Lockdown effects now killing/harming more people than Covid

[bramling]

Nor me, more evidence of those in authority treating us like we're stupid. Means people will trust things like these reports even less in future and wonder my money was squandered on producing it.
Saw an MP on news yesterday saying about the £400billion spent and that people need to realise chickens are coming home to roost; about time someone was honest.

I don’t trust it either. They’re never going to admit to mistakes on this one, the implications are too massive.

For their part, we also have a problem in this country in that many people have unrealistic expectations as to what the state can realistically provide, something politicians have encouraged and exploited over the last couple of decades as a way of gaining votes. The Covid response was the ultimate manifestation of this.

As regards the £400 billion, it’s certainly a reasonable question to ask what benefit we actually derived from that, what the costs were, and what we could have had for that cost (15 Crossrails for example).

 

[duncanp]

I don’t trust it either. They’re never going to admit to mistakes on this one, the implications are too massive.

For their part, we also have a problem in this country in that many people have unrealistic expectations as to what the state can realistically provide, something politicians have encouraged and exploited over the last couple of decades as a way of gaining votes. The Covid response was the ultimate manifestation of this.

As regards the £400 billion, it’s certainly a reasonable question to ask what benefit we actually derived from that, what the costs were, and what we could have had for that cost (15 Crossrails for example).

My biggest fear with the inquiry is that the conclusion is "..if only we had locked down sooner and for longer, and the restrictions were more severe.."

Because if Sir Keir Starmer becomes Prime Minister after the next election he could introduce a new Public Health Act which gives the government sweeping powers to enact lockdowns and impose restrictions without proper parliamentary debate and scrutiny.

If that happens, we could see compulsory face nappies every flu season just to "..protect the NHS and keep everyone safe..".

There are plenty of people in the UK who would like to see COVID style restrictions imposed in response to flu and other respiratory infections, and the CDC is banging a similar drum in the United States.

 

[kristiang85]

My biggest fear with the inquiry is that the conclusion is "..if only we had locked down sooner and for longer, and the restrictions were more severe.."

Because if Sir Keir Starmer becomes Prime Minister after the next election he could introduce a new Public Health Act which gives the government sweeping powers to enact lockdowns and impose restrictions without proper parliamentary debate and scrutiny.

If that happens, we could see compulsory face nappies every flu season just to "..protect the NHS and keep everyone safe..".

There are plenty of people in the UK who would like to see COVID style restrictions imposed in response to flu and other respiratory infections, and the CDC is banging a similar drum in the United States.

I fear this is exactly what the inquiry will say. I mean, much of the measures ignored established science and common sense, so I don't trust any post mortem to include it either.

 

[bramling]

I fear this is exactly what the inquiry will say. I mean, much of the measures ignored established science and common sense, so I don't trust any post mortem to include it either.

I don’t really see how any inquiry can make a meaningful conclusion, given that Johnson / Hancock / the government never really specified what the lockdown(s) were actually intended to achieve.

Was it to manage NHS capacity? Was it to reduce deaths? Was it to “eradicate the virus” (as many people seemed to think)? Was it to stop Patsi from Pitsea getting Covid? Was it to protect those with underlying conditions? Or was it because peer countries were doing it?

It’s very difficult to judge if something was a success if you don’t actually know what you were intending to achieve in the first place.

 

[Eyersey468]

My biggest fear with the inquiry is that the conclusion is "..if only we had locked down sooner and for longer, and the restrictions were more severe.."

Because if Sir Keir Starmer becomes Prime Minister after the next election he could introduce a new Public Health Act which gives the government sweeping powers to enact lockdowns and impose restrictions without proper parliamentary debate and scrutiny.

If that happens, we could see compulsory face nappies every flu season just to "..protect the NHS and keep everyone safe..".

There are plenty of people in the UK who would like to see COVID style restrictions imposed in response to flu and other respiratory infections, and the CDC is banging a similar drum in the United States.

This is my concern too

 

[Richard Scott]

My biggest fear with the inquiry is that the conclusion is "..if only we had locked down sooner and for longer, and the restrictions were more severe.."

Because if Sir Keir Starmer becomes Prime Minister after the next election he could introduce a new Public Health Act which gives the government sweeping powers to enact lockdowns and impose restrictions without proper parliamentary debate and scrutiny.

If that happens, we could see compulsory face nappies every flu season just to "..protect the NHS and keep everyone safe..".

