We need to talk about Lockdown
I guess what I feel most is anger.
I get cross when I have to queue outside a shop that looks empty through the window.
It annoys me when they enforce one-way systems that cause congestion, and I could otherwise fly around the isles and be out in less time than I’m currently spending stood next to these same randomers.
It pisses me off when I see posts from those who believe blindly following rules is somehow morally superior to thinking.
It terrifies me that 85% of the population back this lockdown. It’s worse than Brexit. I’m used to being in the minority, but this is ridiculous.
And these people are imprisoning me. Because they bought in to austerity and ravaged the NHS.
Now they’re buying into lockdown, and causing even greater harm to their future selves.
I might be fuming now, but it won’t be me losing my job, my business, my home.
So let’s break this down here. What are we trying to achieve?
It’s all about the NHS
When we entered the first lockdown, it was acknowledged we weren’t expecting to reduce overall infections, or the natural mortality rate of the virus, we were flattening the curve, so the hospitals weren’t overrun, causing extra deaths.
Although lockdowns don’t prevent deaths, perennial underinvestment in the health system can certainly cause them, with the NHS facing a “workforce crisis”, missing over 80,000 full-time equivalent staff.
Hospitals are under more strain now than they were in the summer, but that’s the wrong comparison; they always are at this time of the year.
Despite reduced capacity, we don’t have unseasonably high occupancy:
That’s not to say the experience is like any other year; patients more ill and in need of intensive care, nurses suffering mental health issues and hospitals running out of oxygen, but we aren’t seeing unseasonably high deaths either:
[Apparently, three years ago, the cold weather and flu helped contribute to 50,000 excess deaths that winter. I don’t even remember hearing about it.]
Depending on your predisposition, you can read that as evidence lockdown is working, or that it’s all hype. Either way, can the latest intensification be justified? Or further measures still, although we’re past the New Year spike and the new strain isn’t as contagious as originally thought?
Do we go back into lockdown next year, when we see these numbers again?
Back in March, there was a lot more discussion about the consequences of lockdown: physical and mental health, domestic abuse, jobs, the economy. There was an awareness that it is unsustainable in the long run. Now we’re looking at November straight through to April, save a couple of weeks, but we’re kind of used to the idea, no one’s really questioning it.
No one’s really questioning anything. Parliament, when they get to vote, all agree. It beggars belief that the only thing the opposition has to say is they want a government with a massive majority to be even more authoritarian. They didn’t even seem that bothered when the House was bypassed completely, and edicts directly issued. Guess it doesn’t make any difference. And weren’t there some other parties knocking around at some point? There seems to be more opposition on the Tory back benches than anywhere else.
Talk about a dearth of ideas, it’s like the whole country has given up on democracy and freedom, looking to mid-20th century Communism for inspiration in our time of need: united ruling class, planned economy, oppressive policing, no right to protest, snitch on your neighbour.
Are we really that scared?
When China cordoned off Wuhan, I commented that they can do that, but it would never work in the UK. I’m often impressed by their efficiency, but I don’t actually want to live under such a powerful state.
Closing the whole economy, and then thinking about how to support it, the government just about got away with. But as good as the furlough, and other schemes are, there are gaps. An economy is far too complex to build from the ground up, let alone reverse engineer from tax returns in a panicked couple of months.
The more it is stretched, the more people it will fail, and the greater the impact when it ends.
Millions are predicted to lose their jobs this year, thousands of businesses will close, with devastating social impact.
Even by the government’s own analysis, the original lockdown caused more harm than Covid:
There’s a lot more lockdown this time.
Was there another option?
Again, in March, we were told the way out of lockdown was mass testing. I was envisaging having a swab before breakfast and knowing, by the last gulp of my coffee, whether I’m working from home or safe to travel.
The trial in Liverpool left plenty of unanswered questions: the purpose –mass testing or targeted; the reach — affluent, healthy but worried, over the most vulnerable, who lacked time; efficacy — danger of false negatives against catching the asymptomatic; results — was the city already past the peak? But questions are needed, if they’re addressed.
I’m guessing, from the way it was hailed as an unmitigated success, they may not have been, and it’s hard to judge how much is government failure over genuine, practical limitations, but if we knew when we had the virus, we would be less likely to transmit it.
There’s talk of rolling out mass testing nationally, so let’s see where that goes.
Maybe if there had been a little more progress, I would be less concerned about our current situation.
In theory, buying time to get the vaccine out makes sense.
I fear November to Easter is too long to be confined, but the track record of this government hitting its targets isn’t great. Logistically it’s quite a task, so there’s a good chance of slippage. If so, we wait for June? September?
Not that I was ever comfortable about waiting to be rescued by Big Pharma anyway. Nothing against medical solutions, but it always felt like avoiding the problem, instead of adapting to cope as a society.
We started to move in the right direction, but never really had the confidence of our convictions, the comfort of the back-to-lockdown bolthole too tempting to leave behind.
Again, the government failed to deliver, requiring businesses to follow guidelines only to close them again anyway. It undermines trust, and without that, there’s no compliance.
