What is the true story?

[Namechangervaver]

Hancock has said he has lost two people close to him.

Somebody I know has died.

Boris has been hospitalised.

The country has been shut down despite us knowing that to do this will cripple us for years to come, so it's a very serious situation.

A small fraction of our population is supposedly affected but I'm guessing we all know people hospitalised or dead.

This is obviously so much worse than we have been told

I think it is not that we were not told how serious this is but that people simply did not listen and it's dawning on them now.

Saying "the only corona cases are awful ones and in hospital" is like saying "the only lip fillers are bad and look like trout" - it's a biased sample because you will only know for certain of the bad cases, and not the OK ones. People with mild symptoms can't get tested and large percentage, like on the Diamond Princess, had no symptoms at all. You could have had it and not known.

What larrygrylls said.

This does have a higher case fatality rate than, say, seasonal flu (which, let's not forget, kills people, including children, every year). Which is not surprising, as it's a novel virus. But a narrative has taken hold in the UK of a 'deadly virus' that 'threatens everyone'. Everyone is technically at risk from it, but for most people the risk is small to very small. This is absolutely a serious situation. It is important to slow its spread as well as we can and protect those more likely to suffer severe disease. It is important to take sensible hygiene measures. But fearmongering and conspiracy theories are not helpful. People have swung from rarely bothering to wash their hands in the normal run of things to (as seen on here) leaving post delivered to their house in the garage for five days and then disinfecting it. People are believing themselves misinformed on a grand scale and aggressively attacking others they deem to have stepped out of line (what was it that Jacinda Ardern said when she announced the NZ lockdown? 'Be kind. We'll police this, not you.' Some MNers would do well to heed that). We need to take this seriously but resist collective irrationality.

because after all- a bunch of countries in a matter of mere weeks have built hospitals, mortuaries, tanked their economies and shut their entire country down.

They don't do that just for laughs.

Moomin

Is that you Angela?

He never said or did that at all. Absolute fucking poppycock

I forgot to add that a substantial percentage of infections with this are very, very likely asymptomatic. Many more people will have had it than we know.

Some of the language hasnt helped.

A lot of people confuse colds with flu. So saying flu like symptoms to somebody who has only ever had colds (but called them flu) has made them think that the illness is milder than it is, until they get it.

Flu can knock even a normally healthy person for six. A week of barely tottering to the bathroom. Hot & cold fever, aching joints. After a week they feel a bit better but still have lingering fatigue.

For most people who get COVID19 that will be their experience. Some people will be a lot worse. The viral infection can trigger an over reaction from the immune system resulting in damage to vital organs. These people will need to be hospitalised. Some people ultimately die because of it.

Normally with a flu outbreak there is already a level of immunity in the population. This time there isnt. Without lockdown, this virus will rocket through the whole population at the same time.

That is what 'flattening the peak' is about. Buying time so that the NHS can cope, buying time so that a vaccine can be developed, treatments can be developed.

Well you are very fortunate. Family members have it badly. Really badly. They're on the shielded list and have it. It's terrifying.

I realise that, but everyone on this thread was adding their personal experiences, some of whom did know people and some didn't.
I just added mine.

The French doctor using hydroxychloroquine has not been running a trial using accepted methods (selecting which patients get the drug rather than taking a random sample; a test involving only 24 patients; not collecting all data from all patients, not respecting their own protocol; not having findings peer reviewed...). I believe there is some doubt over whether the people who recovered after his treatment might not have recovered anyway. And I have seen references to patients dying of cardiac arrest after he treated them with hydroxychloroquine.

It's a shame he is such an arrogant twerp eccentric figure, because it's undermining the work he and his institute are doing. And feeding far-right conspiracy theories as well as suggestions that big pharma want to make money from COVID-19 and aren't interested in this relatively cheap solution.

In NYC, New Orleans and Detroit, the rates at which individuals acquire CV19 and die from CV19, are much higher in deprived areas than more affluent areas. I assume that it will be a similar pattern everywhere.
The rest of the developed world has much better healthcare for its poorer citizens than the US.

Moomin8 I won’t contradict you because I honestly cannot recall when exactly he said that. It overlapped, actually I think it might have been after, with around the same time when Merkel made her speech. Everything has moved very fast and I cannot recall the absolutely exact time frame so you may well be right and am happy to stand corrected - absolutely.

If people hadn't been fed the unpleasant it's only the elderly and frail narrative, they would've taken it more seriously This might have been influenced by the information coming out of known cases from China and Italy at the time and it stuck with us. So, sadly, it has led many people to be complacent and not understand the severity of the situation.

