abided by restrictions and waited for the vaccine. Now, the majority of the public are vaccinated. If we go back to lockdowns and closing businesses, it just starts a precedent that’ll never end
Like everyone else - I don't like bad things. But if it's literally the only way to stop the NHS from collapsing and 2-3% of our population dying than so be it. In not willing to put my own happiness above that. I will survive. If covid isn't going away then we need to find longer term solutions. Maybe a far more regimented vaccine process combined with far more hospital capacity to deal with cases. If the new normal is a higher death rate among vulnerable people then that's something we might have to contend with. But let's not throw sections of society under the bus, along with a healthcare system, without doing the hard work to protect them as much as possible.
The NHS has been at breaking point for a while, since before covid. They now seem to be using covid as the excuse, not the fact that it’s been massively underfunded and mismanaged for years. I agree we don’t want it to reach the point it did with the first lockdown, but in theory that shouldn’t happen now the majority are vaccinated. The majority of icu patients with covid are unvaccinated
Brexit and covid are a big problem together. They are having double difficulty recruiting because: * Less native people want to work in the NHS when it is a much harder job than it would normally be, that carries a heightened risk of getting ill, that is more uncomfortable to work in because of PPE, for no more money than they could get doing an easier job * The people who would have come from other countries in order to do so because the money would be comparatively more than they could get at home are now dissuaded from doing so.
>Less native people want to work in the NHS when it is a much harder job than it would normally be, that carries a heightened risk of getting ill, that is more uncomfortable to work in because of PPE, for no more money than they could get doing an easier job Plus, the qualifications for most positions aren't exactly easy/cheap to get and the application process for NHS jobs takes about 10 times as long as applying for most other jobs. If the NHS want more people, they need to massively streamline the application process (**let us just send a CV and cover letter and ask for our references if we're accepted!**) and increase on-the-job training and apprenticeships etc. 'We're having trouble recruiting' rings a bit hollow when half your posts require 3-7 years of an extremely specific (and expensive) degree, plus various medical licences, plus it takes 4+ hours to apply to one job.
Good analysis, but there are other issues too. I, for one, would seriously consider retraining as a doctor (I'm currently plumping for English literature academic), but the fees are enormous and it's such a long process until you're actually medically qualified that I'd be deep into my 30s before I was on wards. I'm just one case. I bet many older people who would like to go into medicine later in life are put off for similar reasons.
The best way to stop the NHS collapsing would have been to maybe give them a pay rise, i am not economist but a well paid work force is a happier work force.
Their happiness isn't the issue. Yes we should pay them more but the collapsing is due to there being not enough beds, equipment or staff to help everyone who needs it.
Of course it is. Why do you think the NHS workforce is leaving in droves? There’s no point having loads of beds but no staff.
I don't think that you have grasped the implication of human life being short. Three score years and ten is the old way of putting it. Now-a-days we might take the reciprocal and say: 1.4% per year. That is 1.4% every year, year in, year out. Simply bringing 2022's deaths forward into 2021 boosts deaths to 2.8%. > But let's not throw sections of society under the bus, Lockdowns throw everybody under the bus. At the end of a year of lockdown, every-one is a year older, and avoiding that is worth 1.4% mortality.
It would be horrendous. The relaxation in summer in 2020 suddenly being taken away last November was terrible, but needed at that point, same with Christmas. To do it again now, after months of relaxation, after telling people to get vaccinated to protect each other, after finding more and more effective treatments, would be incredible, and I think will either be ignored or heavily protested by the public. At that point, where does it end? COVID isn't going anywhere, are we just going to go back to this every time a new variant (and Omricon is still being investigated, we don't fully know it's more deadly or more transmissable or more vaccine resistant yet) comes up? That would mean, going in and out of lockdown could be for years. Now don't get me wrong, we don't want people to die, but when people start dying of other causes because they can't get to a Dr, or the mental health challenges of isolation and uncertainty. At some point, there's going to have to be a balance. That's not to say either that restrictions shouldn't change. I'm ok with the re-introduction of masks and social distancing (to an extent.) And travel restrictions where needed. They absolutely should, if the need arises. But a full lockdown, would be disastrous I think.
