Rant alert! How do those who want Lockdown to continue justify the suffering of everyone else?

[Thefrenchbaguette]

My 3 month old has been waiting for a hip scan to confirm her rather obvious DDH. She needs a harness, the GP already confirmed she will need one and put in an urgent referral at her 6 week review and still nothing because they're not doing them at all here! You can only use a harness up until 6 months and after that the treatment for DDH is an operation! My baby is going to have to have a completely unavoidable operation or suffer lifelong damage to her hips because the NHS is just not interested in anyone who doesn't have Covid19! There isn't even the option to pay for it to be done privately! I am furious and so sick of seeing countless threads and comments about how lockdown needs to be continued and even stricter! All very well with your comfortable house and perfectly secure income and no real risk to your overall well-being but what about everyone else who is suffering?!
A friend had an abnormal smear come back in January but the follow up has been indefinitely postponed! How many people are going to miss life saving diagnosis', life saving treatments! It's disgusting and I feel so unbelievably angry at what this country has come through so 90% of people can avoid getting what is essentially a bad cold!

@BakedCam

By successful lockdown I just meant succeeded in bringing down case numbers and R number. It was an unfortunate turn of phrase, sorry.

I'm not so sure that lockdown was just to protect the NHS. That was the slogan and it was a key part of it. But the NHS being overwhelmed was a proxy for a level of case numbers that would also be causing much wider health, social, security, and economic disruption. Clearly we wouldn't have a rate of infection that overwhelmed the nhs without much wider repercussions. Also, ultimately they needed to get to a position where we could 'live with' the virus over the medium to long term. Having got to the level of infection we did, lockdown was aimed at reducing R and case numbers to a level that would allow them to start experimenting with a new normal, one that allows us to open up without vaccination. It gave them time to, supposedly, increase testing, tracing etc, while the rate was being beaten back. Even if we had no health care system, we would have needed to beat the rate back somehow.

Lockdown relates to the NHS but the rules of lockdown say nothing about what health care can or should be offered, or do they? Nor about what can be accessed? Those decisions are taken separately.

I think OP should be aiming her anger at her local health trust . My husband has had a recent routine scan for a non urgent condition and we have sent elderly residents for follow up fracture clinic appts and another for a hear pacemaker check ...so moan to Pals at your local hospital and not at people who in your opinion have had a bad cold and died !

The NHS do not care, I say that as an ex nurse (left when dh got diagnosed last year). It looks like I am now going to have to go to pals again about his lack of treatment 😡

I’m so sorry about what you’re both going through. I spent 25yrs looking after patients and was often told I had great empathy, but you realise all the empathy in the world does not prepare you for looking after someone you love. It’s the worse pain I’ve ever been through and believe me, I didn’t have an easy life before meeting my dear husband. I’m thinking of you both. 💐

Yanbu

Nearly 40,000 people don’t die of bad colds.

Loads of people die from bad colds, old people, people who are seriously ill from cancer etc

Loads of people die from lots and lots of things, including the effects of lockdown. Sepsis, depression, cancer, heart attacks, strokes, meningitis, chicken pox.

People have tragically died from covid.

Not sure why covid deaths are more important or lead to people jumping up and down with ‘google x’s husband’

YANBU
I totally and utterly agree

OP
I understand your frustration And upset
But ranting at a load of strangers on MN is a waste of your energy !
I have NO fucking clue what’s going on
I’m just sat here waiting

@Inkpaperstars

Hang on...is the activity of the NHS part of lockdown? I genuinely thought that was a separate issue and lockdown was about shops, going out etc...

It is separate yes. The NHS has stopped procedures that have a higher risk of spreading the infection. They have also had to repurpose operating theatres as temporary ICU. The more virus is in circulation, the longer this will continue to be the case. The best hope for normal NHS service resuming is for the virus to be more effectively suppressed. That means a stricter lockdown.

Even people who haven't tested positive have been included - people with "suspected" covid but a negative or not test.

No, the daily count, the one that has just topped 40,000 only includes those that have tested positive. Not everybody who died from the virus had access to the tests so some people had it recorded on their death certificates according to their Drs clinical judgment. Those deaths are currently around 52,000 but the excess deaths are nearer 62,000 and current thinking it that most of those will have been undiagnosed coronavirus, although of course there will have been some that were not directly due to coronavirus. Not forgetting that all this is with having had a lockdown. It would have been much worse without it.

my family personally know people who died of pneumonia, tested negative yet Covid got put on death certificate.

