I'm 32 and not ready to die - anyone else care to demonstrate it's not just older people this will hit hardest?

[Helenshielding]

I keep seeing posts by people saying they dont think we should be on lockdown to protect older people who will "die next year anyway" or similar.

Here's the thing, over 70s are not "old" these days. People can live well into their 80s, 90s and 100s now.

I'm 32, I've survived cancer (which is now clear- it is not a case of it being controlled, it's been gone for 10 years), I happen to have some lung damage. I dont know what my life expectancy is, but I know it's not 33.

So if you're moaning about socially distancing etc for older adults, stop. You're doing it to prevent deaths of all ages. Younger people with no underlying conditions are dying of this virus.

Stay home. Shut up. Stop moaning. We will all get through this a hell of a lot quicker.

But after that measures have to be introduced so that parts of the NHS and normal life can resume so non COVID things can be treated.

I totally agree, what worries me is that it wont be possible. I have family members waiting on urgent treatment too, and I'm torn because i want them to get their treatment but I'm terrified they will contract covid 19 when they're in hospital. All this again comes back to protecting the NHS rather than the vulnerable.

@BanKittenHeels I completely agree with you about us being used as a debate point without consideration that we actually have valuable lives. Reading some of the posts on here is just about breaking me to be honest.

@larrygrylls I haven't seen anyone say we will come out of this all sunshine and laughter, as you claim we're saying. No one is saying that. We're all saying we see the cost of this lockdown over everyone, including ourselves. But why do you continually challenge our perception of how people are talking about us? It's like saying to a person of colour that they are just imagining racism. We see the ableism on these threads and we see it far too clearly. We see that we are the dispensable, the ones who don't matter a lot, the ones who can be included in the 'sigh of relief that doesn't mean me' kind of thinking. And the ones being sacrificed on altars of rhetoric about how the rest of the world are sacrificing for us - this last gasp bunch - these unproductive sick people. We see that, and what you and others here are doing is minimising the pain caused to us which comes pouring down on top of what we are already going through in our shielded lockdowns, many of us struggling with money through lost income just like you.

The OP started this thread to reach out to those like herself who were feeling battered by this, and we responded, and we needed it. So don't come along bleating on about how we don't give all our money away to the third world therefore we cannot talk about how we're in pain because of what people are writing about us on a screen.

It's a bit pointless arguing that no you're just sharing an alternative POV and it isn't that you want to do exactly what you want and sod everyone else, when that is in fact the behaviour being demonstrated. There's alternative views and there's behaving like an arse.

Thanks for the sentiment OP, I agree with you, but I'm hiding this thread right now along with all the other I Demand To Behave Like An Arse ones. Life's too hard right now to deal with this kind of crap from unpleasant people.

I'm considering doing the same

We’re 82, 81 and self isolated a few days before the official start because we could see which way it was going. We can do that because we have family, friends and neighbours support. Never had supermarket home deliveries before, and now can't get slots. No-one but no-one crosses the threshold, such a pain not being able to hug the family keeping us going.

Official guidance means we could go out to shop, but don’t because we don’t want to run the risk of needing medical care. To quote Helenshielding its about relieving the strain on the NHS.

We’re elderly, comments about us don’t bother me as I prefer to live in a country that favours free speech. Johnson is using us an excuse for his incompetence.

On March 3rd, in a press conference he said he’d visited a hospital with coronavirus patients, shaken hands with them and indeed everyone else. Everyone should shake hands so the British people can get on with their lives. I wonder how many people have been infected because of those comments.

Unlike most other countries, we were going for ‘herd immunity’ for 60% of the population.

Then a statistician said the equivalent of ‘Oh Shit!’ that’s 40 million people, we couldn’t cope with the fall out from that.

Big U turn. Dr John Lee, from another thread, says German statistics were accurate because colleagues over there tell him they had plenty of testing kits before the pandemic hit. We didn’t. And apparently the public reckon he’s doing a good job!

Helen,

'Stay home. Shut up. Stop moaning. We will all get through this a hell of a lot quicker.'

This is not the language of a support thread. It is a harangue to others and a challenge.

And I don't understand why saying 'be grateful' is so offensive, when others are sacrificing for you.

I am immensely grateful every day for all those having to go out and risk their lives to look after the rest of us. And, for the young people who are interrupting their education and lives to (broadly) spare the old.

There has been an interesting trend recently where every decision has to be portrayed as win/win and that there are no hard decisions to be made. This is not win/win. Some people clearly gain from the lockdown, others clearly lose.

