Anyone here still think Sweden, which did not lock down, got it wrong? They relied on people adjusting their own behaviour in light of the known threat.
Not altogether surprising the graph is suspect given it's published by the CATO institute, which among other things shilled for Donald Trump in 2016 (although a number of its members have had second thoughts since) advocates the privatisation of the US education system and is one of the leading organisations involved in climate change denial.
Media and people on here bang on and on about how things were too strict, so it's interesting to see that 40% say not strict enough.
There is a case to be made that being stricter on some measures (international travel for example) or more timely school closures would have led to better outcomes and shorter overall measures. I am not entirely convinced, but could well be true.
I'd interpret stricter more broadly to include locking down earlier, no eat out to help out, being quicker with red lists and quarantine from abroad etc.
EOTHO is an enormous red herring. The rise in cases in autumn 2020 is down to reimported virus from holidays to (mainly) Spain where a newer variant had arisen. When EOTHO w as running there were only a few hundred cases nationally a day. It was low risk.
Is that correct?
The main variant of concern in autumn 2020, and the first major mutation was the alpha covid. It was traced back to Kent.
Media and people on here bang on and on about how things were too strict, so it's interesting to see that 40% say not strict enough.
There is a case to be made that being stricter on some measures (international travel for example) or more timely school closures would have led to better outcomes and shorter overall measures. I am not entirely convinced, but could well be true.
I'd interpret stricter more broadly to include locking down earlier, no eat out to help out, being quicker with red lists and quarantine from abroad etc.
EOTHO is an enormous red herring. The rise in cases in autumn 2020 is down to reimported virus from holidays to (mainly) Spain where a newer variant had arisen. When EOTHO w as running there were only a few hundred cases nationally a day. It was low risk.
That’s not what the published research shows. Separate to the effect of people returning from holidays, EOTHO had a demonstrable effect on case numbers.
I accept it had an increase, but again and again we go back to the point that we could not just have no economic activity. The point is other factors are far more significant in the case rises in tha autumn.
See Oliver Johnson’s twitter and now substack for more.
On-topic: the lockdowns, aside from the healthcare and economic consequences, were also a very rare case of the extroverted being forced to act in a much more introverted manner. Studies should be done into how many, and to what extent, people were affected by this. That should then have some (secondary) weight for future pandemic countermeasure consideration.
Of course, the inquiry should be focused on how best to proceed in the future.
The inquiry has already reached its conclusion.
I can tell you now it will conclude we should have locked down harder, earlier, stronger and with tougher sanctions, that the scientists weren't listened to, that next time they should, and it will otherwise focus on the trivia of WhatsApp messages sent by easy to dislike politicians, who'll be put in the stocks, and excuse those of civil servants and advisors.
To the extent it does focus on the future none of the lessons will be learned by those who need to learn them.
The more nuanced approach that @rcs1000 alludes to or a serious assessment of damage to education, young people, or wider mental health and healthcare won't feature.
Interestingly, the conclusion I get from what I've read was that:
1 - You could have avoided lockdowns completely, in theory, but this was probably impractical for the first one as we just wouldn't have taken on board what was needed. 2 - The administrative setup was far too inflexible and slow to react in both directions 3 - They failed to take on board the needs of many segments of the population, including those who were poorer, did not have much room, did not have gardens, were pregnant, or had children 4 - The capacity to carry out proper cost-benefit analyses wasn't there 5 - Scientists were as slow to react to the severity of the disease and believe in what could and could not be done as anyone else 6 - There was a complete failure to properly assess which interventions worked best and which were least effective. It was highlighted that the failure to allow people to meet up carefully out of doors all along was serious.
... and so on. Seriously, I'd recommend reading them.
On 5, scienitists were also too slow to acknowledge the evidence from South Africa that there was a new variant that was very contagious but also far less lethal. That was the time to open up.
There were also those trying to play politics with Covid. Drakeford, Sturgeon and Starmer all stand accused of this.
You would expect house builders to brief against a politician, and policies which might well (if enthusiastically implemented) impact the profitability of their effective land monopolies, though.
I am a Starmer sceptic - but that means I’ll judge him once he’s in office, and not in advance.
It stands to reason though that private building companies will only build houses if they can sell them at a profit. Current circumstances have impacted that profitability and reduced sales.
The alternative is government funding, but neither national nor local government is in a financial position to spend big on housing.
So to increase house building we either need to reduce costs (for example lower specification) or restore private sector profitability.
Allow Local Authorities to borrow to build council houses using the houses as collateral assets and the rents to pay back interest. I believe that LAs can borrow to invest in shopping malls but not in houses, a hangover from Thatcher days. Get rid.
Media and people on here bang on and on about how things were too strict, so it's interesting to see that 40% say not strict enough.
There is a case to be made that being stricter on some measures (international travel for example) or more timely school closures would have led to better outcomes and shorter overall measures. I am not entirely convinced, but could well be true.
I'd interpret stricter more broadly to include locking down earlier, no eat out to help out, being quicker with red lists and quarantine from abroad etc.
EOTHO is an enormous red herring. The rise in cases in autumn 2020 is down to reimported virus from holidays to (mainly) Spain where a newer variant had arisen. When EOTHO w as running there were only a few hundred cases nationally a day. It was low risk.
That’s not what the published research shows. Separate to the effect of people returning from holidays, EOTHO had a demonstrable effect on case numbers.
Exponential growth, too, so adding cases at the lower end of the curve was not what you wanted to do.
Media and people on here bang on and on about how things were too strict, so it's interesting to see that 40% say not strict enough.
There is a case to be made that being stricter on some measures (international travel for example) or more timely school closures would have led to better outcomes and shorter overall measures. I am not entirely convinced, but could well be true.
I'd interpret stricter more broadly to include locking down earlier, no eat out to help out, being quicker with red lists and quarantine from abroad etc.
EOTHO is an enormous red herring. The rise in cases in autumn 2020 is down to reimported virus from holidays to (mainly) Spain where a newer variant had arisen. When EOTHO w as running there were only a few hundred cases nationally a day. It was low risk.
That’s not what the published research shows. Separate to the effect of people returning from holidays, EOTHO had a demonstrable effect on case numbers.
I accept it had an increase, but again and again we go back to the point that we could not just have no economic activity. The point is other factors are far more significant in the case rises in tha autumn.
See Oliver Johnson’s twitter and now substack for more.
Who said anything about having “no economic activity”?
If Oliver Johnson wants to submit his work to peer review in a journal, I will be happy to look at it.
Really surprises me that so many in that poll think the restrictions weren’t strict enough. In hindsight too. What did they want, Chinese style lockdowns?
I agree with others who say the lockdowns brought out the snitches and school prefects in many, particularly certain police forces who seem to have taken the scientific advice that Covid was spread by fun and were clearing people off deserted beaches and buzzing them on moorlands.
Obviously we needed some restrictions in 2020 and 21 before the vaccines arrived. But we also needed common sense, and in retrospect the closure of schools almost certainly did way more harm than good.
People do not want to hear it, and I am sure the Covid enquiry won't pursue it, but the data from 2020 shows that the first peak had already passed by the time lockdown was introduced.
At the time, the virus took around 7 days to become symptomatic, the requirement for medical intervention was (on average) a further 10 days away, whilst the median stay in hospital before discharge or death was 7 days.
Government data for England shows deaths from Covid peaking between 8th (the actual peak day) and 12th April. As this is just 13 to 17 days after lockdown was introduced, it clearly shows that lockdown was not the driving factor in controlling the disease.
In short, lockdown could prove to be the most costly mistake this country has made in my lifetime.
Media and people on here bang on and on about how things were too strict, so it's interesting to see that 40% say not strict enough.
There is a case to be made that being stricter on some measures (international travel for example) or more timely school closures would have led to better outcomes and shorter overall measures. I am not entirely convinced, but could well be true.
I'd interpret stricter more broadly to include locking down earlier, no eat out to help out, being quicker with red lists and quarantine from abroad etc.
EOTHO is an enormous red herring. The rise in cases in autumn 2020 is down to reimported virus from holidays to (mainly) Spain where a newer variant had arisen. When EOTHO w as running there were only a few hundred cases nationally a day. It was low risk.
Is that correct?
The main variant of concern in autumn 2020, and the first major mutation was the alpha covid. It was traced back to Kent.
Perhaps it spread in Spain via British tourists, but it originated here.
Re imported cases perhaps more significant than the new variant I’ll grant you, but EOTHO was not the superspreader idiocy it’s portrayed as.
The published literature disagrees with you. You are welcome to submit your analysis to a journal for peer review.
And again and again we have this idea that we could shut society and have no cases. Economics mattered too. I do not believe that the literature shows that EOTHO was a significant issue compared to other factors in autumn 2020. Schools, reimported virus from holidays, later on the new variant are hugely more significant.
On-topic: the lockdowns, aside from the healthcare and economic consequences, were also a very rare case of the extroverted being forced to act in a much more introverted manner. Studies should be done into how many, and to what extent, people were affected by this. That should then have some (secondary) weight for future pandemic countermeasure consideration.
Of course, the inquiry should be focused on how best to proceed in the future.
The inquiry has already reached its conclusion.
I can tell you now it will conclude we should have locked down harder, earlier, stronger and with tougher sanctions, that the scientists weren't listened to, that next time they should, and it will otherwise focus on the trivia of WhatsApp messages sent by easy to dislike politicians, who'll be put in the stocks, and excuse those of civil servants and advisors.
To the extent it does focus on the future none of the lessons will be learned by those who need to learn them.
The more nuanced approach that @rcs1000 alludes to or a serious assessment of damage to education, young people, or wider mental health and healthcare won't feature.
Interestingly, the conclusion I get from what I've read was that:
1 - You could have avoided lockdowns completely, in theory, but this was probably impractical for the first one as we just wouldn't have taken on board what was needed. 2 - The administrative setup was far too inflexible and slow to react in both directions 3 - They failed to take on board the needs of many segments of the population, including those who were poorer, did not have much room, did not have gardens, were pregnant, or had children 4 - The capacity to carry out proper cost-benefit analyses wasn't there 5 - Scientists were as slow to react to the severity of the disease and believe in what could and could not be done as anyone else 6 - There was a complete failure to properly assess which interventions worked best and which were least effective. It was highlighted that the failure to allow people to meet up carefully out of doors all along was serious.
... and so on. Seriously, I'd recommend reading them.
On 5, scienitists were also too slow to acknowledge the evidence from South Africa that there was a new variant that was very contagious but also far less lethal. That was the time to open up.
There were also those trying to play politics with Covid. Drakeford, Sturgeon and Starmer all stand accused of this.
Any politician that didn’t have to pay for lockdown was in favour of more and longer lockdowns. Unsurprising, but still a black mark against Starmer, et al
On-topic: the lockdowns, aside from the healthcare and economic consequences, were also a very rare case of the extroverted being forced to act in a much more introverted manner. Studies should be done into how many, and to what extent, people were affected by this. That should then have some (secondary) weight for future pandemic countermeasure consideration.
Of course, the inquiry should be focused on how best to proceed in the future.
The inquiry has already reached its conclusion.
I can tell you now it will conclude we should have locked down harder, earlier, stronger and with tougher sanctions, that the scientists weren't listened to, that next time they should, and it will otherwise focus on the trivia of WhatsApp messages sent by easy to dislike politicians, who'll be put in the stocks, and excuse those of civil servants and advisors.
To the extent it does focus on the future none of the lessons will be learned by those who need to learn them.
The more nuanced approach that @rcs1000 alludes to or a serious assessment of damage to education, young people, or wider mental health and healthcare won't feature.
Interestingly, the conclusion I get from what I've read was that:
1 - You could have avoided lockdowns completely, in theory, but this was probably impractical for the first one as we just wouldn't have taken on board what was needed. 2 - The administrative setup was far too inflexible and slow to react in both directions 3 - They failed to take on board the needs of many segments of the population, including those who were poorer, did not have much room, did not have gardens, were pregnant, or had children 4 - The capacity to carry out proper cost-benefit analyses wasn't there 5 - Scientists were as slow to react to the severity of the disease and believe in what could and could not be done as anyone else 6 - There was a complete failure to properly assess which interventions worked best and which were least effective. It was highlighted that the failure to allow people to meet up carefully out of doors all along was serious.
... and so on. Seriously, I'd recommend reading them.
On 5, scienitists were also too slow to acknowledge the evidence from South Africa that there was a new variant that was very contagious but also far less lethal. That was the time to open up.