There's a false-negative test rate of around 20%.

YANBU OP. A friend posted on insta tonight about how lovely lockdown has been and how nice it is to have their DC always within their safety, experimenting with recipes and baking, sharing family hobbies etc and how they could live Like this forever!!

Well clearly they are all healthy (for now), getting paid, financially okay, decent house etc. It’s such a middle class thing to say. It’s right up there with Trump saying today is a great day for George Floyd !!

But it IS an either or and that's a fact not a horrible statement; you clearly don't have any idea of the crisis with CAMHS? 18 months to wait to get into 'service' (while dealing with suicide attempts) then a further YEAR to wait for any interventions. I was told by a psychiatrist that she could have helped my daughter if she had the funding. Meanwhile, friend of FIL texting me to tell me his 90 year old mother (in a care home) is recovering well from her hip op. 10K a hip op on the NHS. No, it should most definitely NOT be an either or but children in this country count for nothing, absolutely diddly squat. Childrens lives simply do not matter. So yes, some of us mothers are very angry and if we do not speak up for our children who else is going to? Blame the right pepople? We are all part of the system.

That is shocking and terrible and completely unacceptable but also nothing to do with lockdown or coronavirus. Children's mental health services have been massively underfunded and at crisis for a long time.

I'd like to know what the figures are for people who were dying anyway. They're probably there but I'm so confused about the figures now.

You need to look at the excess deaths. That's the deaths above the average of the last 5 yrs. Currently at over 60,000.

Is there an -ism that means systematically discriminatory and prejudicial behaviour towards young people? I think we as a society are guilty at present of that -ism.

I have a lot of sympathy for your problems OP and see exactly what job mean -- why should your child have a painful operation and/or potentially a lifetime of hip problems because of an illness that actually is a lot like a cold for the majority of the population. See image attached from this week's (released today) covid surveillance report.

The real question for me is why we're the first society in human history to care more about people over 70 (three score years and ten is, after all, the traditional END of human life) than people under 20.

You can see from the image that if we'd done better as a nation during the pandemic (as everyone wishes we had) that would have meant, largely, saving the lives of elderly people. The fact that we failed and may continue to do that is awful, but doesn't mean we should continue to fuck over people whose lives are, in my opinion, more important by virtue of having so many more remaining years.

His death certificate has corona virus on it as well as pneumonia 'just in case' but he never had a test and staff at the home and family firmly believe he did not have corona virus.

I think there are bound to be some cases around like that, but I also think that they will be more than balanced out by the opposite, where people who did have it don't have it recorded on their certificate. If you look at the shape of the graphs of excess deaths and of +ve tested covid deaths the shapes are strikingly similar even though the excess deaths are much higher than recorded covid deaths.

Nightingale hospital which was built to cope with demand only had less than 20 ppl in it ...so why werent all covid patients taken to that so hospitals could resume doing other urgent treatments like cancer, surgeries provided patients tested were negative

Because they didn't have the necessary staff or equipment. They had ventilators but not dialysis machines and not enough nurses. A cynical person might say it was all for show.

I agree with you.

Because it saves lives OP.

@LavenderLilacTree

At the expense of other lives.....

Very naughty, PP. How dare you think something that some people don't agree with or don't like. And how very dare you express that thought.

Orwell's book, with its concept of 'thought crime' was supposed to be fiction.

Well, most of would be committing thought crime every day - each time we thought ‘Gee you’ve put on weight’ when looking at friend. Honestly. Some statements are better kept in your head, don’t you think? That’s just manners really.

Moreover, thoughtcrime involves psychological monitoring. We aren’t full Orwell yet - we just need to consider the feelings of other people.

I'm an NHS nurse and podiatrist and have been working throughout but the lack of care for cancer patients and those with chronic conditions is pissing me off. I'm 6 months overdue my spinal injections now and they are all that stand between me and another stint in a wheelchair. We could start start seeing people again. Outpatient clinics here are empty and staff have nothing to do.

@Doggybiccys

YANBU OP. A friend posted on insta tonight about how lovely lockdown has been and how nice it is to have their DC always within their safety, experimenting with recipes and baking, sharing family hobbies etc and how they could live Like this forever!!