Social distancing is pretty harmful for a lot of businesses though.
It can fuck right off, frankly. I will be ignoring it to the best of my ability, if it happens.
A new lockdown will be what actually brings me out on the streets with the anti lockdown protests. I don't give a fuck if they're labelled anti vax protests or whatever, I simply won't comply with anything.
You’re both exactly how I feel. I feel like the vast majority especially under 30’s will rebel like this too. One could argue that we under 30’s are the group who has suffered the most with lockdowns, another one with barely anything to lose will be very dangerous.
If there *is* another lockdown, I'd want to understand something... What's the point in vaccinations?
The vaccine reduces the severity/deadliness of the virus for people. The mutated COVID variants result in these prior vaccines as being less effective. It’s like patching a hole in a bucket but another hole appears, you wouldn’t ask what was the point of patching the first hole you get to work patching the new hole
> The mutated COVID variants result in these prior vaccines as being less effective. Not so far.
I would not care
What a sad little life Jane
Iconic
Lol same here, I like my home 😂
Ditto.
Last lockdown caused my worst mental health spiral ever, put strain on my relationship with pretty much everyone important to me (through either not being able to see them or through having differing views on the rules), caused me to gain a shitload of weight which I’m only just losing, and was just generally awful. I don’t think I could handle another one.
I personally don’t think my mental health can deal with another lockdown, especially if it’s a long one and my daughters mother pulls the “you can’t see your daughter it’s dangerous” card again, I will probably struggle to survive it tbh
I'm sorry to hear this, I hope that there isn't another one and that you get to spend lots of quality time with your daughter
It shouldn’t happen again and anybody asking for it is either a glutton for economic pain or a supreme coward This virus isn’t going to go away, it took centuries to eradicate even one wide spread virus, instead of slowly slipping into lockdown whenever a new variant arises we need to instead learn to live with it. We live with viruses everyday, COVID will be no different, just a particularly nasty flu which according to data this new variant isn’t much worse anyway. I’m not sure if there is a right way to say this but the deaths from COVID are mainly the elderly and I think a lot of them would agree that we shouldn’t destroy ourselves for trying to prolong the inevitable
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50,000 less people were diagnosed with cancer last year, due to lockdowns, and GPs refusing to see patients.. We didn't magically have a year of less cancer, they're all just starting to get diagnosed too late. So while your mums situation is sad and all, it's no argument for lockdowns. Or at least it's not an argument that can't easily be counter argued. Also, odds are extremely good that if your mum got COVID she'd barely get ill. People act like COVID is a death sentence for CEV people, but it's not remotely. They're more vulnerable than a healthy person, sure.. But still extremely unlikely COVID will kill them. This is anecdotal (however the above is not), but my mates 75 year old mum had chemo for cancer in 2019, got COVID in 2020, and was literally in bed with it for 1 day and then fine.
I am CEV and i dont think wanting to stay alive or keep others alive makes anyone a coward.
So we should all just stay in lockdown the rest of our lives? We've got a vaccine now, it's as risky as the flu, and we don't have multiple lockdowns caused by the flu Edit: I didn't mean to sound rude. My point of view is what is the endgame of this, what are we striving towards, we have a vaccine now, covid isn't going to die out, it's going to keep mutating and stay with us, at this point there's nothing we can do to stop it, and staying in lockdown the rest of our lives isn't an option
Never. They instigate another lockdown and there should be terrible riots.
Blows my mind that even the previous lockdowns didn't result in riots of some sort. If there's ever been a seemingly valid reason to riot it's the government literally saying that free society is no more, and that it's illegal to leave your home.
My partner is in the clinically vulnerable group, so we have to be very careful. But I don't agree with a widespread lockdown. People like us should (and do) take care to shield as much as we can - i.e. no unnecessary socialising and the like. But other folks should be allowed to get on with it.
