What do you think the effect of the lockdown has been?

[jfgw]

What effect do you think that the lockdown in the UK has had?

Please keep general discussion to the relevant threads.

We know a lot more now than we did in March, and opinions now may differ from our predictions when lockdown policies were made. It would be wrong to view the results of this poll as a criticism (good or bad) of lockdown decisions made months ago. Furthermore, different potential outcomes (including worst case scenarios) would have had to have been considered for a proper judgement to have been made.


Julian F. G. W.

[Mike4]

I think the lockdown was very successful in achieving it's goal, which I can't see mentioned in any of the options listed.

Back then it was believed that no-one had any innate resistance to C-19 so it was going to infect everyone until herd immunity was reached. The point of the lockdown was to slow the spread of the virus to the point where our hospitals could cope with the infection rate and no harrowing photos of people dying in queues of ambulances outside full-up hospitals, or mountains of bodies at funeral parlours unable to cope with the volume would appear in the Six-O-Clock News on the telly.

So not really anything to do with saving lives - more to do with slowing down the deaths to a manageable rate, and highly successful at suppressing this metric it was too.

[Lootman]

I think the lockdown was very successful in achieving it's goal, which I can't see mentioned in any of the options listed.

Back then it was believed that no-one had any innate resistance to C-19 so it was going to infect everyone until herd immunity was reached. The point of the lockdown was to slow the spread of the virus to the point where our hospitals could cope with the infection rate and no harrowing photos of people dying in queues of ambulances outside full-up hospitals, or mountains of bodies at funeral parlours unable to cope with the volume would appear in the Six-O-Clock News on the telly.

So not really anything to do with saving lives - more to do with slowing down the deaths to a manageable rate, and highly successful at suppressing this metric it was too.

That is the 4th option, surely?

But my choice is genuinely missing from the list. That the lockdown slowed down the spread but also caused a multitude of other problems such as an increase in incidents of domestic abuse, a fatal loss of important screenings and treatment for other illnesses, a hike in mental illness due to depression and other ailments, and a massive cost to the economy, the national deficit and the communal sense of well-being.

China was so good at using a lockdown that we were all lulled into thinking that if we put up with this then, in 3 months time, bingo, we're all done. Well we have been locked down for over 4 months now and the numbers are still bad. Back in March I was convinced that the strategy would work because it would be done in 2/3 months. Turns out we are nowhere close to being done. And it is getting very boring.

[88V8]

I think it's too early to tell.

But I wonder what it's cost per life saved, or rather, per death deferred.

V8

[Mike4]

I think the lockdown was very successful in achieving it's goal, which I can't see mentioned in any of the options listed.

Back then it was believed that no-one had any innate resistance to C-19 so it was going to infect everyone until herd immunity was reached. The point of the lockdown was to slow the spread of the virus to the point where our hospitals could cope with the infection rate and no harrowing photos of people dying in queues of ambulances outside full-up hospitals, or mountains of bodies at funeral parlours unable to cope with the volume would appear in the Six-O-Clock News on the telly.

So not really anything to do with saving lives - more to do with slowing down the deaths to a manageable rate, and highly successful at suppressing this metric it was too.

That is the 4th option, surely?

But my choice is genuinely missing from the list. That the lockdown slowed down the spread but also caused a multitude of other problems such as an increase in incidents of domestic abuse, a fatal loss of important screenings and treatment for other illnesses, a hike in mental illness due to depression and other ailments, and a massive cost to the economy, the national deficit and the communal sense of well-being.

China was so good at using a lockdown that we were all lulled into thinking that if we put up with this then, in 3 months time, bingo, we're all done. Well we have been locked down for over 4 months now and the numbers are still bad. Back in March I was convinced that the strategy would work because it would be done in 2/3 months. Turns out we are nowhere close to being done. And it is getting very boring.

The fourth option says nothing about lowering the height of the peak, only moving it along. Nor does it mention the declared (and achieved) goal of "saving the NHS". All of the options write as though 'saving lives' was the goal. It wasn't.

[gryffron]

The lockdown slowed down the spread but also caused a multitude of other problems such as an increase in incidents of domestic abuse, a fatal loss of important screenings and treatment for other illnesses, a hike in mental illness due to depression and other ailments, and a massive cost to the economy, the national deficit and the communal sense of well-being.