But they need us. We need to be working towards a common goal, together. We need to be building respect, rather than fostering contempt.
They don’t offer any real explanation for what they’re doing. Yes, they give us horror stories of what might happen if we do nothing, but they don’t justify the specific actions they then take. Has no one else noticed this?
“There’s been a surge in infection amongst university students, so we’re going to close non-essential shops.”
“Yes, more infections, close the shops, we need more lockdown!”
No!
Or… What? Are the students hanging out in non-essential shops? If so, it makes sense, otherwise, it’s nonsense. Or maybe it isn’t, but explain it.
Do people actually catch Covid in the shop?
Were they really targeting their response, or just picking the low-hanging fruit?
This is a consumerist society; most things are non-essential if you really think about it. It’s an interconnected economy, nothing is non-essential to the people whose livelihoods it supports, and the people they support, and so on.
The less essential Boris thinks it is, the less likely it is to be covered by the extended furlough schemes.
The reluctant dictator?
It’s not really Boris though, he’s just a populist voted in to deliver Brexit. He doesn’t care about you, he doesn’t care about the NHS, he just wants your votes. Ultimately, lockdown is demanded by the public, tail wagging the dog in some perverted self-enslavement. Literally, the tyranny of the masses.
I guess people don’t want personal responsibility? You can’t avoid it.
I keep having these conversations, being told that, “whilst you and I may be responsible, “others” won’t be”, and need to be controlled. No one can know everyone else’s circumstances, what’s known as Local Information. It isn’t the government’s role to micromanage our lives, there needs to be flexibility. When our basic human instincts are criminalised, when people have to break the law just to feed themselves, to maintain sanity, the social contract is broken, the legislation loses its legitimacy.
It’s the public that really need to understand this, before vigilantes go around slashing tyres on nurses’ cars, thinking they’re enforcing the rules.
Look at the fuss made about Boris cycling around London. Seven miles! That’s not far on a bike. He wasn’t in Durham.
This fascination with the details of the rules is ridiculous. The whole country is hysterical.
Not surprisingly.
Read “1,000 DEATHS TODAY!!!!!!!!”, everyone’s “lock us up, lock us up.” Were it reported, “3,500 deaths today, 1,000 of which may have been COVID related, but what does testing positive in the last 28 days really mean anyway?” (as this doctor questions) the reaction might be different.
10,000 jobs lost today! Anyone care?
There needs to be some context in what we are seeing, how it differs to other years and what else is going on in the country.
People are dying
Did you know that the average age of someone who dies of Covid is actually higher than general life expectancy?
There was a headline in The Sun a few weeks ago, claiming less than 400 healthy people under 60 had died from Covid — I can’t vouch for its accuracy, but most of those who die are over 70, beyond retirement, and the whole country is closed.
Over 90% have other serious conditions — even in your 80’s you have almost 95% chance of survival.
[It is shocking that care homes are still getting decimated at this stage, they should be the easiest places to contain.]
Deaths in lockdown are so much worse than usual, because we don’t have that time to connect with and console each other (and why shouldn’t you say goodbye to your Gran, if you can then go home and isolate?) I don’t want to be insensitive to that, but I do feel there needs to be a more targeted response, both geographically and demographically, and that society is paying a very heavy price for what we’re actually achieving.
I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to explain to people why death, killing, is not okay.
That we shouldn’t bomb Iraqis or Syrians.
I’m still a little shocked that people ask, Why?
So here we go again. I’m still the outlier.
Life is about quality, not quantity. I’ve had a moment when I thought I might die, crashing my motorbike. It was calm. I had no fear. I relaxed into it, maybe a little too easily. I feel like I understand death a little bit.
Loss is different, loss is tragic, loss is difficult to cope with and adjust to. I’ve experienced that too, and won’t trivialise it. But now we’re talking about lived experiences we can talk about all the things people used to care about before they were scared, terrified of this virus: child poverty, adult poverty, inequality, homelessness. Lived experiences of the victims.
Grief, as sure as death, is a part of life. Poverty, hardship, struggle, they don’t have to be.
I don’t know what would happen if we abandoned lockdown. I don’t know how many more people would start dying because they can’t get the care. We’ve already stopped treating some cancer patients, and probably others.
But neither do I know how many people are going to spend the next decade on the streets because of lockdown. How many kids will go hungry, the number of suicides or victims of abuse we’ll see (or not, it won’t make the headlines).
What I do know is if you focus entirely on one issue, it’s very easy to come up with absurd, inhumane solutions.
I was at some Green Party drinks a couple of years back and this was guy was trying to convince us that we should address the global population problem by encouraging “people in Africa” to stop having children.
I was a little surprised someone of South Asian heritage would take such a colonial attitude, but that’s not the point.
He was so focused on the environment, he just couldn’t see the humanitarian side.
Let’s not be that man.
Stand back a little. Notice how “lockdown” and “the virus” have become synonymous in a lot a discourse, especially around the havoc being reeked.
A lot of time it’s just lockdown. Does one really have to follow the other?
I’d question that.
