How long can we carry on like this for?

[Pseudosudocrem]

Anyone else starting to wonder just how long we can carry on like this before everything irrevocably falls apart?

How will we ever recover as a country?

[NeneValley]

@Lweji it is a plan. It’s the document published by Joh Hopkins that the government is working to.

The vaccine will be for vulnerable people first, and by then the rest of us who are more healthy we will have herd immunity and won’t need the vaccine.

The world has recovered from pandemics before, life isn’t over.

People in this country and abroad have lived through all this before - the food shortages and personal panics, job losses, education disruption, employment lockdowns and so on. It’s all happened before, just not all at once.

The world is not going to run out of money or manpower. Everything will recover.

[5zeds]

Recessions kill - unemployment is linked to higher death rates. but not death rates like CV19 surely?

[circusintown]

I'll have a listen thanks.

"The choices you face in 5 years time are:

1. Your loved ones being dead, the economy being utterly trashed and your DC’s future being ruined.
   
   Or
   
   
2. Your loved ones being dead and your DC having a decent chance at a future.
   
   The option (3) that we all want, namely your loved ones not being dead, simply isn’t on the table."
   
   I still don't understand this and I disagree. You've basically said that many of my family including myself will die anyway in the next 5 years. In reality many of us may be very ill but need oxygen or a ventilator to survive the virus. We have illnesses but none that are expected to kill us as they are controlled.
   
   However, this virus has shown that without medical intervention (which would be available if we continued social distancing measures but not if we adopt your it's ok they're ill and elderly approach) it is likely to kill us.
   
   Hopefully I'm here in 5 years to update the thread and let you know. Prior to the virus my chances were excellent

[Lweji]

Still not "a plan".

[underneaththeash]

It won't last more than a few more weeks and then we'll get back to some kind of normality. My risk as a healthy 44 year old woman of dying from coronavirus is less than 1 in a 1000 and I'm happy to take that risk, my children's risk is even less.

Of course the shielded group risk is higher - but they need to take whatever measures they feel necessary to to keep themselves safe.

[NikeDeLaSwoosh]

I think the unfortunate fact is that we are dealing with a virus.

Why do we think we can ‘deal with it’ or ‘plan’?

We will just have to accept that there are some threats we cannot bring under control.

We’ve become accustomed to keeping people alive far longer than than what would have been their natural life span. Perhaps we need to become more comfortable with the idea of death, and out ultimate powerlessness over it?

[0v9c99f9g9d939d9f9g9h8h]

We need to wait.

Medics are only just working out how to treat this illness. It's possible and even probable that they can get more people through the illness if we wait a bit, however hard that it.

To put this in proportion, it's like a number of Hillsborough tragedies happening every week, week in week out. Covid victims also suffocate. One of the many things that grieved us all about Hillsborough was how avoidable it was. This present situation is not without huge cost in every scenario but those frighteningly high death tolls may well be avoidable if we wait. It's a brand new illness. This isn't the time to send thousands too hospital with a brand new illness. Let's not pretend it is.

[Keepdistance]

So the pregnant 28yo nurse was going to die in 5yrs !
And the 40yo nurse whose child is 14 and husband also hospitalised.
Yes clearly very mild.
1/4 people dead have no health issues.
20% of people require hospitalisation.
It's all very well being all right jack as you have no health issues but look at BJ 5yrs off being not ventilated....

[yesterdayschild]

Everyone is an expert.

[twirlycat77]

Very few people who are ‘saved’ from Covid 19 will be alive after a year. Even fewer will still be alive after 5 years.

What is it you’re saying here, if you recover from covid 19 you aren’t going to live beyond a year? Why not?

[Mustbethewine]

I think a small glimmer of normality will start seeping in after these 3 weeks are up, obviously there will still be restrictions in place for a while yet.

[delightfuldaisy19]

'Forever'.......oh do piss off.

The reality is we'll have to be exposed to it at some point and some of us will probably die - but some of us will die anyway of things not related to Coronavirus. 600K people die in a normal year in the UK anyway.