Yeah, agree with all that. But it could have been MUCH worse without it.

Gryff

[johnhemming]

The evidence ii that the lockdown did not limit the maximum infections or peak number of deaths per day from Civid-19. There are arguments as to whether the social distancing held back the peak or not. The main factor in England in holding back the peak was the number of people who were previously infected (aka Herd Immunity).

[Golam]

The effect of the lockdown has been to significantly damage my HYP portfolio and, to a lesser extent my IT portfolio. Another effect has been to significantly reduce my personal expenditure. Yet another significant effect has been to my health and well being. A positive effect.
On a more broad note, we will learn much from those countries with a markedly lower infection rate per capita.

[AF62]

I think the lockdown was very successful in achieving it's goal, which I can't see mentioned in any of the options listed.

Back then it was believed that no-one had any innate resistance to C-19 so it was going to infect everyone until herd immunity was reached. The point of the lockdown was to slow the spread of the virus to the point where our hospitals could cope with the infection rate and no harrowing photos of people dying in queues of ambulances outside full-up hospitals, or mountains of bodies at funeral parlours unable to cope with the volume would appear in the Six-O-Clock News on the telly.

That I would completely agree with.

So not really anything to do with saving lives - more to do with slowing down the deaths to a manageable rate, and highly successful at suppressing this metric it was too.

I would slightly disagree in that I do think the original intention of the lockdown did have something to do with saving lives, not necessarily by reducing the number of of people infected, but by slowing the infection rate so there was a hospital bed they could be treated in. Being treated in a bed with sufficient medical resource to deal with patients must result in a lower death rate than an overwhelmed hospital system with queues of ambulances and the scarce resources being spread thinly.

But yes, a significant purpose of the lockdown from the government's point of view was how it looked, so it didn't look so incompetent with overwhelmed hospitals and bodies stacking up.

Not an impact from the lockdown, but just simply from having a large number of people infected has been the development of more effective treatments of the impact of COVID-19 on the body, so meaning that those who will get it have a better chance of survival. However the lockdown has meant the infection of a significant number has been delayed, so these more effective treatments can be applied to them and thus the death rate will be reduced.

Will the lockdown have reduced the number of cases in the end (cases, not deaths - those will be reduced) - not unless a vaccine is developed, but the lockdown has bought some time for that to happen.

• So did the lockdown achieve its goal of reducing Covid-19 deaths - yes.
• Has the lockdown increased non-COVID-19 deaths - yes
• Would an earlier lockdown created a New Zealand type scenario - no. The UK is nothing like NZ and the NZ scenario is bad for them and would be awful for the UK.
• Would an earlier lockdown have reduced deaths - yes, but only if the government had got its act together with hospital discharges to care homes, temporary staff in care homes not moving between locations, PPE, closing borders, quarantine restrictions, effective 'track & trace' etc. - i.e. not a cat in hells chance they could have done that.
• Would an earlier lockdown have cost more and done even more damage to the economy - yes, and as above wouldn't have been effective

To me the most significant effect of the lockdown is not the impact on health/deaths, but the general impact on the economy and life. Companies suddenly realising that employees working from home may not be that bad for business, daily commuting for office workers is a waste of their time, nationalising railways is possible, the high street as some remember it through rose tinted glasses is not viable, cash is on its way out, etc.

[sg31]

My view is the lockdown worked in it's aim of protecting the NHS by allowing it to cope with the number needing hospital care. That in itself has saved lives.

It has also saved lives because reducing the number of infections means there are less spreaders to infect others. That doesn't necessarily mean less people will ultimately get Covid, (although that might happen). The advantage we gained from delaying some infections is that the treatment options are now better and better understood so that each infected person has a better chance of surviving with less ongoing problems. The use of ventilators is no longer the preferred option for serious cases although it is used as a last resort. Ventilators cause a lot of damage even if they save some lives.

We now have Remdesivir and steriods which improve survival rates.

A lot of the benefits of lockdown were unexpected. If it had been imposed earlier there would be a lower number of deaths at this point in time. Whether that means a lower number when the final numbers come in is unknowable at this moment.

If we do manage to find an effective vaccine, another unknown, the lockdown will have saved a lot of lives.