If the young were dying we would have sorted this by now?

[Chaotic45]

To be clear I think I one of the few good things about Covid is that children and young people are mostly not affected.

However I feel that if they were, we would have had much more success with controlling the virus.

If more people had been genuinely concerned for themselves, and even worse for their children they would have followed the rules more closely.

The virus spreads via person to person contact- so by being in close proximity to an infected person and sharing of surfaces. So the roles should work, and they only don't because too many people don't follow them.

AIBU to think that if young people were dying more people would have reduced social contact and the infection rate would be more under control?

I don’t think so, I don’t think it would change most people’s behaviours. I’m cautious FOR my son, my grandma told me she’s lived a life so doesn’t mind of she dies. Her choice.

Although I did see a:

If Covid made dicks fall off we would have cured it six dicks in.
😂😂😂

If this affected children badly the world would look very very different

Until there is a series of public information films showing naked people lying face down with an endotracheal tube and their eyes taped shut and Xrays showing completely consolidated lung fields, nothing much will change
Why aren't they showing these things, we saw the coffins in Italy and China, bodies stacked in trucks in New York, mass grave digging in Brazil/Mexico.
Apparently close to 60,000 lifes lost in the UK.

I think if it affected children and not the elderly then children would have been made to shield and families told it was their responsibility to protect their children. I think there would have been no national lockdown and older people would not have especially gone out of their way to change their lifestyles to protect the young.

no

No I don’t think it would be sorted even if it was kids it affected.

I do think there would be a different approach if it affected kids though yes. It’s understandable though as thousands of kids don’t die every day and it’s tragic beyond anything else.

if would be tragic

The latest evidence is that it is mainly spread by aerosols. So masks help, but you don't seem to catch it from surfaces - could but don't seem to.
And if people wear masks over their mouth but under their nose then apparently they are protecting you but not themselves. Aerosols spread from the mouth much more than the nose.
And Swine flu which did disproportionately did affect the young, resulted in fewer measures against it.

But it is a privilege to be able to self isolate, to minimise contacts etc. Lots of people (especially the more disadvantaged groups) have to go out to work, they may also live in more crowded conditions and so on.

it it it

If more people had been genuinely concerned for themselves

I'm not too sure about that tbh. I have seen plenty of elderly people completely ignoring social distancing too.

I think if it affected children and not the elderly then children would have been made to shield and families told it was their responsibility to protect their children. I think there would have been no national lockdown and older people would not have especially gone out of their way to change their lifestyles to protect the young.

This. And there’s absolutely no effing way the older population would have shouldered the cost either.

There isn't a quick fix, and I don't think we'll ever be in a position where there's a universal vaccine or cure to get it sorted.

Although the disease itself generally has a more damaging impact on older people, the appalling way it was handled by government at the beginning (particularly with the way government pushed the spread into care homes) must have been a major contributory factor to the cases in the elderly population.

I think if it affected children and not the elderly then children would have been made to shield and families told it was their responsibility to protect their children. I think there would have been no national lockdown and older people would not have especially gone out of their way to change their lifestyles to protect the young.

Actually I think this could be right. Children would just be told to stay at home.

I would like them to tell us the age ranges of the daily deaths. 247 deaths - how many of these are for example under 75? If it’s found 99.9% are in the elderly bracket, we have to maybe ensure our elderly self isolate pending a vaccine being introduced. Organise food parcel deliveries for them, organise a care package in their homes, and the rest of us just get back to normal living. We have to find some way of living alongside covid.

I think what OP is saying is that if you do not feel you can 'other' the problem, you are much more likely to comply with restrictions to reduce transmission.

And it is clear that some posters very much want to 'other' the issue, and seek to condemn the government for not deciding that those pesky more vulnerable other people can be left to suffer.

I think you are right in that, if lots of small children were dying, families would definitely be social distancing much more and not saying they are going to flaunt the rules to see cousins/grandparents/Christmas etc.

And schools would be much more careful with sanitising everything, everyone wearing PPE etc., and no-one would be saying "my child can't wear a mask, they're too young" and so on....

As a family we have followed the guidelines. I’ve not seen family and friends we don’t break the rules - we’ve had socially distance walks With friends but now the weather changing we haven’t met as it would mean meeting in home’s. My children both go to school. It’s boring , it’s driving me mad and frustrating me - but it’s the only fair way as a society we all to our bit....

My late 70’s MIL is very worried about Covid.....whilst going to dance classes at gym, meeting up with friends for meals, garden centres, she lives near a major city and complained yesterday while shopping there was groups of teenagers shopping they should be at home :/ She hasn’t seen her grandchildren since Christmas because as she thinks they will kill her. Her feeling is we all should stay home and let the elderly carry on as they aren’t the spreaders ?

As a society we all I think getting bored with this. My life is on repeat everyday the same :( i just want to see family and enjoy spending time with them again.

Yes. We couldn't have our workforce or future workforce incapacitated by death. Sadly this governement views the elderly as expensive and expendable. The first wave might have caused a lot of death but we would have stamped on it with greater force over the summer and compliance with measures would have been better; we'd be in a much better position by now.

I don't think it would have been sorted - it isn't as though people are dragging their feet about a vaccine or new treatments as economic disaster is quite motivation enough.

I think young people (and their parents) would pretty scared if it was affecting them, so we'd see greater sticking to rules. It wouldn't 'sort' it on its own though.

The one unforgiving thing IMO about the government’s management has been the failure to lockdown right at the beginning of March. March-April is when the vast majority of deaths occurred.

The vast majority of the public continued going about their lives as normal during the first two weeks of March despite all the evidence that this approach was madness.

They were given false security by the government’s “shrug shoulders let’s just wash hands” approach. Studies show that literally tens of thousands of lives could have been spared by locking down just 1-2 weeks earlier at the beginning of the first wave.

Of course, the late lockdown also meant the virus spread rapidly throughout the whole country, making later efforts at control and mitigation much more difficult.

Our compliant media has virtually given the government a free pass over perhaps 30-40,000 preventable deaths of the elderly and vulnerable who followed the government lead in Late February and Early March.

It would have been much worse.
One of my friends is a cleaner in a hospital with young children. She kept working all the way through. So did her colleagues. So did lots of workers in the supermarkets, shelf stackers, delivery workers, nursing home staff. Many of those people are young - but even older people more at risk (like my friend) kept working.
If the virus had affected young people/children more then the essential services including hospitals would have really struggled to keep their workers. My friends an amazing person but she has a four year old child (and teenagers) no way would she have kept working, without adequate PPE, if there was a good chance she would have brought the virus back home and killed her child with it.

Do people still not understand that it's about preventing the health system from collapse, not who dies?
If/when the health service becomes overwhelmed people of all ages will start to die. Anyone who needs hospital care for any reason will be at risk.There won't be enough staff, beds, equipment, oxygen, drugs to go round.

The one unforgiving thing IMO about the government’s management has been the failure to lockdown right at the beginning of March.

I’m not even sure that’s true though. The Czech Republic locked down early and hard, thought they’d ‘beaten’ it and look at them now - on the brink of collapse - losing compliance from people who’ve already been locked down for months.

I think most people did follow the rules for months originally, but then we got 5/6 months in, realised hardly anyone was dying and that there’s no real plan or end in sight and people risk addressed for themselves what to do.