Well clearly they are all healthy (for now), getting paid, financially okay, decent house etc. It’s such a middle class thing to say. It’s right up there with Trump saying today is a great day for George Floyd !!

This. I have friends who are loving it too.

YANBU OP, no NHS treatment should be suspended now, the NHS is not and was never overwhelmed.

The stats that have been circulated are wrong and it wonder why this has been allowed to happen.

Actually I'd say that it's more important a baby is treated to avoid a lifetime of disability, pain and complications.

It isn't as simple as that. A few weeks ago radio 4 was interviewing staaff who have been redeployed, they talked to a consultant who's speciality was nothing to do with acute medicine, I can't remember what it was, think opthalmology or rhumatology. He had been re trained to work in ICU with patients on ventilators. If he returned to his own department, even for a day that was one less ICU person and that might lead to the death of more than one personin ICU.

You need justification???

Well, how about 40,000 dead people, including over 350 yesterday, and many, many more who have survived but left permanently damaged, their lives changed forever.

Not to mention their families and loved ones left behind. Just how much justification do you need OP.?

Well, how about 40,000 dead people, including over 350 yesterday, and many, many more who have survived but left permanently damaged, their lives changed forever.

There’s about 450 deaths a day from cancer alone in the U.K. Corona isn’t even touching the sides of the 165,000 pa death toll. And there will be more, given that regular GP visits are the key intervention for early detection.

I’m also waiting for gynae surgery that can’t be done either NHS or private because most hospitals are signed over to the NHS still. It really is corona or nothing. As far as I can see, the lockdown is over based on the behaviour of those living around me in London, so what’s the point of all this?

Well, I do NOT want Lockdown to continue.
It is doing serious damage to the education of our children, many of whom will miss around 6 months of school.
My Adult DS, Working from home (so still has an income) is suffering serious mental health issues from the lack of social interation. He lives on his own.
Many 'non-urgent' treatments at hospital have been cancelled, as well as dentistry.
It is also devastating the economy, without which there would be no NHS, etc
However, I think Covid 19, is much worse than a bad cold (see OP). It is also DIFFERENT from flu, although we could compare the fatality rate.
Some reports in the newspaper have quoted medical experts claiming that it is more contagious than flu, but less deadly.
I remember the 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemic. I was at school and did not get it, but I remember many of my friends being off school with flu.
We did NOT shut down the economy. Some websites say 80,000 deaths occurred in the UK. Others say it was nearer 35,000.
I currently feel we are in the middle of a massive social experiment.

Lots of young people have died, No, they really haven’t. The number of young people (that is under 45) is around 350 iirc. Compared to the overall death rate of approx 40000 and compared to.a UK population of 60 million.

Of the people who have died, 85% of those are over the age of 65, and 91% (including the thirteen year old) had underlying health conditions. Oh, and the fact that thirteen year old’s family couldn’t be with him was because of the lockdown people want to continue.

Now, before someone accuses me of thinking the elderly and the vulnerable are expendable, of course they’re not. But the reality is that many of the vulnerable are already at risk from either other health conditions, or in fact the underlying conditions which mean they’re vulnerable, for which they’re now not receiving treatment so as to protect them from COVID.

I have a serious heart condition. I need a transplant. Fortunately, because of some interim treatment I had last year I am currently well enough not to be on the list. But I was told in October that given my stats the likelihood of me deteriorating in the next year was high.

If I catch COVID I will almost certainly die, as made very clear to me by my consultant. But if I deteriorate I will do so quickly and I won’t be able to have a work up for a transplant and I will probably die. No, I will die without a transplant.

Added to which I am currently unemployed (this is relevant given what I’m about to say.)

So in theory, I could die from COVId. In theory, I could die from heart failure. I obviously take whatever steps I need to to mitigate both of those risks right now. But in the meantime life has to go on. i had a remote job interview yesterday (surreal experience,) and if I’m successful then I will bloody well go into work once they stop working remotely. Because without a job I have no income, and when my DC leaves full time education e.g. CM etc will also cease. Which may compromise my health and lead to , oh, I don’t know, me dying.

Fact is, we’re all going to die. And reality is none of us knows how or when that will happen. We could expect the vulnerable to shield for the next two years, and then any one of them could go out for the first time and get hit by a bus.

Life has to go on, and while you’re sitting there thinking about dying, you’re not actually living

As for “it saves lives,” that’s just a virtue-signalling catchphrase.