To want coronavirus to just run it’s course now and get back to normal

[rosieposiepud]

For most of us, we’ll have a cold/feel quite rough for a few days. Dc will barely be effected yet MN is obsessed with shutting schools again. There may be many more deaths from coronavirus still to come, but they’ll be lot’s of deaths from other causes plus massive long term devastation to the economy etc if we carry on like this.

@Bupkis
@EDSGFC
It sure is rife on MN.
It's not exactly hidden on this thread either.

Thing is.... my life feels pretty normal.

My children go to school. Phenomenal school - they are swimming, playing sport, with friends.

I am meeting friends with coffee, brunch etc

I am going to yoga. I am running. I am doing gym classes.

The ONLY thing different is face masks!

Life is good for my children, my (small) family, my friends. And tbh that is what I care about.

‘Cannot agree more. It needs to run its course. Let those who are vulnerable or afraid shield. Let the rest of us get back to our lives, work, get the economy restarted and move on. It is an option. In my view the only sensible option.‘

The vulnerable have been at work all the way through this. Only the extremely vulnerable were allowed to shield.

I feel like people have forgotten how many were dying in the peak, when numbers were doubling every two days. It took a full lockdown to bring it under control.

Now restrictions have eased - you can see friends and family, get supermarket deliveries, go shopping and so on - but people are still whining because life isn't entirely back to normal.

Imagine being someone who thinks we should endure half a million deaths, that that is preferable to current restrictions, as if the so-called 'suffering' you are enduring by limiting your contact with others in any way compares with that. When did we become a nation of such pathetic, selfish pricks.

froggygoneacourting

The other day I was in a waiting room and there was an older baby in a pram, maybe one years old. She was staring around at all these people as babies do, and it really hit me then - how weird for a baby to be experiencing this inability to read faces? I dont have kids so it didn't really occur to me before, but in that moment I did think - god surely that's quite a big deal in a kids development?

I smiled at a little one in her pram - big old coach pram, don’t see them very often now - with my eyes over my mask a couple of days ago and she smiled right back.

Millions of children around the world have female relatives whose faces are often covered and I don’t suppose that leads to arrested development?

Wouldn’t worry too much about it, children adjust to their normality and most of the time they’ll be seeing full faces, at home, nursery etc.

[quote IwishIwasyoda]@SylvanianFrenemies
Not writing anyone off. Just stating a fact the people do die and we have lost sight of this as a society.

Everyone's needs are important. So should the needs of the vulnerable / old / frail in respect of covid trump those whose mental health is suffering? is it OK for someone to commit suicide because they have been unable to get the help they need because of Covid, ditto cancer, heart attacks etc. Just asking - because these are the things my friends / family have died of over the past 6 months - some of which I believe could've had longer if services had been running normal

Also please don't make presumptions about me - just because I hold a different view from you doesn't mean that I am having BBQs or breaking the rules.[/quote]
The problem is that you assume its black and white - control the virus or have normality. In reality

not controlling the virus will actually provide chaos, rather than normality.

If the vital services don't have enough staff to function because people are off sick or shielding - how are any MH services going to be able to operate? If enough people are put off the idea of going out for coffee because they've just seen a mortuary van at a neighbours house and there aren't enough customers to warrant opening coffee shops, restaurants or non-essential shops - how is that going to feel normal. If your bins aren't collected because local authority staff are striking in protest about being asked to put themselves at risk for the running of community services - how will that feel normal?

Honestly, if this government thought that a better outcome would be achieved for the country and economy by throwing the old and vulnerable under the proverbial bus do you honestly think they wouldn't be doing it?!

It would be lovely. Alas viruses don't come and go. They come, become endemic. Then humans develop a vaccine. If everyone takes it up the vaccine helps the virus disappear, if it is the that kind of virus (polio, measles before it all went anti vaxx, etc), or it is a virus that mutates often (like flu) and the vaccine does not eradicate but offers some resistance for the very young/vulnerable groups.

That's how I understand it (not a doctor).

@rosieposiepud Coronavirus is not the only cause of death and suffering but many people have forgotten this.

No people haven't forgotten that. In many ways they are the exact point of the lockdown. If the health service is overwhelmed so, so, so many more people will die and suffer. And will continue to do so needlessly for many years beyond Covid being an issue. Saving the lives of people who would die of Covid is only the secondary concern. The number one concern to almost all governments is protecting their healthcare systems. Those two goals luckily go hand in hand but never forget that that absolute main reason to each and every lockdown and restriction is to protect the healthcare system. Because without it, everything that is bad about Covid becomes many orders of magnitude worse.

So yes, if necessary, there 100% will be another lockdown. Schools will close again. More people will lose their jobs. The economy will shrink more. Why? Because the alternative is far, far, far worse. Without a functioning healthcare system, more people will die, more jobs will be lost. The hits to the economy will be far more devastating and longer lasting. We are between a rock and a hard place, with only 'least worse' choices to be made.

So for godsake. When the vaccine becomes available, as it will for us all in the quite near future. Take it if you can (it may well be contraindicated for people with certain conditions). Protect everyone. Even if you had the virus, even if you are 100% sure you'd probably be fine if you did catch it. The first iterations of the vaccine may not provide sterilising immunity. Ie, you may still be able to transmit the virus even if it can't make you sick. And the most vulnerable people in our community usually have the least immune reaction from vaccines. So we need community inoculation. Vaccines are about protecting society. So when it comes, do it to protect those who need it most.

Why do people thing others dying is going to have any good effects on the economy?