There were also those trying to play politics with Covid. Drakeford, Sturgeon and Starmer all stand accused of this.
I think you are confusing winters. Omicron appeared in Dec 2021, not Dec 2020. We weren't locked down in autumn 2021, and apart from travel restrictions we didn't for Omicron.
Media and people on here bang on and on about how things were too strict, so it's interesting to see that 40% say not strict enough.
There is a case to be made that being stricter on some measures (international travel for example) or more timely school closures would have led to better outcomes and shorter overall measures. I am not entirely convinced, but could well be true.
I'd interpret stricter more broadly to include locking down earlier, no eat out to help out, being quicker with red lists and quarantine from abroad etc.
EOTHO is an enormous red herring. The rise in cases in autumn 2020 is down to reimported virus from holidays to (mainly) Spain where a newer variant had arisen. When EOTHO w as running there were only a few hundred cases nationally a day. It was low risk.
That’s not what the published research shows. Separate to the effect of people returning from holidays, EOTHO had a demonstrable effect on case numbers.
I accept it had an increase, but again and again we go back to the point that we could not just have no economic activity. The point is other factors are far more significant in the case rises in tha autumn.
See Oliver Johnson’s twitter and now substack for more.
Who said anything about having “no economic activity”?
If Oliver Johnson wants to submit his work to peer review in a journal, I will be happy to look at it.
He’s a Prof at Bristol who has a very sound sense of perspective. Worth paying attention to. But I dont think you and I will ever agree on this.
On-topic: the lockdowns, aside from the healthcare and economic consequences, were also a very rare case of the extroverted being forced to act in a much more introverted manner. Studies should be done into how many, and to what extent, people were affected by this. That should then have some (secondary) weight for future pandemic countermeasure consideration.
Of course, the inquiry should be focused on how best to proceed in the future.
The inquiry has already reached its conclusion.
I can tell you now it will conclude we should have locked down harder, earlier, stronger and with tougher sanctions, that the scientists weren't listened to, that next time they should, and it will otherwise focus on the trivia of WhatsApp messages sent by easy to dislike politicians, who'll be put in the stocks, and excuse those of civil servants and advisors.
To the extent it does focus on the future none of the lessons will be learned by those who need to learn them.
The more nuanced approach that @rcs1000 alludes to or a serious assessment of damage to education, young people, or wider mental health and healthcare won't feature.
Interestingly, the conclusion I get from what I've read was that:
1 - You could have avoided lockdowns completely, in theory, but this was probably impractical for the first one as we just wouldn't have taken on board what was needed. 2 - The administrative setup was far too inflexible and slow to react in both directions 3 - They failed to take on board the needs of many segments of the population, including those who were poorer, did not have much room, did not have gardens, were pregnant, or had children 4 - The capacity to carry out proper cost-benefit analyses wasn't there 5 - Scientists were as slow to react to the severity of the disease and believe in what could and could not be done as anyone else 6 - There was a complete failure to properly assess which interventions worked best and which were least effective. It was highlighted that the failure to allow people to meet up carefully out of doors all along was serious.
... and so on. Seriously, I'd recommend reading them.
On 5, scienitists were also too slow to acknowledge the evidence from South Africa that there was a new variant that was very contagious but also far less lethal. That was the time to open up.
There were also those trying to play politics with Covid. Drakeford, Sturgeon and Starmer all stand accused of this.
I think you are confusing winters. Omicron appeared in Dec 2021, not Dec 2020. We weren't locked down in autumn 2021, and apart from travel restrictions we didn't for Omicron.
On-topic: the lockdowns, aside from the healthcare and economic consequences, were also a very rare case of the extroverted being forced to act in a much more introverted manner. Studies should be done into how many, and to what extent, people were affected by this. That should then have some (secondary) weight for future pandemic countermeasure consideration.
Of course, the inquiry should be focused on how best to proceed in the future.
The inquiry has already reached its conclusion.
I can tell you now it will conclude we should have locked down harder, earlier, stronger and with tougher sanctions, that the scientists weren't listened to, that next time they should, and it will otherwise focus on the trivia of WhatsApp messages sent by easy to dislike politicians, who'll be put in the stocks, and excuse those of civil servants and advisors.
To the extent it does focus on the future none of the lessons will be learned by those who need to learn them.
The more nuanced approach that @rcs1000 alludes to or a serious assessment of damage to education, young people, or wider mental health and healthcare won't feature.
Interestingly, the conclusion I get from what I've read was that:
1 - You could have avoided lockdowns completely, in theory, but this was probably impractical for the first one as we just wouldn't have taken on board what was needed. 2 - The administrative setup was far too inflexible and slow to react in both directions 3 - They failed to take on board the needs of many segments of the population, including those who were poorer, did not have much room, did not have gardens, were pregnant, or had children 4 - The capacity to carry out proper cost-benefit analyses wasn't there 5 - Scientists were as slow to react to the severity of the disease and believe in what could and could not be done as anyone else 6 - There was a complete failure to properly assess which interventions worked best and which were least effective. It was highlighted that the failure to allow people to meet up carefully out of doors all along was serious.
... and so on. Seriously, I'd recommend reading them.
On 5, scienitists were also too slow to acknowledge the evidence from South Africa that there was a new variant that was very contagious but also far less lethal. That was the time to open up.
There were also those trying to play politics with Covid. Drakeford, Sturgeon and Starmer all stand accused of this.
I think you are confusing winters. Omicron appeared in Dec 2021, not Dec 2020. We weren't locked down in autumn 2021, and apart from travel restrictions we didn't for Omicron.
Alpha was 2020 and ended the idea of tiers in regions really.
Media and people on here bang on and on about how things were too strict, so it's interesting to see that 40% say not strict enough.
There is a case to be made that being stricter on some measures (international travel for example) or more timely school closures would have led to better outcomes and shorter overall measures. I am not entirely convinced, but could well be true.
I'd interpret stricter more broadly to include locking down earlier, no eat out to help out, being quicker with red lists and quarantine from abroad etc.
EOTHO is an enormous red herring. The rise in cases in autumn 2020 is down to reimported virus from holidays to (mainly) Spain where a newer variant had arisen. When EOTHO w as running there were only a few hundred cases nationally a day. It was low risk.
Is that correct?
The main variant of concern in autumn 2020, and the first major mutation was the alpha covid. It was traced back to Kent.
Perhaps it spread in Spain via British tourists, but it originated here.
Re imported cases perhaps more significant than the new variant I’ll grant you, but EOTHO was not the superspreader idiocy it’s portrayed as.
The published literature disagrees with you. You are welcome to submit your analysis to a journal for peer review.
And again and again we have this idea that we could shut society and have no cases. Economics mattered too. I do not believe that the literature shows that EOTHO was a significant issue compared to other factors in autumn 2020. Schools, reimported virus from holidays, later on the new variant are hugely more significant.
Who’s talking about shutting society? Not subsidising restaurant meals is not shutting down society.
You can go read the peer-reviewed literature and see what it says for yourself. Most of the literature here is open access. If there are any papers behind a paywall, drop me a note and I’ll get them for you.
My Facebook is *filled* with paid-for ads (which can't be cheap) from every British charity you can think of asking for funds for the crisis Gaza. I've never seen anything like it. I can't see a single big name that isn't up there. Except maybe Macmillan Cancer.
You have to ask of those who do click 'donate': how much of that money will end up directly in the pockets of Hamas in just a few weeks time?
That's weird. I have just gone on to FB to take a look myself. Admittedly, I am only an occasional user but no charity ads of any sort for me, just a few green energy ads. Am I maybe not very charitable?
(Reminds me obliquely of the poster back in the days when PB had ads who complained that PB was hosting lots of Thai bride and Russian 'hostess' ads, until it was pointed out that the ad profile was individualised to your Google(?) search history. I think said poster departed soon after - can't remember who it was now tbh.)
On-topic: the lockdowns, aside from the healthcare and economic consequences, were also a very rare case of the extroverted being forced to act in a much more introverted manner. Studies should be done into how many, and to what extent, people were affected by this. That should then have some (secondary) weight for future pandemic countermeasure consideration.
Of course, the inquiry should be focused on how best to proceed in the future.
The inquiry has already reached its conclusion.
I can tell you now it will conclude we should have locked down harder, earlier, stronger and with tougher sanctions, that the scientists weren't listened to, that next time they should, and it will otherwise focus on the trivia of WhatsApp messages sent by easy to dislike politicians, who'll be put in the stocks, and excuse those of civil servants and advisors.
To the extent it does focus on the future none of the lessons will be learned by those who need to learn them.
The more nuanced approach that @rcs1000 alludes to or a serious assessment of damage to education, young people, or wider mental health and healthcare won't feature.
Interestingly, the conclusion I get from what I've read was that:
1 - You could have avoided lockdowns completely, in theory, but this was probably impractical for the first one as we just wouldn't have taken on board what was needed. 2 - The administrative setup was far too inflexible and slow to react in both directions 3 - They failed to take on board the needs of many segments of the population, including those who were poorer, did not have much room, did not have gardens, were pregnant, or had children 4 - The capacity to carry out proper cost-benefit analyses wasn't there 5 - Scientists were as slow to react to the severity of the disease and believe in what could and could not be done as anyone else 6 - There was a complete failure to properly assess which interventions worked best and which were least effective. It was highlighted that the failure to allow people to meet up carefully out of doors all along was serious.
... and so on. Seriously, I'd recommend reading them.
On 5, scienitists were also too slow to acknowledge the evidence from South Africa that there was a new variant that was very contagious but also far less lethal. That was the time to open up.
There were also those trying to play politics with Covid. Drakeford, Sturgeon and Starmer all stand accused of this.
Politicians do politics for a living. Drakeford and Starmer legitimately took different views. Arguably some of the Scottish Government's measures looked more like playing politics but ironically, they stayed closer to Westminster.
Media and people on here bang on and on about how things were too strict, so it's interesting to see that 40% say not strict enough.
There is a case to be made that being stricter on some measures (international travel for example) or more timely school closures would have led to better outcomes and shorter overall measures. I am not entirely convinced, but could well be true.
I'd interpret stricter more broadly to include locking down earlier, no eat out to help out, being quicker with red lists and quarantine from abroad etc.
EOTHO is an enormous red herring. The rise in cases in autumn 2020 is down to reimported virus from holidays to (mainly) Spain where a newer variant had arisen. When EOTHO w as running there were only a few hundred cases nationally a day. It was low risk.
That’s not what the published research shows. Separate to the effect of people returning from holidays, EOTHO had a demonstrable effect on case numbers.
I accept it had an increase, but again and again we go back to the point that we could not just have no economic activity. The point is other factors are far more significant in the case rises in tha autumn.
See Oliver Johnson’s twitter and now substack for more.
Who said anything about having “no economic activity”?
If Oliver Johnson wants to submit his work to peer review in a journal, I will be happy to look at it.
He’s a Prof at Bristol who has a very sound sense of perspective. Worth paying attention to. But I dont think you and I will ever agree on this.
Media and people on here bang on and on about how things were too strict, so it's interesting to see that 40% say not strict enough.
There is a case to be made that being stricter on some measures (international travel for example) or more timely school closures would have led to better outcomes and shorter overall measures. I am not entirely convinced, but could well be true.
I'd interpret stricter more broadly to include locking down earlier, no eat out to help out, being quicker with red lists and quarantine from abroad etc.
EOTHO is an enormous red herring. The rise in cases in autumn 2020 is down to reimported virus from holidays to (mainly) Spain where a newer variant had arisen. When EOTHO w as running there were only a few hundred cases nationally a day. It was low risk.
Is that correct?
The main variant of concern in autumn 2020, and the first major mutation was the alpha covid. It was traced back to Kent.
Perhaps it spread in Spain via British tourists, but it originated here.
Re imported cases perhaps more significant than the new variant I’ll grant you, but EOTHO was not the superspreader idiocy it’s portrayed as.
The published literature disagrees with you. You are welcome to submit your analysis to a journal for peer review.
And again and again we have this idea that we could shut society and have no cases. Economics mattered too. I do not believe that the literature shows that EOTHO was a significant issue compared to other factors in autumn 2020. Schools, reimported virus from holidays, later on the new variant are hugely more significant.
Who’s talking about shutting society? Not subsidising restaurant meals is not shutting down society.
You can go read the peer-reviewed literature and see what it says for yourself. Most of the literature here is open access. If there are any papers behind a paywall, drop me a note and I’ll get them for you.
