If we could go back do you wish we went down the herd immunity route?

[Sakalibre]

Just curious

YABU - no
YANBU - yes

We encourage international travel, sporting events and hand shaking in January/February/March.

So in the first 3 months of the pandemic, we did go down the herd immunity path, we can all see where that led.

So why on earth would anyone wish we had continued with this approach?

I think we should have kept cases to a level that the NHS could handle, so there were no deaths due to life saving treatment not being available (rather than not being the best choice for an individual). I don't think we should be suppressing it to the degree we are now. I think it's a good thing that schools are back, not just for the children's mental health and education. I have relatives who have shielded for months and we still don't have herd immunity to protect them if cases should rise again, one now has to go out to work. My grandmother still won't leave the house.

@Madein1995

30 people have died today, which while sad for the families isnt comparable to 1000plus in April. We dont hide in fear of flu we get on with it. A vaccine wont be anytime soon and unleas the plan is to go back and fp for the nest 2 years, pissing us all off and fucking up the economy then we need to get on with it. All articles ive read say majority of those died were over a certain age or had health conditions which msde them vulnerable. Ive not read anything saying a young healthy perspn died of it

Also - I know someone who was 43 years old, a mother. She died leaving her husband and three children. She had diabetes.

Are you saying we shouldn't be bothered about her death because she wasn't a 'healthy person'.

Seriously?

We, like NZ and Australia, are an island. That makes border control extremely easy. Oh come off it.

Kind of feels that's what going to happen anyway now. Three months of lockdown followed by letting us back out to all places. Masks put in place weeks after people were out and about.

Now you've got schools closing bubbles everyday! Parents are walking together as normal. Chatting at the gates (queues are less effective at separating that playground drops off) set arrival times are meaning parents are queuing up for 10 minutes to finally get to their kid. It's a slow process and it doesn't make sense as all the kids are squashed in the corridor shoulder to shoulder lining up to come out.

No. I think deaths would have been huge.

No because Initially we didn’t know what we were dealing with so lockdown was the right decision to buy us time. We should also have not buckle to the Chinese government’s pressure to keep allowing flights in from China especially as they had closed their own province borders and stopped Internal flights.

Now we need to follow the Swedish model with the healthy going back to education/work with doable social distancing/ hygiene measures. The government needs to finance and facilitate shielding of vulnerable groups until there is enough herd immunity or a vaccine is available.

Herd immunity is interesting as in normal circumstances It is the healthy who are vaccinated to Provide herd immunity to protect the vulnerable who are unable to have the vaccine. Natural herd immunity does occur but it’s difficult to measure as it involves more than detectable antibodies

But the figures you quoted were 6% of the 29000 deaths not 6% of the population

And I very clearly said before that, “herd immunity” as people seem to be meaning it could be as bad or worse than the worst month we had here in which six percent was the figure. It’s the last sentence of the paragraph right before the one you quoted.

I don’t know what to say to someone who says, “The lockdowns are going to be more fatal than the disease.” I know that’s supposed to be a very dramatic quote but... it’s not true. In a later comment, you mention that you know two people in a vulnerable group who survived COVID, and therefore you feel it’s fine, versus people with MH problems in lockdown who you’re worried about surviving. I understand these are your personal experiences and they’re important to you, but that’s why we have science. Because we cannot make life or death decisions based on personal anecdotes. Science tells us that two people you know being very lucky, and several people you know mentally suffering (which I’m not making light of) do not change the statistics, though I understand it’s skewed your perception. I’ve given you stats on COVID. As for mental health, Samaritans have currently said there’s no sign of a rise in suicide rates during lockdown: fullfact.org/online/suicide-200-percent/ . Last year, the suicide rate was 22.2 per 100K. It’s been 6.9 per 100K during the height of lockdown (albeit, some inquests are obviously delayed, but unlikely if it’s enough of them to more than triple the number which is what you’d need to make the suicide rate equal to last year AND then you’d need more to make lockdown scientifically more fatal, so, VERY fortunately, that appears to not be happening: www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/01/male-suicide-rate-england-wales-covid-19 .

