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!

What horrible, divisive language people are using on this thread.

I really wanted to hear about paedos, ragged, in a discussion about keeping people like my dd or my dh safe

There definitely won’t be a second lockdown. I can’t see how that would work. The economy would tank far worse a second time, I can’t see any government agreeing to economic collapse, I can’t see the general population agreeing to it. Can you imagine Italy going on lockdown again?

So many experts on the thread. The NH were not a PR move that's offensive.

The NH were set up to cover expected excess demand based on Italy etc then not needed. We were told would initially would prob be fir the more palliative patients just having oxygen. as numbers are less than worse case scenario they weren't filled and are now going to be for patients who are stable and fit to leave hospital but have no carers etc yet but don't need acute hospital. Like cottage hospitals. To make space in acute hospitals.

Can you imagine Italy going on lockdown again?

Wasn't that why Italy enforced lockdown so stringently and only lifted it when they felt safe to do so- precisely to ensure they wouldn't have to go back in again?

The truth is that what the UK does or doesn't do will have to depend on the death figures: hopefully, they will stay stable, but if there is a sharp raise, we may get to a point where it gets harder to run the country due to the number of people incapacitated than it would in lockdown. We don't know yet. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Again, I agree wtih Nihiloxica. There won't be a second lockdown.

The OPs daughter is at serious risk of not getting to live any of her life free from pain or disability - that is a much bigger tragedy to me than someone like my GF dying at the end of a long fulfilled life

I totally agree. A baby being disabled or in pain for the rest of it's life is a much bigger tragedy than an elderly person dying, and I am a lot more upset about it. Considering how easy it would be to sort out, and the high success rate of a harness.

People here have such black and white thinking, that extending someone's quantity of life always trumps improving someone's quality of life. It doesn't. And that any sort of life, even one where you don't go out for years or have painful disabilities, is fine because at least you're not dead. That OP is "entitled" to not want her baby to be disabled because at least they're alive. How ridiculous.

@corythatwas Italy are starting to open the borders, do you really think a strict lockdown will stop a second wave?

*The OPs daughter is at serious risk of not getting to live any of her life free from pain or disability - that is a much bigger tragedy to me than someone like my GF dying at the end of a long fulfilled life

I totally agree. A baby being disabled or in pain for the rest of it's life is a much bigger tragedy than an elderly person dying, and I am a lot more upset about it. Considering how easy it would be to sort out, and the high success rate of a harness.*

I totally agree about this. But it would be perfectly possible to sort the OPs dd out- and yes, this should be done as a matter of urgency!!! - without total immediate abandon of lockdown. It is completely unconnected to whether schools or restaurants or hairdressers open now or in a month's time.

It is, however, connected to the state of health of NHS staff and whether they are being transferred to keep ICU going. A doctor who is struggling to breathe cannot sort the OPs dd out.

I also still maintain I would like my 23yo (who also has a twisted pelvis and is in severe pain) to have a chance to live to that old age you all keep going on about.

The parents of the 13yo who had to die alone in hospital might also have liked him to have had that chance.

The parents whose children are in ICU probably do too.

YYY to the OPs dd getting her harness. Otherwise, yes to caution.

“ It is always unreasonable when anyone dies. I don’t care what age they are.”

This is such a ridiculous statement.

Beijing, my daughter is both disabled/in pain, vulnerable to Covid, and young. It's not the case that you get to choose one or the other.

Are you saying her life is worth less because she is in pain and sometimes unable to go out?

It is always unreasonable when anyone dies. I don’t care what age they are

Some times it really isn't.

it’s not an either/or.

You can still have lockdown and decrease cases (especially in areas with high pop density, high number cases, rising R). As well as increasing outpatient and elective surgery capacity in a controlled way (fewer clinics than before to enable distancing and cleaning so you don’t get outbreaks in hospital)

If the govt cared enough, they could rent/requisition private hospitals to do the elective surgery - with patients having tests for covid pre-surgery and regular testing of staff.

In fact, a 2nd wave causing a rise in cases and hospital admissions is likely to delay elective surgeries as these are the first to go when a hospital gets full.