I can access the peer reviewed literature through my uni library thank, but I think it’s possible to put too much emphasis on the idea of peer review = true = gold standard. It certainly helps if work is published for scrutiny, but peer review also can have negative consequences. For one thing in many areas of science only positive results get published - there are no journals for ‘experiments that didn’t work’.
The debate we are having I think ebcapsulates the whole government response to covid. I believe that allowing more economic activity, including trying to boost an industry that had been closed down by government, was worth a few more cases, especially when other factors at the time were far more significant. You don’t agree, and that’s fine.
Really surprises me that so many in that poll think the restrictions weren’t strict enough. In hindsight too. What did they want, Chinese style lockdowns?
I agree with others who say the lockdowns brought out the snitches and school prefects in many, particularly certain police forces who seem to have taken the scientific advice that Covid was spread by fun and were clearing people off deserted beaches and buzzing them on moorlands.
Obviously we needed some restrictions in 2020 and 21 before the vaccines arrived. But we also needed common sense, and in retrospect the closure of schools almost certainly did way more harm than good.
People do not want to hear it, and I am sure the Covid enquiry won't pursue it, but the data from 2020 shows that the first peak had already passed by the time lockdown was introduced.
At the time, the virus took around 7 days to become symptomatic, the requirement for medical intervention was (on average) a further 10 days away, whilst the median stay in hospital before discharge or death was 7 days.
Government data for England shows deaths from Covid peaking between 8th (the actual peak day) and 12th April. As this is just 13 to 17 days after lockdown was introduced, it clearly shows that lockdown was not the driving factor in controlling the disease.
In short, lockdown could prove to be the most costly mistake this country has made in my lifetime.
It's a lot more involved than that, because the time to death from infection and/or symptoms was very variable
If you're taking action to reduce infections significantly, then an individual time to death can be 25 days and the population time about 16 days, for example (because you're overlaying a distribution, not a fixed time). In addition, if you get R down less, you'll decrease less, and remain at a high loading for a considerable time.
(This stuff has been analysed quite a bit, which is gratifying).
Media and people on here bang on and on about how things were too strict, so it's interesting to see that 40% say not strict enough.
There is a case to be made that being stricter on some measures (international travel for example) or more timely school closures would have led to better outcomes and shorter overall measures. I am not entirely convinced, but could well be true.
I'd interpret stricter more broadly to include locking down earlier, no eat out to help out, being quicker with red lists and quarantine from abroad etc.
EOTHO is an enormous red herring. The rise in cases in autumn 2020 is down to reimported virus from holidays to (mainly) Spain where a newer variant had arisen. When EOTHO w as running there were only a few hundred cases nationally a day. It was low risk.
Is that correct?
The main variant of concern in autumn 2020, and the first major mutation was the alpha covid. It was traced back to Kent.
Perhaps it spread in Spain via British tourists, but it originated here.
Re imported cases perhaps more significant than the new variant I’ll grant you, but EOTHO was not the superspreader idiocy it’s portrayed as.
The published literature disagrees with you. You are welcome to submit your analysis to a journal for peer review.
And again and again we have this idea that we could shut society and have no cases. Economics mattered too. I do not believe that the literature shows that EOTHO was a significant issue compared to other factors in autumn 2020. Schools, reimported virus from holidays, later on the new variant are hugely more significant.
Who’s talking about shutting society? Not subsidising restaurant meals is not shutting down society.
You can go read the peer-reviewed literature and see what it says for yourself. Most of the literature here is open access. If there are any papers behind a paywall, drop me a note and I’ll get them for you.
I can access the peer reviewed literature through my uni library thank, but I think it’s possible to put too much emphasis on the idea of peer review = true = gold standard. It certainly helps if work is published for scrutiny, but peer review also can have negative consequences. For one thing in many areas of science only positive results get published - there are no journals for ‘experiments that didn’t work’.
Media and people on here bang on and on about how things were too strict, so it's interesting to see that 40% say not strict enough.
There is a case to be made that being stricter on some measures (international travel for example) or more timely school closures would have led to better outcomes and shorter overall measures. I am not entirely convinced, but could well be true.
I'd interpret stricter more broadly to include locking down earlier, no eat out to help out, being quicker with red lists and quarantine from abroad etc.
EOTHO is an enormous red herring. The rise in cases in autumn 2020 is down to reimported virus from holidays to (mainly) Spain where a newer variant had arisen. When EOTHO w as running there were only a few hundred cases nationally a day. It was low risk.
That’s not what the published research shows. Separate to the effect of people returning from holidays, EOTHO had a demonstrable effect on case numbers.
I accept it had an increase, but again and again we go back to the point that we could not just have no economic activity. The point is other factors are far more significant in the case rises in tha autumn.
See Oliver Johnson’s twitter and now substack for more.
Who said anything about having “no economic activity”?
If Oliver Johnson wants to submit his work to peer review in a journal, I will be happy to look at it.
He’s a Prof at Bristol who has a very sound sense of perspective. Worth paying attention to. But I dont think you and I will ever agree on this.
My perfectly healthy 20-something neighbours were very grateful for the summer of sunbathing on furlough cheques, but this hasn't translated into long-term support for the Conservatives - tens of billions squandered at the wrong time in the electoral cycle that our kids will be paying back.
The government's strategy of terrifying people about a virus with a measly 99.8% recovery rate (>99.9% for under 70s) blew up in its face. On this, they deserve everything they get, though of course Labour would have been far worse, and indeed were in Wales, for no obvious benefit. At least the Conservatives took the right decision on Omicron though. Starmer would probably still have us in lockdown. That alone should disqualify him from ever becoming PM.
The recovery rate was not 99.8% in June of 2020. It has become that through a combination of vaccines and the virus no longer being novel.
Some of the restrictions were a bit bonkers, such as one way systems in pubs, and masking while moving around but not while eating. True Lockdown was actually only a smallish part of the whole time, with lesser restrictions for long periods.
My favourite bonkers restriction in education was we were told by the DfE we didn't have to wear masks while teaching, but we should wear them in the staff room at lunchtime.
It was at this point I concluded the DfE were either actively malicious or so stupid they should all be sectioned.
My research lab has 10 fume hoods turning over the air in the lab all the time. You couldn’t ask for better ventilation. Yet we we still forced to work at low capacity and wear masks and worse visors. There was an lethargy about adapting to new facts. We started to realise that aerosols were the issue not droplets, pretty early on, but advice never really changed to reflect that.
And we obsessed about wiping down surfaces and washing hands which were almost certainly pointless, at least in so far as Covid was concerned ( I accept it may have reduced other infections that we would have struggled to cope with).
I remember court hearings where we each had to wipe the lectern once we had finished our questioning. This went on for over a year, long after we knew the infection was almost exclusively airborne. It never really changed.
We were forced to sanitise hands and the ball frequently when playing cricket. That, plus the madness of masks when moving in pubs, but not when sitting, is the height of the absurdity for me.
For me it was the little arrows showing you how to queue one way around the supermarket
It seems funny now, but Lord it was bleak at the time
I missed the shaved parmesan on lap 1 and ended up doing a complex figure of 8, in which time I'd gathered an unplanned bottle of white wine and 16 mars ice creams.
I don’t think that I knew anyone who died of Covid. I heard of people, mainly old and vulnerable, but they were friends of friends rather than anyone closer. The truth is that it wasn’t that dangerous but there was a great deal of uncertainty at the time. The biggest risk was that a wave of infections would crash the Health Service. Thankfully that never happened but I wouldn’t be surprised if consequential deaths and missed cancer diagnoses killed as many as Covid itself.
That seems to me to be something that the Inquiry might focus on. How do we stop something similar bringing our Health Service to a standstill? Not an easy task.
One friend and one acquaintance died of it, both fit and spritely retired women.
If you look at the excess mortality it was overwhelmingly of viral cause, not from cancer etc.
Cancer and other emergency treatment never stopped, but it couldn't continue normally during a pandemic. My Trusts ITU, operating theatres and specialist breast cancer ward weren't sitting idle during the grim days of Jan to March 2021, they were stuffed to the brim with covid pneumonia patients. The beds and staff were already in use.
The cancer deaths are still mounting as the backlog is cleared. I know of 2 people who died when they would have had a better chance with an early diagnosis.
I also, through my work, know 3 people who committed suicide during Covid. The Faculty became seriously concerned about the consequences of isolation and depression during lockdowns and even afterwards with remote courts and little social contact.
Maybe the Nightingale hospitals we never really used would have been a better way forward although staffing them would have been difficult. I am not disputing at all that the Health Service was under immense pressure.
There’s still a complicated picture in terms of the effects of the pandemic and of lockdowns on mental health. Some studies report increases in poor mental health; others don’t. Those finding increases in poor mental health don’t necessarily find those increases correlate with lockdowns. The pandemic itself had a negative effect on people’s mental health. Too many people assume that it was the restrictions rather than the risk of the illness and the loss of loved ones to the disease that was the cause of poorer mental health. But I think we’re still to get to bottom of all the different factors, and different people were affected in different ways.
I think that there were impacts on mental health, but that these might well net out as neutral. For everyone who found lockdown depressing, there was another person who enjoyed being away from workplace conflict, and enjoying time at home with family.
Our Medical Students from the lockdown years are an interesting bunch. There are both more dropouts and expulsions than usual, but the most striking thing is not mental illness but attitudes. Hopefully they will learn normal social skills in time.
Surely they should have learned those before they came to medical school?
Really surprises me that so many in that poll think the restrictions weren’t strict enough. In hindsight too. What did they want, Chinese style lockdowns?
I agree with others who say the lockdowns brought out the snitches and school prefects in many, particularly certain police forces who seem to have taken the scientific advice that Covid was spread by fun and were clearing people off deserted beaches and buzzing them on moorlands.
Obviously we needed some restrictions in 2020 and 21 before the vaccines arrived. But we also needed common sense, and in retrospect the closure of schools almost certainly did way more harm than good.
And yet many of us subsequently caught covid as a result of it being brought home from school by our kids. Thankfully by that stage we had had the vaccine but had it happened earlier it could have been far more serious.
Allow Local Authorities to borrow to build council houses using the houses as collateral assets and the rents to pay back interest. I believe that LAs can borrow to invest in shopping malls but not in houses, a hangover from Thatcher days. Get rid.
That's not the case. Local authorities can borrow to build new houses.
In addition, the discussion on "will people lock themselves down enough without being ordered to" was discussed in Government at the time, it seems.
A chaotic, inconsistent, and voluntary lockdown could and would disrupt the economy hugely, and with no control over what remained open (eg essential services) and what did not. And would likely have less effect on reducing R.
It wasn't between restrictions and continuing on regardless. It was between controlled restrictions and uncontrolled restrictions.
(And all the "Sweden" talk: 1 - Tegnell told the Government in September not to try it 2 - It's not like we leapt straight into lockdown every time, anyway. We tried limited restrictions, local lockdowns, Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, "Rule of 6", and failed each time. Partly due to the Scotch Egg tendency, to be honest)
On-topic: the lockdowns, aside from the healthcare and economic consequences, were also a very rare case of the extroverted being forced to act in a much more introverted manner. Studies should be done into how many, and to what extent, people were affected by this. That should then have some (secondary) weight for future pandemic countermeasure consideration.
Of course, the inquiry should be focused on how best to proceed in the future.
The inquiry has already reached its conclusion.
I can tell you now it will conclude we should have locked down harder, earlier, stronger and with tougher sanctions, that the scientists weren't listened to, that next time they should, and it will otherwise focus on the trivia of WhatsApp messages sent by easy to dislike politicians, who'll be put in the stocks, and excuse those of civil servants and advisors.
To the extent it does focus on the future none of the lessons will be learned by those who need to learn them.
The more nuanced approach that @rcs1000 alludes to or a serious assessment of damage to education, young people, or wider mental health and healthcare won't feature.
Interestingly, the conclusion I get from what I've read was that:
1 - You could have avoided lockdowns completely, in theory, but this was probably impractical for the first one as we just wouldn't have taken on board what was needed. 2 - The administrative setup was far too inflexible and slow to react in both directions 3 - They failed to take on board the needs of many segments of the population, including those who were poorer, did not have much room, did not have gardens, were pregnant, or had children 4 - The capacity to carry out proper cost-benefit analyses wasn't there 5 - Scientists were as slow to react to the severity of the disease and believe in what could and could not be done as anyone else 6 - There was a complete failure to properly assess which interventions worked best and which were least effective. It was highlighted that the failure to allow people to meet up carefully out of doors all along was serious.
