corona lockdowns

[firthy85]

i watched a post on a thread where someone was jumping around all over the place to maintain social distancing with a dog and a dd and ds so they could keep a distance. am i the only person to think its getting rediculous?. covid seems to have sent the population into some crazy paranoid mess. let's clean everything just to be safe. let's jump out of the way of a coughing person just in case they have caught it. never mind the fact it is december its the beginning of winter so it means that these illnesses get caught. it is just me right?

Sweden’s figures have escalated over the past few months and their government have now admitted they got it wrong.

As for only the unhealthy dying, people need to stop looking at death and start looking at the bigger picture. There are actually far worse things than dying of COVID, surviving it with long-term health complications, and long COVID is not unique to those with underlying health conditions.

Let me put it into context for you.

I am a flu survivor. That is to say I had flu four years ago and the virus attacked my heart. it was discovered at the time that I had a genetic heart condition which I was unaware of, however, because of the flu, and associated endocarditis, I also sustained a damaged heart valve and atrial fibrillation. I went from someone who could walk for miles, swim for miles, had no physical issues, to someone who couldn’t walk from my kitchen to my lounge without becoming breathless. For nearly three years I didn’t leave my house apart from to go to hospital appointments, I couldn’t because I had no stamina.

I couldn’t bend to lift a tray out of the oven because doing so would leave me breathless.

Last year I had some intervention to partly repair the damaged valve, but I was deemed to not be eligible for a full valve replacement as I would not have survived it. So I had something called a mitraclip fitted. But not before I crashed so spectacularly I ended up in ICU for nine days, and then had a further cardiac arrest.

I am now comparatively healthy, but it doesn’t end there. Because of the conditions I have I have been told I will deteriorate again, and at that point my only hope of a future will be a transplant. The construction of my heart is such that I am not able to have any other kinds of treatments such as ventricular assistive devices etc.

If I catch COVID I will likely die. However, if I survive it, then the lung damage is likely to be such that I will be ineligible for a transplant, so in short I will go back to where I was but with no light at the end of the tunnel.

Take a guess which i would prefer....

Now, it is true to say that I had an undiagnosed heart condition. But fact is that wouldn’t have been an issue if I hadn’t got sick. And further to that, you have no idea you don’t have an undiagnosed condition which could make you susceptible to COVID.

So while you might be casually saying that “only those with underlying health conditions are affected” you don’t know that you’re not one of them.

makes me laugh everytime i hear either hancock or johnson saying how they protected the nhs. um. no they didn't they switched it off. the nhs has become a virus fighting service. the police have become a covid fighting force god forbid you should actually be a real victim of crime because you will be hard pressed to get a response. the fines they are giving out for people gathering i mean really? the size of them. you have had a few friends over which yes you shouldn't have done. but you didn't bring down the bank of scotland ffs.

I get really frustred when people trot out the "underlying health conditions. " line.

In my friendship group, late 30s/early 40s, we have severe asthma, me/cfs, m.obesity, diabetes.... all of us had planned living quite a long time! Most of us have children and dont want covid to leave our children without a parent.

How can dying at 40 rather than 80 be an acceptable outworking of covid "because underlying conditions."

I find it shocking.

Right now having friends over is truly irresponsible in 90% of Britain. Were you caught? Is that why you've started the thread?

Sweden has a population of approx 10 million in approx 450,000 sq km.

Britain has a population of nearly 68 million in approx 242,000 sq km.

You cannot compare the approaches as the overpopulation of this country makes the Swedish approach impossible and would have led to a much higher death toll. Their “secret” is being sparsely populated.

However, i am biased as i haven’t been out more than 3/4 times since March, excepting the school run. The last of those 3/4 times was Friday after school (to Sainsburys and two shops to allow dd to pick her dad a Christmas present) and now i have woken up with a ticklish throat and repeated dry coughing and i am terrified. Even without death/long covid fears, there are increasingly reports of lasting heart damage from even asymptomatic covid and i am so so scared of passing that to dd1 or baby dd2 who i am still breastfeeding. This isn’t health anxiety. This is fear of a real possibility.

@alternativeperspective. how awful for you. i have heard people talking about long covid but i don't know how common it is. as far as i know i am healthy. its so rare for me to get sick even during a normal flu season. except for both me and my ex coming down with a bad stomach upset whichwas horrendous for us both i have been fine and that was years ago.

Before that I was never sick either. Ever.

I had had the flu before but so have most people, but on a day to day basis I didn’t ever take anything, not even paracetamol.

And I agree with PP, many people with underlying health conditions are the same age as you, are they disposable purely because they were unlucky enough to already have an illness?

OP you are right about the nhs. Twice in the last month I have tried to get medical advice unrelated to Covid. Once for ds2 and once for myself.

Ds2 was really really poorly with a raging temp. I knew it wasn’t Covid but duly got him tested. While waiting for the results a called 111 and it was near on impossible to speak to someone because I had to sit though multiple recorded messages telling me if I was calling about Covid symptoms then to hang up and do x y z. I persevered and eventually got through and a doctor called me back, who was great to be fair (the 111 operator was not) but I was close to hanging up at one point.

And as for me, I am now 4 months down the line of not taking my anti depressants because neither the pharmacy who normally order my repeat prescription, nor the receptionist at the doctors surgery give a stuff, both are blaming each other and yet I’m denied an appointment or an option to speak to a doctor to actually get my prescription ordered, because “Covid”

uh? who said anything about people being disposable because they have an underlying health condition? i never said that i said from what little we have got to know about the virus it has taken mainly elderly people or people who have had other health problems so that second catagory could come under any age group. if you think i am suggesting we let everyone die then you have lost the thread somewhere.

