Healthy people why are you so scared of catching covid 19?

[wakeupitsabeautifulmorning]

Serious question. I’m interested in why healthy people with no underlying problems are so unhappy about starting to get back to normal. I’m not talking about shielded people who need to stay shielded. But everyone else.

@Gobbolino7825 And people do what they can to reduce risk. Or do you think we should all stop using car seats and seatbelts because people die in car accidents all the time and it is impossible to eliminate some risk?

@thecanterburywhales don't spout such utter nonsense - dangerous nonsense. You're very ill informed so until you educate yourself, maybe don't spout ignorant stuff on threads.

Because they are so many unknowns about this virus

• it can lead to inflammatory disorders (sometimes blood clots)
• it may cause ME/CFC (post viral illness)
• it can cause cardiac inflammation

Once healthy becomes debilitated and we don't know the long term effects of this virus.

Being healthy doesn't mean it won't make me seriously ill
Even if it is 'just like flu' flu fucking sucks. And that's before we go into how I could spread it to others

Because people have a poor perception of risk, in general.

I think it's 13.5% of those infected will die.

It's not infected, it's "tested and positive". Most infected people haven't even been tested.

Personally I am not worried, I may get it, I may not. I don’t want to die a horrible death but I am not frightened of dying.

The effects on the long term economy are very worrying if people don’t get back to work, schools don’t open etc. I think there has to be a way of getting back to some sort of ‘normality’ whilst still being able to shield the most vulnerable.

The one person I know with a confirmed case is young, healthy and slim, never been hospitalised, but has been pretty ill and weeks later is still recovering.

Because 'healthy' people have ended up in intensive care and dying too?

@cantory I'm saying that the fear is irrational - not that we should go out of our way to catch covid 19. There's a difference.

Quartz2208, it was said that we underestimated how many people had been infected and that was the prediction put forward on Panorama 'can science beat the virus'. This was by our leading infectious disease specialists and virologists.

There were also early reports from China that it could cause male infertility. Is that still thought to be the case?

Getting back to normal needs to be a carefully phased management that balances economic need, general health and well being and the spread of the virus.

I don't want it. My family is low risk against all known factors of enhanced risk, so hopefully it would merely be a few weeks of inconvenience to us. There is a small chance it could be worse than that, but on balance, we would suffer more than overzealous attempts to eradicate the chances of catching it. It's not worth the mental minefield of trying to "decontaminate" the food shopping. My DCs need a good burst of outdoor exercise every day or their mood suffers. I refuse to go through guarenteed unnecessary suffering to try to avoid a moderate risk of feeling lousy, and a very low risk of death. We may well catch it before a vaccine. Maybe we are resistant? I'm not going to lose sleep over the unpredictable.

People die. Infections, accidents, suicides, domestic violence, underlying health, strokes, cancers... Managing Covid 19 needs to minimise compromising all those other hazards to life.
I'd hate to avoid a low risk and die of fear because of something else. I lost a parent in childhood because he was in denial about the state of his health and did not seek timely intervention. I'm aware of mortality, and there's no point in ruining life by being in fear of it.

It's not in the interests of society to let the illness run its unfettered course, there are too many unknowns, particularly on longer term consequences. All I can do is trust the judgement of the government advisors, and live within those boundaries.

I think, quite naturally, people are also scared of things that affect their breathing even if they only get a mild disease.

Because I have seen otherwise health people with minimal or no comorbidities die from it.

Also I don't want to increase my risk of picking it up and pass it on to the less healthy people who are still out and about, or my patients.

The point is that the sacrifices made to mitigate the risk are disproportionate to the size of the risk

Putting a seatbelt on in a car doesn't require any trade offs. you arent losing anything.

Not leaving your house for months takes a significant toll on your mental health, social life, relationships, etc. So its those that need to be weighed up against the risk of catching the illness.

I think every person who has said they are not worried about themselves has also said they don’t want to spread it around to vulnerable people.

This wasn’t the question though? So why are we told we are being selfish for not being irrationally scared? I’d rather this than be terrified about going out for the next few years....

This virus is going nowhere. There is no guarantee of a vaccine. We need to learn how to live with it. Yes there are questions about immunity but if some people do develop antibodies then healthy people contracting this and recovering is a good thing. They will then spread it around less....

We don't know the mortality rate yet.
The statistics we currently have from different countries don't tell us the mortality rate on their own. We are not testing populations as a whole; we are only testing people who have symptoms or might have Covid.

So let's says 200 people are infected. 100 have symptoms and are tested. Then 5 of those 100 die. That is not a 5% death rate; it's actually a 2.5% death rate - but we don't know that, as we don't know the other 100 people had it.

The last best guess from the WHO was back in March and was a 3.4% death rate. But we don't know what it is really yet.

I'm not. I've likely already had it and had no symptoms as I work for the NHS and I'm still going into the office everyday where stacks of people have been off with symptoms, some diagnosed positive, majority absolutely fine and back to work after a week. I've also been sent to different departments where social distancing doesn't exist. I'd like to get to normal ASAP.

I'm not.

(Not to mention the economy, the poor health of which will likely negatively affect all our life chances and those of children we have yet to have for generations to come)

@Gobbolino7825 I don't think you can say an individuals fear of catching the virus is irrational when you know nothing about them. You don't know if they are BME, overweight, have not had a BCG jab, have a vitamin D deficiency? These are all things that have been suggested might increase your chance of this virus affecting you very badly.
The truth is we don't know enough yet, so it is a gamble. A gamble some are comfortable with. Me, I prefer to know the odds first.

When you have a car crash, you don't give another 3 or 4 people a car crash

Well technically you do if you have passengers or crash into another car or pedestrians/cyclists.

I don't want to be pedantic but the point really is that it's important to keep perspective. Comparing the risks of cv to young people to everyday risks helps us to gain perspective.

People are in general notoriously bad at risk assessment. Some risks are judged as being disproportionately high compared to others.

This springs to mind:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7876425.stm

Everyone went crazy about it but it's helpful to have perspective.

And the Dumb Question of the Day Award goes to...