[unity1001]

You have no idea how bad it was. Since everyone concentrated on their own issues, little news of the state of other countries made it into other countries' press.

First, British Tories (the conservative free market types) denied that any pandemic existed. They kept the country open still after Italy, Spain started their lockdowns. They said they would go for 'herd immunity'. Ie, let those who will die die out. After much protest they started a quarantine. Even when they started the quarantine, it was limited at the start. They said it was 'okay' because covid affected mostly the elderly. (so not a problem for 'the economy'). Then things got really bad and they started a lockdown. In which they left everyone fend for themselves. No support like how the Spanish government gave to the businesses and the people. During the quarantine they totally ignored and hush-hushed what happened in retirement homes. Its unknown how many died there. I think there was a lawsuit resulting from that. Then they rushed to open early for the sake of 'the economy', saying that 'herd immunity' would take care of the problem (again). During all this time they were privatizing their social healthcare system, the NHS by defunding it and selling parts of it to US corporations. So at the end of the quarantine when the new waves started, the NHS was flooded and under capacity. They started overworking the underpaid doctors and nurses to the point of breaking. Now even with the strikes the government refuses to pay them more or fund the health system more and instead is planning on laws to prevent the strikes. It is said that an unprecedented number of people are dying as a result of the defunding and privatization of the NHS. People cant even get ambulances. There arent hospital beds and so on.

https://eand.co/welcome-to-dickensian-britain-97bf9e7fe93a

https://eand.co/why-britains-nhs-is-dying-and-why-it-s-a-war...

What the Brits are doing to themselves through these Toff governments defies description.

[gggggg5]

I lived between Barcelona and London through the lockdowns.

As far as I can tell, current studies indicate that in all likelihood only the first lockdown in the UK may have been "worth it" (and even then, it should have happened earlier and not lasted nearly as long as it did)

You'll easily find a bunch of rather credible literature on the subject, e.g. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/d.miles/document/7583/Mile...

Or more folksy news articles like https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/14/coronavirus-co...

Are you aware of conflicting literature?

[unity1001]

Similar sources like the ones who advocated that covid affected mostly the elderly so 'it was okay'. ~200 years of capitalism fostered institutions that propagate its interests. 'The literature' that opposed lockdowns came from mainly Angloamerica. Not even France, Germany or Greece. Not China. Not Korea. Not India.

And with Angloamerica, we mean the US and the UK, really. The others arent even second bananas in the affair. These two countries where deregulated capitalism rides on the stock market, any disruption to the economy is less desirable than the lives of people. Worse, this mentality is normalized. Only in such an environment prominent figures could come up saying 'Covid affects the elderly so its ok'. In any other country on the planet someone saying this would be socially and politically castrated. Not in the US or the UK.

Quarantines were and are always worth it during epidemics and pandemics. Asia had been using them for decades to combat many lesser epidemics until covid. This 'quarantines are not worth it' is a nonsense that has originated from the financial establishment in the Anglosphere only because it was detrimental to stock prices. For no other reason. From the same place comes 'masks dont work' and 'covid is just a flu'.

One must remember that even 'neutral' science has problems with funding bias in an ideal setting...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_bias

...whereas private think tanks in Anglosphere literally produce whatever 'research' to support whatever view you want for the right price. Really, at this point the Anglosphere and its institutions cannot be taken as references for anything with their ultra sold-out, principle-free state...

[gggggg5]

It sounds like you can't actually find any research strongly in support of lockdowns, and that's because of funding bias?

So, we're just supposed to believe without evidence that the lockdowns were good because ... ?