Letting Covid rip through the community isn’t good for the economy.
Grieving staff don’t make productive workers, Grieving people don’t often spend, eat out or a lot of other “simulous” activity.

It’s not just about deaths.
People who are long haulers and sick for months or people with organ damage from the virus or neurological conditions will cost the tax payers and economy more in the long term both in medical care and lost productivity.

My husband and I know multiple people who've had this, confirmed. Most of them were ill and off work longer than 2 weeks. Many still not back to normal now. The impact on workplaces would be huge if we just let it rip.

We're fucked ether way let it run and shield vuneralbe loads die

Lockdown country fucked the poverty and hardship would lead to many deaths and there simple isn't the money to bank roll it.

The question is will it rip through the population as it did in March? We are still social distancing and most people wfh. Think back to March, when there were no restrictions.

We know viral load is hugely important in the severity of this disease. By social distancing and not gathering inside in huge crowds even when people do pick it up they will maybe be picking up less viral load?

Then we know not to put people on ventilators. We know to assess for inflammation and vascular issues in hospital and we have drugs to treat this.

The problem with letting the virus run its course is that that strategy will kill a lot of people, and a lot more people will suffer complications. My dad is unlikely to survive it if he catches it, as he's got a long list of underlying conditions. He's only 72, from a family where his parents and aunts/uncles lived well into their 80s, and none of his conditions are likely to kill him any time soon. He's not at death's door, and should live another 10-15 years of he manages to avoid this (and other) virus.

I am unlikely to die, as I'm only in my forties. But I am overweight (was obese til very recently) and diabetic. If I catch it (as I'm a teacher I feel it's more when than if at this point), I'm quite likely to have complications, and therefore quite likely to need more than just a couple of weeks off work feeling a bit under the weather. I'm doing everything I can to avoid it, but being in a classroom with so many teenagers is putting me at a higher risk of catching it.

@TheSeedsOfADream

Mumsnet is weird though.

Half of the posters think anybody over 60 should be dead already anyway so why should they sacrifice their birthday party for the vulnerable...(curiously they daren't say the same about the disabled and other clinically vulnerable people but anyone churning out the "well they were 85 anyway" trope gets put in my hateful-eugenicist box.)

While a quarter think the virus is a Russian/Chinese/CIA plot

And another quarter haven't even touched their husband's arm and live in hazmat gear.

Real life is a bit more normal with people (generally) following guidelines, doing their best and trusting that this too shall pass. Which it will. And sooner if more people are like the real life ones!

Hahahahaha ahaha You’ve summed MN up perfectly here

No one was forced to shield. It's always been voluntary.

I wonder though if those in the at risk categories would benefit from the new treatments and drugs? So they’ll be less likely to be put on a ventilator? They’d be given oxygen? I think that’s what we need to ascertain in the coming months.

I hope that we can treat the virus better and the death rate will remain low. I know some people will die. We can’t keep the death rate at 0 for most illnesses. But if we can bring it down that will be positive.

You may think the herd immunity via infection approach (let it run it's course) is the best one, but the overwhelming majority of epidemiologists, virologists, public health policy experts etc are not saying that. And given that it's their field of expertise, whereas it's not mine (or yours) I think I am going to go with the experts on this one.

Not really, it has long term effects we don't really know about, organ damage and the like... need to treat it with the respect it deserves as whether it's short term or long term, it's a killer

It's taken off in France, numbers admitted to ITU are rapidly increasing.

https://apple.news/A2mm_jwAvQtONTGBrvz021w

Cases in care homes over here are rapidly increasing again

apple.news/AsqTYpiJqS5ejlOqk9VvwHA

So yes, if necessary, there 100% will be another lockdown. Schools will close again. More people will lose their jobs. The economy will shrink more. Why? Because the alternative is far, far, far worse. Without a functioning healthcare system, more people will die, more jobs will be lost. The hits to the economy will be far more devastating and longer lasting. We are between a rock and a hard place, with only 'least worse' choices to be made

Oooorrrrr... you could look at Sweden or Japan (who did fuck all) or South Korea and realize that locking down and destroying economies is a blunt instrument and may cause more harm when all is said and done.

OP, I think people like you (and me) who feel this way need to try and accept/come to terms that the world has changed forever

There will be a new “normal”, things will stabilise, but we’ll never go back to how it was

This is not to be gloomy, but remember how air travel was never the same after 9/11

This is comparable, we may have masks and intermittent school closures forever.

The world has reached population levels where we are sensitive to outbreaks like Corona. Corona wasn’t the first (there has been avian flu, swine flu) but the first that impacted us directly

The world has changed. It’s hard to accept. But accepting it is an important step in getting to some new kind of normal

There's nothing like stating the obvious, is there. Were you expecting people to disagree with you, saying, 'oh no! we want this to go on for years and years?'

Sorry, what? I don’t think anybody really thinks that anybody thinks this

These kind of OPs are all a part of people’s grieving process for their old normal lives

It’s not easy, for anybody

@Pikachubaby
Masks forever??!

Oooorrrrr... you could look at Sweden or Japan (who did fuck all) or South Korea and realize that locking down and destroying economies is a blunt instrument and may cause more harm when all is said and done.

But we are not Sweden, Japan or South Korea.

If you went to hospital for treatment would you like the treatment appropriate for you, given what the doctors know about you taking into account your sex, weight, age, health status, and how the condition is affecting you, or would you be happy for them to simply copy the treatment they gave Derek from work or Sue from across the road, because of obviously what worked for Derek/Sue is sure to work for you?