Children mustn't see grandparents until vaccine found?

[Witterywoman]

Now that the kids are back at school, SIL has said her kids must isolate from both sets of grandparents in case they give them Covid picked up at school, and this must continue until a vaccine is found. All 4 grandparents are over 70 but healthy, no health conditions to speak of. My parents are particularly upset and don't understand it. I don't get it either and don't intend to stop them seeing my kids.

Are we missing something?

This is a poor understanding of probability and risk.

No it isn’t. You’re revealing your own utter inability to assess risk.

We know that RTAs kill millions a year, we have the power to stop them and we don’t. We take that risk every time we get in a car or cross the road.

We happily live with that ongoing, significant risk, yet have to ‘prevent every single Covid death’ according to this thread, despite enormous cost.

It’s been taken out of all reasonable proportion now.

@TeacupDrama

Someone who knows they have the virus because of either symptoms or a test then goes amongst people is like a drunk driver they know they are drunk and shouldn't be driving just like the covid positive person knows they should stay home. Someone who has no symptoms and has not knowingly been in contact with a covid positive person and has followed the law can't be compared to a drunk driver but a normal driver, they know of nothing that should stop them driving they are not too tired to drive or taking drink / drugs their car is roadworthy but still there is a small possibility that the brakes could fail or that something happens thar causes a accident or injury but there is no recklessness likee the drunk driver. A healthy person with no covid symptoms going about daily life and sticking to covid laws is being perfectly reasonable to do all that is allowed.

There is far more nuance to the current situation than that. Other factors (eg the rate of infection in your city, how many different grandchildren/different schools are being attended, also come into play). Looking after a grandchild who is in nursery (direct contact with perhaps 5 other households) is very different to mixing indoors with multiple grandchildren who are in different, massive ‘bubbles’ in schools).

These are all factors that are worth considering before making a reasoned judgement.

@TheKeatingFive

This is a poor understanding of probability and risk.

No it isn’t. You’re revealing your own utter inability to assess risk.

We know that RTAs kill millions a year, we have the power to stop them and we don’t. We take that risk every time we get in a car or cross the road.

We happily live with that ongoing, significant risk, yet have to ‘prevent every single Covid death’ according to this thread, despite enormous cost.

It’s been taken out of all reasonable proportion now.

I’ve just explained the difference between additive and multiplicative risk to you. Pandemics fall into the latter category. This is a fundamental tenet of probability for anyone within the field. Sorry that I can’t do more to remedy your lack of understanding.

I’ve just explained the difference between additive and multiplicative risk to you.

Deaths are deaths though.

I’m not quite sure why you can’t grasp that, but 🤷‍♀️ Not my problem.

I’d love to know why Covid deaths must be prevented despite the enormous cost, but the far more substantial RTA deaths are fine and we’re happy to live with.

Answers on a postcard.

Kids do get it and do spread it, in fact they are super spreaders. They also show different symptoms to adults so is harder to spot. My kids and I have had it. 7 months on im still suffering from the damage it caused. It's bloody horrible.

A vaccine may never be found - we may have to just live with it being around.

I do understand her concerns but sure the grandparents should have a say in it!?

Really Keating? Since you’re so highly informed, do you fancy letting us know what the ratio is of RTA deaths to Covid 19 deaths in the UK? I’m sure we’d all benefit from your superior knowledge.

I’m not going to hunt down UK figures for someone who presumably can use google themselves but ...

Globally we have 875,000 Covid deaths so far.

Compared to 1.35 million RTAs annually

If you want to compare deaths we care about versus those we don’t.

@bemusedmoose

Kids do get it and do spread it, in fact they are super spreaders. They also show different symptoms to adults so is harder to spot. My kids and I have had it. 7 months on im still suffering from the damage it caused. It's bloody horrible.

A vaccine may never be found - we may have to just live with it being around.

I do understand her concerns but sure the grandparents should have a say in it!?

This depend on the age of the kids. Primary school children pose a significantly lower risk than secondary.

The government treated the initial outbreak in the same way as flu hence the concern about all children and all schools closing. However the evidence has shown that primary schools are much less problematic than secondary.

Yes you got me, Keating, I was just being sarcastic. Off the top of my head, without googling, UK road deaths were around 1,800 in 2019, whereas Covid 19 deaths are somewhere between 40 and 60 thousand, so far. Now throttled back by drastic action, but we can’t know for certain that they won’t come back and double by the end of the year if we don’t keep our guard up.

Yes road deaths are appalling in sub-Saharan Africa but that’s not really top of most Brits’ priorities at the moment.

S’okay, we already established much earlier in this thread that if deaths are non-Western we don’t give a shit, even if they are entirely preventable.

Back then we were taking about disease rather than traffic, but I guess it all falls into the same category.

[quote LovelyIssues]@TheKeatingFive I don't think it's selfish at all. In fact the complete opposite!! I think people still putting elderly at risk are selfish personally [/quote]
I think people treating everyone born before 1950 like children are patronising and rude personally.

@VinylDetective I respect your opinion. Funnily enough my parents and in laws have completely agreed with our decision and appreciate how much we care about them. It'll be hard and we're very close with them but the children can facetime like in the beginning of Lockdown and we feel happy knowing we're doing our bit to continue to keep them safe

@Blackforesthotchoc

Sorry but that's insane. Are the grandparents going out of the house? Driving a car even in their age group is a more "risky" activity than catching and dying of covid. They're in their 70s so they're definitely inordinately more at risk of getting some form of cancer or any number of other diseases. This govt have really done a number on peoples ability to rationally assess risk.

