To think people have forgotten what lockdown was for and now think they’re all going to die

[wakeupitsabeautifulmorning]

I think people have gradually lost all sense of reality during this lockdown. It’s the NHS we are protecting by making sure not too many people are admitted with Coronavirus at the same time. But normal young healthy people seem to be thinking it’s to stop them catching it and dying. Where do we go from here?

*@Sadie789

MSM’s fault - misinformation, disinformation, conjecture, hyperbole and scaremongering

Where are you getting your news from? Twitter? Seriously, this mad anti ‘MSM’ stuff really pisses me off. BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have been reporting on what has happened, questioning the length of the lockdown and when it started as well as responsibly reporting while holding the government to account. Do you expect them not to report the lockdown?? Can you give an example of BBC hyperbole or scaremongering for example?

Aussie here, in Melbourne. Our lockdown restrictions have been milder than the UK’s. We have absolutely tiny numbers of infections being diagnosed, and tiny numbers of deaths. We also had inexplicable inaction by government in mid-March, with many Europeans (including unrestricted flights from Italy) permitted to enter Melbourne for the Grand Prix. This event was only cancelled (on the day!) when the teams themselves refused to participate, after a diagnosis of Covid in a pit crew member. There was also a most extraordinary occurrence in NSW, when 600 infected passengers from a cruise ship docked in Sydney were released to move freely into the community. Truly insane. However, I watched an interview this week with a researcher from the Doherty Institute, who developed the pandemic simulation which informed our government’s response, and she said they were now looking at climate as a reason why southern nations appear to be less affected. So our low numbers are not necessarily down to expert pandemic management – we were just muddling along like everyone else, making huge mistakes but perhaps blessed with fantastic virus-killing weather conditions, and a population replete with vitamin D. However, despite tiny numbers of new infections and tiny numbers of deaths our premier is refusing to lift or even ameliorate restrictions, until at least May 11th, in contradiction to our federal government’s ‘lockdown exit strategy.’ I’m very, very concerned about this, as lockdown also has huge and measurable impacts on health. Our premier’s actions seem to suggest that none of us will be permitted to be exposed to the virus, despite our large healthcare capacity. Very worrying indeed, and of course the longer lockdown lasts, the more likely it is that our inevitable exposure is pushed into the winter months.

The whole point of lockdown IS to stop people getting it during this time. And I do think part of the means of doing that IS by making people afraid - with the daily death stats leading the news, government warnings, constant reminders to #stayhome everytime you pick up your phone or face dire consequences.

When lockdown eases up, and the NHS can cope with small rises in numbers, the warnings will ease up too. It's a fine line though. Things will not go back to the way they were last February, and appealing to people to do the right thing and continue to social distance will only go so far. Fear is a more effective deterrent.

I personally think part of the reason for lockdown is to 'reprogram' people into social distancing as a way of life. Its no longer unnatural and strange but the way we behave. I can see it in myself watching something like Eastenders on TV, feeling slightly anxious seeing people all crammed into the pub!

Yes Venus, I agree. There are 67 active cases of coronavirus in my entire state (around 6.4 million people), and 1 man died in his 90s died overnight. But what's on the front page on my newspaper? An assurance from a chaplain that you won't have to die without a spiritual advisor at your bedside! Blatant propaganda.

The whole point of lockdown IS to stop people getting it during this time

As much as I agree with your comment that lock down has taught people about social distancing, I disagree with your above statement. It wasn’t wholesale to stop people getting it. It was to stop too many people getting it. There is a huge difference. We were never trying to stop people getting it and eradicating it. We were trying to stop so many people getting it that the nhs became over whelmed.

"If it saves one persons life, it's worth it" is a meme that crumbles under rational scrutiny but it makes some people removed from such considerations feel bad so, in their world, it's worth it and if you don't think the same you are beneath contempt.

Yes.

I've been against the lockdown from the outset (although I grudgingly accepted the rationale for the first three weeks).

Given that the mortality rate for covid19 is so low, it is impossible to detect without surveillance. The unfurling of covid19 may be obvious to the NHS or funeral homes, for example, which are dramatically affected by disease trends that are imperceptible to the general population. The average person, in a few weeks time, is going to look around and say - 'I can't see it' and then, we will be forced into a real debate.

I know many people who are scared they are going to get it and die. Who quarantine shopping for 72 hours. Dettol all deliveries etc.
DH and I were pretty lax - followed social distancing guidelines but didn’t wash shopping etc. We both think we got the virus. We were lucky that symptoms were relatively mild, kids didn’t get any symptoms, and we are slowly on the mend. But it is a bugger of a virus made us both pretty poorly and took weeks to shift - its now a month since I had it and I’m still not entirely recovered. and DH and I are both in our 40s and healthy.
People are dying. Otherwise healthy people are dying. I’m not surprised people are scared.

