To think this coronavirus hysteria is completely OTT

[tacosplease]

I’ve just read that the NHS has declared the coronavirus “situation” a level 4 incident - the highest level of emergency.

There are only 51 known cases in Britain out of a population of 66 MILLION. None of these people have died. In the extremely unlikely event that you do catch it, the chance of death is just 2%.

So, I simply don’t understand why people are getting so hysterical about this. Far more people catch the common flu every year and no one starts panicking over that. Every time you use your car you have a 1/20,000 chance of dying yet people still drive and don’t think twice.

AIBU?

If you are so arrogant to think this will simply pass you by then good luck to you and your families.

It’s nothing to do with being arrogant...! It’s simply maintaining a calm and rational outlook and recognising that the worst case scenario is highly unlikely to materialise.

The hospital I work in has a catchment of nearly a million people. We can ventilate perhaps 25 people. That's if we cane the facilities and the staff work themselves in the ground and manage not to get sick.

That's why it's a problem op. You're being a fool.

I am not hysterical but I am concerned -2 reasons both based on dh
last year he had sepsis & was in the infectious diseases ward (separate rooms) - think - a very large University hospital in major city. There are a very limited number of beds & they landed up playing tetras in the 6 weeks he was in (I think his care was fantastic) the point I am making is how in gods name WHEN the number of sick do land up in hospital- some of whom will be acutely ill & the some staff will be ill lets not forget - the numbers don't add up -
the second thing that concerns me is dh vulnerability & yes that's personal - I am not rushing into panic -but I am concerned & your sweeping brushing aside of numbers is insensitive & incorrect
do you think our present Government would have called a COBRA meeting for the fun of it? Do you think the PM would have held the interview/announcement if he was not concerned? Italy has had 79 deaths so far with over 2500 affected in a very short time period

My dd is supposed to be going on a school residential to London in 2 weeks. After today do You think i would be over reacting by pulling her out. We have no cases where we are & up til action plan & level 4 I haven't really been sucked into media hype with it. Now I can't help be a little fearful.
She will have me, but I don't want her getting ill. And all places they are due to visit are busy full places

I'm afraid you are coming across as anything but rational op.

Did you listen to Boris announcement today op? 80% of the UK COULD catch this ( worse case sanario) 1% of those would be expected to die. That's 550,000 deaths.

Unfortunately they wont just drop dead, they will need ICU beds.

How many ICU beds do you think the UK has?

Now imagine your in the "I'm ok Jack" 99% but you have a stroke or a heart attack? Where will your ICU bed be? Oh dear, there is a COVID case in it. Oops!

But dont worry. You might be fine, your elderly relatives? Let's hope strokes, heart attacks, stabbings, car crashes, cancer can all take a rest for the duration as ICU beds are like gold dust at the best of days.

Please watch Hospital at 9pm this Thursday

OP you are not a public health expert, a medic or an epidemiologist. If the NHS has declared it an emergency then I think we need to accept that's where we're at. This isn't hysteria from the Daily Fail or the Sun, it's coming from people who know what they're talking about.

I'm afraid you are coming across as anything but rational op.

We will have to agree to disagree on that one. Personally I think the posters quoting the worst case scenario as inevitable are the ones who are irrational.

My dd is supposed to be going on a school residential to London in 2 weeks. After today do You think i would be over reacting by pulling her out.

As mentioned up thread, I commute to work using the tube and while I am taking some extra precautions, given the figures I’m not overly concerned and am certainly not going to stress myself out over it.

Anyway, I think I will bow out of this thread for now, as it seems to be turning into a pile on by some types who are determined to only see the absolute worst case and spread fear. G’night all!

The chief medical officer, the PM, the minister for health, the WHO, PHE are all emphasising how serious this situation is. And there are still people wondering why there's so much 'hysteria' (hate that word)

They know more than we do, much more. They are telling us to be concerned.

tacos I say this with all the love, light and humility in the world....

get your head out of the hourglass sand. ⏳

You do realise there is no vaccine for this, there is no herd immunity to this, it is highly contagious, it latches on to the old and immunodeficient like a magnet. Calm and rational is fine but purposely downplaying the severity of what we are facing is wrong.

