Something doesn't add up to me

[Greysparkles]

If the virus is as contagious as claimed by some, as in you'll catch it from sitting on the same patch of grass someone else has, or just walking through where someone sneezed earlier.

Why haven't more of us got it??

Also worth point out that viral load is also a thing. If you are passed it by one person in a “walk by infecting” you will likely have few symptoms of any. But if you are in a room with dozens of people who have it, your viral load will be much higher and you are more likely to have a harder time with it.

"The vulnerable" is a very large group. Millions in the UK fall into that category. Most don't live in single person households either.

Didn't Ebola basically kill you before it had a chance to spread, so it wasn't a very effective virus

There is a feeling that we are now backed into a corner or it's a kind of Mexican standoff where there is no safe move that can be made 😳
perhaps the best that we can hope for is that countries and governments, teams of scientists from different parts of the world, not to mention multidisciplinary teams etc will collaborate and share data to try to find the best way forward for everyone?
Or is that just my utopian fever dream 😳

Off the top of my head...ebola very difficult to catch but very lethal I think it's a 50% survival rate may be even less?
Mers and sars while not as contagious as coronavirus are highly lethal, I think one out of every three cases dies?

There's several potential treatments already. Nothing conclusive as yet but definitely positive signs.

I think that the risk of death is preferable to living like this, for most people.

When people say that, they're weighing up normal life+increased risk of death vs lockdown very personally, while still thinking, like a teenager with delusions of immortality "well, it won't be me".

Is living like this necessarily worse than not being able to attend the funeral of your mother/father/grandad/immune-compromised best-friend?

Because that's the calculation I've been thinking about all along. I have a lot of people I don't want to see die, and I can't guarantee that none of the people I care about wouldn't be amongst the people who would die due to lack of medical care during an unmanaged peak.

@Gwenhwyfar and @Quartz2208, thank you for your helpful comments.

But we didn’t know this about Ebola or swine flu or bird flu or Spanish flu and we didn’t close the world down for them?

Ebola is harder to transmit and was relatively contained. However had it not been, the resulting lockdown and panic would have made the one we're currently going through look like a breeze. Ebola is as nasty as it comes.

The SF is not comparable. I saw a program where it showed a lot of our current health policies were eventually formed on the back of that pandemic. There were disagreements about how to tackle it then. A lot less was known about viruses then and bad living conditions for the poor, and no NHS probably contributed hugely to the death toll within the UK at least. We know a lot more now.

Again if it was the dreaded SF we were dealing with, being as it affected children also we would have harsher lockdown. I dread to think!

Swine flu if my memory is correct they found the flu vaccine on offer at tge time, despite not being wholly effective did offer a small resistance to it (dont quote me but I remember sonething about it not being as bad as projected)

They won’t have have the funding to down tools on the stuff they were given grants to do and to start to research this. The money is starting to come through now, but even still science takes time. You have to write a proposal, take it to the various approval bodies, including ethics committees, and then start researching. And then there’s the actual time involved to do things like cell culture etc. The science is moving pretty quickly on this one, but it will take some time to fully understand. Nothing fishy, just how science actually works.

@MrsGface - Sorry but if laws can be changed so that countries around the world can be put into lockdown etc - Science laws can be changed too. I don't mean the laws of Science. I mean the rules you are talking about ie it has to be done this same way etc - with grants etc.

For goodness sake this is an emergency situation. Of course the old stuff must be put on hold. If it is true what you say, the world of Science research goes down even further in my estimation.

They were also using Tamiflu to treat swine flu and maybe that worked for quite a few people?

I think that the risk of death is preferable to living like this, for most people.

'Living like this' is such an extreme way to phrase staying at home for a bit. We're 3 weeks in people - can we lose the cheap theatrics about 'living like this'?! For most people (certainly the middle-class, mumsnet-using, computer and wifi owning crowd) this is an inconvenience not a hardship.

I am desperate to know, but can't seem to find a definite answer to - If you have had covid 19 and recovered, whether it be mild, not tested, tested, went to deaths door and came back- are you now immune to getting it again?

I don't typically suffer with anxiety over anything, but this whole lockdown of the world has really got to me, especially since nobody is able to say when we will be able to get back to normality and meanwhile, I am forced to stay indoors and unable to earn anything since I am neither a key worker nor able to work from home.

Nobody knows yet. It's extremely likely that there will be some level of immunity, but they don't know if it will last a few months, a year or forever. Also the virus may change so in that case even if you're immune to the one going round now, you might not be immune next time it come around.

Nobody knows yet. It's extremely likely that there will be some level of immunity, but they don't know if it will last a few months, a year or forever. Also the virus may change so in that case even if you're immune to the one going round now, you might not be immune next time it come around.

that would suggest we therefore have to remain locked down indefinitely !

For most people (certainly the middle-class, mumsnet-using, computer and wifi owning crowd) this is an inconvenience not a hardship.

A lot of people's mental health is taking a pounding, both from the isolation/loneliness/boredom and from the fear of the future. Many people have either lost their incomes or fear they are about to. For some this is a truly shitty way to live and they would rather take the risk.

'Living like this' is such an extreme way to phrase staying at home for a bit. We're 3 weeks in people - can we lose the cheap theatrics about 'living like this'?!

'Cheap theatrics'? I know it's likely your privilege talking here but... wow

Losing our freedom and livelihoods, lots of people trapped in abusive situations. Mental health deteriorating, people unable to see loved ones..
Cheap theatrics?!

Get tae feck.

Rather than privilege, perhaps Saladnakesmesad is talking from the position of someone permanently housebound. For them, living like this isn't temporary.

The current situation for me is an inconvenience, yes - I'm sat on the sofa pissing about and doing online courses. The long-run will be shitty though. My company/industry will not recover for a very long time, so I will have to try and find a new job/career during a recession with double digit unemployment. We probably won't be able to buy a flat now, or have kids in the near future - because who wants to raise them in a pandemic and give birth in a run-down hospital.

I'm lucky I have savings and don't need to worry about money, but rn millions of people are wondering how they will afford food.

SmurfWorn those are very likely the same people most at risk from Covid. Poverty increases the likelihood of poor health, as does abuse. And people suffering with mental health issues are statistically more likely to have physical poor health then the rest of the population.

I don’t get this viral load theory either. Surely if that was true there would be many more NHS workers dead. The masks provided don’t protect and washing and caring for multiple covid patients woo surely be more lethal than the few nurse deaths currently seen.

And if surgical masks are sufficient to protect NHS staff giving personal care to covid patients , why can’t we all go about our daily business wearing surgical masks? Why does everything have to be shut?

And if surgical masks are sufficient to protect NHS staff giving personal care to covid patients , why can’t we all go about our daily business wearing surgical masks?

To be fair, no one (sensible) is saying surgical masks are sufficient protection for NHS staff, they're just saying that PPE makes NHS staff safer than they'd otherwise be, not totally safe. And if everyone went around using the sort of PPE NHS staff want to be using the way NHS staff want to be using it, we wouldn't all just be donning a mask as we walked out the house. We'd be wearing a mask, gloves, a hat, a face mask and disposable coveralls and changing them (carefully, so the trash didn't end up infecting others) each time we came into contact with a potential new person to infect/be infected by.

So I don't think NHS staff's use of PPE is really comparable to the idea we could just put on a mask and all be fine.

I think the mask wearing advice might be changed, on the basis that you should wear a mask to protect others (rather than yourself.) There does seem to be some evidence that even a homemade mask has an effect from that point of view.