@MrsTerryPratchett is spot on. There’s no such thing as herd immunity without a vaccine, since this disease does not confer long-term immunity. Removing all safety barriers and just letting it run rampant will mean a large amount of deaths, probably more than predicted, since original predictions were lower than what’s already happened.

@Peony9876

No. We should have locked down earlier, stopped all the big events going ahead and implemented an internal travel ban and/or quaranteening before february half term.

This except we didnt learn and Gloucester races are going to go ahead soon with thousands of people (Cheltenham re-run anyone?).

And no I wouldn't have wanted herd immunity in the sense of letting the virus run amok through the country, killing off extremely clinically vulnerable adults and children I want herd immunity by vaccination (assuming vaccine is passed). I want treatments that work to keep the most severe cases from dying (and that keep others from suffering long covid).

It honestly wouldn't surprise me if suicides as a result of covid take over deaths from the virus eventually

Suicides in the UK were around 7,000 a couple of years ago. We've had nearly 42,000 Covid deaths in six months. That's nearly 6 times as many in half the time.

I think your fears are unjustified and unrealistic.

Any suicide is an awful tragedy and I'm not in any way downplaying it, and I'm appalled by the total neglect of MH services during the pandemic, but we need to keep a sense of proportion here.

I work for an organisation that delivers a lot of MH support services, drop in centres, that sort of thing, and they have been closed and replaced by telephone support. Four clients have died because of suicide since lockdown started.

Our SMT looked at previous years for a comparison. This year's suicide figures were actually lower than in the same period for the 3 preceding years.

I wish people would actually report the proper figures on Sweden. Sweden has had one-tenth of the deaths predicted by the Imperial Model, over half of which were in care homes (i.e. people with roughly a year to live).

This is less than 6,000 deaths in a population of 10m, of which less than 3,000 deaths were non care home.

Their cases are now very very low - lower per 100,000 than Norway and Denmark - and not rising. They are now relaxing measures and hope to have a normal, family Christmas including with elderly relatives.

All this while keeping schools open for up to 16 years olds throughout. And treating other illnesses properly. They stayed calm and did not panic and have had a consistent strategy throughout. n

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

We followed the rules, we have avoided infection. I think it might have been better to close the country to all non essential air traffic for a while.

I remember seeing mass graves being dig in the US, swarms of refrigerated trucks in Italy and feeling very cold and anxious. This was real and serious.

YABU.

Are people who suggest this sociopaths who don't care about all the people who would die?

Or truly ignorant maths and science illiterates who don't understand what they're suggesting and somehow slept through April?

Both? You'd have to be to, wouldn't you?

Sweden had the most deaths this spring since they had a famine 150 years ago.

And you don't get to herd immunity without a vaccine.

And letting people die and get debilitating illness when you don't have to is evil.

I'm one of the estimated 60k with Long Covid.

I'm 31, and pretty healthy before this - running 5 and 10ks, low resting heart rate, good blood pressure. The virus itself wasn't anything to write home about. Two days off sick, a little fatigue in the two weeks after.

But the rebounding fatigue REALLY isn't something I'd advise anyone walking into. I've had more days off due to that than for the initial virus. The associated low mood and confusion aren't a walk in the park either.

Forgetting the death stats - this is something that could have and still could affect thousands and thousands of young people and businesses.

I think we should have kept cases to a level that the NHS could handle, so there were no deaths due to life saving treatment not being available

There isn't life saving treatment available though. Drs give supportive treatment and hope that the body fights the infection. The only "treatment" is dexamethasone and that only helps in certain cases. Hospitals wouldn't be able to cope with the numbers of people needing to be admitted if we let it run through the population. As it was, piped oxygen supplies in some hospitals was compromised due to patient numbers needing it.

@Eyewhisker you cannot compare schools in Sweden to schools in the UK.

In Sweden the average class size 19.

In England in primaries the average class size is 27 and in secondaries it is 22.

We have bigger class sizes and schools so it is more difficult to get children to social distance.

www.newscientist.com/article/2251615-is-swedens-coronavirus-strategy-a-cautionary-tale-or-a-success-story/

Sweden has had 57 deaths per 100,000, compared with five in Norway and 11 in Denmark. (For the UK it is 70 and the US 50.)

