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.

I understand what the median is, there are three definitions of average. But average used by public is usually used for the mean.
So 50% were under 80 years of age. That tells us nothing about the spread. So as an example that 50% could all be in their 40's or they could all be 79 years of age. The median would still be 80.

Anyway my kids are not going back to school and we are not going out to pubs, cinemas, restaurants etc until there is a vaccine. We won't be the only ones.
I don't think the government gives a shit about people like me, so we will do what we need to to keep our family safe.
If you think it is no big deal to catch covid 19 please go and work in a care home or hospital or volunteer.

OP - it's because they watch the BBC's endless stream of gloom and covid hyperbole

No but the rest does contextualise it
The ages ranged from 0-104
239 patients were under 18

I did not do the study merely read and highlighted it

I suspect I have had it as I have stated and for me personally was not as bad as swine flu. But that is just me

I hope there is a vaccine soon

Yes I hope there is a vaccine too.
I believe you had swine flu. But I have noticed an awful lot of MN posters claiming to have had swine flu when only 540,000 people in the UK had it. Swine flu mortality rate was also only 0.026%, so relatively low mortality rate.

Medics keep saying that covid 19 acts in surprising ways. And its estimated mortality rate is far higher than swine flu.

@wakeupitsabeautifulmorning

I think it's a good question.
I'm in the states and we're moving from "Stay-At-Home" to "Safer-At-Home."
I get anxious because all of a sudden the world seems to have gotten a lot bigger and a lot scarier. And so much is unknown and out of our control.
This is an odd analogy, but bear with me. I am fascinated/terrified by sharks. This virus seems very much like a shark attack. (Think the opening scene of Jaws). You know it's a possibility, but not really probable. Then something unseen, undetectable strikes. Strikes hard, strikes fast. You're helpless.
I am not embracing further restrictions. However, I know I'm going to have to fight through these recently acquired agoraphobic-like feelings, even as I am heartened at any little step towards "normal."
For example, while I'm thrilled we can now move forward and start my daughter's orthodontic treatment (big teeth, tiny jaw), the new restrictions are that she must go in alone, wear a mask, have her temperature taken, and I must wait outside for her to be brought out by a staff member, who will update me about the appointment. (To be fair, they did say that if a child showed signs of distress during any procedure, the (masked) parent will be allowed in).
It's new. It's weird. It's scary.
Frankly, I'm less concerned about getting the virus than my mental health.
However, we have no vulnerable loved ones near us, and our community has been very good about Stay-At-Home, social distancing and masks.

I’m female, fit & healthy with a low BMI, so I should be ok but I’m a single parent. If I became ill, what would happen to my ds? I couldn’t ask my older sister with her still older husband. Social services? I get distressed just thinking about it.

I don't think we have all the data yet. The death toll became very high very quickly and our ability to get people who were admitted to hospital out alive has frankly been hopeless. People have died waiting for ambulances and may have been saved if they'd had help sooner. I find both the government response, the speed of the climb in the death toll, the massacres in nursing homes and the recovery rate for those in hospital very alarming. I think we should be alarmed, really. Not juggling with statistics about cars (which are different because we know how many people travel safely-it's a riskyy different ball game and I'm not at all convinced the analogy holds weight).

@Mintjulia there is a whole thread for those of us with over 40 days of Covid symptoms and coincidentally most of us are (were) slim, 30s-50s and very fit. It doesn’t render you immune to significant symptoms unfortunately.

But I appreciate your concerns about your DS. For what it’s worth, I have been able to do essential tasks most days of my illness as have many, so you would probably be able to look after him yourself more or less.

Because death?

Also because it leaves scar tissue where your lungs should be, meaning you can possibly shave a good ten to fifteen years off your life expectancy.

HTH.

But we are going to have to start getting back to normal in the not too distant future.

You must be listening to different updates. What I am hearing is WFH, pubs closed and social distancing will all be in place for some time to come. Schools may return in some for eventually, but still social distancing somehow, next year's exam diet being cancelled again has been mooted.

Until we get some treatment, a vaccine or something to help get more people, including the apparently healthy, through this disease alive there will be measures in place.