Schools will reopen and try to encourage hand-washing etc but no, they can't do social distancing. Other places will open and people will try their best but it's not really possible as people will hug, brush past each other, share coffee cups, visit friends and family. There might be further mini lockdowns - dictated by geography but life will try as best to get back to normal.

FFS, we got over the Spanish Flu and that was pre-NHS and antibiotics, so we will get over this.

[NeneValley]

It’s all there in the document if people care to read it!

The document the government have devised this whole lockdown on.

The plan is for 3 months lockdown in stages of 3 weeks at a time. This is happening.

[NikeDeLaSwoosh]

Yes @5zeds

The last projection I read was that a drop in GDP in excess of 6.5% would result in more deaths from the recession than the virus.

The current thinking is that GDP will drop by 35% in the next year alone.

[0v9c99f9g9d939d9f9g9h8h]

Nike Maybe we need to accept that we're not comfortable with having a drop in our standard of living and that's what we need to get comfortable with?

You're not seriously suggesting we should tell the medics to get int with it as best they can because everyone else is learning to just let it happen? I imagine you'd like a medic to do their best to control an illness you were experiencing? It seems hypocritical to get comfortable with death if you're relying on someone else to do battle with it, were it to affect you.

[NikeDeLaSwoosh]

@Keepdistance

These cases are outliers, admittedly very tragic ones.

As a country, we cannot and should not make policy based on edge cases.

[5zeds]

@NikeDeLaSwoosh you think 800+ will kill themselves a day as result of recession?

[0v9c99f9g9d939d9f9g9h8h]

very few people who are saved from COVID-19 will be alive after a year

What convenient, poisonous bullshit.

[Blackbear19]

Unfortunately I think the bottom line is we can't go on like this for months.

I think lockdown is about buying time for the temporary hospitals to be up and running. People trained to give oxygen. Not necessarily fully qualified nurses.

Then we have to get on with it, just as previous generations have done when their has been pandemics.

[NeneValley]

@delightfuldaisy19 this is exactly the view most of us should be adopting. It’s the correct way to deal with this personally.

I appreciate people are scared, I’m scared of dying, from Covid and asthma and being run over by a bus. But I’ve also read the very long document that the government have based the whole lockdown plan on, and it does state in there exactly how everything will pan out.

We’ve lived through pandemics before, it will end, but obviously lots of people will die before their time. It’s just how it is (shrug emote). Use common sense about your own lifestyle restrictions, and work through it. Be stoic.

[FliesandPies]

I think the unfortunate fact is that we are dealing with a virus. Why do we think we can ‘deal with it’ or ‘plan’?

Just as well we didn't take that attitude to Polio, Smallpox, Typhoid etc isn't it?

[NikeDeLaSwoosh]

@0v9c99f9g9d939d9f9g9h8h

I think when a person is infected, they (and their relatives) need to have a long, careful think about whether it is for the best to take that person to hospital, risk the life of an NHS worker to intubate them, take up capacity in itu etc...

If it is an otherwise healthy(ish) 30 year old, then yes, it probably is a fair trade off. An elderly, unwell person, well, maybe less so.

I’d like to see more personal responsibility here, that would take an enormous pressure off the NHS.

[BeijingBikini]

So the pregnant 28yo nurse was going to die in 5yrs !

Do you know what "on average" means? The young cases are so stand-out and unusual and that's why they get published, but the vast majority of the deaths were very very elderly and ill, and even a mild cold could have killed them.

The huge drop and millions in unemployment will absolutely cause higher deaths; I read somewhere that it's about 40,000 extra deaths per million unemployed.

A lot of the people being shielded don't actually want to spend their last few months locked up, for example like the elderly man in this story: www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/g3mtrc/why_do_a_lot_of_people_suddenly_not_care_about/

[NikeDeLaSwoosh]

@0v9c99f9g9d939d9f9g9h8h

I’ve referenced that ‘poisonous bullshit’ ( as has another poster)

Do you have a source for your opinion?

[BeijingBikini]

Deaths from recession are not just suicides; they are from poverty, homelessness, stress, heart disease. Being poor is associated with much shorter life expectancy and health conditions like diabetes and obesity, and in a recession a lot more people become a lot poorer.