It’s heart breaking a child dying, especially in those circumstances but I say again 5 children under 15 have died under Covid and most of those had serious issues. That lad died of the rare syndrome, he was very overweight, here’s the report:

www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31094-1/fulltext

I bet there’s thousands of children who have op’s child condition which isn’t receiving medical attention

The really distasteful thing about this thread is the comparison in the value of lives. No life is worth more any other. And one death being assigned tragedy status while another isn’t. Reading this paints a very bleak picture of our society.

What Namenic said. Every word of it.

There is no connection between allowing elective surgery and the complete abandonment of lockdown.

The children who need hip surgery do not depend on their treatment on people being able to sit next to each other on a Dorset beach.

We could have elective surgery- as long as the hospitals are not filling up with acutely ill people.

Are you saying her life is worth less because she is in pain and sometimes unable to go out?

No, I was calling out the ridiculous statements I saw calling the OP "entitled" for expecting any treatment and that she should be grateful for being alive in the first place, no matter how difficult her daughter's life may end up.

No life is worth more any other.

Doctors always have to prioritise some people for treatment over others, and actuaries compare "value" of lives for a living. A life with more years left to live would be placed over a life with less years left to live, based on QALYs. It is completely insincere to say that if you had to save your child or your grandma from a burning building that it would be down to the toss of a coin - come on.

The really distasteful thing about this thread is the comparison in the value of lives. No life is worth more any other. And one death being assigned tragedy status while another isn’t. Reading this paints a very bleak picture of our society.

I think what's worrying about our society is that we are apparently so shit scared of death, and have some kind of weird expectation that we are going to live forever, so much so that the death of someone in their eighties or nineties is deemed 'a tragedy'. It's not tragic, its life, it will literally happen to all of us, hopefully in our eighties or nineties.

I don't even have particularly strong feelings about whether lockdown continues for the time being. I understand that we need to start getting back to normal in order for people not to die or become seriously ill from other things, I also understand that we need to proceed with great caution in order to help people like Corys daughter.

It's just this ridiculous assertion that if you don't think that the death of an 85 year old person is 'unreasonable' or 'tragic' then you are a heartless bastard, that I can't get on board with. It shows a weird sense of entitlement to be honest. I've had cancer and if I die at the age of 80 I will be fucking over the moon!

But Beijing, could you explain why accessing treatment for the OPs dd to prevent possible future disability and pain (which we can surely all agree is an important and urgent matter!) has to come lumped with a general raising of lockdown which would put my daughter (already in pain and disabled) at risk of losing her life?

How are the two connected? What has elective surgery to do with a general raising of lockdown?

@corythatwas, yes I see your point, probably not connected, though I can see how some would connect "lockdown" to the total shutting down of non-Covid healthcare, as they happened at exactly the same time.

It's just this ridiculous assertion that if you don't think that the death of an 85 year old person is 'unreasonable' or 'tragic' then you are a heartless bastard, that I can't get on board with

I totally agree - I get really upset when I read about children or animals suffering, horrible stories like Baby P or animal rescues or a person who committed suicide. These are things that are horrible and unfair and genuinely a tragedy. I'm sorry if I don't feel the same about very elderly people dying - how can it be a tragedy if it's unavoidable and inevitable and will happen to every single one of us?

One mistake we make, I think, is lumping all elderly people together in a group that are just about to pop their clogs and have no quality of life.

Think about how our society depends on the volunteering and childcare of people over the "shielding age". Round here, grandparents are very important because many families can't afford childminders or nurseries.

Some of the scientists doing great work at the moment are over 70.

My own mother, who (bless her!) is shielding to protect others, has spent her enforced lockdown partly as a research assistant to a relative, partly in restoring textiles so they can be used by generations to come; she also knits for children in refugee camps and contributes to a number of charities.

She would probably be cool about dying except she is a carer and she knows she wouldn't just spontaneously combust leaving no trace of infection for others: if she was taken ill, that would be a further risk to all sorts of people.

how can it be a tragedy if it's unavoidable and inevitable and will happen to every single one of us?

I agree the death of elderly strangers that die of ‘natural’ causes is a fact of life and rationable (made up word alert), but losing your parents to this virus must be horrible. Some have lost both parents in short proximity. I am deathly afraid for my mum who has been shielding.

The end dragon
I agree