So its okay for those with underlying health conditions their 30s/40s (a heck of a lot of people, people who wouldnt otherwise be facing death) to be put at risk because you fancy a few friends over?

omg where did i say that it was ok for people to be dying? and if you have mental health problems to have that social contact with friends can make the difference between going under or staying a float. and obviously some selective reading going on because i clearly said that it was a bad idea at the moment to be having friends and gatherings but to fine a person thousands of pounds(money they probably don't have) because they did have people round is heavy handed beyond belief. a call to remind people of the rules if they get a report is fine. if they have to come back order people to leave and maybe a fine of £50 maybe. but it's not the crime of the century. i have stuck to the rules as best i can. if i was invited to a gathering of course i would say no but i wouldn't go telling tails either.

Blimey op, I had to check the date of your post as I thought it might be one from May. People are overreacting, it's just a cold, Sweden, posting in aibu rather than the coronavirus board?

Never has a thread been so irrelevant or out of date. Congratulations op, you've just proved time travel into the future is possible.

OP I kind of see where you are coming from except the part where you wouldn't avoid a coughing stranger? Covid or no , why would you not avoid catching something nasty ?
Anyway what i came on here to say was that a lot of people now are doing anything they can to avoid infections that could lead to another lockdown. I'm one of them. I'm not particularly afraid of catching covid, but I support theatres, hospitality and the travel sector. So I will comply , however nuts this would have looked 12 months ago, because we are living in different times .
Your post is goady.

Well, yes we have...but then I've never been in a pandemic before, have you?

HIV/AIDS in the 80s. Still with us
SARS 2002-2004
Mumps 2009
Swine flu 2009 - 2010
MERS 2012. Still with us
Zika 2015- 2016

Even if that cough is just a winter cold I don’t want to catch it. It would mean the whole family having to self isolate while we wait for test results (again!), as we aren’t one of those selfish people who assume every cough is a normal winter cold

exactly bonnie. point proved. all of the above were pretty nasty viruses yet we didn't shut the entire world down for any of them. as for the post being gody i don't know where you get that idea from. i'm not saying we should deliberately hang around with people that are coughing their guts up that's a stupid thing to suggest but what we are doing now is acting like everyone that may have a cough or runny nose is going to kill us. if this pandemic does make us more aware of our own hygiene standards then its a positive thing but i think a time will come where we will ahve to admit that we are living with this virus as we have had to find ways to live with many others. vaccinations and testing will eventually get us to a point where the risk will be far reduced but never the less i would say we are stuck with it

exactly bonnie. point proved. all of the above were pretty nasty viruses yet we didn't shut the entire world down for any of them. as for the post being gody i don't know where you get that idea from. i'm not saying we should deliberately hang around with people that are coughing their guts up that's a stupid thing to suggest but what we are doing now is acting like everyone that may have a cough or runny nose is going to kill us. if this pandemic does make us more aware of our own hygiene standards then its a positive thing but i think a time will come where we will ahve to admit that we are living with this virus as we have had to find ways to live with many others. vaccinations and testing will eventually get us to a point where the risk will be far reduced but never the less i would say we are stuck with it We didn’t shut the world down because we didn’t have to. None of the above viruses were anywhere near as prevalent as COVID is.

Neither HIV/AIDS or MERS are anywhere near as contagious as Covid-19 unless you think all humans wander around having unprotected sex, injecting used needles and licking farm animals in the Middle East everyday.

um didn't this thing come from bats? so not quite sure the point trying to be made

exactly bonnie. point proved
Well not really.
There are similarities but also huge differences between Covid and the diseases listed.
Epidemiologists, WHO and scientists around the world have studied these previous pandemics, and have come up with the current strategies that we have to try and deal with Covid....they haven't just plucked containment, isolation, social distancing, masks and vaccines out of politicians arses....

You can't compare virus,s such as HIV with COVID I'm 47 so I remember the tombstone adverts and I remember people being terrified about it ,but we soon realised we couldn't just catch by popping down to Asda ,meeting friends for lunch going to work etc .

Anyone who thinks it’s as easy to catch HIV as Covid surely socialise in a different way to most people... but I guess if your Christmas Day involves a raw gangbang then you would be as concerned about HIV as Covid.

I was reading an article yesterday about the Spanish Flu which people keep referring to when they talk about Covid as they are/were apparently quite similar.

It was essentially saying that there are 2 ways a pandemic is deemed to have 'ended' - either medical intervention (ie, a vaccine) or social intervention (ie, people stop being afraid and caring about it so much).

In 1918 there was no vaccine or medical intervention that had any real impact so the Spanish Flu actually 'went away' because the war ended and people were so happy about that they sort of forgot about Spanish flu, stopped distancing, stopped wearing masks, starting interacting again, etc. Eventually herd immunity took over and it actually reoccurred seasonally for several years afterwards before eventually dying off completely.

I think it will be much the same with Covid. Eventually people will get fed up, refuse to comply, infections will gradually level out as people naturally develop immunity and it will get to the same sort of infection/death rate as seasonal flu.

Except we have vaccines now Turbotastic so hopefully they will bring about the end of the pandemic.

exactly. there does become a natural immunity. what about the hon kong flu epidemic from 1968/70. now i wasn't even a twinkle in the eyes of my parents but i remember being told about it how again people got on with life, in fact one of the biggest and most well known music festivals took place right in the middle of all that(woodstock).again after a while it fizzled away simply because it ran out of hosts. sad the amount of people who caught and didn't make it nobody wants to see that but i bet more got immunity from it than died. the same could happen here. what we are actually doing by locking down the country is prolonging the pandemic and the longer we are in this situation the harder the recovery from this is going to be. do you think local councils are going to tell people "oh don't mind that you can't run your business at the minute we will let you out of paying the rent?"