... and so on. Seriously, I'd recommend reading them.
On 5, scienitists were also too slow to acknowledge the evidence from South Africa that there was a new variant that was very contagious but also far less lethal. That was the time to open up.
There were also those trying to play politics with Covid. Drakeford, Sturgeon and Starmer all stand accused of this.
Politicians do politics for a living. Drakeford and Starmer legitimately took different views. Arguably some of the Scottish Government's measures looked more like playing politics but ironically, they stayed closer to Westminster.
Starmer also played politics. Badly. The Johnson Variant FFS !
My Facebook is *filled* with paid-for ads (which can't be cheap) from every British charity you can think of asking for funds for the crisis Gaza. I've never seen anything like it. I can't see a single big name that isn't up there. Except maybe Macmillan Cancer.
You have to ask of those who do click 'donate': how much of that money will end up directly in the pockets of Hamas in just a few weeks time?
That's weird. I have just gone on to FB to take a look myself. Admittedly, I am only an occasional user but no charity ads of any sort for me, just a few green energy ads. Am I maybe not very charitable?
(Reminds me obliquely of the poster back in the days when PB had ads who complained that PB was hosting lots of Thai bride and Russian 'hostess' ads, until it was pointed out that the ad profile was individualised to your Google(?) search history. I think said poster departed soon after - can't remember who it was now tbh.)
I agree. I have had no charity ads for Gaza and I am a heavy FB user. I believe ad selection is based on your general internet browsing history.
In addition, the discussion on "will people lock themselves down enough without being ordered to" was discussed in Government at the time, it seems.
Just because the ***** in Downing Street couldn't bring themselves to abide by the mandatory rules, they assumed nobody else would voluntarily do anything sensible...
Allow Local Authorities to borrow to build council houses using the houses as collateral assets and the rents to pay back interest. I believe that LAs can borrow to invest in shopping malls but not in houses, a hangover from Thatcher days. Get rid.
That's not the case. Local authorities can borrow to build new houses.
Though local councils do have massive debts and overspends already. If interest exceeds income then borrowing is not the way forward.
I don't think the answer here lies in financial engineering. It comes from either wage growth or cost cutting making house building profitable.
On-topic: the lockdowns, aside from the healthcare and economic consequences, were also a very rare case of the extroverted being forced to act in a much more introverted manner. Studies should be done into how many, and to what extent, people were affected by this. That should then have some (secondary) weight for future pandemic countermeasure consideration.
Of course, the inquiry should be focused on how best to proceed in the future.
The inquiry has already reached its conclusion.
I can tell you now it will conclude we should have locked down harder, earlier, stronger and with tougher sanctions, that the scientists weren't listened to, that next time they should, and it will otherwise focus on the trivia of WhatsApp messages sent by easy to dislike politicians, who'll be put in the stocks, and excuse those of civil servants and advisors.
To the extent it does focus on the future none of the lessons will be learned by those who need to learn them.
The more nuanced approach that @rcs1000 alludes to or a serious assessment of damage to education, young people, or wider mental health and healthcare won't feature.
Interestingly, the conclusion I get from what I've read was that:
1 - You could have avoided lockdowns completely, in theory, but this was probably impractical for the first one as we just wouldn't have taken on board what was needed. 2 - The administrative setup was far too inflexible and slow to react in both directions 3 - They failed to take on board the needs of many segments of the population, including those who were poorer, did not have much room, did not have gardens, were pregnant, or had children 4 - The capacity to carry out proper cost-benefit analyses wasn't there 5 - Scientists were as slow to react to the severity of the disease and believe in what could and could not be done as anyone else 6 - There was a complete failure to properly assess which interventions worked best and which were least effective. It was highlighted that the failure to allow people to meet up carefully out of doors all along was serious.
... and so on. Seriously, I'd recommend reading them.
On 5, scienitists were also too slow to acknowledge the evidence from South Africa that there was a new variant that was very contagious but also far less lethal. That was the time to open up.
There were also those trying to play politics with Covid. Drakeford, Sturgeon and Starmer all stand accused of this.
Politicians do politics for a living. Drakeford and Starmer legitimately took different views. Arguably some of the Scottish Government's measures looked more like playing politics but ironically, they stayed closer to Westminster.
Starmer also played politics. Badly. The Johnson Variant FFS !
Badly? It stuck in the political lexicon, did it not? That Shagger was personally responsible for so many of the stupid decisions that allowed Covid to spread? You can't deny that is true as we now have a public enquiry tearing apart the "it wasn't his fault honest" narrative every single day.
Wasn’t it 20% who wanted nightclubs shut down forever?
I hated lockdown with a passion, but much of the population loved it.
That was probably the scariest finding for me from the polling at the time. And the evidence of neighbours gleefully switching on their neighbours, which I saw a few proud boasts about on Facebook.
Convinced me that, were we ever occupied by a hostile oppressive power, they'd find plenty of willing collaborators.
There would be no difficulty in recruiting a British SS and a British Stasi.
For all of Boris’ corruption and incompetence, I would still prefer someone at the top who was instinctively hostile to restrictions, as opposed to someone who was enthusiastic about them, like Mark Drakeford.
Anyone here still think Sweden, which did not lock down, got it wrong? They relied on people adjusting their own behaviour in light of the known threat.
Not altogether surprising the graph is suspect given it's published by the CATO institute, which among other things shilled for Donald Trump in 2016 (although a number of its members have had second thoughts since) advocates the privatisation of the US education system and is one of the leading organisations involved in climate change denial.
You think the data in the graph wrong because of who published it? Really? The data came from Statistics Sweden (like our ONS), as it says in the footnote.
You can petition @rcs1000 to try to reduce the over-aggressive caching of comment drafts
Good luck.
...or you can use PB.com like any sensible person.
The default comment-ordering on politicalbetting.com is the wrong way, with the newest at the top which encourages people to repost stuff that has already been said. Admittedly, I sometimes come in and see 349 unread comments and decide to wait for the next new thread.
I don’t think that I knew anyone who died of Covid. I heard of people, mainly old and vulnerable, but they were friends of friends rather than anyone closer. The truth is that it wasn’t that dangerous but there was a great deal of uncertainty at the time. The biggest risk was that a wave of infections would crash the Health Service. Thankfully that never happened but I wouldn’t be surprised if consequential deaths and missed cancer diagnoses killed as many as Covid itself.
That seems to me to be something that the Inquiry might focus on. How do we stop something similar bringing our Health Service to a standstill? Not an easy task.
One friend and one acquaintance died of it, both fit and spritely retired women.
If you look at the excess mortality it was overwhelmingly of viral cause, not from cancer etc.
Cancer and other emergency treatment never stopped, but it couldn't continue normally during a pandemic. My Trusts ITU, operating theatres and specialist breast cancer ward weren't sitting idle during the grim days of Jan to March 2021, they were stuffed to the brim with covid pneumonia patients. The beds and staff were already in use.
The cancer deaths are still mounting as the backlog is cleared. I know of 2 people who died when they would have had a better chance with an early diagnosis.
I also, through my work, know 3 people who committed suicide during Covid. The Faculty became seriously concerned about the consequences of isolation and depression during lockdowns and even afterwards with remote courts and little social contact.
Maybe the Nightingale hospitals we never really used would have been a better way forward although staffing them would have been difficult. I am not disputing at all that the Health Service was under immense pressure.
There’s still a complicated picture in terms of the effects of the pandemic and of lockdowns on mental health. Some studies report increases in poor mental health; others don’t. Those finding increases in poor mental health don’t necessarily find those increases correlate with lockdowns. The pandemic itself had a negative effect on people’s mental health. Too many people assume that it was the restrictions rather than the risk of the illness and the loss of loved ones to the disease that was the cause of poorer mental health. But I think we’re still to get to bottom of all the different factors, and different people were affected in different ways.
I think that there were impacts on mental health, but that these might well net out as neutral. For everyone who found lockdown depressing, there was another person who enjoyed being away from workplace conflict, and enjoying time at home with family.
Our Medical Students from the lockdown years are an interesting bunch. There are both more dropouts and expulsions than usual, but the most striking thing is not mental illness but attitudes. Hopefully they will learn normal social skills in time.
I've heard this both in the med school context (one tutor blames private school grade inflation giving unsuitable candidates a chance to study medicine who otherwise would have been weeded out by their grades - applies more to the lazy rather than the stupid) and the broader education context that COVID cohorts are hard work and need a lot of extra support. A teacher friend, at primary level, says that they talk about Adverse Childhood Events, and those kids get more support, but now most children in that Cohort have an ACE and there is no support.
Whether this lockdown was right or wrong, or that restriction too strict at that time, I think, is neither here nor there really. Beyond identifying mistakes made, with hindsight, so we don't make those mistakes again or so that we can find better ways of doing things, I don't think it's all that useful picking over the bones. We won the COVID war but we are losing the peace badly.
Really surprises me that so many in that poll think the restrictions weren’t strict enough. In hindsight too. What did they want, Chinese style lockdowns?
I agree with others who say the lockdowns brought out the snitches and school prefects in many, particularly certain police forces who seem to have taken the scientific advice that Covid was spread by fun and were clearing people off deserted beaches and buzzing them on moorlands.
Obviously we needed some restrictions in 2020 and 21 before the vaccines arrived. But we also needed common sense, and in retrospect the closure of schools almost certainly did way more harm than good.
I think a lot of it is about perception. After the first lockdown - which created a 'rally round the flag' effect where people wanted the government to be on top of things, because it would have been frightening to think otherwise - the government often sent out mixed messages that gave an impression that they'd bungled things by not locking down hard enough.
That's because we'd see ministers and the PM saying things were fine and another lockdown wasn't going to happen - before cycling through local lockdowns to full ones. It's easy to see how someone can come to believe the answer was that reckless ministers weren't tough enough, because it's partly true. Just that the answer may well have been smarter, lighter restrictions throughout that avoided the need to lockdown instead of hoping we wouldn't have to, watching infections rise alarmingly and then swinging the other way.
The raw fact is that if we hadn't had restrictions and had allowed COVID-19 to spread through the population unhindered, the number of deaths would have been on the order of half a million.
You can argue about whether that estimate should be halved or doubled. But it would have happened over a couple of months, and given that the NHS was pretty near to its capacity even with the benefit of lockdown, I doubt that attempts to reduce it by much will produce much credibility.
So the deniers really need to be honest and say that their personal liberties were worth more than the lives of more or less half a million people, on the basis that "they would have died soon anyway."
Perhaps there is nothing wrong with an argument like that in today's world. But if so it needs to be argued honestly.
You can petition @rcs1000 to try to reduce the over-aggressive caching of comment drafts
Good luck.
...or you can use PB.com like any sensible person.
Depending on the device you are using and your privacy settings that may not be possible. To post from my phone the only place I can do it is on vf.politicalbetting.com
Allow Local Authorities to borrow to build council houses using the houses as collateral assets and the rents to pay back interest. I believe that LAs can borrow to invest in shopping malls but not in houses, a hangover from Thatcher days. Get rid.
That's not the case. Local authorities can borrow to build new houses.
Sorry. You are correct. In 2018, the government lifted the borrowing cap on local authorities. I'm out of date. Apologies.
So the deniers really need to be honest and say that their personal liberties were worth more than the lives of more or less half a million people, on the basis that "they would have died soon anyway."
There is a difference between going around licking all the door handles at an old folks' home and barricading yourself in your house for months on end just because Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and Matthew John David Hancock ordered you to do so.
Anybody who who reflexively obeyed the strictures of that pair of fucking clowns without engaging their own powers of discretion deserved everything they got.
Anyone here still think Sweden, which did not lock down, got it wrong? They relied on people adjusting their own behaviour in light of the known threat.
Not altogether surprising the graph is suspect given it's published by the CATO institute, which among other things shilled for Donald Trump in 2016 (although a number of its members have had second thoughts since) advocates the privatisation of the US education system and is one of the leading organisations involved in climate change denial.
Density of population might well have been a factor
My perfectly healthy 20-something neighbours were very grateful for the summer of sunbathing on furlough cheques, but this hasn't translated into long-term support for the Conservatives - tens of billions squandered at the wrong time in the electoral cycle that our kids will be paying back.
