Friend cancelled because she's scared of catching coronavirus..aibu to be annoyed?

[lindseyvvt]

Saturday night we are going to a concert in Newcastle (well we were meant to be )
We've paid for train (over £100 each ) and hotel (£150 split) and £80 ticket each.
Tonight she text saying she isn't coming as she is scared incase she catches coronavirus.
So I have nobody to go with and we only reserved hotel so I will have to pay £150 for that.
Aibu to be Annoyed?
I told her to get a grip,and was she planning on not going out till after this has gone.

Well @HelpFlattenTheCurve since you obviously are an epidemiologist, you have the answers, so don't ask me. Instead of some crazy 30,000 number, why don't you try comparing the number of tests administered in each country to their death rates , and you find that those countries with widespread testing also have very low death rates (as a %), which is unsurprising. This is also interesting, as it suggests for example that South Korea may have very accurate stats. And they do not have 30,000 infected, but like I say I'm sure you're a genius, so I'm sure you'll come back at me with more factoids.

Loving the idea that reading some crap on the internet constitutes educating yourself. I'm not an epidemiologist, so I take the government's advice. Yes, I'm reducing trips out, yes, I'm avoiding the shops, but what's with all the armchair experts

Why assume that the British government, out of all the government affected by this situation, is the one most capable of evaluating medical expertise and acting responsibly in an emergency?
I mean, these are people we have literally seen sitting coughing non-stop (and not into a handkerchief either) in Parliament though they know they have been in contact with an infected person. These include a Health Minister who signed the paper making coronavirus a notifiable disease and then didn't tell anyone for 5 days that she had it, including the constituents who had attended her surgery when she was clearly infectious. Why would I trust them more than the governments of Singapore, Germany, Denmark, Sweden?

As far as I am concerned "some crap on the internet" also involves listening to the Prime Ministers of other nations explain clearly and rationally how flattening the curve works and why it is important. I thought Angela Merkel on German television was a model of clarity and calm. It also involves listening to actual epidemologists.

Yes. I'm German. I have listened to them. And I follow the advice, which is virtually the same between UK and Germany. Anyway bye, this is a bit pointless.

It's just how things are at the moment . I didn't go to see take that in concert up London after what happened in Manchester . My friend was the total opposite and determined to go .
She should pay costs tho .

So to all the doubters. Now Boris has spoken and said what the 'armchair experts' have been saying, do you consider still harmless? "Just" the flu? Still, thinking people are people ridiculous?

Convinced yet it's going to cost a hell of a lot of lives yet, big some bloke on the tv finally admitted what WHO etc have been saying?

Remind me what was the figure yesterday, something like 460? Have you seen today's numbers? Quickly reaching10,000 See how quickly it's rising?

That just what they know about. If it can almost double overnight for the confirmed, now try and work out the numbers for those undiagnosed.

I think your friend should pay for the half of the hotel if she doesnt want to go

@Tootletum, my apologies for having misreading that you did not claim to be an epidemiologist.

Neither am I. Nor am I a genius. I am just reasonably good at basic secondary school maths, including exponential growth arithmetic.

That's really all it took in order to work out from the reported case numbers, the growth rates seen in other countries without aggressive containment measures, the known lag of about two weeks between infection and case confirmation in the UK, that there were likely many thousands of infected persons in the UK. I guessed roughly 30k. Today the UK government stated estimates that there are probably 5k to 10k. I really hope that they are right, but the key point is that even if they are, unless we take significant action right now to slow down those growth rates, we will get to those 30k actual infected persons in the UK within a week or ten days, and then it will keep growing further at very high rates unless we go into "lockdown."

So far, all but one of the big slowdowns in case count happened in countries where they used "lockdown" in certain areas, or nationwide. The exception, S. Korea, used aggressive testing with deployment of technology to help find, isolate and treat infected people (S.Korea).

We don't have the testing nor the technology capabilities of S.Korea, so lockdown is our only real option if we want to slow down actual case growth in the UK.

In most other places, where the political will or ability to take really effective containment measures has been lacking, we have just seen continued rapid growth in the number of cases, followed closely by a rapidly increasing number of deaths, until the death count gets so high that the population is willing to accept a proper lockdown.