I'm with you, OP. Suggest you steer clear of the 'social darwinism' or 'let's create an artificial spike' thread on here - full of people apparently willing to sacrifice as many lives as it takes to 'save the economy'

Ruffle,

You do realise that the economy is, ultimately, lives.

If it totally collapses, there is no reason to think that life expectancy will also fall to that more usually seen in third world countries. Are you happy to see that for your children?

Lives vs the economy if a totally false equation.

The thing that larrygrylls & Xenia & the other uncaring twats who have come on this thread to demonstrate their total lack of human empathy fail to see is that EVERYONE is at risk from covid.

My sisters friend & her husband & family all healthy no underlying health problems yet her husband is struggling to breathe & is going to ED, what's next for him??
Three previously healthy hospital consultants died this week.
There have been videos in FB of young gym goers on oxygen who can't breathe.

With lockdown we are protecting everyone not just the vulnerable & elderly (who personally I care a great deal for).
(However I work for the nhs & I'm at work with crap ppe so like 4 of my good colleagues I may catch it next. Luckily I live alone).

And I don't understand why saying 'be grateful' is so offensive, when others are sacrificing for you.

Because you're not sacrificing anything for me! I'm not sticking my head out the door, who am I going to catch it from?! It's been explained over and over but you still refuse to acknowledge what it's all actually about.

And lives are, ultimately, the economy @larrygrylls. If it wasn't so grim I'd be laughing at your bizarre notion that people are going to carry on working for and 'producing' and buying non-essential shit for the sake of it, even as the unburied bodies pile up in the makeshift morturies. Like we're all going to sit there watching that happen and respond with "Nothing makes me feel more productive or like going on a pointless spending spree! Let's get this economy moving!"

Ffs.

@rufflecrow to be fair I think what they are trying to say is it is about protecting the infrastructure of society - we are already looking the potential for blackouts. And we may not like it but in our developed capitialist world the economy underpines everything thing that we do. Destroy that and the longer term future is gone as well.

A short term lockdown is absolutely the right thing to do but there will be a point where continuing to lockdown stops being beneficial and the negative implications of doing so are more than COVID 19 - each country is aware of that balance and is trying to figure out exactly when and how to start it.

We should though have pitched it as stay at home save the lives of everyone rather than some weird notion that the young and healthy will be fine they are doing it to protect the vulnerable and elderly. Which I think comes from the misguided notion we are doing this for herd immunity. We are staying at home to protect everyone. At the moment everyone is gaining from a lockdown more than they lose

I don’t understand how people aren’t getting it. I’m 30 fit and healthy so not overly worried about myself but I’m certainly worried about my children, parents and especially grandparents. I’d happily stay in for 6 months or more if that’s what it takes to stop people dying un necessarily and alone. People are so selfish

There has never been any suggestion of 'stay at home...' applying to those who provide essential services - especially the national grid. If you think any economy where the government has just promised to pay 80% of almost everyone's wages is 'capitalist' you may wish to look up the definition of the word @quartz2208! To be fair.

The government may have promised but it certainly doesn’t have the longer term capability of doing so. Look the brutal truth is that at some point they are going to have to figure out how we all exit out from this because in the longer term being lockdown will start to cause more problems than it solves
But I don’t think this thread is the place for those discussions

I’d happily stay in for 6 months or more if that’s what it takes to stop people dying un necessarily and alone. People are so selfish

How would you eat and pay your bills

Maybe you work from home in a secure sector and have no children but surely you can see for the vast majority of the population (all ages and all vulnerabilities) it's slightly more complex than that...

I go with the Swedish view and would not in he UK have closed the schools. Taht is when I departed from the Government's view. In my view we are not now serving the greater good.

People obviously take different views on that topic. Those os uf with zero state support and vast numbers of cases of people going bust all around us is a massive price to pay.

Every year 500,000 people die in the UK which is about 1400 a day. Coronavirus is pretty nasty for a small percentage of people and I Hope I don't catch it but my view on the state's measures is not self interest but in fact sympathy for all those people day in day out who are calling me for help, their lives destroyed around them. They would adore to be front line workers in the NHS paid if off sick, with a job that will carry on even if they got covid they would probably recover but instead their lives are destroyed and everything for which they worked has been lost, sacrificed on the altar of an NHS they mostly don't need. don't like and don't use.

You should google "quantitative easing" @Quartz2208. And then ask yourself how you could possibly know what the government does or doesn't have the means to do before you start making unfounded pronouncements about it on here.