The government's strategy of terrifying people about a virus with a measly 99.8% recovery rate (>99.9% for under 70s) blew up in its face. On this, they deserve everything they get, though of course Labour would have been far worse, and indeed were in Wales, for no obvious benefit. At least the Conservatives took the right decision on Omicron though. Starmer would probably still have us in lockdown. That alone should disqualify him from ever becoming PM.
Mainly because they were concerned with a real virus, and not a fantasy one with fantasy numbers that you, for some reason, persist in repeating.
In the real world, by the end of December 2020, c. 10% of the country had been infected. Somewhat over 4% of those infected had been so ill they'd been hospitalised, and c. 1% of those infected had died.
Of those infected, between a fifth and a quarter were 54 and under.
If this, in Fishing-maths, equates to "a... 99.8% recovery rate (>99.9% for under 70s)", then we really need to scrutinise any other stats you've calculated.
The reason for the issue was, as said repeatedly in all of the witness testimony, that the NHS would collapse if it needed to deal with that many people simultaneously, and when the real figures for infectivity and exponential growth, coupled with the real figures for those needing hospitalisation, they needed to do something serious.
Because, as they said repeatedly in the witness testimony, if we destroy the NHS, everyone who relies on it for anything (and even in the depths of covid, 70%+ of NHS activity was on non-covid healthcare) will be in a lot of problems.
Not to mention the economic chaos and destruction, but the "no, no, nothing happened, just a sniffle, shut up" tendency just prefer to pretend that everything would have swum on serenely, don't they?
Across 51 locations, the median COVID-19 infection fatality rate was 0.27% (corrected 0.23%): the rate was 0.09% in locations with COVID-19 population mortality rates less than the global average (< 118 deaths/million), 0.20% in locations with 118–500 COVID-19 deaths/million people and 0.57% in locations with > 500 COVID-19 deaths/million people. In people younger than 70 years, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.31% with crude and corrected medians of 0.05%.
Of course those numbers will have declined as, completely predictably, successive variants have been milder.
So the deniers really need to be honest and say that their personal liberties were worth more than the lives of more or less half a million people, on the basis that "they would have died soon anyway."
There is a difference between going around licking all the door handles at an old folks' home and barricading yourself in your house for months on end just because Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and Matthew John David Hancock ordered you to do so.
Anybody who who reflexively obeyed the strictures of that pair of fucking clowns without engaging their own powers of discretion deserved everything they got.
I don’t think that I knew anyone who died of Covid. I heard of people, mainly old and vulnerable, but they were friends of friends rather than anyone closer. The truth is that it wasn’t that dangerous but there was a great deal of uncertainty at the time. The biggest risk was that a wave of infections would crash the Health Service. Thankfully that never happened but I wouldn’t be surprised if consequential deaths and missed cancer diagnoses killed as many as Covid itself.
That seems to me to be something that the Inquiry might focus on. How do we stop something similar bringing our Health Service to a standstill? Not an easy task.
One friend and one acquaintance died of it, both fit and spritely retired women.
If you look at the excess mortality it was overwhelmingly of viral cause, not from cancer etc.
Cancer and other emergency treatment never stopped, but it couldn't continue normally during a pandemic. My Trusts ITU, operating theatres and specialist breast cancer ward weren't sitting idle during the grim days of Jan to March 2021, they were stuffed to the brim with covid pneumonia patients. The beds and staff were already in use.
The cancer deaths are still mounting as the backlog is cleared. I know of 2 people who died when they would have had a better chance with an early diagnosis.
I also, through my work, know 3 people who committed suicide during Covid. The Faculty became seriously concerned about the consequences of isolation and depression during lockdowns and even afterwards with remote courts and little social contact.
Maybe the Nightingale hospitals we never really used would have been a better way forward although staffing them would have been difficult. I am not disputing at all that the Health Service was under immense pressure.
There’s still a complicated picture in terms of the effects of the pandemic and of lockdowns on mental health. Some studies report increases in poor mental health; others don’t. Those finding increases in poor mental health don’t necessarily find those increases correlate with lockdowns. The pandemic itself had a negative effect on people’s mental health. Too many people assume that it was the restrictions rather than the risk of the illness and the loss of loved ones to the disease that was the cause of poorer mental health. But I think we’re still to get to bottom of all the different factors, and different people were affected in different ways.
I think that there were impacts on mental health, but that these might well net out as neutral. For everyone who found lockdown depressing, there was another person who enjoyed being away from workplace conflict, and enjoying time at home with family.
Our Medical Students from the lockdown years are an interesting bunch. There are both more dropouts and expulsions than usual, but the most striking thing is not mental illness but attitudes. Hopefully they will learn normal social skills in time.
I've heard this both in the med school context (one tutor blames private school grade inflation giving unsuitable candidates a chance to study medicine who otherwise would have been weeded out by their grades - applies more to the lazy rather than the stupid) and the broader education context that COVID cohorts are hard work and need a lot of extra support. A teacher friend, at primary level, says that they talk about Adverse Childhood Events, and those kids get more support, but now most children in that Cohort have an ACE and there is no support.
Whether this lockdown was right or wrong, or that restriction too strict at that time, I think, is neither here nor there really. Beyond identifying mistakes made, with hindsight, so we don't make those mistakes again or so that we can find better ways of doing things, I don't think it's all that useful picking over the bones. We won the COVID war but we are losing the peace badly.
There needs to be a serious inquiry into Covid era private school grade inflation - it was an absolute scandal. Ideally the most egregious institutions should be shut down for corrupting the education system.
I do wonder why we need to keep trying to reimagine and rewrite what happened. Nobody wanted lockdown - especially the people who called for it and imposed it. Some of us found a perverse enjoyment of bits of it, some of us were driven to destruction by it - a few of us one then the other.
It happened. We had a disfunctional government led by a disfunctional wazzock. The public enquiry will go into all the details and come up with a list of findings which could be neatly summarised as any other previous PM rather than Shagger and we would have done a lot better.
Some of the PB right seem to think this enquiry is a kangaroo court. But your boy has been proven to be a kangaroo...
This photo will become iconic. It shows Palestinian protestors surrounding the poppy sellers in Charing X yesterday. All of Britain in some weird nutshell
You would expect house builders to brief against a politician, and policies which might well (if enthusiastically implemented) impact the profitability of their effective land monopolies, though.
I am a Starmer sceptic - but that means I’ll judge him once he’s in office, and not in advance.
It stands to reason though that private building companies will only build houses if they can sell them at a profit. Current circumstances have impacted that profitability and reduced sales.
The alternative is government funding, but neither national nor local government is in a financial position to spend big on housing.
So to increase house building we either need to reduce costs (for example lower specification) or restore private sector profitability.
Government acquiring land without planning gain squares some of that circle.
I do wonder why we need to keep trying to reimagine and rewrite what happened. Nobody wanted lockdown - especially the people who called for it and imposed it. Some of us found a perverse enjoyment of bits of it, some of us were driven to destruction by it - a few of us one then the other.
It happened. We had a disfunctional government led by a disfunctional wazzock. The public enquiry will go into all the details and come up with a list of findings which could be neatly summarised as any other previous PM rather than Shagger and we would have done a lot better.
Some of the PB right seem to think this enquiry is a kangaroo court. But your boy has been proven to be a kangaroo...
"...any other previous PM rather than Shagger and we would have done a lot better."
I am *far* from convinced about that; and it's a blase thing to say that hides a lot of failures by other people, groups and organisations.
So the deniers really need to be honest and say that their personal liberties were worth more than the lives of more or less half a million people, on the basis that "they would have died soon anyway."
There is a difference between going around licking all the door handles at an old folks' home and barricading yourself in your house for months on end just because Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and Matthew John David Hancock ordered you to do so.
Anybody who who reflexively obeyed the strictures of that pair of fucking clowns without engaging their own powers of discretion deserved everything they got.
That's all very well, but if there need to be restrictions for the common good, who else is there but the government to do the restricting, and if people choose not to obey them because ministers are clowns, what good does that do?
It seems to me your argument should be with the system of government/party of government/whatever that puts clowns like Johnson, Hancock and Co into government, not with the principle of having restrictions for the common good.
Of course, the fact that our system of government puts clowns into positions of authority is a problem - particularly acute in times of crisis, given the fact that clowns are incapable of making wise decisions. But it's a much more general problem, and a worldwide one. Nothing to do with COVID. Obviously replacing our system of professional politicians with sortition is the solution. But the real underlying problem is that people simply accept the current system.
Anyone here still think Sweden, which did not lock down, got it wrong? They relied on people adjusting their own behaviour in light of the known threat.
This photo will become iconic. It shows Palestinian protestors surrounding the poppy sellers in Charing X yesterday. All of Britain in some weird nutshell
The poppy stall seem more bemused, bored and irritated than frightened in that snap.
Ok, neck out time: I reckon the roiling culture wars over Gaza might eventually give us, after the next election but one, prime minister Suella Braverman
This photo will become iconic. It shows Palestinian protestors surrounding the poppy sellers in Charing X yesterday. All of Britain in some weird nutshell
The poppy stall seem more bemused, bored and irritated than frightened in that snap.
Incidentally, when the Covid outbreak first started, I mooted elsewhere that a government of national unity should be started for the duration of the crisis. Invite Starmer and two or three senior Labour figures in, along with some from the SNP, Welsh and NI parties.
I find it interesting to consider how that would have turned out. Probably badly, but I'd like to think they could have put politics to one side for a few months.
Incidentally, when the Covid outbreak first started, I mooted elsewhere that a government of national unity should be started for the duration of the crisis. Invite Starmer and two or three senior Labour figures in, along with some from the SNP, Welsh and NI parties.
I find it interesting to consider how that would have turned out. Probably badly, but I'd like to think they could have put politics to one side for a few months.
A good idea, in retrospect
The Tories could then have made starmer and sturgeon share some of the fiscal responsibility and poltical cost for the lockdowns they kept demanding
This photo will become iconic. It shows Palestinian protestors surrounding the poppy sellers in Charing X yesterday. All of Britain in some weird nutshell
The poppy stall seem more bemused, bored and irritated than frightened in that snap.
I don’t see fear either, I do see despair
I see a large number of people taking selfies. The Les Misc poster in the background is a nice touch. You can read anything you want into the picture; it’s a political rorschach test.
I don’t often wear poppies, as it’s a performative faff, but I do buy them. FWIW.
Ok, neck out time: I reckon the roiling culture wars over Gaza might eventually give us, after the next election but one, prime minister Suella Braverman
No sign of it shifting polling at all in the last month, and it is not likely that the current military or protest intensity will carry on long term. I don't think there is any real significance for British politics in the long term.
Just another further bit of misery for Israelis and Palestinians in a seemingly eternal war is what I forecast
So the deniers really need to be honest and say that their personal liberties were worth more than the lives of more or less half a million people, on the basis that "they would have died soon anyway."
There is a difference between going around licking all the door handles at an old folks' home and barricading yourself in your house for months on end just because Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and Matthew John David Hancock ordered you to do so.
Anybody who who reflexively obeyed the strictures of that pair of fucking clowns without engaging their own powers of discretion deserved everything they got.
The power of hindsight thinking.
It's not hindsight on my part. I pleased my-fucking-self the whole time.
I drove to Scotland via B roads just to get car parts zinc plated. LOL.
So the deniers really need to be honest and say that their personal liberties were worth more than the lives of more or less half a million people, on the basis that "they would have died soon anyway."
There is a difference between going around licking all the door handles at an old folks' home and barricading yourself in your house for months on end just because Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and Matthew John David Hancock ordered you to do so.
Anybody who who reflexively obeyed the strictures of that pair of fucking clowns without engaging their own powers of discretion deserved everything they got.
The power of hindsight thinking.
It's not hindsight on my part. I pleased my-fucking-self the whole time.
I drove to Scotland via B roads just to get car parts zinc plated. LOL.
Was that after you finished watching the last box set of Keeping up Appearances?
So the deniers really need to be honest and say that their personal liberties were worth more than the lives of more or less half a million people, on the basis that "they would have died soon anyway."
There is a difference between going around licking all the door handles at an old folks' home and barricading yourself in your house for months on end just because Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and Matthew John David Hancock ordered you to do so.
Anybody who who reflexively obeyed the strictures of that pair of fucking clowns without engaging their own powers of discretion deserved everything they got.
The power of hindsight thinking.
It's not hindsight on my part. I pleased my-fucking-self the whole time.
I drove to Scotland via B roads just to get car parts zinc plated. LOL.