There are plenty of people in the UK who would like to see COVID style restrictions imposed in response to flu and other respiratory infections, and the CDC is banging a similar drum in the United States.

If that it their conclusion will the general population buy it? I have my doubts now; they were taken for a ride once. Whilst some fanatics will go along with it think majority will see it as biased nonsense.

 

[bramling]

If that it their conclusion will the general population buy it? I have my doubts now; they were taken for a ride once. Whilst some fanatics will go along with it think majority will see it as biased nonsense.

Much as I’d like to agree, I’m not convinced that much of the population has actually given the whole thing that much thought at all. In that sense the whole Johnson partygate affair + Conservative leadership matters has done us a dis-service by heavily dominating the news waves, again to the detriment of some proper scrutiny of the Covid response. It’s actually acted as a very effective dead cat.

Even now there’s more about how awful it is that mortgages have increased (which isn’t by any means a universally salient issue), but little scrutiny as to the root causes.

 

[kristiang85]

Even now there’s more about how awful it is that mortgages have increased (which isn’t by any means a universally salient issue), but little scrutiny as to the root causes.

Unfortunately Brexit and Russia provide convenient scapegoats, even though I'm sure 75% of it is the aftermath of COVID policy. Anybody with a basic sense of economics would know that the unplanned spending of hundreds of billions would have consequences in the financial system. Sadly most people don't think like that and just assume what they are told is correct.

 

[DustyBin]

Unfortunately Brexit and Russia provide convenient scapegoats, even though I'm sure 75% of it is the aftermath of COVID policy. Anybody with a basic sense of economics would know that the unplanned spending of hundreds of billions would have consequences in the financial system. Sadly most people don't think like that and just assume what they are told is correct.

I agree.

Incidentally, has anybody seen the story on BBC News about the potential removal of free-at-point-of-use healthcare in Scotland? It would only affect the "wealthy" apparently.

 

[bramling]

I agree.

Incidentally, has anybody seen the story on BBC News about the potential removal of free-at-point-of-use healthcare in Scotland? It would only affect the "wealthy" apparently.

I saw that. Rather concerning.

 

[Ian Cunningham]

I saw that. Rather concerning.

I saw that. Rather concerning.

To quote Humza Yousaf (Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care) any suggestion of that is "complete baloney"

 

[102 fan]

BBC News - Patients dying as ambulances face crippling delays in England

Patients dying as ambulances face crippling delays in England

Warning by NHS bosses as nearly three in 10 crews caught in queues outside A&E in England last week.

www.bbc.co.uk

'Ambulance crews are facing crippling delays when they arrive at A&E with sick patients, NHS bosses are warning. Over the past week, nearly three in 10 ambulances were caught queuing outside hospitals in England. It is the worst start to winter since records began - before the pandemic about half the number of delays were recorded, NHS England data shows. Ambulance chiefs said the problems were leading to patients dying and being harmed on a daily basis.'

For two years covid was blamed for these headlines, no mention now. What's causing the problems now?

 

[bramling]

Unfortunately Brexit and Russia provide convenient scapegoats, even though I'm sure 75% of it is the aftermath of COVID policy. Anybody with a basic sense of economics would know that the unplanned spending of hundreds of billions would have consequences in the financial system. Sadly most people don't think like that and just assume what they are told is correct.

Agreed in all of the above. We were already getting high inflation before Ukraine, this has simply turbocharged it, especially in relation to gas. Had we not spent the utter fortune on the Covid response then we’d have been in a better position as far as energy price support goes.

The bigger issue is structural flaws with our economy, and the government committing to a Covid response we couldn’t afford, in particular for the very long duration. There simply wasn’t an urgency to get “back to normal”, and there should have been.

 

[MikeWM]

For two years covid was blamed for these headlines, no mention now. What's causing the problems now?

My first guess was going to be that this is partly due to increased attendance at A&E due to GPs being so incredibly hard to see nowadays. But perhaps not - there's lots of figures to be found here on A&E attendance

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ae-waiting-times-and-activity/

and for example, that shows number of A&E attendances for October 2022 to be almost equal to that in October 2019. So presumably we can rule that one out.


My next suspicion would be that the number of blocked beds is higher than normal due to people not being able to move to a residental home or get sufficient social care (and indeed there are various recent newspaper reports implying that this is the case). A major culprit for that would no doubt be the 40,000 workers in that sector that were laid off at the end of last year because they didn't want to take the covid vaccines.