Is that what we want to do in the UK?

@Helpflattenthecurve I simply don't know what the best option is at this point. It's a very complex situation with difficult tradeoffs to make all the time. Lockdown in a democracy is not simple to implement, and my worry about the virus doesn't stop me worrying about the economic fallout particularly for small businesses. They need support and I'm assuming, perhaps naively, that the govt does also want to consider how to implement a package to help them before any lockdown is deployed. The official reason is also worth bearing in mind, namely that all measures rely on compliance and goodwill, and people will become complacent if it's all heavy from the start. The Guardian's view seems to be that it is all just delay, whilst giving up on limiting cases, i.e. allow the NHS to manage and thereby keep death rate as low as poss. Anyway I'm just taking life a day at a time and trying to find levity and light somewhere. Not working that well as I mostly cry and WFH is a nightmare but there we are!

Just watched the press conference. Arguments for the choices made and the relatively slow rollout of actions sounded much more sensible than what I expected. Basically they are saying that if they "decided" on more aggressive measures, they would not be able to enforce them for long enough to have them actually work.

Key weaknesses remain:

(1) if the share of patients getting serious enough illness really is potentially 10%+, then it might still be worthwhile to try to "contain" for as long as possible, even taking the risk of "fatigue" undermining distancing measures after a while, in order to allow time for new therapies and treatment protocols to emerge before too many people get seriously ill. For instance, by May we might have results from clinical trials on remdesivir, an existing antiviral that might actually work against this disease. By end of March we will know whether Korea's early testing allowed them to keep patients from deteriorating, and we may be able to learn from their treatment protocols (although having so many hospital beds really helps them as well!). We may also start to learn how "recovered" the recovered patients, even from mild illness, actually are (vs. whether they suffer permanent lung damage).

(2) Ending testing of non-hospitalised patients sounds like a decision driven by inadequate total testing capability, in order to save more lives now (good!), but on the other hand this means that we will have no data in UK to help understand whether this phase of "Delay" is actually delaying anything, or whether cases are still doubling every 3-4 days. Headline numbers will be lower, making it hard to secure political will for tougher actions when they become necessary. Also, we will have no UK data to help answer the key question of whether the true rate of serious illness is 1% or 10%.

But I guess the bottom line is, the decisions are taken in a way that respects real limits on what they think they can actually get people to do.

My friend is coming back to celebrate her birthday ( she lives by the coast now) but will risk the virus to meet with us her friends for her birthday meal ... but is too worried about the virus to come back for my birthday in April

No I'm just a normal person who thinks all these articles are total scaremongering.
The people who are dying from this are elderly with other medical issues.
More people do die from flu and those saying avoid big groups blah blah best not leave the house Also..they could catch it from Tesco,from the corner shop.
I'm not prepared to hibernate whilst I have zero symptoms.
I'm going to be on top of hygiene with hand washing etc
Until somebody cancels these large scale events..I'm going to still carry on as normal.
Anything else is pure hysteria.

The people who are dying from this are elderly with other medical issues.

In Italy people of all ages are dying. Over a 1000 deaths now. They are making choices as to who lives and who dies due to lack of ventilators. Believe what you like.

Have you actually been listening to the news at all OP?

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/607807/

This is what is happening in Italy.

@lindseyvvt if you think it's pure hysteria then why have you started 4 threads about coronavirus?

Sorry - correction - you've started 3 threads and posted on a 4th.

But my question still stands ...

OP: AIBU ?

Replies: yes, and you're ignorant for not being concerned. Here's some facts why.

OP: you're all just hysterical and scare mongering blah blah blah...

Classic Mumsnet

I know, I wonder why this thread is still here.

If you want to carry on as normal then maybe stop starting threads about coronavirus?

There's a huge gulf between hysteria and stupidity. Most of us are somewhere in the middle.

Sensible precautions and looking at the rest of the world so we are armed with as much information as possible.

You seem hysterical about not being hysterical. Have a little calm down and stop obsessing over other people obsessing about coronavirus.

They’ve cancelled.

LOL

Now it's been postponed, perhaps you and your family will take heed, and take this pandemic seriously OP?

Nope. The OP clearly knows better than the World Health Organisation.
She also trusts the government.