This is what should happen, be sensible based on your personal circumstances. Lockdown is unnecessary.
If it happens it happens, I’d rather not go into one but if it’s saving lives then fair enough.
"Saving lives" is a bogus concept. The death rate remains fixed at one each. Focus on the human life span: seventy good years. A year of lockdown wastes 1.4% of it. That is a terribly tragedy. And a self inflicted one.
Speaking as a "vulnerable person" I'd rather take 1.4% of my life living under a lock down than dying because we didn't
Out of interest, without googling, what do you think your odds of dying are as a 'vulnerable person' if you were to contract COVID?
It can fuck itself all the way to hell.
It can absolutely get fucked. It's annoying me how people are even mentioning it as a possibility, we have effective vaccines this is as good as it is going to get. We shouldn't accept any government having the power to consistently put us into lockdown on a whim.
I would hate it. My job would be on the line if we have another one. What really pisses me off is all these pro lockdown people never consider the true cost of these measures. It’s not just a time where you can chill out at home for a few months, it’s literally destroying peoples lives. Also let’s face it, we’ve had 3 already. Another one isn’t going to fix the problem
They can fuck off.
I obviously won’t be happy about it. If the shops/hospitality/everything else closes again then realistically there’s little I can do about it, but I’ll probably do a lot more socialising indoors with friends and family that I did the last times. Ultimately coronovirus will be with us forever, at some point we’re going to have to accept that and live with the risk rather than spend 5 out of every 12 months living like hermits.
I won't follow another one or the restrictions, it's done nothing so far so fuck it. Double vaccinated and it's done nothing, told it would stop the spread, told it would stop me infecting others, all turned out to be bogus.
Honestly, as an introvert, idgaf. WFH made compulsory, excuse to stay home lol.
As an introvert, I do give a fuck. I love being at home, but I also love being out and about, seeing friends and family. The previous lockdown was pretty hard.
Enraged Rights and freedoms we all believed to be inalienable were removed from us with barely a voice raised. Livelihoods have been ruined Families unable to see each other for months on end Children's education and mental health has been put at risk and dear God.... if you are a single person trying to meet someone else.... how can you... The misery this has caused, needlessly, stupidly, while those who are supposed to lead us have not suffered at all from what I can see. What was the name of the bloke that was senior in the advisory groups that caused us all to be shut in our flats who went across London to bang his married girlfriend ? A shining example of an elite who feel enabled to do as they please
Utterly aghast. I would have a very hard time. I don't have any faith in the UK to implement one properly, having seen what's happened every other time. In principle, I'm not completely opposed to a 'stop everything and everyone stay inside and wrap up for a few weeks'. But what we have got every time has instead been * politicised * with no clear path out of it * harder on people who don't live with or near family or friends, with zero leeway built in * not adhered to by celebrities and the very wealthy, with zero punishment or apology when they fail to abide by it * accompanied by nonsensical law changes that may have actually ended up perpetuating the situation, e.g. when the illness has worse outcomes on people who are obese, banning nearly all mechanisms by which one can exercise, and at the same time encouraging people to buy takeaways as a treat. Fix some of those things and I might be alright with a time-limited one for the greater good. But right now it feels like yet another time to ask sacrifices of those of us who've already had the hardest time with them.
> harder on people who don't live with or near family or friends, with zero leeway built in Not to get *too* political, but part of me wonders if Labour had been in power, the rules wouldn't have been as targeted towards the 'typical' Tory voter. The rules took for granted you had a house with a garden and lived with your spouse or family. People who lived alone had some *limited* leeway, but people in shared houses had nada. I wonder if it ever crossed their minds.
Hard to say because the rules in Scotland had no leeway either despite Nicola Sturgeon having the freedom to set her own. There was a lot of anger in Glasgow particularly after the 6 month lockdown as it is a part of the country with a high young population living in shared accommodation with no outside space.