The outcomes from Sweden are not as great as some posters on here would have us believe.

They had 10 times the deaths per 100,000 than Denmark and five times greater than Norway. How is that something to emulate?

@Madein1995

30 people have died today, which while sad for the families isnt comparable to 1000plus in April. We dont hide in fear of flu we get on with it. A vaccine wont be anytime soon and unleas the plan is to go back and fp for the nest 2 years, pissing us all off and fucking up the economy then we need to get on with it. All articles ive read say majority of those died were over a certain age or had health conditions which msde them vulnerable. Ive not read anything saying a young healthy perspn died of it

Were you sleeping under a rock during March? There was a time in March when "only" 30 people died. A month later it was 1,000 per day. That's exponential growth. (Look it up!).

And yes, plenty of healthy young people died if you bothered to look it up.

afaik, no one in UK died of UK because of lack of known treatment methods.

UK was never northern Italy who literally ran out of beds, ventilators & doctors/nurses. There's bed shortages in India & Yemen right now too, supposedly.

Better treatments have been found since March, so some people died in March-April who might have survived if the better treatments had been known about -- but not died because the treatments were unavailable.

Yes

Sweden.

www.newscientist.com/article/2251615-is-swedens-coronavirus-strategy-a-cautionary-tale-or-a-success-story/

My understanding of herd immunity is what a previous poster stated about vaccinating most of the population so the remainder just don’t catch the disease.
Eg TB - we nearly all had the vaccine so the disease was almost wiped out. The people unable to have the vaccine or chose not to were protected because no one was spreading the disease.

To me, the governments version of herd immunity was to let people catch a disease and they would either die or recover.

They had no idea of herd immunity could even happen as this was a new disease - there was no information about re-infection, how long antibodies last for, what happens if the virus mutates....
We don’t rely on herd immunity for flu as we get different strains every year, we use the vaccine to try and protect as many people as possible.

And my Swedish colleagues aren’t happy with the number of deaths in their country compared to Norway/Denmark.

No. Absolutely not. Because my mother would probably be dead now. Along with many others vulnerable people. She had covid in March and spend 8 weeks in hospital. She very nearly died and is still recovering. If we hadn’t had lock down we there would have been many many more hospitalisations, the health service would have been overwhelmed and someone younger and healthier than her would probably have been prioritised over her for all for all of that treatment she had. She would probably have been told to stay at home with me and I would have to have nursed her in her dying day. I looked after her before she went into and jt wasn’t pretty at that stage. It would have been sheer hell.

I am not sure if some people understand what could have happened if we didn’t contain the virus at least to some extent.

Yes we can adhere to lockdowns but that means to a lot of people no work

We are going to have to come up with some alternative to UC if people are going to survive long term

I would like to know how many people who agreed with the original lockdown would agree to locking down, however loosely, again in the knowledge that your families careers and jobs are over because of the lockdowns and this virus.

Even when this is over we as a family will all have to find both alternative sources of income and new careers.
We are all on UC for the long term and having exhausted all of our savings we are in danger of losing everything.

I think a lot of people who want the lockdown to continue still have an income, still have a career so are safe in the knowledge that lockdowns and this virus isn’t going to affect them if they stay indoors, wfh, have their shopping delivered and only go out very occasionally and think everyone else’s life is the same as theirs and can throw accusations around without a thought of what others are going through.

I ask in my families position would you be able to survive another lockdown.

How long would you be able to survive if you and your family lost all of your incomes and not only had to rely on benefits but also your careers were over and you stood to lose everything.

Add to that all the vulnerable people in your family had already had this disease and come through it.

Whilst I was ok to stay in during the first lockdown. We still had money to pay bills.
The length of the lockdown dragged on and it became obvious that people in different parts of the country were not adhering to the lockdown at all.

Now it has taken a sinister turn and as dd has found out to her cost, it is being used as a way of ruining people’s careers and sacking people for no reason.

Do people who support herd immunity not have anyone they love?