Most of the younger, otherwise healthy people who have died have been those in regular close proximity to the virus though, nurses for instance. Like most people I've picked up a little knowledge over the last few weeks and my understsnding is that in that situation the amount of the virus transferred is the reason why they die, whereas if you pick it up through indirect or very brief contact, it's much less severe.

But 'otherwise healthy people' do die. They die all the time from a myriad of causes. You can't prevent that from happening totally.

Acting like going for a quick jog around Bridport is the same as going for a quick jog around Chernobyl isn’t helping anyone.

A quick jog - or indeed a number of days in v Chernobyl (even in the Exclusion Zone) - will most likely be harmless and give you no b more exposure to radiation than a dental.m X-ray our flight

< misses point if thread >

(or perhaps doesn’t as relates to people’s inability to rain assess)

(RISK assess)

It have never been about protecting us. It’s been about protecting the NHS.

I wish people who come up with that would stop for 2 seconds and think about what they are saying...What do you think "protecting the NHS" actually means exactly?!?

Just about anyone could die of it though, nobodies immune so... YABU. Especially if they open lockdown to soon, like idiots are demanding.

I’ve friends (not all, but this definitely applies to some people I know) who have never had or seen illness really. We are in our twenties and mostly their grandparents are only in their 60s/70s and don’t even have anything more than a bit of high cholesterol or maybe had a cancer scare once. I’ve got a family history of MS, type 1 diabetes (including young kids living with it), seen a child in our family go through cancer treatment and seen family members in intensive care on a ventilator. Most of my family works in the NHS as doctors, nurses or dental so illness is just something that’s talked about not feared. I have Hashimotos which I don’t even class as an illness -it’s just a thing that’s there. I told a friend I take a tablet every day for it and you’d think I’d told her I had cancer.

So they see sensationalist headlines about all these supposed millions of completely healthy, 25 year olds dropping dead and think that’s what will happen. Without looking at actual statistics. The fact is they don’t even go for their smear tests because they think they can’t get cancer. It’s daft but I’m just going to live in my realistic world and they can live in theirs.

I've got an over 60's Wendy next door who literally kicks her parcels back out onto her front garden and leaves them there for 72 hours to kill the germs because the delivery drivers aren't using gloves...

Except her food deliveries which are somehow magically immune even though the delivery drivers aren't using gloves. She has also asked me to make sure my kids don't go in the back garden when she is in hers in case the 'rona gets over the fence, but she goes to her daughters for the Thursday 8pm clap.

Madness.

Lockdown isn't about protecting the NHS. That's just government spin to prevent mass panic. It gives the population a focus and common goal. Wartime propaganda served the same purpose.

lock down isn't about protecting the NHS
Yes, it is. So that it doesn't become overwhelmed with mass CV. When we're allowed to resume normal life in stages, the NHS will be able to cope.

There is a middle zone you know. I caught the virus I've not died, not been admitted but am suffering on a daily basis with post viral effects. Perhaps people are worried about getting ill. I wish I'd not got it so early and could have then protected myself.

Me too, @Casino218, and thank you for the support you have given me on other threads.

One of the issues here is because some people furloughed or working from home are now isolated from the real world and starting to become agoraphobic/paranoid. Just one of the potentially harmful side effects of lockdown.

@Casino218 I know its not quite the same but I had swine flu badly and hang in there I would say that it took me 6 months to properly feel fit and normal again.

I think I had CV this time and luckily it got hit me as badly as swine flu but you do recover. Take things slowly. I found everytime I rushed it too much I took more steps back

@Quartz2208 thank you

@everythingisginandroses how are you doing now? I think there is so much that people don't realise about this virus. No wonder people are fearful.

People also have to remember that the flu can also have horrendous effects and long lasting impact.

Yanbu. It's awful. All the arguments have been laid out by numerous sensible PPs over numerous threads but even so I can't help but feel like I'm in a really lonely minority wondering where this inability to risk-assess has come from, and more importantly, how we will ever get out of this with the kind of society that I would vaguely like my DC to live in.
The anxiety is one thing, and to some extent fine if too many others aren't dragged down the same way. But the unwillingness to discuss things politely and sensibly, the constant offence-taking, the cruelty of some who genuinely seem to be taking a kind of morbid joy in disseminating their, often incorrect, understanding of risk. I hate it and I hate the effect this is having and will have on the young.