Vulnerable children locked up in flats, deep recession, mental health eroded a future generation screwed

[Borkins]

I hope it flattens that curve. I hope it saves lives. Because huge sacrifices are being made.

Oh yes and I forgot to mention the 1918 flu pandemic with no antibiotics or ventilators and the 1930's depression. despite this my grandparents still managed to save a bit and collect a small state pension.
Ff's

Typical!
Spend months jumping up and down going mad at our lax response to a plainly imminent crisis which could, possibly, have been stopped with immediate and severe restrictions, track and trace, or if not at least prepped for by ordering the bloody equipment.
Then it's all .... ooh don't go on about the past ... what should we do now, now that it's all fucked up because we didn't do any of the things anyone could see from looking at China needed to be done

It's all a bit fucked now, isn't it, so I suggest we accept that and just crack on with life keeping the economy running and hoping herd immunity turns out to be a thing. Meanwhile, isolate our vulnerable completely and throw everything at developing as good systems as possible to protect them and their financial security so they can live the two years of isolation required before widespread vaccination is available, if it is. The rest of us try to avert economic catastrophe.

@RishiSunakFanClub

**My mother died when she was 94. Are you suggesting my response to her dying should not have been grief but 'oh well, she was well past 86, it was time to go?' Same with family friend's husband who I had known all my life - he was 92 when he died. Should I have just shrugged and felt no emotion?

I'm guessing you aren't 85. hmm**

That’s not what I said now was it? Of course you would feel grief regardless of the age of your mum when she passed away. No one is suggesting you wouldn’t 🙄 you’d be heartbroken and rightly so.

That’s said, it doesn’t make it tragic at that age. A 40 year old with 3 young kids is a very different situation and not comparable at all.

The wider society would view this as a tragedy whereby children are left without the mother and a life that was shortened almost by half.

That’s the difference

@KenDodd

Ffs nobody is saying it's not sad when people die or that those left behind won't grieve. Personally, I admit, I do value the lifes of the young more than the lifes of the very elderly though. I'd hazard a guess most people do. You might find that disgusting and immoral, that all life is of equal value and equality deserving of treatment, that is a view some have and does have some moral weight, I don't agree though. If I was a doctor with one ventilator available and had to make the terrible decision who got it, I would treat the 30 year old, not the 86 year old, even if they both had a equal chance of survival. I guess some others might just toss a coin to see who got it. If I had to choose between the life of my 80 year old mother or my 11 year old daughter, it's a complete no brainer to me. This isn't to say I wouldn't be sad at the death of my, already very sick, mother.

This this and this 👏 I share your view entirely. I find it rather strange when people can’t see the logic behind it... 🙄

I think the rationale behind the lockdown and social distancing is to keep the numbers of people needing ventilation down so that there are machines available to treat the 30 and 40 somethings without having to not treat everyone over 65.

Trainspotting, I do understand that this is a particularly horrendous situation for children like the child you were.

But would your childhood self have had any idea of what it would be like to drown in your own mucus over a period of many days? (that's how I've heard it described by people going through it). And is there any guarantee abusive parents wouldn't be adding to the horror of it by becoming even more abusive?

This by all accounts is not a gentle, "it was time to go" kind of death. It is horrendous. If too many fall ill at once, there won't just not be the resources to keep them alive: there won't be enough resources to keep them sedated and on painkillers either. If we have any humanity at all, we want to avoid that, not just for ourselves but for anyone.

OP - of this finds rampant then the death rate could be roughly equal to the rate of which people need breathing support of any kind. That would be 3-4 million people.

And yes, borderline home situations in crowded flats are likely to be worse during this than borderline home situations in spavious houses with gardens. That when I have this week been curled up struggling with self harm urges I could send DS to play in the secure garden with toys meant I had space to calm down and both of us stayed a lot safer. In a small flat that is much harder to manage.

@MinesAPintOfTea It's good you have a Garden so you can separate yourself from your son when your feeling this way, I hope you have some help irl also.

I imagine living in a flat for you would be hard, but for most it's not. Its frustrating right now to not have a garden, but that's about it for us- we're keeping ourselves quite entertained potting a window garden today! (Thank you M&S ).

I don't judge people on whether they live in a house or flat (for info, my flat is beautiful, some of the houses 3 miles away are shitholes, not an opinion, a fact...). I do however judge small minded, 'better than', materialistic fuckwits as....well, fuckwits...

OP , I agree with every single word of your various posts.

I think you're brave to express this on here, though, as you will be held personally responsible for every nonogenarian who dies of old age Covid 19 now.

cory I remember whooping cough and the panic of struggling to breathe now, so yes, I would have had some idea. Nothing compared to the fear of going home. Depending on how bad a day it was I would have chosen that as a preferable alternative to being trapped with my mother, let alone the risk of being in the small probability of being in the minority of dc that are seriously ill. And to give some perspective, my childhood was otherwise very privileged. I dread to think how that would have been with less space to escape to, and with parents with limited funds/ money worries.

We aren't asking those dc to pay a high price, we've just told them they are paying.

madcat that's great. I survived my childhood without any mental illness. Perhaps I should make a public service announcement telling everyone with mh problems they are snowflakes. That will be really fucking helpful for them. I'm also not seeing the relevance of affordable housing or a state pension for your grandparents, should the current generation have planned their date of birth better so they had that option too?

pot & ken agree with all you say.

There will be children in abusive or neglectful homes who struggle with bad asthma or diabetes or other medical conditions. You should not forget that vulnerable children, suffering from adverse childhood experiences, are more likely to be in poor health in general at population level.

I would put good money on the 0.2% of children who will die being disproportionately from abusive homes, or from conditions of miserable poverty, or both.

Abandoning the lockdown chucks ALL vulnerable children under the bus.

What bullshit it is to believe we can have an anywhere near normal functioning economy if a large amount of people die in a short space of time. That's not going to happen.

Can't believe some of what I have read on here

My mums 73 with health conditions that put her in the vulnerable group.
That doesn't mean I'm ready to loose her because shes had her life according to some on mumsnet.
If she catches this she will be the one they probably wouldn't bother to save.

@Easilyanxious me neither....some really warped thinking-