Or maybe other things are going on? What is apparent is that, just like the very large amounts of excess deaths that are being reported week after week, no-one seems to be very interested in finding out the reasons for these things happening. Here's John Campbell's latest video on that very subject, with some speculation as to possible reasons (while being very careful to stick to the youtube rules, though what he is actually implying is fairly obvious).

 

[bramling]

My first guess was going to be that this is partly due to increased attendance at A&E due to GPs being so incredibly hard to see nowadays. But perhaps not - there's lots of figures to be found here on A&E attendance

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ae-waiting-times-and-activity/

and for example, that shows number of A&E attendances for October 2022 to be almost equal to that in October 2019. So presumably we can rule that one out.


My next suspicion would be that the number of blocked beds is higher than normal due to people not being able to move to a residental home or get sufficient social care (and indeed there are various recent newspaper reports implying that this is the case). A major culprit for that would no doubt be the 40,000 workers in that sector that were laid off at the end of last year because they didn't want to take the covid vaccines.

Or maybe other things are going on? What is apparent is that, just like the very large amounts of excess deaths that are being reported week after week, no-one seems to be very interested in finding out the reasons for these things happening. Here's John Campbell's latest video on that very subject, with some speculation as to possible reasons (while being very careful to stick to the youtube rules, though what he is actually implying is fairly obvious).

Sobering viewing there.

One point to add is that I bet a proportion of the population had their health decline during 2020 and 2021. Date from my phone shows a conspicuous reduction in activity over those two years (esp 2020), despite making some effort to remain active. This would be a lot worse for those shielding, and real-world observation appears to bear this out in many examples known to me.

 

[Mag_seven]

The lockdown chickens are coming home to roost but the lockdown advocates will never admit it.

 

[MikeWM]

One point to add is that I bet a proportion of the population had their health decline during 2020 and 2021. Date from my phone shows a conspicuous reduction in activity over those two years (esp 2020), despite making some effort to remain active. This would be a lot worse for those shielding, and real-world observation appears to bear this out in many examples known to me.

Agreed, that is certainly reflected in my step counts over the last few years. November 2020 was the worst month for me, only around 30% of average, but 2020 as a whole is well below the norm. 2021 was better, and 2022 is back to normal.

 

[Eyersey468]

The lockdown chickens are coming home to roost but the lockdown advocates will never admit it.

Exactly

 

[Enthusiast]

But then could be a case of once bitten, twice shy and majority won't do as politicians ask? Think plenty realise they were taken for a ride and less likely to go along with it another time?

But, as I have said before, the public may well "mutiny" but the largest amount of damage will be done by the compulsory closure of (or severe restrictions on) large sections of the economy. Individuals may rebel against stay at home directions or mask mandates, but if all the pubs and restaurants are forcibly closed, they won't be able to use them. There is zero chance of such businesses ignoring the mandates because they will jeopardise their licences and hence their businesses.

To quote Humza Yousaf (Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care) any suggestion of that is "complete baloney"

When's it being introduced!

 

[farleigh]

The lockdown chickens are coming home to roost but the lockdown advocates will never admit it.

Precisely this

 

[Bikeman78]

The lockdown chickens are coming home to roost but the lockdown advocates will never admit it.

Yesterday I saw the infamous clip of Allegra Stratton laughing about the parties. We need to remember that the people who made up the rules were quite happy to ignore them. They were never scared of Covid so why should we be? On a personal note, mum is currently experiencing first-hand what a sh*t show our beloved NHS is.

 

[bramling]

Yesterday I saw the infamous clip of Allegra Stratton laughing about the parties. We need to remember that the people who made up the rules were quite happy to ignore them. They were never scared of Covid so why should we be?

The problem with the whole parties thing is that the (quite reasonable) anger about it tends to drown out the even more serious point - namely the question of why the politicians spent hundreds of billions on a response to something which they clearly didn't perceive as enough of a threat that they needed to pass on their own pleasure engagements.

It also shows a serious accountability deficit with our political system. There isn't any other industry where it's possible to pee several hundred billion of other people's money up the wall with no accountability whatsoever. But then there didn't seem to be much accountability for the person who led the country in to a sham war a few years ago, either.

 

[Bikeman78]

The problem with the whole parties thing is that the (quite reasonable) anger about it tends to drown out the even more serious point - namely the question of why the politicians spent hundreds of billions on a response to something which they clearly didn't perceive as enough of a threat that they needed to pass on their own pleasure engagements.

