Has your perception of the severity of this changed?

[Orangeblossom78]

A few weeks ago, people were talking of having parties to get this over with, similar to chickenpox www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/3849042-To-throw-a-Coronavirus-party

Do you feel it is now being portrayed as something more 'deadly' to more people as it seems to be in the media

Yet it still has a very low mortality rate for the majority of us and in most cases would be mild

Friend of mine got a temperature, bit phlegmy. Isolated. After 9 days of no change he started to feel just really sick. Then wretching. Couldn’t eat. He’s now in hospital on oxygen having been diagnosed. This is very unpredictable. No one knows how someone will react.

There's not yet any confirmation that there's loads of extremely mild cases out there. When they say mild in relation to known cases, the definition is anything up to and including pneumonia that doesn't require a hospital stay. That's not the 'mild' most people are thinking of!

for me it's never been about avoiding any one particular individual getting it but the bigger country wide picture of how fast and easily it spreads and that combined with the rate of complications needing ICU - which means it has the potential to completely overwhelm the NHS in a short space of time

for the majority it is mild but it is easily and quickly spread to those who won't be so lucky, who will need hospitalisation, and that's what has to be reduced with the lockdown. So we don't end up with 50 people in every hospital who need an ICU bed and one bed left between them.

The posters on the series of 'my lungs are on fire' threads would be considered mild cases because they have not been hospitalised but they actually very sick. A mild case can be pretty awful.

A mild case can be pretty awful.

Exactly, mild doesn't mean it's a minor cold. It really is classed as not having a ventilator/hospital admission.

You can still be at death's door but if you manage to pull through at home, it's 'mild'.

I go up and down regularly in how I feel about it. Sometimes I’m confident that life will be returning to normal by June, other times I think it’s going to be a year or more.

Yes, i understand a mild case can feel awful, but it isn't helpful to think that in most cases it is going to be deadly, which it seems to be how it is portrayed in the media these days

For me and my children, no
For the population as a whole, yes

@Orangeblossom78. I don't think they do imply most cases are deadly. I think there has been a lot of focus on most cases being 'mild', but I don't think they have really driven the message home to people that a mild case is still a serious illness. People think its either a minor cough or it will kill them, there's little understanding that the likelihood is you'll get it mild but you'll be knocked out for a good 2 weeks and maybe at times be concerned you need hospital care.

For me the problem is a lack of good data. Nobody knows how many people contract the virus but are asymptomatic. If we don't know that, we don't know how dangerous the virus is.

I don't understand why this study hasn't been done yet. Somewhere, if not the UK.

The point is the significant number of cases there would be in young healthy people that are easily survivable with a ventilator and not without one, and the limited number of ventilators.

Also, it’s no surprise that people stupid enough to have a chickenpox party wouldn’t understand this.

I think overall it is the case that around 10-20% may need some kin dog support, but in the under 60s there is a very low risk of death

kind of, sorry for typos

We don’t know what a “mild case” really is because we aren’t doing widespread antigen or antibody testing. Is it Iceland or Switzerland where they’ve been doing much larger scale testing and the majority of positive tests have been from people with no symptoms at all or barely more than a tickley throat? Which would therefore mean that what many people with symptoms but who are not hospitalised are experiencing is not mild, but moderate or serious.

Sometimes I’m confident that life will be returning to normal by June, other times I think it’s going to be a year or more.

Even if the lockdown restrictions are over by June (which I doubt), the economic hangover is going to be felt for years.

I wasn’t to worried but now am went to supermarket for first time in a week and felt like I was putting my life at risk. Too many reports of otherwise healthy people dying and young people at that.

I do not want to get it it sounds nasty let alone I don’t want to die or have my children be without their mother. If I have to stay home to prevent that in the short term then your bloody right I’m doing it

Overall my perception has not changed except what constitutes 'mild' as others have said.

Colleague of mine not officially tested but ticks every box of symptoms. Completely floored for 2 weeks and close to hospitalisation like others. Still not fully recovered but better than they were. Not the type to exaggerate and a fit 40 year old.

What people are managing with at home is scary and makes you think what 'severe' must be like.

I’m asthmatic and know that a mild case could kill me. I’m taking it very seriously indeed.

I’m as worried now as I was end of jan/feb, absolutely terrified, total lock down at my house since 9/3

People with this opinion are dangerous.

Age is not a factor at the itu in my trust. The itu which is rapidly running out of space.
It is not mild like a slight runny nose.
Mild cases and people are still struggling to breathe and feel horrendous.
They just lucky do not require artificial ventilation.

I really wish I could round some people up and take them around itu and show them this mild illness.
Death rates are still low ish because there are so many still in intensive care/incubation.

*they're just lucky enough not to need

I know 5 people who have likely had it. Four of them really did just feel mildly ill (one of them is v vulnerable wuth other health issues). The fifth felt horribly ill but has still come out the other side without needing any treatment

So yes it can be mild in the way most people would think of the word. I'm still taking it very seriously just because no one knows who in advance will have serious problems with it.

My perception of the severity of it has changed in that I don't think so many people will die because of the lockdown but I'm not making any assumptions. It could still get much worse. I really hope most people are staying in and will therefore be ok though

DH and I have had symptoms for the last fortnight. We are fit and healthy in our 40s and it has been really unpleasant. If we have indeed had CV19, as seems likely, we can entirely understand how the elderly and immunocompromised people are at risk of dying

The problem is most people who say they had it mild don't know if they had it or not. So we have no idea. It seems that anyone who has a mild virus is assuming it is corona, and we just don't know that.
My opinion has not changed. I think we locked down too late, but I am glad it is finally happened.
And yes mild always meant medically mild i.e. can be managed at home. But some of these people although they will survive, will feel very ill.