@Falacy don't you listen to the government's daily briefings? 80% of most workers' earnings are now guaranteed by the government. People are being instructed to stay at home unless travel to work is unavoidable, until further notice. Are you genuinely unaware?!

They would adore to be front line workers in the NHS paid if off sick, with a job that will carry on even if they got covid they would probably recover but instead their lives are destroyed and everything for which they worked has been lost, sacrificed on the altar of an NHS they mostly don't need. don't like and don't use.

NHS workers are already dying. I wouldnt want to be on the front line.

It's not about the NHS in that way though- it's about ensuring the nhs can handle the volume of cases rather than "saving it".

Surely they would have to use the NHS like everyone else if they got covid-19 @xenia? Given that private hospitals are now pitching in to the national effort and resources are being shared? I'm amazed that you've been here all these decades and you still don't really understand the concept of taxation.

Ruffle,

Your comments about quantitative easing show how little you understand about economics.

Governments can print as much money as they like but if there is no real economy (as in people producing things for others to buy), it is just so much combustible paper.

We can live like this for a while, heavily borrowing from the future, but not for too long.

And for years to come we will have austerity which will make this ‘austerity’ look like confetti at a wedding.

Xenia, techically correct use of probably in "They would ADORE to be front line workers in the NHS paid if off sick, with a job that will carry on even if they got covid they would probably recover" but there is a certainty that HCPS under-60 with no pre-existing conditions are putting their lives at greater risk than the general population because of no/insufficient/wrong/expired PPE and the impact of what appears to be viral load as demonstrated by the number of HCPs who have died and who are being ventilated at the moment compared with the figures for the general population (I know the stats are an art).

I hope, by the end of this that my DC have not lost one or both of their parents and those parents don't have to live with the guilt of bringing home infection due to said abysmal/unlawful PPE and working conditions that they end up being responsible for family members' deaths.

As I've said on posts elsewhere, for those so certain that the lockdown has ruined their lives and/or stolen their children's future, they might want to try and think about the economic effects of the counter-factual. Whenever I've asked, it appears none of those who are so certain that lockdown is terrible and should end and worse that not locking down is able to show any thought about the economic effects of all the additional deaths/deaths brought forward and the effects on businesses and jobs or changes in behaviour of people with no lockdown in the longer-term. Now I see the world as being more than economic and see the value of everyone's lives when some PPs on other threads have just said 'well it's just the elderly and they would have died anyway' but the economic effects of no lockdown are more than the 'exchequer savings' of state pensions from the elderly dying younger (again from another thread). I'm astonished how people are so certain that the economic effects of the lockdown are worse than the alternative but some people seem to trade in the certainty of their opinions.

Now I could be over-reacting and I'm an arse at the best of times. These times are difficult for everyone and even the furloughed employees and the SE are having to wait and are facing reduced income, not every employee and SE is eligible and many people are losing material things and many are losing friends and family. I try and be kind so won't share my opinion of your 'friends' who would ADORE the chance to increase their risk of dying by working in the front line of the NHS.

@larrygrylls

And I don't understand why saying 'be grateful' is so offensive, when others are sacrificing for you.

Because ‘others’ aren’t sacrificing for me, others are sacrificing for themselves. Lockdown is not about protecting me or the OP or Ban.

Lockdown is about ensuring that those people making up the 55% of hospitalisations, 47% of ICU admissions, with COVID-19 among adults aged under 65 that I quoted yesterday can get the treatment they need so that they can recover and continue to contribute. If they start arriving at hospital simultaneously there won’t be capacity and they will die.

We, the vulnerable, are being kept out of the way so that we don’t clog up the system taking capacity away from the otherwise healthily.

If this weren’t the case then everyone would be shielding, and there would be a draconian lockdown not the “lite” version we have now.

@larrygrylls

” And I don't understand why saying 'be grateful' is so offensive, when others are sacrificing for you.”

We are locking down for everyone, to flatten the curve and ensure everyone has access to the NHS to not overwhelm it at once.

You expect us disabled people to be grateful as if only you healthy people are sacrificing. Talk about othering! You are not isolating to protect the 1.5 million. We are all isolating for the greater good.

Sorry I’m not willing to be a subservient “extremely vulnerable” person. I am thankful for the NHS and social care system but I also contribute to the economy and society and lockdown is hard for me too.

Apparently if you just lie down in bed with this virus, it will be the death of you. They say you have to keep moving, even when you are tired, to keep your circulation moving. Keep breathing fresh air outside and keep moving. Don’t lie on your back but on your side and your stomach.