The concern in our NHS department is not about deaths from covid19. It’s how do we staff the department if schools and nurseries shut? How do we staff the department if we have an infected patient in the department and half of us have to go off and self-quarantine? If one of our patients turns up with symptoms, where do we physically put them so they don’t infect everyone else? If one of our patients phones up to say they have symptoms, how do we get them tested quickly, given that 111 currently has a >24hr callback time, and actual testing takes days more? Our patients will die if they miss treatments, so they can’t sit at home for days waiting to be tested.

So no, not scaremongering. I’m sure we won’t have millions of deaths, probably won’t even have that many cases, but the potential for disruption and associated incidental deaths is massive.

Flu is nasty (I felt like I was going to die when I had it at 19) and yes it does kill people. It's not new though, there are vaccines and not everyone catches it at once because'some' immunity has been built up in the population to it, even though that doesn't totally protect people because it mutates.

This is more serious because it's a new disease, so more people are likely to catch it due to no immunity or vaccines yet. The figure is also likely to be higher because people have often had it for a while before symptoms arise. People might die because they can't get to hospital to be treated due to them being overstretched. If people are off work on great numbers, it will affect everything we rely on.

OP doesnt understand exponential growth.

This thread just reads like you are seeking reassurance for something you really want to be true, OP.

The more people try to explain the situation to you, the more you dig your heels in and are determined to rubbish the reality of what is unfolding.

You keep mentioning that the 'worst case scenario' of half a million deaths might not happen. Ok. So divide those 'worst case' figures by 10, in the name of optimism.

That's still over fifty thousand people dead. You think that's no big deal? Really?

Would you be ok with 50,000 people dying in a terrorist attack, for example?

It’s 2% of actual cases isn’t it? Not 2% of the population as a whole. Unless I’ve misinterpreted...

The UK have a population of approx 66million. 80% of that is about 50million people (give or take)

Assuming we get 80% of 50M people infected ( as has been suggested - admittedly worst case) in a year

2% death rate would result in about 1 MILLION extra deaths in the UK in that year

With a death rate of 3.4%, it will be more like 1.7 million extra deaths

For comparison in 2018 there were just over 600,000 deaths in that year in total .

But yeah it is just another flu

When is the best time to get the flu jab please.

Why would 40 million be infected?
as I posted upthread - my province 70 million people, 600 cases, no deaths.

Best case scenario for swine flu 2009 was 3100 deaths, worst case was 65k. Later figures suggest 138 in the UK died.

Overlyleafy, a report a couple of years on put the total deaths from swine flu in the UK as 457. Still much less then best case scenario at the time but higher than 138.

The thing is op, it's one thing to say you want to stay calm and rational and another to stick your fingers in your ears to how dangerous and highly infectious this virus is. Being educated on it doesn't mean being hysterical.
China has tanked their own economy to try and contain Covid19. Why do you think they would do that if it's not that big a deal?
Even Boris, clearly trying to talk things down a fair bit, has been clear this will reach epidemic in our country. 1 in 5 predicted to be off work, possible school closures...as 20% of sufferers require hospital treatment, how exactly will the NHS cope?

I don't think there's anything wrong with asking those kind of questions.

Where swine flu was concerned, there was a lot of confusion between swine flu and the much more lethal bird flu, which had a 60% death rate. There were fears that it would mutate and spread from human to human, a fear which beer materialised, it only infected people working with poultry or who had direct contact with a bird that had died of it.

Swine flu was always less serious than that. It was really nasty (I had it), but it was never going to be as dangerous as bird flu.

"Why would 40 million be infected?
as I posted upthread - my province 70 million people, 600 cases, no deaths.*

That is the worst case scenario, ( as calculated by medical professionals not me) if we do nothing . It is my response to the claim that declaring a level 4 emergency is just hysteria . It is is not, it is acting to prevent a potential catastrophe.and is in no way hysterical behaviour . It is in fact a rational response to a very real threat.

Oh dear, 'beer' should have been 'never'. I hate predictive text!!

But presumably we aren’t going to do nothing...

I think anyone who can’t see how this has the potential to cause massive issues is a bit naive.

This and stupid

shanghai would you trust the validity of those numbers you just gave? 🤔