Half a million UK workers drop out of workforce, citing long-term illness

Re:Half a million UK workers drop out of workforce, citing l... by hunglee2 on Thursday November 10, 2022 @03:29PM (#33552818)

UK uniquely flawed pandemic response - oscillating between lockdown, let it rip, lockdown and finally back to let it rip entirely - cost the country billions, whilst infecting a larger percentage of the population than any other comparably sized country. The long term impact of long Covid is not just reduced labour force participation, but also surely reduced productivity from those able to come back to work but now in a permanently debilitated state.

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Re:Half a million UK workers drop out of workforce, citing l... by mixtur2021 on Thursday November 10, 2022 @04:39PM (#33553792)

What are you insinuating would have been the better approach here? It sound like you would have wanted harder lockdowns and/or pursue a zero Covid strategy?

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Re:Half a million UK workers drop out of workforce, citing l... by Aromasin on Thursday November 10, 2022 @05:41PM (#33554632)

I think he's implying exactly that. I don't necessarily agree with it, but there's something to be said about possibly spiking infections driven by the "we're free!" effect of long term lockdowns followed to removal of any and all restrictions in less that a month. It felt like towing a jack-knifing trailer. One moment we were proceeding off the road, and the other we were careening into oncoming traffic.

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Re:Half a million UK workers drop out of workforce, citing l... by mixtur2021 on Thursday November 10, 2022 @06:29PM (#33555152)

Not sure. In the devolved administrations, Scotland in particular, my understanding is they locked down for longer with more restrictions and actually had higher death rates (other factors may be at play here to be fair) or very similar levels:

https://www.ft.com/content/0eccfeef-2913-43a7-9518-6728f15e5...

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/covid-lockdown-s...

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Re:Half a million UK workers drop out of workforce, citing l... by TurkishPoptart on Thursday November 10, 2022 @07:18PM (#33555684)

Scotland and Wales took the Chinese "Zero Covid" route and are suffering the consequences.

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Re:Half a million UK workers drop out of workforce, citing l... by hunglee2 on Friday November 11, 2022 @01:46AM (#33557973)

obviously - in hindsight, zero covid, coordinated globally, would've shut this thing down in 4 weeks. This was the advice of the WHO, ignored by the UK when it mattered.

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