To believe that it won't all be over by Christmas

[caroline161]

I hope it will but really. Does anyone truly believe this or do you think that covid-19 is going to cause a lot of trouble this winter?
Yes it will all be back to normal by Christmas
No we are in for a tough winter.

It doesn't sound hysterical to me @AlternativePerspective. No one that I've seen on this thread is saying there will bodies piled in the streets by December. Rather, that the usual 'normal' things like big office Christmas parties, trips to panto, large family Christmas gatherings won't be able to happen due to high levels of infection.

You dont think that might happen? Hope you're right and it disappears! I personally probably wont put a deposit down for our Christmas do this October though...

There are plenty talking about the second wave and how there will be no high street, office blocks will be standing empty and we will all be doomed.

In the scheme of things no office Christmas party isn’t exactly something to get too upset about Most people moan like hell about them anyway, get too drunk and vow they won’t do it again next year. Perhaps having no Christmas party will bring home the reality that feeling the need to socialise with people you have to work with all day is unnecessary anyway.

A family friend who works in the field of infectious diseases (both on the frontline at a large Teaching Hospital and in academia) was saying that he and many colleagues suspect the virus has been around and circulating in the community for much longer than we realise so what we are all assuming to be the advent of the pandemic was the "second wave", which is by no means over but past it's peak.
Of course that doesn't mean their won't be a third or fourth wave.

Yes I actually agree with you there Alternative. The high street is on it's way out, covid or no covid, and it will need to reshape itself to cope with our different lifestyle and expectations. Possibly the same will be said of office blocks. But neither one of those things is a long term catastrophe on a societal level, although of course it is a personal catastrophe if you lose your job.

I think this winter will be shit as we won't be able to socialize outside as much, and numbers of infections will inevitably rise. But the vast majority of us will survive and it will be just a shit time that passes.

@ welcometohell I have heard that as well, although you will be instantly dismissed for saying it on here. Posters have gone so far as to say “no it wasn’t COVID” when someone has pointed out they had an unusual virus e.g. last year.

But there are people who have been proven to have had COVID back in December so it’s likely that there will have been people who had it before then. Thing is we’ll never know because there were never any tests done.

I had a flu-like virus towards the end of last year. Just before I had to go to the transplant centre for an assessment. I was told then that all my blood results were off the scale, and that if they continued down those lines I would deteriorate within a year max. So much was their concern that they booked an appointment just six weeks later and the talk was very much doom and gloom and looking at the next stage, i.e. the transplant list.

Six weeks later all my results had improved and they moved my next appointment to six months and bounced my routine care back to my local cardiology team (local being one of the bigger hospitals in London,)

I have wondered if it could have been COVId, but it is of course not possible to know. If I were to find out that it was then I would be bloody ecstatic, because I’ve been told by my cardiologist that if I catch it I am highly unlikely to survive.

A family member works in the police and they have all had antibody tests. His came back negative, but one of his colleagues, who was sent home after her Tesco delivery driver tested positive, and who tested negative for COVID, her antibody test came back positive.

it would be interesting to see how many people have antibodies and how many more people have had COVID than they really know, esp as they are saying that 80% of known cases are a-symptomatic.

The media certainly don't want it to be over and will keep ramping up the doom and gloom, especially the likes of Sky News, they love it.

There will be an amount of people that will take everything they say as fact, but the more they bang on about it, the more people are going to get bored with it.

The people bored by it all will go back to normal and just get on the best they can. We had a long walk yesterday and next to nobody socially distanced at all. It was a choice of stay on the pavement or get run over by a car, it was an obvious choice. The last couple of weeks here have felt very normal now and thank god for it.

@welcometohell

A family friend who works in the field of infectious diseases (both on the frontline at a large Teaching Hospital and in academia) was saying that he and many colleagues suspect the virus has been around and circulating in the community for much longer than we realise so what we are all assuming to be the advent of the pandemic was the "second wave", which is by no means over but past it's peak. Of course that doesn't mean their won't be a third or fourth wave.

I’ve heard that before.....they’ve proved in Italy and France it was about and killing people in Dec. They’ve analysed Stored lab samples And sewage samples. They just didn’t know what it was and it obviously wasn’t as deadly or wasn’t as prevalent in Dec as it was in March. So yes, maybe we are in the second wave. I hope so.

Wow - there are some cheerful souls on this thread

260,000 new cases worldwide yesterday. There's no way things will be back to normal here by Christmas, next Christmas maybe

Online retailers are going to be very busy soon. I won't be shuffling round the shops in the winter wearing a mask

@Whatnext2018

All these comments are pretty scary and depressing 😞 Does no one see any positive moves forward, what about the vaccine when they mentioned September? Is it bullshit?

Keep up, @Whatnext2018. This is MN remember, where everyone is trying to out do themselves in the doom and gloom stakes.

Agree with those who have said that Covid isn;t going to disappear but that doesn't mean that we carry on in lockdown forever. We will just have to learn to live with it until an effective vaccine and treatment comes along and hopefully that won't be too long.

@Ethelfleda

Wow - there are some cheerful souls on this thread

Glass half empty, that's for sure.

@Rigorousyetcalm

I can’t see vaccine being available until this time next year (work in Pharma). Trial participants need to be exposed to the disease and it might be pretty hard if you are taking part in the trial in the UK. They either need to directly challenge the trial participants with COVID-19 or start opening centres in badly hit areas worldwide. An end by Christmas is a pipe dream.

The Oxford vaccine team are actually doing both of these things though aren't they? They're completing Phase 3 in Brazil to expose participants to more of the virus and they're planning and recruiting for a challenge phase.

It’s not just about vaccines though it’s about treatment.

We are more informed about the virus now and there are proven drugs which make a difference.

