It's been five years since the pandemic and I have questions

[BaggyTrousing]

• will Paddington ever be investigated for his role in the departure of our dear old queen?
• was the woman who wrote "and the people stayed home" ever taken to task for her contribution to the awfulness?
• what about that nurse who was roaring about bread in a supermarket car park? Hopefully shunned and avoided at least
• how do you all feel now about protecting the NHS?

We had a neighbourhood Friday disco! We'd all come out onto the street but stay in our gardens and dance. We'd wave to each other, play music. Have drinks.

That was fun. Weird but fun.

Interesting you should say that about under-reporting of deaths: I think so too. There was a lot of comment among the sceptics "if it really had been a deadly pandemic, with people dropping dead spontaneously, the government would not have needed to frighten the public into compliance". The reason they used so much fear porn was precisely because it wasn't very deadly. Even now, I don't personally know anybody who died of covid, and neither does anyone else I've talked to. And there's still deathly silence about those killed by lockdowns, or suicide. That's certainly being under-reported.

And then there was all the comment (not mine) about healthy young people who dropped dead in 2021, rather than 2020.

I remember that before the lockdown started and people were panicking, I went into my local Coop and bought lots of bottle of sauces like alloys Grossman etc, these had already high prices on but I didn’t care. Also I bought every possible cleaner they had, like 3-4 bottle of dettol or wipes, I still have those bottles here un opened.
I carried all these bits home on my back walking about 4 miles home as avoiding bus.

I know several people who died. I didn’t think that was unusual.

I think that is unusual to know several people who died. Unless there is something you’re not telling us like you work in an old people’s home or you “know” them from Facebook friends of friends or something.

One of the crazy things I remember is trying to buy five large loose potatoes from Aldi and being told I could only buy four at a time. There were five of us at home.

As having one jacket potato per person was so clearly profligate.

Three people in my street that I know of died of Covid - two were elderly but one was only 57. That was quite a shock. Two further neighbours died of cancer during the pandemic - and one where I know his wife quite well certainly had treatment delayed because of it. Another poor woman died of septic bed sores as carers weren't coming in/not as frequently.

2 family members, a work colleague and a friends Dad.

I think that is unusual. My friend's dad died of COVID but no one I knew personally did. A colleague took his own life during lockdown though, as did a friend.

230 thousand people dead are likely to touch a lot of people though surely?
Most people have family, friends, neighbours, and work colleagues.

230,000 people isn't enough for most people to know several people who died though ... in a population of about 68M

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/annualmidyearpopulationestimates/mid2023

I don’t think I said most people knew several people, I think I said I didn’t think it was that unusual. Certainly if you asked me I wouldn’t have assumed our experience was particularly bad or unusual. I guess the question is how many people feel connected to the average person? 68M is about 300 times the number who died. So if your life touches 1000 people, knowing 3 seems fairly likely. 🤷🏻‍♀️

So you agree it's unusual to know several people who died from Covid which is all we were saying.

Speaking for myself I wouldn't deny that it happened to some people, merely that it's unusual.

"If your life touches 1000 people" is a strange one. I would probably recognise and be recognised by 1000 people as used to work in a school but I don't know 1000 people.

I literally wrote I didn’t think it was unusual. I then went on to ponder the numbers in a fairly transparent way. My guess would be a thousand ish people would say they knew someone if that person died but I stated the number because I pulled it out of the air. Actually in my case it would be FAR more than a thousand because I come from a large family and have moved many times. Perhaps you come from a more insular (sorry I know that’s usually used as a slur but I hope you take my meaning) background?

You said it wasn't that unusual which suggests you did think it was a bit unusual.

I think your guesses are way off and having a large family isn't very relevant to whether 1,000 people would know the average person who died.

I didn't know anyone who died of covid, although I knew of people who died of it, like a friend's mum and someone who worked at the same firm as DH.

I knew someone else who died in early 2020 but she didn't have covid.

My aunt-in-law also died at the tail end of the pandemic but she didn't have covid either.

So I personally knew people who died during the pandemic, but not of covid, and not because of covid (eg because of delayed cancer treatment).

Sorry, I’ve only read the last few messages - but doesn’t that illustrate why anecdotal evidence is not as reliable as scientific data?

My anecdotal evidence is several people that died, two thirty year olds needing ambulance and hospital treatment, a child with a PIMS reaction and a very close relative who needed urgent cancer treatment from a hospital that was inundated with Covid patients.

But I could see across the globe that things weren’t great.

The biggest issue was lack of hospital resources while there were serious complications and deaths from Covid. When the child I knew with a PIMS reaction needed care it was right at the height of Covid and very scary.

I'm done with the NHS our health board one friend died in the corridor after 31 hours heart attack. Another friend discharged, nothing found was dead by the time her husband arrived to take her home. Ten days in hospital swollen hot leg never tested for a blood clot. Early sixties.

My case GP surgery telephone triage only for two years. Did have an x-ray, nothing found they said. Take a painkiller. Was on two sticks by now. Went private both hips stage four bone on bone the x-ray showed. Four months after the NHS x-ray.

God, those are some awful scenarios. I'm sorry.

My son had a friend who went to A&E during lockdown. She had a brain scan and there was a brain haemorrhage,

She was discharged home with tablets and was dead by the next day. In her forties.

I don’t think it’s that unusual for,
women to dye their hair,
babies to regurgitate milk,
teenagers to have spots,
men to shave….
the phrase DOES NOT mean “I secretly think this is unusual”.