To think there's still that teeny weeny bit of a pandemic thing happening?

[IAmOldNow]

Not complaining, just observing:

Figures say: cases rising, hospitalisiations rising, fatalities: flat at best but if anything that'll be thanks to large scale immunisation, largely due to vaccines that may not prevent infection altogether but are, largely, proving to be pretty good at making sure the vast majority of us don't end up on a ventilator and/or: dead!

Currenrt reality says: huge client party tonight. Cue some 3k people crammed into a mostly indoors space, free alcohol, hugging, air kissing, any old thing you'd imagine from people who, literally, know and do not actively hate each other and haven't met in the flesh for two years.

AIBU to think that this is a) human and understandable but also b) bound to see 1/3 of the organisation out cold with COVID within a week?

For the record: I don't know the right answer! I went, too!

It is still here and there should be a sensible response, not the current almost denial of the useless government.

Most highly vaccinated countries have dropped restrictions at this stage

People should be able to opt out of events such as the OP describes without being criticised or pressurised.

If people want to opt out if things, they should just do that. There'll always be pressure of some sort or another, the answer is pull the big girl pants up and stand your ground, just like it aIways was.

There are 500,000 of us in the uk who would benefit from Evushield. Most of whom are still shielding due to their health conditions. Mainly blood cancer, transplant recipients and undergoing chemochemotherapy

No, because you were still required to isolate if you tested positive and wear masks. All restrictions were removed in February this year.

I think that's fair enough. One thing we need to be very clear about during this pandemic is that some people suffered and were disadvantaged a great deal more than others. Not that I think we're going to be able to formulate successful policy responses to that anyway, but we especially can't do it if we don't name it.

I've got a colleagues wedding in a few weeks and am a bit nervous about that. My husband and I are both triple vaxxed and - to our knowledge - have never had Covid but it's always in the back of my mind as it killed one of my friends and left two others with long Covid :/

I'm trying to live life as normally as I can but I still take precautions like frequent hand washing, wearing masks in crowded places and using hand sanitiser.

Another colleague went to his sister-in-laws wedding last month and 75% of the guests, including him, caught it. They think the bride had it and passed it round when she was hugging everyone 😧

Wait, what is this Evushield? My dad is a stem cell transplant patient (one year post transfer now) after he had AML. If this is a thing he could get that would be amazing! :O

I've literally just had Covid for the 1st time.... caught from going on holiday. Passed it on to DH and both kids too. Both kids completely asymptomatic. DH felt ill for 10 hours with a temperature for 5 of those, and then a dry cough and then no symptoms at all (testing negative at day 4), I had cold symptoms only (productive cough, sore throat on day 1, bit tired until day 7) but the cough did drag out for 2 weeks. For us, it really was 'just a cold' or less. I'm the last out of all my friends and family to catch it (including 91 yr old grandmother) and none have had it worse than a mild flu - even my CEV cousin who sheilded throughout just had tiredness and headache (early Omicron variant).

DH has had it 4 times now. 1st in 2020 was really bad - like a bad flu. Other infections since have varied from 'a headache' to 'temperature' and once asymptomatic. He's a teacher, so I guess he is exposed a lot more than me as I WFH. We're both fully vaxxed.

I get that unfortunately a minority do fare badly with Covid. But people saying 'its just a cold' are not making it up, as for most of us that is our real experience of Covid.

@QueenCamilla

No need to worry about bubonic plague - it’s bacterial, and easily treated with antibiotics!

You're definitely not unreasonable OP!

I'm always amazed by how few humans seem to be able to operate in a grey area of nuance. It doesn't have to be 'everything as it was in 2019' or 'lockdown'. There is a middle ground, and many countries have adopted this. Where people still wear decent quality (ffp2) masks in crowded indoor spaces, and companies and government invest in ventilation but everything else carries on as before, and in fact is probably less disrupted due to a lower disease burden.

It's also fascinating how quickly humans forget human history. It's really not that long ago that there was regular child mortality and massive disability as a result of diseases such as measles, TB, polio etc. Vaccination revolutionised our lives but it's not 'normal' in historical terms to have so little disease and disability. We shouldn't be surprised perhaps that we've come up against a disease that resists vaccination and has huge immune escape (even from previous infection). People did adapt to diseases in the past and the risks they faced, they didn't just carry on as 'normal'. Two generations back, my family was decimated by one such disease - my mother left disabled for life and two members, including a 7 year old child, dead. This is only two generations ago! It's still like this is much of the world!

This is the new normal, not what we had in 2019. But it does seem that this is what people want and I think we just have to go with it and be glad we're not the vulnerable ones and protect our vulnerable family members as best we can.

I'd much rather live in a society where vulnerable members are more highly valued and cared for, but the UK certainly isn't it and many other countries too.

I think the biggest worry from a UK perspective is that the NHS is under such strain and unable to cope with such high background levels of disease. There doesn't seem to be a solution to this in the short term, other than getting private insurance if you can (although that doesn't resolve the emergency care crisis as no private insurance provides emergency care).

My primary aged kids had 10 days of school in 5 months. There were no daily trips to the beach as I worked from home throughout. Play areas were closed, clubs stopped running, our holiday was cancelled and we couldn't see family (none of whom live locally) for many many months. The idea primary school children were largely unaffected is ludicrous.

There is a middle ground, and many countries have adopted this. Where people still wear decent quality (ffp2) masks in crowded indoor spaces

What countries are you talking about?