I do wonder why we need to keep trying to reimagine and rewrite what happened. Nobody wanted lockdown - especially the people who called for it and imposed it. Some of us found a perverse enjoyment of bits of it, some of us were driven to destruction by it - a few of us one then the other.
It happened. We had a disfunctional government led by a disfunctional wazzock. The public enquiry will go into all the details and come up with a list of findings which could be neatly summarised as any other previous PM rather than Shagger and we would have done a lot better.
Some of the PB right seem to think this enquiry is a kangaroo court. But your boy has been proven to be a kangaroo...
"...any other previous PM rather than Shagger and we would have done a lot better."
I am *far* from convinced about that; and it's a blase thing to say that hides a lot of failures by other people, groups and organisations.
I am going off what the witnesses have said. Every single one of them has pointed to the PM and the chaos in Downing Street created by him as a massive contributing factor.
Covid would still have knocked us over as it did everyone else. But when people pointed to other countries doing better and blamed our lockdowns, what they should have been doing was blaming Boris Johnson.
There seems to be this weird PB right obsession with Keir Starmer - "he wanted more lockdowns" etc. Have any of the witnesses even fingered Starmer as a driver? An influencer? Even someone that Johnson was concerned about? There is only one man to blame for this, and that man is Boris Johnson.
Ok, neck out time: I reckon the roiling culture wars over Gaza might eventually give us, after the next election but one, prime minister Suella Braverman
It would take a big turnaround in her likeability. Even among Tory members she scores below Badenoch, Cleverly and (last time I checked) even Mordaunt. Among the general public she’s below Patel. She would also need a coherent economic vision. She’s showed no interest in economics to date. Unlike some of her “anti woke” rivals like Badenoch.
With one exception I can’t think of a PM who’s won a general election and who wasn’t at least slightly likeable. That one exception being Thatcher of course.
Thatcher got in due to Britain’s economy being in an abject state after a decade of oil price rises and industrial unrest. She had an economic vision, albeit a divisive one. If a Tory wins in 2029 I think it’ll be the economy that does it. Just as if Trump wins next year it’ll be the economy (and Le Pen in France).
Is Braverman collegiate enough to command the support of MPs and a shadow cabinet? No evidence of that yet.
I do wonder why we need to keep trying to reimagine and rewrite what happened. Nobody wanted lockdown - especially the people who called for it and imposed it. Some of us found a perverse enjoyment of bits of it, some of us were driven to destruction by it - a few of us one then the other.
It happened. We had a disfunctional government led by a disfunctional wazzock. The public enquiry will go into all the details and come up with a list of findings which could be neatly summarised as any other previous PM rather than Shagger and we would have done a lot better.
Some of the PB right seem to think this enquiry is a kangaroo court. But your boy has been proven to be a kangaroo...
"...any other previous PM rather than Shagger and we would have done a lot better."
I am *far* from convinced about that; and it's a blase thing to say that hides a lot of failures by other people, groups and organisations.
I am going off what the witnesses have said. Every single one of them has pointed to the PM and the chaos in Downing Street created by him as a massive contributing factor.
Covid would still have knocked us over as it did everyone else. But when people pointed to other countries doing better and blamed our lockdowns, what they should have been doing was blaming Boris Johnson.
There seems to be this weird PB right obsession with Keir Starmer - "he wanted more lockdowns" etc. Have any of the witnesses even fingered Starmer as a driver? An influencer? Even someone that Johnson was concerned about? There is only one man to blame for this, and that man is Boris Johnson.
Lots of witnesses saying “look, it wasn’t my fault” so far. And so far we have not had those accused having a chance to answer back.
Ok, neck out time: I reckon the roiling culture wars over Gaza might eventually give us, after the next election but one, prime minister Suella Braverman
No sign of it shifting polling at all in the last month, and it is not likely that the current military or protest intensity will carry on long term. I don't think there is any real significance for British politics in the long term.
Just another further bit of misery for Israelis and Palestinians in a seemingly eternal war is what I forecast
Ok my thinking is this
(And remember I’m really good at extrapolating and really bad at estimating the political futures of female Tory leadership candidates)
1. Starmer wins. But not with a total landslide, in the end a few voters get nervous (not least cause of the pro Hamas left he is desperately trying to silence)
2. He disappoints hugely in government. This seems almost certain. Our problems run deep and he appears to have no solutions; we’ve simply run out of money
3. As his first term rolls on the culture wars keep coming - the turbulence over Israel is the START of something bigger - one of these is a brutal national conversation about migration/crime/wokeness
4. Meanwhile the Tories have elected Braverman. She seems true to her name. Bravely willing to say stuff others won’t. In desperation at Starmer’s failure and insipidity in the culture wars voters look to her..
5. Through all this AI is hurling economies into even greater turmoil - eventually this will probably be good but there will be immediate pain for almost everyone
6. In such perilous times the British people feel that they have to take a punt on a hard right leader who might impose some kind of order. Braverman
I am tempted to add
7. Braverman fails. The nation sinks into even greater chaos. We elect GPT7 as our first AI premier. Democracy ends
This photo will become iconic. It shows Palestinian protestors surrounding the poppy sellers in Charing X yesterday. All of Britain in some weird nutshell
The poppy stall seem more bemused, bored and irritated than frightened in that snap.
Yes, from that one image, which is devoid of wider context of course, the front of the poppy stall is not blocked. I'd imagine it is more the repetitive chants that irritate the sellers. What is remarkable is the number of people in that photo taking selfies.
I do wonder why we need to keep trying to reimagine and rewrite what happened. Nobody wanted lockdown - especially the people who called for it and imposed it. Some of us found a perverse enjoyment of bits of it, some of us were driven to destruction by it - a few of us one then the other.
It happened. We had a disfunctional government led by a disfunctional wazzock. The public enquiry will go into all the details and come up with a list of findings which could be neatly summarised as any other previous PM rather than Shagger and we would have done a lot better.
Some of the PB right seem to think this enquiry is a kangaroo court. But your boy has been proven to be a kangaroo...
"...any other previous PM rather than Shagger and we would have done a lot better."
I am *far* from convinced about that; and it's a blase thing to say that hides a lot of failures by other people, groups and organisations.
I am going off what the witnesses have said. Every single one of them has pointed to the PM and the chaos in Downing Street created by him as a massive contributing factor.
Covid would still have knocked us over as it did everyone else. But when people pointed to other countries doing better and blamed our lockdowns, what they should have been doing was blaming Boris Johnson.
There seems to be this weird PB right obsession with Keir Starmer - "he wanted more lockdowns" etc. Have any of the witnesses even fingered Starmer as a driver? An influencer? Even someone that Johnson was concerned about? There is only one man to blame for this, and that man is Boris Johnson.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the witnesses are doing a little CYA action? *Their* decisions and advice was not to blame; it's all someone else's fault. Yes, as PM Boris has to take ultimate responsibility, but there's sure as heck a lot fo people shifting their own responsibility up to him.
"when people pointed to other countries doing better"
It was stupid to point at other countries and screech that they were doing better during the pandemic; because starting points were different, societies were different, and the spread of the virus, including the types, were different. It was infantile.
And yes, Starmer should be criticised for that. it's an indication that a Starmer-led government may have made some hideously poor decisions. Which is actually excusable, in a way, because *no* government would *not* have made some hideously poor decisions, given the little we knew.
Ok, neck out time: I reckon the roiling culture wars over Gaza might eventually give us, after the next election but one, prime minister Suella Braverman
Naah. For the hardcore little Englander right, she isn't properly English. And in calling for tents to be criminalised she is directly attacking our homeless veterans that so exercises these people on social media.
What is clearly brewing is a reckoning for the crank anti-semite left and nut-job anti-semite radical muslims. They think that the people of Britain will back them, and won't notice (like that moron Laura Pidcock) who is organising the marches they are going on. Not true.
There is no good side and bad side to the Israel Palestine mess - both can be both. And whatever is going on over there, we have people over here increasingly scared and threatened. British people. In Britain. In 2023. In fear - with good reason - for being Jewish.
This has to be stopped. Because whatever the rights and wrongs of Israel Gaza, nobody is making British people be in fear because they are muslim. No hate groups abusing and attacking muslims over Hamas. As usual the jews are singled out.
This photo will become iconic. It shows Palestinian protestors surrounding the poppy sellers in Charing X yesterday. All of Britain in some weird nutshell
The poppy stall seem more bemused, bored and irritated than frightened in that snap.
I don’t see fear either, I do see despair
Interestingly I think people on the far right and left of politics would like you to think this is all of Britain in one photo. Actually it’s missing the vast cohort in the middle who have little in common with anyone on that picture.
Working age broadly middle class Brits between 30 and 60, many of which are swing voters, most with children but not yet grandchildren, not averse to buying a poppy and sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but wary of antisemitism. At risk of being drowned out by the culture war the Braverman and Owen Jones tendencies are so desperate to foment.
Ok, neck out time: I reckon the roiling culture wars over Gaza might eventually give us, after the next election but one, prime minister Suella Braverman
I doubt it. Not because the seams aren't there to exploit - but because she's bad at it. An interesting outside bet along those lines might be Priti Patel. Much longer odds. Will be less associated with the coming defeat, is a Boris loyalist (so could maybe do a deal to gain his support), and pretty much has similar politics without the tendency to cross the line from 'hardliner' to crazy.
And there will be a lot of Tory MPs for whom the next leadership election will be entirely about stopping Braverman at any cost - although the more likely beneficiary of that may be Badenoch who you sense is the right-winger Tory moderates could stomach more easily.
This photo will become iconic. It shows Palestinian protestors surrounding the poppy sellers in Charing X yesterday. All of Britain in some weird nutshell
The poppy stall seem more bemused, bored and irritated than frightened in that snap.
I don’t see fear either, I do see despair
I see a large number of people taking selfies. The Les Misc poster in the background is a nice touch. You can read anything you want into the picture; it’s a political rorschach test.
I don’t often wear poppies, as it’s a performative faff, but I do buy them. FWIW.
Yes, the complex ambiguity in the photo is its genius. So many rich details. It’s like the Manchester pub brawl photo
I don't know anyone who died of covid, or who had a really bad bout of it and ended up in hospital. I "heard" about friends of friends or bloke down the road's fifth cousin twice removed who died, but I have no way of verifying that. A couple of elderly neighbours passed away in hospital during the pandemic, as did my father in law, but they were all late seventies/eighties and had plenty of ongoing illnesses and none of them died from covid. I think the government did what they had to do initially, bearing in mind that we didn't really know what we were dealing with. I'll cut them a lot of slack for the first lockdown and the masks and social distancing and getting on with vaccine production. Everything else, the partying, the incompetence, the absolutely disgusting PPE purchasing scandals, the harebrained schemes, the lies, the trips to Durham Castle....they all deserve as much shite as we can pile onto them.
So the deniers really need to be honest and say that their personal liberties were worth more than the lives of more or less half a million people, on the basis that "they would have died soon anyway."
There is a difference between going around licking all the door handles at an old folks' home and barricading yourself in your house for months on end just because Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and Matthew John David Hancock ordered you to do so.
Anybody who who reflexively obeyed the strictures of that pair of fucking clowns without engaging their own powers of discretion deserved everything they got.
The power of hindsight thinking.
It's not hindsight on my part. I pleased my-fucking-self the whole time.
I drove to Scotland via B roads just to get car parts zinc plated. LOL.
Public health policy by necessity accounts for the odd maverick. And on you own admission, society wouldn’t function at all if everyone were you. So while you’re right about your own case, generalising from the particular is… problematic.
Ok, neck out time: I reckon the roiling culture wars over Gaza might eventually give us, after the next election but one, prime minister Suella Braverman
Naah. For the hardcore little Englander right, she isn't properly English. And in calling for tents to be criminalised she is directly attacking our homeless veterans that so exercises these people on social media.
What is clearly brewing is a reckoning for the crank anti-semite left and nut-job anti-semite radical muslims. They think that the people of Britain will back them, and won't notice (like that moron Laura Pidcock) who is organising the marches they are going on. Not true.
There is no good side and bad side to the Israel Palestine mess - both can be both. And whatever is going on over there, we have people over here increasingly scared and threatened. British people. In Britain. In 2023. In fear - with good reason - for being Jewish.
This has to be stopped. Because whatever the rights and wrongs of Israel Gaza, nobody is making British people be in fear because they are muslim. No hate groups abusing and attacking muslims over Hamas. As usual the jews are singled out.