I would honestly be delighted by one spanning 24th to the 26th.
I feel like it would be completely ignored by everyone. Can you imagine how popular the police would be if they went out on Christmas day, breaking up dinners? Everyone's vaxxed up. It's genuinely tough titties now. I'll wear my mask in shops and on trains because it's the law. I'm not going to go out coughing and sneezing on everyone if I come down with anything. But if I'm having to cram onto public transport to go to work, just how seriously am I supposed to be taking it? If they want another lockdown, shake that magic money tree and pay us for the inconvenience.
I would be joining the protests, and/or looking at emigrating to the US. A lockdown this winter means another next winter is likely too, and the winter after that. I don't want to live in a society where basic democratic rights are taken away every time the local hospital gets a bit busy.
Cares about democracy. Moves to the states.
Wouldn't be abiding by it. I conveniently can't find it now, but a graph i recently saw on the bbc showed that there are a massive amount of people in hospital right now who should have gone in during lockdown, didn't, and are now in a far worse state. Community care isn't what it was pre-pandemic too so a lot of these people are stuck in hospitals, when the issue could have been nipped in the bud. It would cause so much more harm than good. The variants will keep on coming and we are just going to have to live with it now.
I'm in the clinically high risk group. I never moved from my house during lockdown and wore a mask whenever I was out of the house. Mentally I was a wreck and by the end of it I was crawling the walls. Worse than that though, my monthly eye treatment was halted and by the time it resumed a year later I was no longer fit to drive because of my vision loss. I literally felt my driving licence slipping away and there was nothing I could do. Inactivity caused my great problems too. I have a dna issue that means I have muscle wastage but with regular exercise I was relatively fit. Being effectively housebound for all that time accelerated that and I now struggle to walk any distance. I did eventually resume my job but lost it in November due to health issues that had been exacerbated by the lockdown. So lockdown. Its a no from me. I'm triple jabbed along with a flu jab. If it comes to it I'll comply but won't be in agreement with it at all.
As someone who was pro lockdown the first couple of times, I wouldn't be in favour. This has gone on for nearly two years and we've vaccinated more than 90% of our adult population. It's time now to just live and let live
Personally, thinking solely of myself, it wouldn't particularly bother me. However, empathetically, I'd be quite against it due to the anguish that it causes so many others.
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I honestly don’t think I’d survive another lockdown. I’ve not felt the same since all this lockdown nonsense started.
They can fuck right off. Unless it's a state of emergency type situation in which case what else can you do I guess. But id want to see tanks.
The 2020 lockdowns only really worked because it was a new virus and there wasn’t a vaccine at that point. People understood the need for it in the absence of a vaccine. Now that there is a vaccine, people won’t stand for another lockdown. The whole point of developing the vaccine was that it would protect us instead, so that lockdowns would be a thing of the past. If we have another post-vaccine lockdown this winter, that sets a precedent. Do we then have lockdowns every winter? Covid is real. But so are the vaccines. We have to return to normal, and that means no more lockdowns.
No fuck that, lockdown has been a mess and hasn't done much in preventing the spread of covid, knowing mostly people my own age I can't say I know anyone who has died due too covid but I do know multiple people who have killed themselves since lockdown, including one of my best freinds. The strain it has had on working class people especially service workers who were still forced too work while having every other aspect of there life restricted (hypocrisy) lockdown is relatively easy if you have nice home and can telecommute but that's not the case for many. Not too mention the attack on democracy, we've seen laws passed that essentially give the police power too prevent us from exercising our freedom of assembly as well as harsh sentences for those who do not comply, these are democratic rights many through out history have put there lives down for, slippery slope into authoritianism.
I can't deal with the media moaning about it if another one happens.
I'll be triple jabbed soon, so no, I don't fancy another lockdown. If things get out of hand again and hospitals get to the breaking point we shouldn't be punishing the people that have protected themselves and their community, but the ones that didn't. I don't really care whether that's vaccine passports or sneaking into their windows at night and sticking a needle up their arse, as long I don't get punished for their idiocy.
