why panic?

[John470322]

In 2018, there were 6,507 suicides registered in the UK,
Statistics on reported road casualties in Great Britain for the year ending June 2018 show there were 1,770 reported road deaths.
In the construction industry an average of 36 fatalities to workers and five to members of the public each year over the last five years;
That is an average of 542 suicides every month,147 deaths on the roads and three construction workers killed. Combined that is 693 deaths each month or about 23 deaths every day.
The 2019–20 coronavirus disease was confirmed to have spread to the United Kingdom on 31 January from China when the first two cases with the respiratory disease COVID-19, caused by the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, were confirmed in Newcastle upon Tyne.
That is about 6 weeks so while ten people have died from coronavirus about 743 will have committed suicide and 202 will have been killed on UK roads.
Since coronavirus started there have been 10 deaths in the UK, less than half the number of deaths from suicide and RTA in a single day. It is approximately the same as the average number of construction workers killed in six weeks but that is never mentioned.
Why is all the reporting on every news channel about the one virus and not about the deaths from other causes?
I hate to quote him but Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army seems to have the right idea when he says “Don’t panic”.
Take sensible precautions, wash your hands. Pay attention and don’t use a handheld mobile when driving, if you feel stressed ask for help. Use safety gear when working at heights.
There is nothing new, you do not need 100 toilet rolls, you just need to take sensible precautions.

1. I work in a school, so expose myself every day to a lot of potential carriers of the virus.
2. My elderly DM has a severe respiratory disease. If she catches it, it will probably be the end of her.
3. My oldest child is in remission from an autoimmune disease. Their immune system is very poor. (And they were recently hospitalised with a life-threatening asthma attack. Nebulisers did not help. They had to be given magnesium, which is the last stop before putting the patient in a coma and on a respirator.) I'm trying very hard not to panic, but at the same time I am very worried.

I am scared and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

For me the difference is that a lot of those alternative ways of dying would be considerably quicker. If I were to be fatally injured in a car accident in normal times, I would be cared for quite well and compassionately by paramedics and/or hospital staff until I departed.

I'm more afraid of the time leading up to a potential COVID-19 death than I am of actually dying of it. The thought of ending up in hospital on respiratory support amongst a crowd of others with the same disease dying next to me, being looked after on a severely under-staffed ward, or corridor, and not having the company of people I care about while I go through it, are the things that scare me.

Are you people that are so worried also worried about flu? We only vaccinate against 4 strains! The media are hyping this up to the max and the British bloody public are lapping it up.

@INeedNewShoes are you elderly or have a a comorbid disease? If not chances are even if you do catch it you'll probably have a cough and a runny nose not be dying in ITU on a ventilator all alone.

utterbuttery8

The coronavirus outbreak is more severe than the 2009 outbreak of H1N1, or swine flu. That illness infected between 700 million and 1.4 billion people worldwide but only had a mortality rate of 0.02%

It doesn't appear to be as deadly as SARS or MERS but unlike them it has rapidly and further spread than either of those which were far more contained.

If as much energy and effort was put into telling people why drinking and driving is wrong as there has been into telling people to wash their hands lately then maybe my brother-in-law and other victims of drunk drivers might still be alive today.

Absolutely sick of people playing this down.

Are you people that are so worried also worried about flu?

When it comes to my immuno supressed daughter, yes I also worry about flu. But I worry more about this virus as it isn't flu. It's worse than flu. I'm desperate for the schools to close so that she can work from home. So is she.

*My biggest bugbear in all this are the people who say “this many people die on the roads” or “this many people die from heat attacks”.

You can not compare any other forms of death to a fucking virus that is new and has no vaccine*.

I'm sick of it too, I see it loads.

It's fucking stupid you just can't compare.

@starrynight19 and I'm absolutely sick of people hyping it up. Its not the bubonic plague. As with flu and similar - it may sadly hasten the demise of the elderly and Co morbid if caught. But so will any other virus.

@MashedPotatoBrainz sorry to hear your daughter is immunocompromised. Your concerns hold validity in your case. However I disagree that you've considered it to be more dangerous than flu. There isn't evidence of that. Flu vaccines don't cover all strains.

Yes there is always death, but all our systems are geared to a fairly steady number of deaths spread out ove the year, and a lot of them will be sudden rather than intensive care. It's the pressure on the system as a whole that fucks it. It's true that right now it looks fine and the mass hysteria won't help at any point anyway, but it will not feel so fine when daily life grinds to a halt in a few weeks time.