Of course you could easily be right. I’ve sketched out my thinking re Braverman upthread. Its a fool’s errand making predix two elections ahead but fun, nonetheless
Incidentally I have a personal question - which, of course, you have no obligation to answer
Your firm convictions on Hamas/Gaza are slightly surprising. Are you Jewish? Or married to a Jewish person, etc?
The trouble with COVID restrictions, and I think even the enquiry is on danger of going down this rabbit hole, is it has become a very reductive debate about too strict or too lax. Even ithe absurdities of individual quickly and badly thought through restrictions have been subsumed to that overall debate.
The question of did we have the right restrictions at the right times, the agility to iron out absurdities and adjust messaging against what was actually happening, did we do things in a timely fashion. Did we nimbly do all that was necessary and ditch all that was not.
To me many of the issues relate to those broader questions rather than one dimensional lockdown or not and the ability to do the right things at the right time or, if you didn't know at the outset, course correct to the right things, would have had a significant beneficial effect on the scope and tolerability of lockdowns for many.
COVID: Vaccines were good, everything else was a * up.
We now have an inquiry which will cost hundreds of £m, go on til 2027 minimum and from which no lessons will be learned.
Pretty much agree. The Nightingale hospital plan seemed pretty good as well though, although we were fortunate to never need to use them to see that tested.
My wife, along with a number of other doctors at her company (a large pharmaceutical company) volunteered to man vaccination venues and Nightingale hospitals, but were told they would be more useful carrying on their day jobs, which weren't Covid related, for the time being. I assume, therefore, there (or am I being naive) was a plan also to call on extra medical resources if needed.
This photo will become iconic. It shows Palestinian protestors surrounding the poppy sellers in Charing X yesterday. All of Britain in some weird nutshell
The poppy stall seem more bemused, bored and irritated than frightened in that snap.
I don’t see fear either, I do see despair
I see a large number of people taking selfies. The Les Misc poster in the background is a nice touch. You can read anything you want into the picture; it’s a political rorschach test.
I don’t often wear poppies, as it’s a performative faff, but I do buy them. FWIW.
Yes, the complex ambiguity in the photo is its genius. So many rich details. It’s like the Manchester pub brawl photo
The woman who took the pub brawl photo was also the photographer behind that picture of Starmer with the glitter on him at conference.
My perfectly healthy 20-something neighbours were very grateful for the summer of sunbathing on furlough cheques, but this hasn't translated into long-term support for the Conservatives - tens of billions squandered at the wrong time in the electoral cycle that our kids will be paying back.
The government's strategy of terrifying people about a virus with a measly 99.8% recovery rate (>99.9% for under 70s) blew up in its face. On this, they deserve everything they get, though of course Labour would have been far worse, and indeed were in Wales, for no obvious benefit. At least the Conservatives took the right decision on Omicron though. Starmer would probably still have us in lockdown. That alone should disqualify him from ever becoming PM.
Mainly because they were concerned with a real virus, and not a fantasy one with fantasy numbers that you, for some reason, persist in repeating.
In the real world, by the end of December 2020, c. 10% of the country had been infected. Somewhat over 4% of those infected had been so ill they'd been hospitalised, and c. 1% of those infected had died.
Of those infected, between a fifth and a quarter were 54 and under.
If this, in Fishing-maths, equates to "a... 99.8% recovery rate (>99.9% for under 70s)", then we really need to scrutinise any other stats you've calculated.
The reason for the issue was, as said repeatedly in all of the witness testimony, that the NHS would collapse if it needed to deal with that many people simultaneously, and when the real figures for infectivity and exponential growth, coupled with the real figures for those needing hospitalisation, they needed to do something serious.
Because, as they said repeatedly in the witness testimony, if we destroy the NHS, everyone who relies on it for anything (and even in the depths of covid, 70%+ of NHS activity was on non-covid healthcare) will be in a lot of problems.
Not to mention the economic chaos and destruction, but the "no, no, nothing happened, just a sniffle, shut up" tendency just prefer to pretend that everything would have swum on serenely, don't they?
Across 51 locations, the median COVID-19 infection fatality rate was 0.27% (corrected 0.23%): the rate was 0.09% in locations with COVID-19 population mortality rates less than the global average (< 118 deaths/million), 0.20% in locations with 118–500 COVID-19 deaths/million people and 0.57% in locations with > 500 COVID-19 deaths/million people. In people younger than 70 years, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.31% with crude and corrected medians of 0.05%.
Of course those numbers will have declined as, completely predictably, successive variants have been milder.
That's Ioannidis, who has been comprehensively wrong about pretty much everything with the pandemic, and whose figures are isolated out at one extreme away from every other one - including the measured outcome here.
Why would you cherry-pick a single number that's so far out from all the others, and demonstrably at variance with how things actually unfolded?
We had 10% infected by end Dec 2020 - the ONS survey showed this, both from their prevalence studies and their antibody studies.
The number hospitalised in England (population 56.5 million; 10% of which is 5.65 million) by one week later than that was 263,064. That's 4.66% The number dead with covid in England by 9 days after that (c 16 days for pop. effects) was 95,116. If 80% of deaths with covid on the death certificate were due to covid (as measured over time), that 76,100/5,650,000 = 1.35%
All right, I suppose maybe all those deaths were from some other reason and just coincidentally had covid on the death certificate and fooled all the doctors and coroners. Maybe they just happened to die of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome from a respiratpry disease and coincidentally had SARS-CoV-2 in their bloodstream at the time.
But arguing that we did actually have some mysterious thing killing so many people (as shown by excess deaths) at exactly the same time that correlated so perfectly with being SARS-CoV-2 positive and responded to NPIs and treatments (and, later, vaccination against SARS-CoV-2) so directly... really does break my suspension of disbelief, I'm afraid.
Ok, neck out time: I reckon the roiling culture wars over Gaza might eventually give us, after the next election but one, prime minister Suella Braverman
Naah. For the hardcore little Englander right, she isn't properly English. And in calling for tents to be criminalised she is directly attacking our homeless veterans that so exercises these people on social media.
What is clearly brewing is a reckoning for the crank anti-semite left and nut-job anti-semite radical muslims. They think that the people of Britain will back them, and won't notice (like that moron Laura Pidcock) who is organising the marches they are going on. Not true.
There is no good side and bad side to the Israel Palestine mess - both can be both. And whatever is going on over there, we have people over here increasingly scared and threatened. British people. In Britain. In 2023. In fear - with good reason - for being Jewish.
This has to be stopped. Because whatever the rights and wrongs of Israel Gaza, nobody is making British people be in fear because they are muslim. No hate groups abusing and attacking muslims over Hamas. As usual the jews are singled out.
The word "attack" is doing some heavy lifting there. Jews are not being assaulted. Jewish businesses are not being vandalised (there was an early report of one restaurant but in hindsight that looked more like robbery). There has been some graffiti, some vexatious chanting. Oddly, McDonalds is blamed (and has seen a couple of mice-chucking incidents) which says something about the gullibility and stupidity of the social media generation. Yes there has been an increase in recorded antisemitism (and islamaphobia) but let us not overegg the pudding for fear of making things worse.
This photo will become iconic. It shows Palestinian protestors surrounding the poppy sellers in Charing X yesterday. All of Britain in some weird nutshell
The poppy stall seem more bemused, bored and irritated than frightened in that snap.
Yes, from that one image, which is devoid of wider context of course, the front of the poppy stall is not blocked. I'd imagine it is more the repetitive chants that irritate the sellers. What is remarkable is the number of people in that photo taking selfies.
I also find it hearteningly and amusingly British that the protesters have left a gap around the stall out of apparent politeness.
This photo will become iconic. It shows Palestinian protestors surrounding the poppy sellers in Charing X yesterday. All of Britain in some weird nutshell
The poppy stall seem more bemused, bored and irritated than frightened in that snap.
Yes, from that one image, which is devoid of wider context of course, the front of the poppy stall is not blocked. I'd imagine it is more the repetitive chants that irritate the sellers. What is remarkable is the number of people in that photo taking selfies.
I also find it hearteningly and amusingly British that the protesters have left a gap around the stall out of apparent politeness.
I can assure you the reaction of 80% of Brits to that photo will not be a chuckle and “oh that’s hearteningly and amusingly British”
On-topic: the lockdowns, aside from the healthcare and economic consequences, were also a very rare case of the extroverted being forced to act in a much more introverted manner. Studies should be done into how many, and to what extent, people were affected by this. That should then have some (secondary) weight for future pandemic countermeasure consideration.
Of course, the inquiry should be focused on how best to proceed in the future.
The inquiry has already reached its conclusion.
I can tell you now it will conclude we should have locked down harder, earlier, stronger and with tougher sanctions, that the scientists weren't listened to, that next time they should, and it will otherwise focus on the trivia of WhatsApp messages sent by easy to dislike politicians, who'll be put in the stocks, and excuse those of civil servants and advisors.
To the extent it does focus on the future none of the lessons will be learned by those who need to learn them.
The more nuanced approach that @rcs1000 alludes to or a serious assessment of damage to education, young people, or wider mental health and healthcare won't feature.
Interestingly, the conclusion I get from what I've read was that:
1 - You could have avoided lockdowns completely, in theory, but this was probably impractical for the first one as we just wouldn't have taken on board what was needed. 2 - The administrative setup was far too inflexible and slow to react in both directions 3 - They failed to take on board the needs of many segments of the population, including those who were poorer, did not have much room, did not have gardens, were pregnant, or had children 4 - The capacity to carry out proper cost-benefit analyses wasn't there 5 - Scientists were as slow to react to the severity of the disease and believe in what could and could not be done as anyone else 6 - There was a complete failure to properly assess which interventions worked best and which were least effective. It was highlighted that the failure to allow people to meet up carefully out of doors all along was serious.
... and so on. Seriously, I'd recommend reading them.
On 5, scienitists were also too slow to acknowledge the evidence from South Africa that there was a new variant that was very contagious but also far less lethal. That was the time to open up.
There were also those trying to play politics with Covid. Drakeford, Sturgeon and Starmer all stand accused of this.
Any politician that didn’t have to pay for lockdown was in favour of more and longer lockdowns. Unsurprising, but still a black mark against Starmer, et al
It was so scary that he was calling for restrictions to stay in place in Summer 2021, when apparently “The Johnson Variant” was out of control - turns out it was nothing to worry about
He’d been boozing inside with his colleagues a month or so earlier, but apparently the virus wasn’t as deadly when you’d been doing zoom calls, so he was ok
This photo will become iconic. It shows Palestinian protestors surrounding the poppy sellers in Charing X yesterday. All of Britain in some weird nutshell
The poppy stall seem more bemused, bored and irritated than frightened in that snap.
Yes, from that one image, which is devoid of wider context of course, the front of the poppy stall is not blocked. I'd imagine it is more the repetitive chants that irritate the sellers. What is remarkable is the number of people in that photo taking selfies.
I also find it hearteningly and amusingly British that the protesters have left a gap around the stall out of apparent politeness.
I can assure you the reaction of 80% of Brits to that photo will not be a chuckle and “oh that’s hearteningly and amusingly British”
No, it will be same as those manning the stall: A baffled, mildly irritated sigh.
Comments
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34609261/
Not altogether surprising the graph is suspect given it's published by the CATO institute, which among other things shilled for Donald Trump in 2016 (although a number of its members have had second thoughts since) advocates the privatisation of the US education system and is one of the leading organisations involved in climate change denial.
See Oliver Johnson’s twitter and now substack for more.
There were also those trying to play politics with Covid. Drakeford, Sturgeon and Starmer all stand accused of this.
If Oliver Johnson wants to submit his work to peer review in a journal, I will be happy to look at it.
At the time, the virus took around 7 days to become symptomatic, the requirement for medical intervention was (on average) a further 10 days away, whilst the median stay in hospital before discharge or death was 7 days.
Government data for England shows deaths from Covid peaking between 8th (the actual peak day) and 12th April. As this is just 13 to 17 days after lockdown was introduced, it clearly shows that lockdown was not the driving factor in controlling the disease.
In short, lockdown could prove to be the most costly mistake this country has made in my lifetime.
You can go read the peer-reviewed literature and see what it says for yourself. Most of the literature here is open access. If there are any papers behind a paywall, drop me a note and I’ll get them for you.
(Reminds me obliquely of the poster back in the days when PB had ads who complained that PB was hosting lots of Thai bride and Russian 'hostess' ads, until it was pointed out that the ad profile was individualised to your Google(?) search history. I think said poster departed soon after - can't remember who it was now tbh.)