As regards treatments ordinarily used to treat other infections like malaria etc. I haven’t read this myself but, before we even had the lockdown here and before the concept of herd immunity was introduced in the UK, so a long time ago but at the time when Italy was starting to have big problems, my mother mentioned reports from China where a small number of patients have been successfully treated with existing drugs (combination of or only a certain drug it wasn’t clear, but since then it has been agreed that combinations can be fatal). These patients who were not elderly or with existing know medicinal conditions did consequently die because of heart related incidents. She tends to read the international media as opposed to one single country so I have no idea exactly where this was coming from. Much later on, there was one incident from America which I have seen in the news where a patient treated with a certain drug sadly passed away. So it looks like attempting to treat with certain drugs can be counterproductive, my impression is that it can lead to fatal heart problems. Why is America currently considering mass distribution of particular existing drugs, I do not know. Maybe they have an established protocol and can foresee potential issues and are able to counteract these under immediate medical supervision. There was another report from Japan where they found a certain drug used in milder cases at the start of the illness helps people recover faster, it doesn’t cure them but it helps recovery. The Chinese thought it was significant enough to attempt replicating the drug for mass production but the Japanese did not pursue this avenue because it wasn’t deemed safe.

The reality is that, from a scientific point of view, there simply isn’t enough knowledge about this virus. It is all new and overwhelming. But we need to keep a sense of perspective on global numbers.
The news and development change very fast and observations can only be made after an event has passed. Drawing a conclusion and making a decision takes even longer. There has to be a balance for the benefit of both people and the economy. It takes time to get that balance right and it might not even exist. There’s no big conspiracy going on.

My brother had it. He has recovered.

@CatteStreet

Finally! Another voice of sanity.

He was hospitalized too.

I personally only know 3 people that have definitely have it. They had the mild version.
What different about this one it seems to me us that the rich and famous are getting it. With no cure or immunity money doesn't appear to buy your way out of it once you get it.

@GreenTeaMug exactly! We've had so many viruses and diseases that have killed a lot of people, including new strains. Governments around the world didn't react like this so clearly this is different.
It isn't scaremongering to say that! When governments actually choose to wreck their economies it's sensible to be scared!

The reason that there seems to be a mismatch between reporting and people’s experience is that the figures are slightly behind the actuality.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/04/why-what-we-think-we-know-about-the-uks-coronavirus-death-toll-is-wrong

I don't know anyone who has been hospitalised.

I don't know anyone who has died.

Two of my neighbours had a moderate case and were unwell for two weeks. They have recovered. The BIL of one of my best friends is a hospital doctor in London - he had it and recovered. A guy I went to uni with had it and recovered.

Of course it is much more widespread than the official case number would suggest - no one honestly thinks that's accurate when it's almost impossible to get to a test when you have symptoms. Is it 10 times worse than the official figure? 20 times worse? No one knows.

GenomedePlume that too.
It wasn’t helpful.
I have to say, listening to some of the symptoms described earlier on, I was thinking that’s not exactly mild, it’s like no flu I’ve ever had. I had flu twice, or at least I think it was flu and although not pleasant it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as some of the symptoms being circulated. But then again, not everybody would have the time to try and find out what symptoms they were talking about. I’m busy, I hear mild symptoms, flu something or another, the sun is still shining, I’ll carry on as normal. So another false sense of security. It comes down to lack of information. It’s the world we are living in, everything is fast, grab a headline, stick with it, it’s the way our world is functioning to a large degree we can’t put the blame on anyone for this attitude.

I don’t know anyone who has been really ill with it either. I know three adults and two children (all different families) who assume they have had it - bad fever, dry cough etc. All recovered in a few days.

I'm guessing we all know people hospitalised or dead.
I don't know anyone who has had CV, let alone been to hospital or died, and I know a lot of people, all over the world as well as all over the UK.

This is obviously so much worse than we have been told
Why do you think that?
Why do you think we are not being told the full extent?

We've been told all along that it's serious and it's been obvious from looking at Spain and Italy that it would be serious here.

I don't think some people have been taking it seriously because they don't know anyone who has been ill or died. I'm in London and I've known only a couple of people who have been ill and they have both recovered. Neither were tested but had all the symptoms.

I think where I live (the borough has hundreds of confirmed cases) people are taking it seriously. However a friend who lives in the North East is carrying on much as normal because 'we don't really have it up here'. I suspect that will continue until she knows someone who is ill.

We're in the south west, I don't know anyone who has it or been hospitalised.

Actually, I don't think I'm that fortunate.
At this moment, fewer than 5000 people have died.
Statistically, it's more likely I don't know someone who has.
So far.

This isn't "much worse" than we've been told, it is exactly as we have been told, and that is quite bad. Extremely credible medical professionals have been taking part in the daily briefings, there is absolutely no reason to disbelieve anything they say or the completeness of their information. It was never possible to contain a virus like this, which can have a long incubation period and can be asymptomatic, in a country as densely populated as this. The government said from the beginning that they would curb movement when the time was right, there was no U turn.

Any confusion comes from the public messaging which has to be simple and catchy if it is to penetrate deep into society - just look at the threads on here about what "stay at home" means, when it can't really be any clearer.
One colleague has died, who I didn't know, in my central London employer of c. 6,000 people. Otherwise I have only heard of friends of relatives up north having it, where there was a cruise ship related cluster.
I wish the daily briefings would tell us how many people have been in to intensive care and are now well enough to go home, the cure rate of those who became very ill.