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.

@Kazzyhoward how was that poster selfish? they didnt say they were going to not comply with the lockdown guidelines but that from a personal point of view she was not concerned?

@Kazzyhoward Excuse me? Just because I refuse to live my life in unfounded fear doesn’t mean I won’t take sensible precautions.

You do understand many of us will get this? It’s better that the healthy ones do. Unless you think we all hide away for five years until a vaccine is available?

@Leflic to be fair, this thread is asking healthy people why they are scared. Not if they are not. It shouldn't invite ridicule either way.

@PixelatedLunchbox I got sick on 17th March, so must have caught it before lockdown. I think I caught it from a colleague who was just back from Spain -but of course I dont know for sure.

@SmileyClare I am assuming her clinical judgement and based on what has happened elsewhere? Other countries have had devastating pandemics more recently.

I am not scared of catching it at all.

I know I would likely be fine, I've had two difficult pregnancies and various bouts of flu and my immune system seems pretty tough. But my eight year old son nearly died after contracting pneunonitis during chickenpox as a perfectly healthy five year old. And the thought of him being taken into hospital struggling to breathe again terrifies me. Especially as with this I wouldn't be able to go with him.

Thanks @cherrybunx0

I have been fully compliant with lockdown but I also understand accurate risk assessment...

Maybe because we care about people other than ourselves. Once more people - even healthy people become infected they'll spread it to people who are shielding and healthcare professionals. Also this poses a much higher risk of putting me in hospital even if I eventually survive. I don't want my lungs and other organs permanently damaged. I don't want to be too ill to walk up the stairs (of the few healthy people I know who have had covid that has happened to more than one).

Dont know if i have an undiagnosed health issues and heard healthy people die from it too.

I'm worried because my dh may be vulnerable. And because so much is unknown about this relatively new virus.

I'm assuming that either I've already had it or that at some point I will. I think most of us should expect to. I don't have any particular reason to be worried that it would be serious for me, and most of the people I know who have had it have recovered well, though it's usually taken 3-4 weeks to get back to full strength.

What I am worried about is passing it on to other people who may be much more vulnerable than me, especially my parents. And I am worried about the people I know who work as carers and NHS staff, dealing with the burden of caring for those who are seriously ill with it.

It's right to be scared -there is no knowing who will have mild symptoms and who will have more serious ones

@Coldbatteredpuddings

I think this is key to why people are frightened. The symptoms vary from temporary loss of smell and taste, to life threatening. The virus affects people in unpredictable ways. There are now reports emerging that smokers are more resilient to it, with speculation that nicotine somehow inhibits the ability of the virus to adhere to cells. I am not at all suggesting that smoking is an effective antidote or a good idea. As we all know, smoking is linked to lethal lung conditions. But it is bizarre and counter intuitive that smokers are apparently less rather than more susceptible to this. Its impact is unpredictable, varies from mild to fatal, it's extremely contagious, can survive on plastic surfaces for days. And there is no cure. No wonder people are bloody frightened.

Most people survive car crashes but only a total idiot would actively seek to be involved in one.

I’m more worried that I might pass it on to someone who would get very unwell from it. I know people in high risk groups have been asked to stay at home but I’m still aware of people in those groups that are still going out.

I think it’s because the only person I know to have had it, my friend who is an NHS nurse had no symptoms except a loss of her sense of smell, her husband had mild cold symptoms and her DS had nothing. She was tested and came back positive.
So I guess my view is skewed by my personal experience.

@DollysDrawers

They are neighbours and are very good friends with a GP. The mum, just before lockdown, described her (mild) symptom to her GP friend and he said it was highly likely that she was suffering from Covid-19.

Subsequently, the rest of the household also had similar, albeit even milder, symptoms.

Of course people are scared. The news reports, the public information films/announcements (albeit not of 1970s-style goriness), the threads on boards like this one. And it's a new disease with no pre-existing immunity in the community.

The comparison with flu is really not as off as many people (who get very upset at it as trivialising) seem to think. It's just that 'flu' has become shorthand for 'an unpleasant heavy cold'. True flu can be every bit as nasty as coronavirus and cause complications that can and do kill people, including young and healthy ones. (And the uptake of flu vaccines isn't what it should be, anywhere). I had a nasty run of lung health, culminating in multiple pneumonias and suspected bronchoectasis (before i got pregnant and it all suddenly, and weirdly, disappeared), subsequent to having swine flu moderately badly in 2009 and I am not at all sure the two weren't connected.

Coronavirus is new. No existing immunity. Constant media exposure. The cumulative message, for many, is that this is a 'killer virus'.

I think there's also something else going on in terms of the control over our lives that it has taken from us. There does seem to be a risk of particularly severe effects in people with what are - at a population level - 'lifestyle' health issues (I am not, at all, shaming anyone individually. I also mean lung conditions exacerbated by air pollution. Who knows if working with chemicals has an effect. Etc). A lot of the other 'lifestyle' diseases are not immediate threats. We can defer them - out of sight, out of mind. The measures to try and contain the spread have taken away a huge amount of the fabric of our lives. We (collectively) in Western nations are not used to this degree of destabilisation and being at the mercy of outside forces. So the obvious psyhcological response is that it must be some terrible killer force that's doing it. Not 'simply' a new virus which has knocked some of the more finely balanced - health- and economy-wise - structures of our lives.

Not worried about catching it but am worried about transmitting it to someone more vulnerable. Also enjoying lockdown even though I am wfh and have young children. My pace of life was too fast before. Enjoying the slow down and extra time with dh and the kids.

I actually know a few people struggling with long term back or joint pain as the result of being in a car crash many years before. Of course they survived, but would I assume prefer not to have been in them and left living with pain.

Every action we take every day carries a risk. Getting in the car, crossing the street. Many things we eat or drink carry risk - bacon, sausages, alcohol.

Life is full of risks and we need to manage them, clearly.

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. But no one is suggesting banning bacon, even if it's not a great idea to eat it regularly.

Even as an older person or someone with health conditions the vast majority of sufferers recover.

So we live with risk all the time and it's our responsibility as adults to make decisions about what risks are worth taking and what aren't.

How long would you go through lockdown to avoid that risk of 1 in several thousand? A few weeks maybe, we've all now done that. But months? A year? At what point would we say, actually for the compromises I'm making, I consider that risk to be worth taking.

I don't want to get it. I am afraid, despite having no underlying heath conditions, that it would affect me badly. I am also worried about getting to hospital, there seems to be mixed messages about paramedics admitting people and I know it isn't popular but I have a feeling that people have died because we havent been proactive enough about getting them help or to hospital. Although having said that I would get DH to drive me to hospital if I was very sick.

This feeling for me is tied up to the fact that the stats coming out of Germany seem to indicate their very proactive approach to treating people and giving them oxygen has worked.

I'm not scared of catching it at all

I'm scared of spreading it. That is all