The debate we are having I think ebcapsulates the whole government response to covid. I believe that allowing more economic activity, including trying to boost an industry that had been closed down by government, was worth a few more cases, especially when other factors at the time were far more significant. You don’t agree, and that’s fine.
(eg Kucharski, here: https://twitter.com/adamjkucharski/status/1569235844682194944)
If you're taking action to reduce infections significantly, then an individual time to death can be 25 days and the population time about 16 days, for example (because you're overlaying a distribution, not a fixed time).
In addition, if you get R down less, you'll decrease less, and remain at a high loading for a considerable time.
(This stuff has been analysed quite a bit, which is gratifying).
The debate we are having I think ebcas Check out his substack (or don’t, if you only count peer reviewed stuff).
A chaotic, inconsistent, and voluntary lockdown could and would disrupt the economy hugely, and with no control over what remained open (eg essential services) and what did not. And would likely have less effect on reducing R.
It wasn't between restrictions and continuing on regardless. It was between controlled restrictions and uncontrolled restrictions.
(And all the "Sweden" talk:
1 - Tegnell told the Government in September not to try it
2 - It's not like we leapt straight into lockdown every time, anyway. We tried limited restrictions, local lockdowns, Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, "Rule of 6", and failed each time. Partly due to the Scotch Egg tendency, to be honest)
- You can edit your post to remove the extraneous bit. I often need to do this.
- You can delete previous drafts from https://vf.politicalbetting.com/drafts
- You can petition @rcs1000 to try to reduce the over-aggressive caching of comment drafts
Good luck.I don't think the answer here lies in financial engineering. It comes from either wage growth or cost cutting making house building profitable.
For all of Boris’ corruption and incompetence, I would still prefer someone at the top who was instinctively hostile to restrictions, as opposed to someone who was enthusiastic about them, like Mark Drakeford.
The data came from Statistics Sweden (like our ONS), as it says in the footnote.
We should respond by scuttling HMS Prince of Wales in the Taiwan Strait.
Whether this lockdown was right or wrong, or that restriction too strict at that time, I think, is neither here nor there really. Beyond identifying mistakes made, with hindsight, so we don't make those mistakes again or so that we can find better ways of doing things, I don't think it's all that useful picking over the bones. We won the COVID war but we are losing the peace badly.
That's because we'd see ministers and the PM saying things were fine and another lockdown wasn't going to happen - before cycling through local lockdowns to full ones. It's easy to see how someone can come to believe the answer was that reckless ministers weren't tough enough, because it's partly true. Just that the answer may well have been smarter, lighter restrictions throughout that avoided the need to lockdown instead of hoping we wouldn't have to, watching infections rise alarmingly and then swinging the other way.
You can argue about whether that estimate should be halved or doubled. But it would have happened over a couple of months, and given that the NHS was pretty near to its capacity even with the benefit of lockdown, I doubt that attempts to reduce it by much will produce much credibility.
So the deniers really need to be honest and say that their personal liberties were worth more than the lives of more or less half a million people, on the basis that "they would have died soon anyway."
Perhaps there is nothing wrong with an argument like that in today's world. But if so it needs to be argued honestly.
Anybody who who reflexively obeyed the strictures of that pair of fucking clowns without engaging their own powers of discretion deserved everything they got.
The NIH reports a fatility rate of 0.2% here, equalling 0.05% in those under 70:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7947934/
Across 51 locations, the median COVID-19 infection fatality rate was 0.27% (corrected 0.23%): the rate was 0.09% in locations with COVID-19 population mortality rates less than the global average (< 118 deaths/million), 0.20% in locations with 118–500 COVID-19 deaths/million people and 0.57% in locations with > 500 COVID-19 deaths/million people. In people younger than 70 years, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.31% with crude and corrected medians of 0.05%.
Of course those numbers will have declined as, completely predictably, successive variants have been milder.
It happened. We had a disfunctional government led by a disfunctional wazzock. The public enquiry will go into all the details and come up with a list of findings which could be neatly summarised as any other previous PM rather than Shagger and we would have done a lot better.
Some of the PB right seem to think this enquiry is a kangaroo court. But your boy has been proven to be a kangaroo...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-suspends-from-cabinet-meetings-minister-who-touted-option-of-nuking-gaza/
It seems a mark of Netanyahu’s political weakness that he wasn’t sacked.
I am *far* from convinced about that; and it's a blase thing to say that hides a lot of failures by other people, groups and organisations.
So Bibi’s war cabinet does have red lines, after all. You can’t go round suggesting nuclear warfare. Good to know
It seems to me your argument should be with the system of government/party of government/whatever that puts clowns like Johnson, Hancock and Co into government, not with the principle of having restrictions for the common good.
Of course, the fact that our system of government puts clowns into positions of authority is a problem - particularly acute in times of crisis, given the fact that clowns are incapable of making wise decisions. But it's a much more general problem, and a worldwide one. Nothing to do with COVID. Obviously replacing our system of professional politicians with sortition is the solution. But the real underlying problem is that people simply accept the current system.
I’d imagine Israel’s instant sunshine is in better order than Russia’s.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/cricket/67278614
We now have an inquiry which will cost hundreds of £m, go on til 2027 minimum and from which no lessons will be learned.
I find it interesting to consider how that would have turned out. Probably badly, but I'd like to think they could have put politics to one side for a few months.
The Tories could then have made starmer and sturgeon share some of the fiscal responsibility and poltical cost for the lockdowns they kept demanding
You can read anything you want into the picture; it’s a political rorschach test.
I don’t often wear poppies, as it’s a performative faff, but I do buy them. FWIW.
Just another further bit of misery for Israelis and Palestinians in a seemingly eternal war is what I forecast
I drove to Scotland via B roads just to get car parts zinc plated. LOL.
Covid would still have knocked us over as it did everyone else. But when people pointed to other countries doing better and blamed our lockdowns, what they should have been doing was blaming Boris Johnson.
There seems to be this weird PB right obsession with Keir Starmer - "he wanted more lockdowns" etc. Have any of the witnesses even fingered Starmer as a driver? An influencer? Even someone that Johnson was concerned about? There is only one man to blame for this, and that man is Boris Johnson.
With one exception I can’t think of a PM who’s won a general election and who wasn’t at least slightly likeable. That one exception being Thatcher of course.
Thatcher got in due to Britain’s economy being in an abject state after a decade of oil price rises and industrial unrest. She had an economic vision, albeit a divisive one. If a Tory wins in 2029 I think it’ll be the economy that does it. Just as if Trump wins next year it’ll be the economy (and Le Pen in France).
Is Braverman collegiate enough to command the support of MPs and a shadow cabinet? No evidence of that yet.
I’m currently thinking Cleverly for next leader.
(And remember I’m really good at extrapolating and really bad at estimating the political futures of female Tory leadership candidates)
1. Starmer wins. But not with a total landslide, in the end a few voters get nervous (not least cause of the pro Hamas left he is desperately trying to silence)
2. He disappoints hugely in government. This seems almost certain. Our problems run deep and he appears to have no solutions; we’ve simply run out of money
3. As his first term rolls on the culture wars keep coming - the turbulence over Israel is the START of something bigger - one of these is a brutal national conversation about migration/crime/wokeness
4. Meanwhile the Tories have elected Braverman. She seems true to her name. Bravely willing to say stuff others won’t. In desperation at Starmer’s failure and insipidity in the culture wars voters look to her..
5. Through all this AI is hurling economies into even greater turmoil - eventually this will probably be good but there will be immediate pain for almost everyone
6. In such perilous times the British people feel that they have to take a punt on a hard right leader who might impose some kind of order. Braverman
I am tempted to add
7. Braverman fails. The nation sinks into even greater chaos. We elect GPT7 as our first AI premier. Democracy ends
"when people pointed to other countries doing better"
It was stupid to point at other countries and screech that they were doing better during the pandemic; because starting points were different, societies were different, and the spread of the virus, including the types, were different. It was infantile.
And yes, Starmer should be criticised for that. it's an indication that a Starmer-led government may have made some hideously poor decisions. Which is actually excusable, in a way, because *no* government would *not* have made some hideously poor decisions, given the little we knew.
What is clearly brewing is a reckoning for the crank anti-semite left and nut-job anti-semite radical muslims. They think that the people of Britain will back them, and won't notice (like that moron Laura Pidcock) who is organising the marches they are going on. Not true.
There is no good side and bad side to the Israel Palestine mess - both can be both. And whatever is going on over there, we have people over here increasingly scared and threatened. British people. In Britain. In 2023. In fear - with good reason - for being Jewish.
This has to be stopped. Because whatever the rights and wrongs of Israel Gaza, nobody is making British people be in fear because they are muslim. No hate groups abusing and attacking muslims over Hamas. As usual the jews are singled out.
Working age broadly middle class Brits between 30 and 60, many of which are swing voters, most with children but not yet grandchildren, not averse to buying a poppy and sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but wary of antisemitism. At risk of being drowned out by the culture war the Braverman and Owen Jones tendencies are so desperate to foment.
And there will be a lot of Tory MPs for whom the next leadership election will be entirely about stopping Braverman at any cost - although the more likely beneficiary of that may be Badenoch who you sense is the right-winger Tory moderates could stomach more easily.
I think the government did what they had to do initially, bearing in mind that we didn't really know what we were dealing with. I'll cut them a lot of slack for the first lockdown and the masks and social distancing and getting on with vaccine production.
Everything else, the partying, the incompetence, the absolutely disgusting PPE purchasing scandals, the harebrained schemes, the lies, the trips to Durham Castle....they all deserve as much shite as we can pile onto them.
And on you own admission, society wouldn’t function at all if everyone were you. So while you’re right about your own case, generalising from the particular is… problematic.
Also you’re an irrational vaccine phobe.
Incidentally I have a personal question - which, of course, you have no obligation to answer
Your firm convictions on Hamas/Gaza are slightly surprising. Are you Jewish? Or married to a Jewish person, etc?
The question of did we have the right restrictions at the right times, the agility to iron out absurdities and adjust messaging against what was actually happening, did we do things in a timely fashion. Did we nimbly do all that was necessary and ditch all that was not.
To me many of the issues relate to those broader questions rather than one dimensional lockdown or not and the ability to do the right things at the right time or, if you didn't know at the outset, course correct to the right things, would have had a significant beneficial effect on the scope and tolerability of lockdowns for many.
My wife, along with a number of other doctors at her company (a large pharmaceutical company) volunteered to man vaccination venues and Nightingale hospitals, but were told they would be more useful carrying on their day jobs, which weren't Covid related, for the time being. I assume, therefore, there (or am I being naive) was a plan also to call on extra medical resources if needed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvL_C5N4-C0&list=OLAK5uy_mtDMN9Yma1rJXgNDE7BBdt2I8gmsMpMfY&index=2
https://x.com/sundersays/status/1721107432175173961?s=46
In this crisis I think “both sides equally” and “don’t know” are very reasonable positions.
Why would you cherry-pick a single number that's so far out from all the others, and demonstrably at variance with how things actually unfolded?
We had 10% infected by end Dec 2020 - the ONS survey showed this, both from their prevalence studies and their antibody studies.
The number hospitalised in England (population 56.5 million; 10% of which is 5.65 million) by one week later than that was 263,064. That's 4.66%
The number dead with covid in England by 9 days after that (c 16 days for pop. effects) was 95,116. If 80% of deaths with covid on the death certificate were due to covid (as measured over time), that 76,100/5,650,000 = 1.35%
All right, I suppose maybe all those deaths were from some other reason and just coincidentally had covid on the death certificate and fooled all the doctors and coroners. Maybe they just happened to die of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome from a respiratpry disease and coincidentally had SARS-CoV-2 in their bloodstream at the time.
But arguing that we did actually have some mysterious thing killing so many people (as shown by excess deaths) at exactly the same time that correlated so perfectly with being SARS-CoV-2 positive and responded to NPIs and treatments (and, later, vaccination against SARS-CoV-2) so directly... really does break my suspension of disbelief, I'm afraid.
https://brusselssignal.eu/2023/10/le-pens-rassemblement-national-tops-frances-2024-eu-elections-poll/
She must be favourite to win in 2027
He’d been boozing inside with his colleagues a month or so earlier, but apparently the virus wasn’t as deadly when you’d been doing zoom calls, so he was ok