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.

From the Times today: “It’s a common misconception, even today, that Covid is just a bad dose of the flu,” Calum Semple, a professor in outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool who is leading the study, said. “I'm going to choose my words very carefully here: Covid is a very serious disease.
“Despite the best supportive care that we can provide, the crude case fatality rate for people who are admitted to hospital – that is, the proportion of people ill enough to need hospital treatment who then die – with severe Covid-19 is 35-40 per cent, which is similar to that for people admitted to hospital with ebola.
“People need to hear this and get it into their heads because the reason the government is keen to keep people at home, until the outbreak is quietening down, is that this is an incredibly dangerous disease.”
This is why.

Also, at no point have I suggested that I am not following the rules here. So I am not spreading to anyone or risking catching it myself any more than anyone else. I’m just saying why my concerns about my children “being left without a mother” come from a completely different direction. But by all means apply your own risk assessment to MY situation, why don’t you. Fucking hell this situation is showing how little compassion people really are capable of

Because healthy people are dying from it as well

I’ve got a newborn and a young toddler and I’m terrified of something happening to me, DH or them. I’m most terrified of it happening to them and not allowed to be there for them.

I also don't want to catch it now because we'll know much more about it later. And we might have a vaccine within touching distance so win win.

I'd feel really rubbish if I got it, gave it to my partner who had issues (not issues as such but suddenly we find they are issues), got long term damage, put my kids through hell and then find it would have been a different story if we'd waited nine months or so.

Um. ...as other posters have said, seemingly healthy people can die of it, or at least end up in hospital?

I've been unwell for 7 weeks with COVID-19 symptoms. I still have a very bad cough as well as a temperature on and off. I've also had times when I've struggled to breathe. Believe me, it's been horrific!, and it really isn't something you would want to suffer from.

Quite apart from myself, my DH has asthma and my DM/MIL are 80/79 respectively. Yes I know it can be mild (my DD2 (8) had it for 4 day(not tested but I really do appear to have it and I could only have caught it from her. She had a high temperature, chest pain, bad headache and was achy all over. But she was thankfully fine, apart from passing it to me!

I hate hearing it being spoken of as 'mild', there really is no guarantee it will just be like a cold. If you think of how flu feels like (a lot of us have had bad bouts of that when we couldn't get out of bed, then you might realise that it really isn't like having a cold. You really can't predict how it will affect you.

Finally, I would really hate to think if passed it to someone who went on to die from it.

@EarlGreywithLemon but that is comparing the severe response (which is at worst around 20% possibly less given what we know now) with everyone who gets Ebola!

I should say that I actually have vulnerabilities (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and pneumonia last year, and low immunity to infection), so I have to take precautions anyway. But that isn't my main concern. Over 26,000 people have died of this virus and it really isn't something I want to risk passing on to a vulnerable person.

May I just say though, I have the utmost gratitude to our key workers and particularly HCP, who are unable to make these choices. Even if I didn't feel inclined to stay home, I would support a lockdown for as long as those on the front line asked us to.

My mum is on the frontline in the NHS and she wants the restrictions relaxed

Fair enough. I was thinking about the majority view.

Well it’s not like they’re given a vote on any of it!

I think the 24/7 newsflow we get now doesn’t help. I am not scared of it and I’m 51 so in the so called danger zone but it has certainly frightened a lot of people and this is very bad news for when things start to get back to some sort of normality as people’s habits will change until they know it’s gone.

Was going to add that even if 60k die from it, that’s 0.01% of overall population and for those under 50 it’s probably more like 0.001%.

Sorry 0.1 on first bit FFS! Back to the wine!

I’ve had the pleasure of being an inpatient on a non-Covid ward in the last two weeks. The restrictions were hard on everybody, including the staff who said explicitly that they weren’t giving the service that they would like to, and that they were concerned about the lack of community support after discharge. I could hear the staff conversations. They were worried about the same as the rest of us - wanting to see grandchildren and other loved ones, concerned about the vulnerable, upset about missing much needed holidays etc. I was grateful that they were working and exposing themselves to the virus of course, and most were more concerned about the physical and mental health under current restrictions of the postnatal mothers they were caring for

@EarlGreywithLemon
That's a rather silly point if I'm honest.
'Of those admitted to hospital...' that's rather crucial. There could be 1 million people who have it who aren't admitted to hospital. Or 100,000. Or 10,000. Or 1000. Without that info, it's a meaningless stat.

But that isn't the point that some of us are saying here! We're not talking about the odds of of being a catching it and dying of it! Even though you yourself might be okay, unless you know the medical history of everyone whose paths cross with yours, you really won't know whether you're putting vulnerable people at risk.

Plus we're also protecting the NHS from being overrun with cases. If you end up in hospital, you will end up putting frontline workers in danger.

I'm not in the shielded group but I am in the vulnerable group.

I work from home thankfully so for the rest of the year I won't be visiting shops, bars, restaurants, cinemas, anywhere with crowds.

I'll see friends at houses or outside 1-2-1 or in very small groups and with the 6ft social distancing but that will be my social life until there's a vaccine.

I've been prepared on that basis since it all kicked off TBH.

Spreading it to my vulnerable mum.

I’m healthy and under 50. However I’ve had a couple of smallish issues that have actually turned out to be bigger than I thought - a few years ago I had a chest infection that turned into pleurisy, so although I’m healthy I don’t think I’m as strong as I might be.

Also of people I know personally that have had it...

• Two were okay, like a mild flu
• One died, aged 43 leaving 3 children
• One, also 43 and a marathon runner was ill for 5 weeks

They're not odds I like.

Oh, I forgot one more. Best friend's sister.

Aged 36 and in hospital.

• As a healthy person, your risk of dying if you catch coronavirus is probably 1 in many many thousands.

For context I just looked up the increased risk of eating bacon daily to bowel cancer, and it is 40 in 10,000 - probably similar to corona fatality rate to healthy people.*

Your calculations are quite a way off there.

Given that most people would be likely to catch it in the next 12 months or so and 0.2-0.3% of younger people die = 1 in 400-500 chance of dying this year

The risk related to bowel cancer is over your lifetime not in the next 12 months.

I'm pretty good at balancing risks and generally not very risk averse but a 1 in 400-500 chance of dying this year is higher than I'd like to play with to be honest.

Especially as the chance of not dying but ending up severely ill and in hospital is much higher.

And I have a very high BMI so my chances would be worse (and yes, I had a flu jab and also yes, I am losing weight).

And for those comparing it to getting into a car.

Again, chance of dying of CV in the next 12 months or so of someone in their 30s-40s is 1 in 400-500.

Chance of dying in a car accident in any 12 month period is apparently 1 in 20,000.

So not really comparable at all.