Lockdown will be eased in stages though - not least that actually some people are easing it themselves. NHS has to start opening for screening and operations - some invasive cancer screens have not been carried out for 5 weeks now. Also, if you tank your economy completely (it’s going to be very bad already), they’ll be nothing to go back to. The latter 2 things are going to see non-Covid deaths rise.

So I’m in favour of staged easing
Masks
Social distancing in place for longer
No mass gatherings for this year at least
Non-essential travel off for longer
But schools and workplaces and shops gradually opening over the next few weeks
Backed by a proper test and isolate regime

Until we get some treatment, a vaccine or something to help get more people, including the apparently healthy, through this disease alive there will be measures in place

No, there won't be measures in place until a vaccine. It could be years. A completely fucked economy means many more will die, and not from covid19. Society will collapse. Are people not getting this? Life will be different, sure, but it will have to go back to some semblance of normal. We'll all just have to learn to live with it for now at least.

and wear masks. I'm completely dumbfounded as to why authorities in the UK and Ireland and actively discouraging people from wearing them. They work.

*are actively discouraging

I think FromEden, because they'd be asked to provide them and they know they won't be able to manage it. Pretty sure that is the main reason.

I think a lot of people don’t understand how rates of suicide will go up and also the consequences of more people being pushed into living in poverty in terms of health outcomes across a population. We are so used to seeing things at the individual level (not just Thatcher but a whole philosophic tradition in the West) that people don’t always extrapolate. It’s not just people making ‘poor choices’ about diet/lifestyle when living in poverty - it’s actually terribly stressful to the human condition and that impacts on health.

@Cantory why the I believe you? Yes I had it and yes I was very ill with it. I was a new Mum and it was awful. It took about 6 months to recover from it fully from it.
I was lucky this time (and yes untested but spoke to GP on the phone and all symptoms and cough fit but I guess I could not have had it). I still didn’t leave the bed for 5 days and the sofa for another 5 but for me it wasn’t as bad as the flu because 2 weeks after I had energy back! DD thought it worse than the flu she had. So yes if you think about flu as people do it was worse than that for both of us.

Parts of lockdown are already starting to ease with B&Q etc. It will slowly I think happen over the next 2-3 months stopping and starting as required

Testing and antibody testing is absolutely crucial though we are only at the moment seeing the tip of the iceberg and that is making it seem much much worse. Proper numbers of infected should give us a better picture

Because people I love and live with aren’t healthy and I don’t want to give it to them.

@Quartz2208 Relatively few people in the UK have had it. Yet most people arguing that lock down should finish now seems to say at some point they had swine flu. It stretches belief.

@Quartz2208 And the mortality rate with swine flu was low. Far lower than covid 19.

On the news just now - no new cases in South Korea. They only ever had a partial lockdown and managed to hold an election a fortnight ago. They have been absolutely rigorous in testing and contact tracing, and have prioritised hyper cleanliness in public areas. It can be done - the UK government has to show some humility, appreciate that we can learn from other nations and formally ask for South Korea's guidance and assistance in managing the infection

Also on the news this morning, Germany. Partially ended lockdown a week ago, R rate up already and Merkel warning of possible reimposition.
Indeed, we must learn lessons from other countries.

Where on earth have I said lockdown should finish @cantory

My point was that we have made this virus so all emcompassing we think it has the ability to do things no virus has done before. That is not true others can take you out for a very long time as swine flu did with me. This isnt a competition between the two (because CV would win) I have never tried to argue otherwise. But that some of the things we seem so worried about are normal in other viruses.

As I have said multiple times the problem with this is the scale which is why everything seems so much more magnified and scary. You are right Swine flu had a lot lower numbers so I was the only person I knew who took that long to feel back to normal. Here there will be a lot more

As it happens my view about the scale of it is why I dont want to come out of lockdown. I want a well thought out exit strategy that takes things slowly but acknowledges that neither can we live in THIS lockdown for anything but the short term future alongside a contact tracing and testing programme

But the fear with this is something that needs addressing - not helped by the constant media turning science into science fiction headlines such as the below

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8269427/How-British-coronavirus-patients-admitted-hospital-die-major-study-finds.html