Should the UK enter lockdown?

Nope never again!

 

This is England you're on about

 

Goodness me. It's like I'm an in an acid trip flashback.

 

It really is, but for the two of us, for very different reasons.

I will never, ever, ever be able to forgive this BBS for what it did during lockdown. Never. I still post on here, but I don't really engage. I can't, because what happened was not even remotely close to being OK.

 

Sorry to hear that. I can’t recall for sure, but I don’t think I was posting during the lockdown period/s, and if I did, I can’t recall what the general mood was.

 

Isn't one of the reasons it's so bad it's this years flu jabs administered from Aug onwards isn't hitting the mark that the virus is another strain so the vaccines are pretty useless they are kind of behind

 

That's entirely missing the point.


During COVID-19, governments and central banks introduced massive stimulus measures to prevent economic collapse. These included policies like quantitative easing (injecting money into the economy), low-interest rates, and direct payments to businesses and individuals. While these measures were intended to support the economy broadly, they disproportionately benefited wealthy individuals and corporations in several ways:

1. Asset Price Inflation: The injection of money into the financial system caused stock markets and real estate prices to soar. Wealthy individuals who owned significant assets saw their wealth increase as the value of their investments skyrocketed.

2. Business Benefits: Large corporations often received more substantial financial aid or had better resources to weather the pandemic, while small businesses struggled or closed. This concentrated economic power further in the hands of the wealthy.

3. Unequal Savings Growth: Wealthier individuals, who continued earning while spending less during lockdowns, saved and invested more. In contrast, lower-income individuals spent most of their stimulus on necessities, gaining little long-term financial benefit.

4. Debt Favorability: Low-interest rates allowed the wealthy to borrow cheaply, often to invest in appreciating assets, further increasing their wealth.

In short, policies meant to stabilize the economy unintentionally funneled more wealth to those who were already rich, widening the gap between the wealthy and everyone else.

 

I mean your posting history says otherwise.

 

I was in hospital (Pinderfields A&E for 15 hours then Dewsbury) with my elderly father over Christmas and A&E was crazy but the majority of people in my experience there didn't have flu. There was a cordened off area for flu but that wasn't most of A&E. In hospital there was a norivurus outbreak which was more of a concern. They'd reduced visiting hours etc.

Now the number of people in hospital with serious actual flu (which is quite distinct from a standard cold virus) has increased massively. I don't think there were people eith

Same old issue, not enough beds, not enough space, not enough nurses and doctors.

 

Lockdown is a tool of last resort. For when you have a virus that is a combination of very contagious, very serious in terms of medical intervention and when other mitigations have failed. We are not at that point yet. Unfortunately, the governments (see also the public and businesses and especially hospitals) since 2020 have yet to learn the lessons of mitigation - despite spending a lot of money on air filtration in Parliament itself - and so we are stuck with airborne viruses running rampant.

The number of sick days and hospital costs due to flu this year alone will exceed the costs of implementing many commons mitigations that would significantly reduce the spread of viruses like flu - and USA is already having human cases of avian flu.

 

Think there's a chance I was being overly dramatic

 

I never said that, I said the lockdown cost the country and the economy billions that we are still paying back now and probably for the next 100 years. I know small businesses and sole traders that also did well out of the loans on offer from the government.
I didn't agree with lockdown and wouldn't another.

 

Where do you think most of the money that was drained out of the economy went? Not to your average Joe!

Big businesses and corporations and wealthy people were handed state handouts that increased their wealth by totals of hundreds of billions.

Capitalists hate state handouts, except when they're the ones being given the money.

That money should have been redirected to where it was needed, not into the pockets of those that didn't.

 

There are quite a few issues contributing to lengthy A&E waits (staff shortages, chronic underfunding for 14 years of Tory rule, not enough A&E departments, not enough GPs, etc), but the biggest two, by far, go hand in hand and are the ageing population and the lack of social care places. The hospital beds are full of older patients who don’t need to be in hospital, but cannot be safely discharged home. This means A&E departments cannot get patients up to the wards meaning a) the trolleys/cubicles are all full, and b) the A&E staff are busy looking after patients that shouldn’t be there and should have been admitted to the wards.

The other knock on effect of this is that ambulances cannot safely unload patients into A&E, because there is nowhere to put them. And the knock on effect of that is that the ambulances are taken out of circulation and subsequently people are waiting ages for an ambulance or are dying, when they otherwise wouldn’t have. I used to be an A&E nurse (in the days when a 4 hour wait was deemed unacceptable!) and mates who still work in A&E have told me some right horror stories, like 15 ambulances queueing up outside their department, and having to use ambulances as cubicles. Paramedics are not trained to be looking after patients overnight, but this was happening and presumably will be again.

And why is there a lack of social care places? Well, underfunding by the previous government for one, but the main reason is that they cannot attract the staff to the very demanding but poorly paid jobs. The staff that would have usually filled the roles aren’t allowed into the country any more, following Brexit. The last government has a lot to answer for.

 

We locked down to protect the NHS. A massive amount of people mostly affected in a bad way were people with underlying health problems, one been obesity which costs the NHS over 6 billion a year. In this country we've got people too fat to work but we promote junk food and *****.

 

Flu can be a very serious condition, I've only had it once and couldn't get out of bed for a week. My GP made a house visit so you can tell how long ago that was.... There have been government campaigns to encourage people to get the vaccine but as I understand it, it's only free for the elderly (I had mine) and people with health issues - everyone else has to pay for it. To prevent the current situation we should have made it free for everyone and there should have been a concerted effort to get as many people as possible jabbed - there was enough advance warning that this version of Flu was a bad one. They did it once the vaccine was available for COVID, why is Flu not treated the same?

 

The Covid vaccine is now £100 if you are not in a vulnerable group. Flu IIRC is about £20.

 

Just to retain people's jobs and furlough the workforce cost 70 billion pounds that's not including the bounce back loans etc.

No doubt this government would get it all right if they locked down.

 

Hope not. I've got no pans to bang since I've got an air fryer.

 

The covid vaccine seems to vary in cost. This autumn/winter one was really varied and the criteria massively reduced. My mum (in west yorkshire) paid for it, I think it was £40ish quid when she was eligible previously.

My wife is still eligible. Previously, I was eligible living with someone at risk. That was taken out of the criteria this winter which seems absurd. I paid, gladly, but it was £149 which a lot of people just aren't going to bother with. We chatted with the woman at the pharmacy and she said rates of jabs for flu and covid were incredibly low, so it's little surprise the NHS is struggling with capacity due to Flu and Covid.