To be fair some suicides could be prevented with adequate access to mental health care which has been eroded and left to fester in recent years. I don't think a comparison to that is too outrageous given that the underfunded healthcare service will have an impact on numbers. There difference is that the virus doesn't discriminate, a lot of people are fortunate enough to never lose a loved one to that, but this will rip through communities and money nor love can prevent it.

@limpbizkit it may sadly hasten the demise of the elderly and Co morbid if caught.

So that would be 7 members of my immediate family then dm, df, dmil, dfil, duncle, daunt (also my god mother), and dgmil. I also have a DD with asthma and an immunocompromised DS - so if caught I could be having to attend 7 funerals of immediate family and have two very sick children. Not so hyped up now?? There are vaccinations against the most likely causes of serious illness for these members of my family - flu, pneumococcal pneumonia and shingles.

Oh and our 8yr olds school was shut down for a deep clean today as a child has been exposed to a confirmed case.

@limpbizkit Thank you for that. I feel a lot better now.

I should have thought to qualify my statement with the fact that I do have a comorbid condition, in fact more than one.

Be very very scared. Many people's lives will be permanently changed from this, regardless of whether they actually catch or lose loved ones from the virus. I live in central Europe and drastic changes have been rolled out every 2-3 days. Starting next week, all non-essential shops/salons/gyms must close, restaurants only allowed to open until 3pm, all group events banned and virtually all flights grounded.

Small businesses are going under one after the other, tons of people losing their jobs, homes, mental health, relationships and families suffering. The economy has virtually ground to a halt aside from absolute necessities like supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations and doctors. Imagine a small restaurant, shop or hairdresser owner having to pay their staff yet being forced by the government to close indefinitely.

Lots of people will go into debt or bankruptcy as a result of coronavirus, and many relationships or marriages will not survive. Schools and nurseries are also shut putting an even larger strain on childcare. Most people are faced with double whammy of needing more money to survive (stocking up on necessities, no refunds for cancelled travel costs, using up their savings) and not having any income from cancelled assignments, events or forced closure.

This is the reality that nobody was prepared for when you're simply reading infection numbers on paper. It hasn't really hit the UK or USA yet but it's going to happen very soon and the result will be horrendous.

Limpbiz you clearly have no idea of the implication or complications of a corona SARS virus.

I am immunocompromised. This is worse than seasonal flu, it spreads far more rapidly, putting more people in the firing line.

@lumpy your family are not immune to every strain of flu or every other virus lurking out there for that matter (all of which would also hasten their demise) corona is not unique in its ability to hasten the demise of the already compromised.

@limpbizkit I studied medical microbiology- I know a little bit about viruses...

@Purplewhitelie er yep I do as it happens. If you're not elderly or immunocompromised you're not considered at risk of death. People that are immunocompromised or elderly I understand your fear. Most people stocking up on toilet roll don't fall into this category

The difference with this is that it's going to take lots of people out at once - and many before they would have done before!! That's not hyping things up - that's the truth of the matter

@lumpy I don't care what you've studied. The facts remain the same. Your family are still not immune to every strain of flu other viruses that could cause an untimely end

Edit: Just wanted to clarify that my post wasn't meant to trivialise the medical tragedy of covid19. Every death from this virus is too much and not diminished by the fact that people die from the flu, in accidents or by suicide. The current view of "whether or not to panic" seems based on the actual danger of the virus.

As someone currently living in a near-lockdown, the long-term damage is far more insidious. We may not ever end up personally knowing someone who was infected by the virus (let alone getting it ourselves) but we will definitely all know someone who will lose their job or livelihood as a result of this. Many of the people reading this will be made redundant or forced to file for bankruptcy within the next 2-3 months and they don't know it yet. Sorry that this sounds so negative but this is exactly what's happening across Europe right now.

I've just spent a week in hospital with my newborn (who was suspected of catching a hospital superbug) and all the staff there were making corona virus jokes and rolling their eyes about the whole situation. They believed it to be blown completely out of proportion. We have 2 confirmed cases in our area.
I'm statistically far more likely to die of any of the things listed on OP's post so I'm not worried about Coronavirus. But it would be nice if nurses and healthcare staff learned to wash their hands or bother to wear gloves. We had to make a complaint and yet they still didn't bother. So unless they can learn some basic hygiene practices, nhs staff are likely to make this whole situation even worse. The total lack of hygiene we witnessed in this past week was shocking and they were so blasé about it.