I would agree with this. My DC’s grandparents are visiting restaurants, playing sport, travelling on public transport, shopping, driving daily. They are all over 70 and all have underlying health conditions, but they are well controlled. Two of them couldn’t bare to not see the DC, and I feel it’s up to them to make their own risk assessment. I do sometimes feel worried, and would obviously feel horrendously guilty if the DC passed it onto them, but they are well informed and able to make their own decision.

@tillytown

Some of us are arguing that this isn't what's happening. Children are making decisions for their parents, And that's what we have a problem with. What? The person you are talking about isn't a child, she is an adult.

My children are adults, they are still my children.

This is adult children making decisions for their adult parents.

See?

[quote LovelyIssues]@Bodynegative maybe she doesn't want it on her conscience if she makes Grandparents ill. It's just not worth it at the moment, she sounds sensible.[/quote]
She sounds like a bloody dictator.

Has she even discussed it with them I wonder?

[quote LovelyIssues]@VinylDetective I respect your opinion. Funnily enough my parents and in laws have completely agreed with our decision and appreciate how much we care about them. It'll be hard and we're very close with them but the children can facetime like in the beginning of Lockdown and we feel happy knowing we're doing our bit to continue to keep them safe [/quote]
not envy

SIL sounds brainwashed 😅

@TheKeatingFive

Yes we know that millions die needlessly in sub Saharan Africa. They don't only die from road accidents. Many die from snake bites and many others die in accidents, including RTAs. I suspect that more will die from malaria than will die from Covid. This is because they have a young population; the life expectancy is low.

Yes I care. A Gambian family friend died from cerebral malaria some years ago leaving a young wife and small children.

But there also isn't anything else that I can personally do about it other than what I am doing, i.e. support charities that are active in that region. Whereas I can take action to avoid passing Covid to our elderly relatives. My DM is 81 and is more nervous about catching Covid than I am of her catching it so she isn't actually pushing to be able to hug her DGDs. So we practise social distancing.

I also wear a mask when required. I hate them but I do it so I don't put other vulnerable people at risk. I'm vulnerable myself so I appreciate others doing the same.

@LittleBearPad not envy?
I honestly can't see why so many people are ruffled by this someone has made a decision to keep their elderly parents/in laws safe and people think she is a dictator for this?! when children go back to school they are going to be more at risk of potentially passing something on to someone vulnerable. There is no arguing with that. I wonder if this people that are cross about that are so because they have some guilt that they are knowingly going to continue to visit their elderly or vulnerable relatives

@Mittens030869 you sound very sensible

[quote LovelyIssues]@VinylDetective I respect your opinion. Funnily enough my parents and in laws have completely agreed with our decision and appreciate how much we care about them. It'll be hard and we're very close with them but the children can facetime like in the beginning of Lockdown and we feel happy knowing we're doing our bit to continue to keep them safe [/quote]
And my PIL have taken the opposite position and have seen us for ages now.
FIL is terminally ill with cancer. MIL has a very serious heart problem. So they are both in the highly vulnerable class.

They also have both said they’d rather live and see their dcs and dgc than been stuck at home seeing no one for the next 6 months or year. ESPECIALLY seen that FIL don’t have 6 months to live....

We would be extremely unkind to not agree to see the tbh.

I see where @TheKeatingFive is coming from.

We are obsessed with absolute safety and eliminating all risk but only when it comes to COVID.

There is more we could do to eliminate cancer deaths (c 165,0000 a year in the UK) like much earlier/universal testing, but we don’t.

There is more we could do to eliminate deaths from heart disease - which ON ITS OWN kills nearly three times more people In the UK than COVID is killing right now. We could ban high fat foods, ban sugar, ban cigarettes, ban takeaways - if the Government is going to control people‘s behaviour, why not do this? Talk about saving the NHS - it would save the NHS billions if people weren’t pitching up with obesity, heart disease, lung disease, type 2 diabetes...

And RTAs - there might be only 2000 a year in the UK but if we took the same view about crossing the road and driving as some people have about COVID - ie we would only do it if it were completely safe - the speed limit would be 10mph everywhere and men under 25 wouldn’t be allowed to drive at all. The chances of death if involved in an RTA in the UK are higher right now than death if you catch COVID - so are we saying to people “if one child dies, it’s on you” every time they leave the house?

and appreciate how much we care about them

Believe it or not, I also care about my parents. I saw my mother’s mental health go down the pan during lockdown to crisis point. I care so much that when they, as competent adults, took the decision that they wanted to see their grandchildren I didn’t infantilise them or overrule their decision making.

Some grandparents are happy to be shut away and not see their GC. Particularly if they have additional risk factors than age, I can almost understand it. Mine were not, and they didn’t lose all their faculties when they hit 60 so the idea I get to make this decision for them, for their own good, is pretty offensive. By this thread my dad is too vulnerable to be allowed to see his GC or make decisions for himself, but apparently not too vulnerable that the government called him back to work when their was concern the NHS would be overrun.

The chances of death if involved in an RTA in the UK are higher right now than death if you catch COVID - so are we saying to people “if one child dies, it’s on you” every time they leave the house?

Not just RTA - excess deaths from pollution and particularly NO2 are well documented, but try to get people out of theirs cars or to switch to electric and there is hell on from the same people who just care so damn much when it comes to Covid...

I wonder if this people that are cross about that are so because they have some guilt that they are knowingly going to continue to visit their elderly or vulnerable relatives

I’m cross about it because my 70th birthday isn’t far away. How dare someone else assess my risk and take decisions about it for me? How dare people treat their parents like children and dictate to them? Fortunately for me my son respects my judgement and wouldn’t dream of behaving in such a way.