Rishi Sunac blames scientists for lockdown!

@swimfeeders ,lm talking on a world scale Swimmy, not a ward scale !
I know it sounds bad as my daughter got whooping cough when she
was a toddler !!But l think history will record covid as an over reaction by
leaders world wide, a sort of self induced hysteria ??
Populations seem to be prone to this these days, probably due to over
crowding in cities etc ??it can become more infectious than covid !!
:frowning::frowning::frowning:

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In fairness, I don’t think that world leaders (especially the elected ones thus on a temporary contract) really had much choice?

@Dextrous63 , How come ??
Lockdown is now a dirty. word generally, with little effect on hospital
admissions ! To me that means it was unecassary and the scientific
evidence was misinterpreted on to the over cautious side??
However, it was done, and we pay the price now !
Rishi blew all our credit rating too quickly and by too much ??
We now have little that can be borrowed to fend off this energy crisis !!l
I think Rishi has learned a hard lesson about economics here, at our
expense of course ??
I dont think Hammond would have made the same mistake ??
:-1::frowning::-1:

At the time we had a somewhat virulent outbreak of a virus which we had no real understanding of in terms of mortality nor long term health detrimental rates. IIRC early figures were hinting at killing a small but statistically not insignificant number of people. Since a government’s first role is to protect its population, it had to react. Hindsight alone suggests it was perhaps an overreaction. But at the time a “que sera sera, let them eat poisoned cake” was never going to cut the mustard.

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The first lockdown was definitely necessary and should have commenced sooner, but Bo didn’t believe the science. Later lockdowns, I’m not so sure they were necessary. The Government should have been proactive in sorting out NHS capacity. However, their hands were tied by what was happening in other countries. So you have the knock on effect of years of non investment in training doctors and nurses here or disincentivising them from staying in the NHS. e.g. lack of nursing bursary, Brexit reductions due to staff leaving the country, lack of tax incentives for consultants to stay in post. Staff sickness and hygiene requirements (e.g. longer time for appointments due to clinical deep cleans) PPE constrictions (leading to more staff sickness). etc. at the same time they could not urgently seek staff from abroad due to covid restrictions stopping people coming over here to work.

so to say the science was wrong is lip service to what some tory membership would like to hear, membership who are not interested in the detail or truth.

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@AnnieS @ Dextrose, l disagree, Why then when the virus was first
discovered in China, werent the western tourists in China at that time
put in isolation for 30:days as a precaution, as the science should have
insisted ?? Instead flights were arranged to fetch them back quickly ??
This would have been against medical advice surely, but nothing was
mentioned at the time ??
They were transported home to spread the virus far and wide ??
Once they got here , only then, did the science come into play !!
To me that indicates that both science and politics failed to anylise
events properly?? :-1::grin::grin::-1:
BTW Annie, l tend towards socialism and could never be described as Tory😩

Think we might just have to agree to differ DMan. The virus was always going to spread globally since initial containment was impossible.

It also seemed to be killing people. No reasonable and accountable government would turn a blind eye.

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@Dextrous63 , Yeah well we will do that then . :grin::grin:

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The Chinese did not take this seriously back in Dec/Jan 2020. A chinese friend said people in the towns surrounding the outbreak were not told anything, when we already knew about it here. So they were happily spreading it well before they realised it was going to be a pandemic. Over here they had seen SARs in Asia which had not spread further and become a pandemic. So there were conflicting opinions in the global scientific community right at the start.

Now if they had contained it in China and made a fuss to close borders here to stop spread, there would be an uproar if they had been successful in containing spread. Do you remember the fallout of the swine flu and bird flu warnings? East Asia had it’s own epidemic with SARS and deaths back in the noughties. We were not affected then. This was a different ballgame but you can’t blame anyone for thinking that this was another SARS. Although before reluctantly announcing a lockdown Bo knew well in advance that it was far more than another SARS. The evidence on replication rates was there in mid to late January.

There was inertia because the knowledge of how big this would be simply paralysed government decision making. Deer caught in headlights…

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@AnnieS , Then we were extremely lucky that it was not a really deadly
disease we were dealing with !
If it had been then the death toll could have been in the hundreds of millions
not the few millions we have now ??
This sort of thing is the reason for quarantine and the existance
of the WHO !! :-1::-1:

It was a really deadly disease 6.4m people have died over two and a half years. Also devastating for many who survive. Look at Derek Garraway.

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@AnnieS , in the context of an over 7 Billion world population it is neglidgible !!
You must learn not to personalise everything !! :roll_eyes::roll_eyes:

As said earlier, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

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Thankfully the virus turned out to be a million times less serious than was first thought.

And Boris, along with his scientists played safe, if a little unfair. Lockdown enforcements were taken seriously by most of the country, whilst here in the capital, London transport kept running, the City kept ticking over, the film industry kept filming, and the powers that be kept at it. Unfortunately our rulers will only be remembered for their partying.

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@Dextrous63 , You wont believe this, but l said all this in the first two
weeks when the tourists were still out there !!
Just look up the archives of the covid thread !! :grin::grin::grin:

Must I?

… as Oates left the tent he said, “I am just going outside and may be some time.”

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@Dextrous63 , No you dont have to, but my point was that if an old fart
like me could have enough foresight to see the ramifications of ignoring
basic rules of pandemic control , Why couldnt the experts and leaders
see the the same things ?? :roll_eyes::roll_eyes:

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Yep. I’ve always thought that if everybody on the planet could have stayed at home for the same 3 weeks, then there never would have been a pandemic as the virus would have died out as there was nowhere for it to go.

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May I join you :laughing:

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Hi

Just as an aside we had 4 arrivals yesterday, 3 awaiting results of COVID tests as they all had symptoms.

3 are positive and as we are an enhanced care ward we are in strict lockdown now

I am lucky in that I have been in isolation since arriving as I have been infectious.