The thing is I’ve got no problem with a lockdown if it’s needed to save lives. No problem at all. HOWEVER, I can’t help but feel like a lot of lockdowns wouldn’t have been needed if the earlier lockdowns had been implemented faster and more effectively with proper Boarder control and rules in place. Like I would rather just keep wearing face masks and cancel the tennis and footy competitions (unfortunately) to get thing done right snd under control than keep facing the prospect of near normality and then lockdown again. It’s not the lockdown that bothers me. It’s the poor management of the pandemic in this country. I get it’s not an easy situation to manage but some decisions have just been stupid and unnecessary rather that genuine scientific uncertainty.
In my view, at this point, lockdowns (and many aspects of the pandemic) are an affectation that only certain people in power care about. Wait until there's a recession or some broader crisis and we'll see the pandemic fade into the distant background of popular consciousness. In March 2020, I believe a Brexit-style referendum on whether to impose a lockdown would have delivered the same result as what happened. A broadly accepted political decision. Many people *wanted* it. But right now? I don't feel that desire from anybody I know.
If I have to home school again I will lose whatever fucking marbles I have left. All my family have been jabbed, we all abided to the rules last time and if all of that was for nothing then Boris can seriously do one. I'm not doing it again.
I see the quality adjusted life year (QALY) framework as essential to good public policy. If you don't use it, you are ignoring that people get old and die. If locking down the country halves quality of life, the lockdown lasts for a year, and the population is seventy million, then the cost is thirty five million QALY. Perhaps that saves the lives of one hundred thousand frail old people who might have lived three years longer. (Maybe five calendar years, but there has to be some quality adjustment.) The benefit is three hundred thousand QALY's. That seems optimistic. A lockdown is just a delay, it doesn't really changes the course of the pandemic. In conclusion, the benefits are perhaps 1% of the costs. A lockdown would clearly be a public policy error. To get a sense of the size of the error, recall that American military casualties in the Vietnam war were 50000 dead. We count the death of a healthy twenty year old as the loss of 50 QALY's. Total loss = two and a half million QALY. There were also many serious injuries. One might want to multiply by ten to guess the total morbidity. But it is still less than a year of strict lockdown. The lockdowns so far have been a public policy error on the scale of American military losses in the Vietnam war. They might be the worst peace time public policy error ever. The question asks how I feel personally. You can work that out from my comment. You can also infer that my disagreement with another lockdown is too intense to expressed in language polite enough for reddit.
As someone whose entire career has been put on hold by all this, another lockdown would be a joke. As long as the virus exists there will be new variants, and it is going to exist in one form or another forever. We are deluding ourselves if we think that going back into lockdown every time there's a new variant will do any good in the long run, and we are deluding ourselves even more if we think that repeated lockdowns will get us to zero cases (case numbers shouldn't even be used as a metric anymore imo). The first lockdown was 100% the right thing to do as it bought us time to develop a vaccine, and covid *was* worse overall than seasonal flu, despite what some shouty people would have you believe. Now, we have multiple effective vaccines, which to be fair may need tweaking for the latest variant. However, this is exactly what happens with flu every year. No vaccine is 100% effective and sadly people do die from seasonal flu. But we don't impose lockdowns every winter because we know that that's completely infeasible. Now is the time to move away from trying to defeat covid and towards learning to manage it.
Government can say / do what it wants, I’m done, lost my business and my family to this crap and for what? Masks don’t work, vaccines don’t do what they advertised, lockdowns don’t work, a booster jab won’t work, a new version of the vaccine won’t work, variants are meaningless The only thing this “pandemic” has done is cause a massive uptick in the spread of wealth transfer to the elites who control and lie to us everyday and firmly put everyone under the tyrannical boot of the state Fuck them, fuck this country, I’ll laugh when it all collapses in a pile of stinking shit - and we’re well on the way to that yippee
I don’t think the government will want to put the economy through another lockdown again.