So while there is not yet a vaccine, treatments are advancing, and as such the outcomes will improve regardless.

@Leaannb you have got to bd kidding. UK government and IS government have been together been lying to the public. What kind of crazy is that? That’s the newest and most bizarre conspiracy theory yet.

You are aware, aren’t you, that this is a novel virus - which means new. That means the official can only presume, by way of educated guess, how the virus would react until more facts are known. As more facts are known and shared amongst scientific community and then government plans/policies/predictions change. Then change again if there are spikes or new information available.

It's not over until a vaccine is found. Winter will be a nightmare as people will have the normal cold/flu and this will be mistaken for Covid.

A family friend who works in the field of infectious diseases (both on the frontline at a large Teaching Hospital and in academia) was saying that he and many colleagues suspect the virus has been around and circulating in the community for much longer than we realise so what we are all assuming to be the advent of the pandemic was the "second wave", which is by no means over but past it's peak.

If that were true, then it would still have been the first wave, just that it lasted longer than thought and took longer to reach exponential growth.

How could the March "wave" have been a second wave when no one did anything to stop the first "wave"? Without action, the first wave would just continue to grow. It's highly unlikely, in fact close to impossible, that the first wave simply burnt itself out without any change in behaviour or medical/scientific intervention.

So, yes, possible, in fact likely we've had covid for longer than we thought, but that simply means it doesn't spread as fast as we thought. That can only be a good thing.

I don't think it will be, but I think people will be so fed up of social distancing by then they will carry on as normal.

This.

The government will have to just take into account that people have had a gutful of all this shite, regardless of the status of the virus. As long as the NHS isn’t overwhelmed, and it wasn’t last time, so they know the wriggle room they have.

All these comments are pretty scary and depressing
Does no one see any positive moves forward, what about the vaccine when they mentioned September? Is it bullshit?

Indeed - it’s MN for you! Post asking about CV and you’ll only attract this type of person. The one that states their opinion as a fact.
I could get on board if people said “in my opinion we won’t be back to normal etc etc” but they don’t. With all the confidence they can muster, they declare that they KNOW what is going to happen in the next 5 - 6 months. The truth is, nobody knows for sure. So an optimistic opinion is just as valid as a negative one.

North Wales is rife with this virus and holiday makers are swanning around like its not an issue.

Supermarkets are still queuing 2 meters apart outside then its free for all inside, oneway system has been removed, and even though the long queues for the checkouts, the staff send customers to stand right behind each other.

Snowdon is full to the brim, and they just done care.

Its a huge mistake.

It’s not doom or gloom it’s being more realistic. Even if covid doesn’t highly peak again maybe smaller local spikes, this Christmas won’t be back to normal, people will be more cautious, some have lost jobs so won’t have the money they normally have, travel abroad for Christmas could be limited, some family could still be shielding.
Plans will be hesitant in case of local lockdowns Ok we don’t really know but completely normal isn’t very likely is it?

I work in the NHS plans are being made as for winter ( way above my pay grade!) Winter planning always happens ( winter is always bad) but how do you add covid into The mix with most U.K. hospitals being older buildings that don’t have space or facilities for the infection control measures needed for both winter sickness and covid?

it’s been hard enough and I can’t say I’m not dreading winter. I’ll be so happy to say I was wrong if it doesn’t descend into some kind of another peak though!

I’m hoping the social distancing and hygiene/masks actually helps the other winter illness to be kept at lower infections too.

North Wales is rife with this virus

You mean statements like this, @Ethelfleda? Statements which are most probably totally made up, but presented as fact?

North Wales isn't "rife" with anything. Numbers are decreasing there just as with everywhere else. And is "swanning around" the new "flocking and flouting"?

Will things be back to normal?

I think that's doubtful as max 10% of people have had it. There are still comments on here dismissive of the disease akin to the flu comments back in February.

From what I gather lots of people who know someone or who have had it themselves take it more seriously.

It is also possible that people had it in December but it is impossible to know but I suspect for most people it is doubtful. There were some nasty bugs going around then and lost of people at school caught it.

How different it is going to be at Xmas we don't know yet. The BLM and beach scenes show how hard it is to transmit outdoors in warm weather at least.

When schools go back and offices fill up again we will have more of an idea I suppose. First we see what happens to cases over the next few weeks. If we make it to mid October without cases rising significantly Xmas may be ok with households allowed to mix

You mean statements like this, @Ethelfleda? Statements which are most probably totally made up, but presented as fact?

Yep. You’ve got it in one.
Luckily there are still plenty of people around who are capable of critical thinking

I think by Christmas actual deaths by the virus itself will be low, much as they are right now. However, the government and media will still be flogging the dead horse. Every flu death will go down as Covid along with all the other deaths due to normal winter bugs that the world sees year in and year out. Just like how right now PHE is recording deaths of people hit by a bus as Covid deaths if they happened to have had it three months ago and made a full recovery. Just so the government can say "see, we told you it was a serious threat. We definitely needed to destroy the country as you knew it and the economy otherwise we'd all be dead now".

The "wear face masks and we'll be back to normal sooner" crowd are the same gullible idiots that back in March told us we must not leave our homes and we'd be back to normal in time to enjoy the summer. And look how that turned out?

So to summarise. We could be back to normal but I don't believe the government will allow us to be.

With regards to seasonal Flu - I believe soon we will know the details of the flu vaccine roll out this year. A great many more people should be getting vaccinated than normal.
Plus - the measures in place to reduce CV will also have an impact on reducing other viruses in circulation.
We have a much bigger testing capacity than at the start and we have more knowledge than at the start.
I don’t think we will be back to compete normal by Christmas - but I don’t think it’ll be as miserable as is being made out on here!
Yes local councils & the NHS are preparing but they have to! Surely ‘prepare for the worst and expect the best’ is the mantra here??