To think mumsnet is making more fuss of corona than anywhere else on the Internet, or in general society

[FreshFancyFrogglette]

Just that! Until I checked mumsnet I realised we had a serious situation on our hands, and that hand washing is essential, and isolating if you have symptoms. And that was that, carried on as normal. But coming on here, and it's people convinced they are going to die because they've got asthma, people refusing to go into work (even though they don't have any symptoms), people planning for the end of the world. I'm sorry, but this just doesn't reflect the rest of the world. I was at my friend's last night, and apart from mentioning her partner needs to be careful because he's got cancer, it wasn't mentioned. Same when I went shopping. On here it's sounds like the world is ending. Aibu??

[ShanghaiDiva]

I think some people do despair and that’s a completely normal reaction.
Perhaps they put on a brave face for their children, but use an anonymous forum to voice their fears- also normal.
Posters have shared advice on what to do which is also a positive.
Stating a post complaining that posters seem overly worried is, by comparison, pretty pointless.

[FreshFancyFrogglette]

@Auldalliance. Would you say that the world as we know it is over? I just think talking like that is unhelpful, and I haven't seen it anywhere else apart from on mumsnet.

Yes, I've seen the medical quarentine camps on the TV in Italy, and it's terrifying. I really hope that that doesn't become the reality here, it hasn't yet. I don't know how likely it is.

What I want to know is what people think, realistically, is likely to be the long term impact? Or is it stupid to speculate? Is saying life as we know it is over a dramatic statement? Or am I actually wrong and we are seeing the beginning of the end?

[midsomermurderess]

I think some people are revelling it it, loving every minute of making it a whole drama largely about themselves. And the witless speculation and self-appointed guardians of the public health denouncing others or pontificating about what we must do are hugely irritating. Mumsnet at its most stupid and tiresome. I'm not saying this is not serious, I am talking about the hysterical and pompous threads on here.

[FreshFancyFrogglette]

@ShanghaiDiva I'm not complaining or being flippant, it wasn't meant to come across goady. What I've reas on here has been quite disturbing at times, I just wanted to put feelers out to see if anyone else thought that the views on mumsnet didn't mirror the outlook of the rest of the people they know/meet/see in real life.

[FreshFancyFrogglette]

Thank you @midsomermurderess I'm glad I'm not totally alone

[theflushedzebra]

Ofgs. Being aware that a global pandemic is a pretty fucking serious event isn't revelling in it.

[PurpleCrowbarWhereIsLangCleg]

Look, I'm not losing my shit about any of this. I teach overseas, my children are at the international school I work at, & we are all fine.

Stuck here because the airports are closed, but we are fine. We do feel this is our home (& also frankly that we are safer here - UK model looks like an omnishambles, honestly).

Busy figuring out how online learning platforms will work, as we expect this not to go away any time soon. Avoiding malls, checking household supplies & batch cooking because the lockdown is imminent. Still fine.

But today I arranged a 'buddy' system with a colleague who is also a woman heading a family of teenagers without a partner. We check in with each other daily. If I'm in ICU or dead, it's her job to contact my dc's NOK & look after my teenagers - hopefully remotely, via email, whilst they are home alone, as they'll doubtless have it too at this point - & I do the same for her.

We are both healthy women in our late 40s, & we can both see quite clearly that whilst we are both odds-on to survive, as are our teenage children, there will be people entirely like us who won't. Because in other countries, they aren't. & there's no magic reason that it won't be one, or both, of us.

If you'd told me a fortnight ago that I'd be seriously having that conversation - here's who you contact if I die & thanks for having my kids! - with my mate from work, I'd have scoffed.

Please don't minimise this.

[FreshFancyFrogglette]

@flushedzebra there is being aware, and there is perpetuating unnecessary levels of fear and panic.

I disagree with the poster who said that it's not the over anxious who will cause problems. I think they will, as illustrated by the panic buying, which has caused shortages, and the stock market crashes, and the networks being down due to heavt usage. These things weren't the result of the virus, but the knock on effect of the panic following the virus.

[AuldAlliance]

FreshFancyFrogglette
Depends what you mean by the world as we know it, but the economic and social repercussions of this will be felt for a long time.

I certainly don't only hear people discussing CV the way I do on MN. The head of the WHO doesn't post here much, can't think why, but he is very clear that it is irresponsible not to test and control the spread of CV.
www.france24.com/en/20200306-coronavirus-world-health-organisation-who-tedros-adhanom-ghebreyesus
Emmanuel Macron doesn't hang out much on MN either, certainly not just now, but he said yesterday when he put France in lockdown that people refusing to respect guidelines was endangering others' lives.

Perhaps you don't hear people discuss it like this because your sources of information choose not to (yet).
And because you're not in France, as I am, where at 8pm on Saturday the President suddenly announced that all bars and restaurants had to shut at midnight, the same day, and today at noon we were put in lockdown, our kids are home, we're WFH and only allowed out under strict conditions. Because even after they were asked not to, people were still out and about infecting one another and endangering others' lives.
The fact is that the UK is 2 weeks behind France in terms of contagion.

[theflushedzebra]

Well do you want us to lay out our fears on your thread OP? Our own PM told us many, many people will lose loved ones before their time, and then proceeded to take very little action.. Whilst little action he has taken, you have ignored. And you wonder why posters are a bit cross with you? That's why.

