To think people don't care about covid anymore?

[MumofLandD]

That really. Quick straw poll on that.
DS (13) tested positive this morning after I had a very faint positive this morning. I tested because I had a sore throat all night and 6 days til Christmas I wanted to check. We have Xmas dinner at the ex's families planned and 3 others going are vulnerable.
I also test when feeling unwell as I am a front line health care worker and work with cancer patients and other vulnerable people. Although my hospitals policy is if you test positive and feel well enough to come to work then you are allowed to work, I morally disagree with this.
I co parent with ex partner, he is due to have DS tomorrow for the rest of the week and he thinks DS can go to school tomorrow if he feels better whereas I disagree. DS's best friend is spending Xmas with his 90 year old grandmother and I would hate for him to pass it on to her. Plus who else will he come in contact with at school who have plans like that? Ex partner is of the opinion that vunerable people are fine if they are vaccinated but I don't believe so. Not sure if I am still traumatised by the sights I saw in the first wave.
Interestingly when I asked XP if he was happy for our son to sit next to his mother at the table, if he was still positive, who is vulnerable but vaccinated he said no. 🙄

I really appreciate how considerate of others you are OP, it’s a breath of fresh air.

I’m high risk, fully vaccinated, caught covid a couple of weeks back and was incredibly poorly with it, oxygen sats in the low 80s, heart rate in the 100s, low blood pressure, was a thoroughly unpleasant experience but I thankfully got one of the covid treatments which I think helped. This current strain is awful, I got covid back in 2022 and it did just feel like a common cold, this felt worse than flu and I’m still not fully recovered.

The fact that you are thinking about others, especially those who are vulnerable, speaks volumes about who you are as a person. Unfortunately, most of society has now moved on from worrying about covid and it’s long term risks, which means you may not get much sympathy from your wider circle if you choose to keep DS off school. I think ultimately you should go with what your gut is telling you but be prepared for backlash from others.

People only isolated until the vaccinations were rolled out. People who were worried have been vaccinated, to protect themselves. There is zero need to isolate anymore. If people chose to not vaccinate, then that's their choice. I caught covid for the first time recently, and used my last test to check. I carried on as normal.

People are just carrying on now, it’s a tricky one though because it’s difficult to prevent infections but we also don’t know what repeated infections is doing long term to our bodies.

Thank you, I hope you feel better soon.
I don't really care what other people think, my son is off today and I will take annual leave to keep him home with me for the rest of the week if I am negative and he isn't and XP wants to send him to school.
My post was to gauge peoples opinions at the moment x

It’s difficult and I know I probably more aware of it as it being near Christmas.

I tested positive last week - I test because my work provides the tests for free and they don’t want to us to come in if we are positive. I had a cold a few weeks before covid was much worse & unpleasant. I had it twice before and felt not to bad except this time I feel rotten.

I have felt quite poorly with it . Really knocked me about. I have self isolated to a a degree from my family in the house - as I don’t want them to get it for Christmas when we planning visiting family.

So far both husband and daughter ok!

@MumofLandD you are fortunate that you have annual leave to enable you to stay at home with your child. Your choices can’t be everyone’s choices.

We were all able to stay at home and be more cautious when the government supported us as individuals, and supported businesses to support their employees, to do so.

I am a teacher and my school’s policy now is test if you want, and if it’s positive, you can still come in if you feel well enough. So the expectation is still very much to come in. The reality as a teacher is that if I don’t come into work, my colleagues have to cover for me. They’re all ill and knackered too. So we all still go in to stop each other from suffering from our individual absences. Teachers don’t get annual leave in the same way as other professions, so if a colleague’s child is ill, they have to take unpaid leave. Not everyone can afford to do that.

I might add that we get covid from other people’s choices to send their children into school while they are obviously very unwell and infectious - coughing everywhere, noses running uncontrollably, etc. But I also know those parents probably need to work and can’t afford to take time off. And so on and on it goes.

So it’s not just about people being selfish or uncaring. We all need support to be able to take time off for ourselves and others and if that support isn’t forthcoming then we often have to make difficult choices. Those choices of course impact others, but we can’t all be held individually responsible for a failure of public policy.

I think people should take measures to try not to transmit any virus, not just covid . The elderly and vulnerable can become very unwell from ' just a cold'.

I only took tests when work gave us a week off paid if we ever tested positive! Not taken one for 18 months/2 years.

We weren't all fortunate to stay at home.
I was working, literally, in the middle of it.

I think most people dont give it much thought now unless they have vulnerable relatives. My dd has just had it and she was quite ill, she isolated as we didn't want to pass it on to mil who has lung cancer or to my mum who is 97 with lots of health problems. Yes they are old and ill but the last thing they need is a nasty virus to deal with.