Exactly. There was never any reason for people under 60, aside from those known to be high risk, not to carry on going to work and getting on with life as normal. I worked through most of it as normal, as did my colleagues. Nothing bad happened. So, what exactly was the purpose of lockdown?

 

[Richard Scott]

Exactly. There was never any reason for people under 60, aside from those known to be high risk, not to carry on going to work and getting on with life as normal. I worked through most of it as normal, as did my colleagues. Nothing bad happened. So, what exactly was the purpose of lockdown?

I'm sure we only did it because everybody else did and for no other reason. Boris frightened his public image would be damaged if he didn't follow the crowd.

 

[bramling]

I'm sure we only did it because everybody else did and for no other reason. Boris frightened his public image would be damaged if he didn't follow the crowd.

This is exactly my thoughts, I think the real reason was peer pressure, or more to the point as you say not wanting to be the odd one out.

I don’t necessarily have a problem with March 2020 in itself, as there probably did need to be some kind of emergency response given the various unknowns at the time, in particular that if something drastic wasn’t done I think we’d have seen some serious staffing issues affecting critical functions.

However there are numerous issues with what was done, not least
* we were never told what the objective was, this is pretty serious given the enormous monetary and non-monetary costs
* because of that, there was never an exit strategy
* the measures implemented were quickly allowed to become “business as usual”, indeed elements of them still are to some extent

From summer 2020 things were allowed to drift. It’s absolutely insane that the furlough scheme was allowed to continue for further 15 months, for example.

 

[Jimini]

This is exactly my thoughts, I think the real reason was peer pressure, or more to the point as you say not wanting to be the odd one out.

I don’t necessarily have a problem with March 2020 in itself, as there probably did need to be some kind of emergency response given the various unknowns at the time, in particular that if something drastic wasn’t done I think we’d have seen some serious staffing issues affecting critical functions.

However there are numerous issues with what was done, not least
* we were never told what the objective was, this is pretty serious given the enormous monetary and non-monetary costs
* because of that, there was never an exit strategy
* the measures implemented were quickly allowed to become “business as usual”, indeed elements of them still are to some extent

From summer 2020 things were allowed to drift. It’s absolutely insane that the furlough scheme was allowed to continue for further 15 months, for example.

100% this.

I seem to recall there was (certainly including me) a mindset back in February / March 2020 that the western world wouldn't possibly entertain the notion of locking an entire nation down and all the financial ramifications of doing so, also not least because of the then unprecedended restriction on peoples' freedoms not seen before.

Then, the Italians crumbled first, and the rest of Europe fell like a set of dominoes.

 

[Dent]

However there are numerous issues with what was done, not least
* we were never told what the objective was, this is pretty serious given the enormous monetary and non-monetary costs
* because of that, there was never an exit strategy

That's not quite true. We were told the objective - to "flatten the curve". The problem came when the politicians forgot that that was the objective, and didn't stop when they achieved it.

 

[Mag_seven]

That's not quite true. We were told the objective - to "flatten the curve". The problem came when the politicians forgot that that was the objective, and didn't stop when they achieved it.

Everytime there was talk of relaxing restrictions people started to shout "it's too early", or "second wave", or "we need to wait until there is a vaccine". The truth was too many people got rather attached to staying at home watching Netflix all day.

 

[Eyersey468]

This is exactly my thoughts, I think the real reason was peer pressure, or more to the point as you say not wanting to be the odd one out.

I don’t necessarily have a problem with March 2020 in itself, as there probably did need to be some kind of emergency response given the various unknowns at the time, in particular that if something drastic wasn’t done I think we’d have seen some serious staffing issues affecting critical functions.

However there are numerous issues with what was done, not least
* we were never told what the objective was, this is pretty serious given the enormous monetary and non-monetary costs
* because of that, there was never an exit strategy
* the measures implemented were quickly allowed to become “business as usual”, indeed elements of them still are to some extent

From summer 2020 things were allowed to drift. It’s absolutely insane that the furlough scheme was allowed to continue for further 15 months, for example.

I agree a lot of it was peer pressure from other countries

 

[bramling]

The truth was too many people got rather attached to staying at home watching Netflix all day.

And this has been a problem all the way through this. Numerous hidden or nefarious agendas, and a government which in its desire to be populist found itself encouraging all this.

One of those agendas was of course a rookie chancellor who immediately identified an opportunity to build up a brand-image off the back of all this. The most expensive PR campaign in history?!