@mocktail how are your DC now? I wonder how many children who were under 5 during the pandemic will remember it in a few years time.

It wasn't to save people with an average age of 82 it was to stop the NHS from being overwhelmed.

YABU. No-one is going to be out cold with Covid. It's just a minor cold now.

I wonder how many children who were under 5 during the pandemic will remember it in a few years time.

They don't have to remember it to affect them long term.

None of our play areas were closed fortunately. Again that's something I saw on the news and I'm not denying it happened but again it's not universal. And my family also not being local means DC were used to not seeing them very often. So that wasn't very different either.

I'm not claiming statistics on what proportion of primary school children were affected or not, but it also isn't the case that all children were affected. There was a lot of relief when schools reopened because it was hard jiggling work and school of course and DH and I again were very lucky we both had employers who were understanding but other than that and a few parties being missed it wasn't that big a deal.

For many, many children it was dreadful with long-lasting effects wee will see for years to come. But I don't think it does those who do need extra support now any favours for it to be claimed that all, or even the majority of children, have been screwed over.

I had it a few weeks ago ,it wasn't a minor cold and I felt dreadful for about four days ,whilst i certainly didn't need any hospital treatment and recovered quickly I still felt it ,luckily I'm tripally vaccinated but I can.still affect people differently.

Yes, it's still rumbling around in the background, but so what? So are a lot of other respiratory viruses that can, in some cases, kill the immune-compromised and medically vulnerable.

Masks don't work unless everyone wears an N95 properly in enclosed spaces and almost no one wants to do that or thinks that is reasonable at this stage, when almost everyone has been able to receive a full course of vaccines and/or had Covid at least once and many people have had it more than that.

It's clear that herd immunity is going to be difficult, or even impossible, to reach, because the virus mutates so fast. But most people don't get seriously ill and since mass vaccination not many people die and most people are happy to live with the reality that they will get Covid every now and again in future. We accept that getting viruses every now and again is just part of living and working and travelling freely and it's a price that most of us are willing to pay.

I imagine the reception year group was the bubble - unless your school ignored DofE guidance. Therefore playgrounds and playtime with year groups only, no whole school assemblies, no school trips, no school events, lunch in year group bubbles only. Bubble closing because of a positive test with children sent home at a moments notice to do home schooling again and needing a parent to be home to look after them. It really wasn’t normal.

YABU. No-one is going to be out cold with Covid. It's just a minor cold now.

I don't have any great feelings about covid now, I've managed to avoid it thankfully and rarely did big group events, enclosed spaces, hugging etc anyway.

But it's not 'just a minor cold' for a great many people. DS1 who is a fit, healthy young man of 23 and hasn't been ill since he was 10yrs old had a mild dose of covid at Easter. 4 months on and he is still suffering. He's exhausted, out of breath, sore throats, headaches. It's really unpleasant for him physically and starting to take a toll on his mental health.

You're right, but none of those people were the ones I missed, was worried would die or were people I could hug. My neighbours were super cautious so we didn't do much chatting, and when I went for walks people literally crossed the road to avoid being near someone else.

I guess as with all of it, personal experience will vary individually.

I imagine the reception year group was the bubble - unless your school ignored DofE guidance. Therefore playgrounds and playtime with year groups only, no whole school assemblies, no school trips, no school events, lunch in year group bubbles only. Bubble closing because of a positive test with children sent home at a moments notice to do home schooling again and needing a parent to be home to look after them. It really wasn’t normal
I think KS1 was a nominal bubble. But they have a separate KS1 and KS2 playground anyway. After school club was also a nominal bubble which made no sense as that then crossed all year groups. Hence nominal.

Probably no full assemblies so I guess they missed out something there. They had a trip at the end of the year to a wildlife park. There was one day they all got sent home when they were all snotty but all had negative PCRs so were back 2 days later. Maybe we got lucky with few cases. I think they had more in KS2. Not sure about school events. They didn't do sports day but they had the nativity and filmed it instead of inviting us in.

Again, I'm not dismissing the experiences of people who had it way worse but I'm acknowledging my privilege in having had DC largely unaffected and I don't think that can be totally unusual. I think we should recognise where that privilege occurred more and accept that plenty of children that young won't have been affected so efforts can be focused on those who do need more support now and if there should be further lockdowns.

It’s interesting. My 7 year olds school only
recently reintroduced whole-school assemblies and the kids (my daughter included) absolutely hate them. I asked her why and she said “because when I go to one I feel worried that they are going to tell us something bad”. Now I don’t know if this reason is shared by her peers but it’s just funny that something as innocuous as a school assembly seems to have caused a bit of a reaction.

@DappledThings I think you've missed the point of the post you quoted.

For you who were lucky enough to keep your nursery place, things were pretty normal. This is the main reason that teachers are nursery staff were worried about working because they did still cuddle the kids etc.

The children who weren't able to keep their nursery/school place were the ones most affected. They didn't see people, were told they couldn't go to school because of the germs, were given very little schooling in some cases and in lots of cases be looked after by someone trying to do their job.

I had 4 children. One in nursery, one in primary, one in secondary and one who missed their GCSE's in that first year. Mine were also luckier than some as I was furloughed so had time to do things with them but many many kids in the world have been affected negatively by all the time they spent away from the classroom.

Vast majority won't end up on a ventilator or dead anyway with covid.