[duckduckgoosealbatross]

OP I'm not sure what you mean re the rest of the world. China quarantined people in their homes. Then Italy, then France. Borders have been closed, people aren't able to get back to their home countries. Iran has dug mass burial pits.

In the UK all sport has been cancelled , theatres and cinemas have closed, shelves in supermarkets are empty. That's but because I few people getting into a flap on Mumsnet.

This is like nothing we have ever seen in our lifetime. I'm fucking terrified, and not without reason.

[AuldAlliance]

PurpleCrowbarWhereIsLangCleg
Yes, today we set up filesharing at work, on the basis that there is a possibility one of us in the team (all women in their forties) might be hospitalised at some point the next few weeks.
We don't do that in winter when the flu hits.

I also have a friend who is a rural nurse here and is having to deal with 2 elderly patients who were sent home last week to keep them away from CV patients and free up beds. One has recently been operated on for lung cancer and may well not survive: she will pop in to look after him once or twice a day, along with her other cases.
She knows that in her team of 6 rural nurses, the risk that at least one person will catch CV is v high and there won't be shifts any more, just non-stop work. She is bracing herself and, for someone normally utterly calm, she is very alarmed indeed.

[turdtimelucky]

If your life consists of the bookies and the pub, it won't hit you how serious this is until they both close - I give it 3 days. Come back to me on Friday.

[FreshFancyFrogglette]

@turdtimelucky I fully expect them to close, and I'm also expecting a lock down.. What I'm not expecting is the death rate to rise beyond 98%, or for us all to loose loved ones before their time. I hope that this will peak in June, so that by next year we will be on the way to getting back to normal. Yes some people on this thread will loose loved ones to corona, and that's devestating. Many of us will also loose loved ones to cancer, accidents and other unforeseeable things that don't bare thinking about.

[chinateapot]

@CoolCarrie if people are acting like this is the Spanish flu that would be quite apt. Death rate for Spanish flu was (probably) around 2-2.5%. Quite similar to our best estimates for Covid 19. Estimates are that it killed 20-40 million world wide. More than world war 1.

Does that help you get an idea of what a pandemic illness to which no one has any immunity with a mortality of “only” around 2% can do to the world?

[chinateapot]

@FreshFancyFrogglette the chances are also that more of us will lose loved ones to cancer and accidents as well as Covid 19 in the coming year.
There is going to be huge disruption to the NHS. Very real chance that someone who has a serious accident won’t have access to an ITU bed when they need it. That cancer treatments will be disrupted. That the risk of immunosuppression from some cancer treatments for some people might now outweigh the benefits.
This is really, really serious. Please look at public health England advice and follow it. More handwashing, social distancing etc. We have the potential to save tens of thousands of lives by following advice. Why wouldn’t you do that?

[FreshFancyFrogglette]

@chinateapot, of course. And I am washing hands religiously. Not buying anything atm (mainly that's cus I'm skint though). I did go to my friends yesterday though, which I now see as contravertial, honestly didnt cross my mind that it was at the time.

[chinateapot]

It’s hard! I’m not entirely surprised it didn’t cross your mind then - everything has changed so fast and we’re being expected to change all our activities so quickly. Challenging times.

[CochonDinde]

OP, U OK hun x

[theflushedzebra]

This has taken us all by surprise OP. Nobody expected it to spread so fast. It's overwhelmed everyone's health care systems, and spread like wildfire. While China was building extra hospitals in mere days, Europe thought it wouldn't happen to us. Then Italy, and Spain, and France. And us. And the US.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition the next global pandemic. It was always going to happen, and yet it was always going to take us by surprise.

[choirmumoftwo]

OP the problem is that you're focusing almost entirely on the survival rate. I agree that we will eventually come out of the other side regarding the virus itself but the effect on the economy in the meantime may well be catastrophic. People will lose their jobs with the knock on effects of that and businesses will collapse. This is not only (or even mainly) a health issue. I

[theflushedzebra]

Governments plan for "normal", OP - everything's done in a 'just enough" and "just in time" way.

Sure, there are a few contingencies hidden away for emergencies, but it's never enough for when the real emergency actually comes - because sadly, planning for emergencies is not considered a good use of govt money. That's why Boris is looking so inept. Although he dreamt of his "Churchill" moment - it's not all that fun when he get's it.

[theflushedzebra]

If you have Netflix, OP, you can watch the Darkest Hour, and see what a shit time Churchill actually had in around 1940. It's all romanticised now, of course, because he won in the end, but it was shit at the time.

[LizzyButton]

I think there are a number of aspects to the pandemic. Three are:

1. Some people want to deny that something at least generational in its impact on us is happening.

2. There's illness. It looks like a lot of people are going to get a mild version of the infection, some won't even know they have it and at the top end there will be extra deaths. Governments are taking extreme measures to minimise the death toll.

3. The social and economic knock-ons are significant. Whether you notice them much will depend on your work/lifestyle and level of security. If I go through the friends, relatives and work colleagues I have had contact with in the last 7 days or so (many of them virtual as I'm home doing what the authorities say someone with a cough, fever and chest pain should be doing, it's after midnight so hello day 5), over half have either been warned they might be laid off, have businesses where the custom has dried up, or are now working from home. It's quite a change. meanwhile cinemas, theatres, pubs, restaurants and so on are shutting.

[Isla727]

@CoolCarrie, sorry but the infectivity and death rates mean this is already known to be much worse than the Spanish flu.