I don't know anyone who's still testing. So seems like everyone's just treating it like any other virus. But I'm in ROI where tests were never free so a lot of people were feeling the burden of that expense.

@MumofLandD

So was I. I was teaching. Please don’t act the martyr - it was not just health staff who had a tough pandemic. The vast majority of people were still working outside of the home and were exposed to risk. It was actually only a small subset of the population who were able to work from home or be furloughed, if you look at the stats.

What I meant was that our employers had to give us paid sick leave if we had covid as we were legally obliged to isolate if we tested positive in 2020 and 2021.

That is no longer the case and so people are now having to make different choices to ensure they can still pay the bills. Employers are not as understanding as they were and many people cannot afford to take sick leave as SSP is less than their usual salary or doesn’t even kick in until they’ve been off for several days. Saying it’s just a matter of selfishness is therefore unfair. There is more to people’s choices than that.

I had Covid for 5 weeks recently. Fully vaccinated, generally fit. It was hell on earth and I couldn't work.

The vaccines have mostly worn off now, this article is interesting
BBC News - Why Covid is still flooring some people
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-67726685

Surely all the clinically vulnerable people have been vaccinated? Isn't that who the vaccines are for these days? I truly believe some people continue to feed off the drama of covid. No-one ever got their pants in a twist over noroviruses, and that used to close wards I was working on at Christmas.

I think a lot of people are treating it like any other virus which mean you're going to have the people who would be considerate about illness (and probably were before the pandemic) and the people who think nothing of spreading their illnesses (probably the same people who before the pandemic were the ones who'd come into work obviously unwell infect the whole office instead of staying home with a nasty cold and flu bug).

I am still testing if I have symptoms that include loss of taste and smell. I've had COVID twice. I'm currently suffering from it. On Day 12 now and it's been just awful. I'm signed off work this week.

The vaccines have mostly worn off now

If they were true, we'd be seeing fatality rates in line with March/April 2020. This is not the case.

Month 5 of severe Long Covid here. People ignore LC. The more infections you have the more likelihood of LC. Some people are in 6th or 7th infection.

There's something like 1.5 million people who the vaccine won't work for
I'm fully vaccinated with 8 vaccines now and was still so unwell I was under the Covid at home ward, on paxlovid and off work for 3 weeks
Ok yes I'm not dead obviously but I don't want it again for many reasons

I fear whenever I have any symptoms which I thing could be Covid out of consideration to others. I have no idea which of the people sitting in a meeting with me or next to me in the cafe might be extremely vulnerable or have elderly relatives who are. My husband has various health conditions which could be a real issue if he gets covid, and my mother in law is 93 and in a nursing home. I couldn't live with myself if I passed covid or any other serious infection to a vulnerable person. With covid tests costing under £1 per test, it's not a real hardship for most people to test if they think they have symptoms.

I didn't think much about it until I caught it for the first time and have been really unwell. People saying it is just a mild illness - it might be for some but not for others. 10 days in and still feel awful.

Wether peoples of care or not ,lots of people have no option but to carry on working wether they have Covid now assuming they feel.well enough ,its only those who can work from.home who.can't seem to.grasp that on mumsnet at least .

I've currently got covid. I haven't tested DD because the school policy is if well enough to go in! Also tests arent thar cheap (DH and I both NHS workers so we had free tests for a while but that has stopped now). Technically keeping her off could be unauthorised. Morally I think we should still isolate with it but the rules everyone follows don't agree

I’ve never had anxiety over covid but I would distance myself if I have it.

At my work you have to come in if you have covid.
Out of my small team 6/10 currently have covid and it’s annoyed me because they were really poorly with it for about a week, some had a couple of days off and the others didn’t.

They tested negative when they were really ill but now they’re getting better they’re testing positive and so it was obviously covid all along but the test didn’t pick up on it.

If I was poorly or positive and had to come into work then I would avoid the shared areas as much as possible, but they’re not.

So chances are I am now going to get it over Xmas.

Because the majority of people are ignoring it and carrying on? Because admitting it did anything bad would force people admit how bad the situation is? Because I read research and try to stay informed?

Either immune systems aren't working as well, staying at home for a couple of months years ago gave us all the fictional immunity debt or all viruses are magically stronger than before.
...

Humans have never ignored a disease and hoped it would just go away like this before. We worked out how it spread and stopped it. That's why we have safe clean water now. I'm boggled that people are merrily going along with the ignorance is bliss approach while the government are cleaning their air and taking precautions while encouraging the general public to keep spending money for as long as they can.