8 million in UK may require hospitalization - DM front page

[Cam77]

....The (secret NHS briefing document) shows that health chiefs expect the virus to last for another 12 months, and details how it will impact key staff in the NHS, police and fire brigade. It says: 'As many as 80% of the population are expected to be infected with Covid-19 in the next 12 months, and up to 15% (7.9 million people) may require hospitalisation.'

Assuming true, can we now call time on this sick Tory experiment with people’s lives and shut down the country properly like should have happened last week? (If not earlier)

I'm sorry, Meerscweinchen. Can you think of another event that has affected Britain in living memory that has killed as many people?

How very unlike the The Daily Mail to publish screechy hysterical BS.

Headline news in July 2009

Swine flu could kill 65,000 in UK, warns chief medical officer

It was 457 in actual fact.

I have been ruminating a bit on why I feel so angry about the government deciding that herd immunity 80% getting it elderly and sick dying is the way to proceed. I feel angry and scared and powerless and it's horrible. I think a lot of us are panicking because this is beyond our life experience. We've grown up in the Privileged west surrounded by vaccines, antibiotics and herd immunity. With life expectancies on the increase, child mortalities an unusual tragedy not acceptable or commonplace in any way. We do not know the fear that used to be just part of life. We don't know how to push it down and carry on with our lives, like we do with our other every day fears like car accidents, climate change or nuclear weapons. We think we don't have to worry about ourselves or our loved ones dying, if we don't smoke and don't drink and don't eat too much junk and get out jabs and attend our routine appointments we will be alright, right? We don't think the warnings about super viruses and flu pandemics and antibiotic resistance apply to us. But people used to live surrounded by TB and small pox and the plague and polio and they still lived their lives. They still went on having children knowing many wouldn't survive. They still Went to work knowing they might catch all kinds. Life went on. I think this is just a massive fucking shock to people who feel "protected" and "immune" and are facing just how vulnerable we all are, as individuals, in our communities, in our country, in our world. We can't pretend this one does not apply to us any longer, we cannot just bounce around in our safe little bubble, we are exposed and it's scary. I hope we are all just hysterical and over reacting and that the numbers are wrong. I hope it's just a pandemic of panic and not the coming storm. Time will tell.

How very unlike the The Daily Mail to publish screechy hysterical BS.

They lifted the story from the Guardian. Who have seen a leaked government document, as described by the OP.

Link to guardian here

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/15/uk-coronavirus-crisis-to-last-until-spring-2021-and-could-see-79m-hospitalised

Anyone remember Prof Lacey who made the headlines by predicting that by 2016 half a million Britons would be dying from CJD every year.

Maybe this is our lesson we’re not immune from horrible illnesses that kill lots of people that millions of people round the world have to deal with, with no one here giving 2 fucks.

That is true, millions of people die of malaria in sub-Sahara Africa every year, the majority of them being children under 5.

I personally think that we've been protected against fatal illnesses for such a long time because of vaccines that something like this causes widespread panic. (It's a pandemic and it's going to cause thousands more deaths, I'm not disputing that. I've been ill with it myself the last 3 weeks.). But I'm old enough to remember when smallpox was still around (and killed a far higher percentage of victims btw), and lots of children at school caught measles or whooping cough. And pregnant women could catch German measles (rubella) and their babies were born deformed.

Obviously there was also the Spanish flu a century ago, which sounds like it followed a similar pattern to COVID-19.

And in previous centuries, there were millions of deaths from diseases like TB or scarlet fever.

Now smallpox has been stamped out and measles, rubella, whooping cough (and mumps) have vaccines. So the idea of a fatal illness is much more terrifying now than it would have been in the past.

Anyone remember Prof Lacey who made the headlines by predicting that by 2016 half a million Britons would be dying from CJD every year?

I don't remember that specific prediction, but there was a lot of fear about vCJD (the more established CJD was not connected to BSE, they were 2 different things). No one knew how it would pan out as the incubation period could be over 15 years, one of the victims had been a veggie for that long.

In the event, there were only a few hundred deaths, though it was a horrific end and it was always fatal.

Do you work OP?

Because unless you are independently wealthy you cannot because cannot bunker down for as long as it takes.

I know I’m not.

The point Prof Lacey was making was that it was possible that would happen and that in light of any other evidence, the government should be cautious, which they weren’t being.
Have just been taught this in my Public Health MSc, well, last April.

Sorry, in absence if any evidence!

Of

I give up.

Page 1 and Godwin’s law already achieved!

Yep. The irrelevant comparisons with WW2 continue as nauseam....

Is this not a case of prepare for the worst and hope for the best?

What about the likely second peak that will happen in locked down countries when the lockdown comes to an end?

Then you deal with smaller peaks rather than one massive spike which will kill hundreds of thousands of people.

Also, why do people think that the virus will immediately run rampant following an effective lockdown? Do people get the point of the lockdown and what it entails.

Look at China and South Korea.

I think the best health advice at the moment would be to stop reading the DM. Seriously. Stop reading the DM. It exists to whip up anxiety and bad feeling.
I am totally with the concept of free speech - you can say what you like (with certain caveats), but I don't have to listen.

Just in case I wasn't clear - stop reading the DM

Funny how the DM has always been slated as awful press etc for years on here but now people are taking it all as gospel!