Is the fear out of proportion?

[Hotlungs]

I’m asking this genuinely as I struggle with anxiety and have a tendency to catastrophise.
I read yesterday that 99.5% of people will survive if they have the virus. Whilst I understand that people are worried they are in the 0.5% is the fear rationale? The press describing it as a ‘killer virus’ and people saying they don’t want to go to the supermarket incase they die. Obviously I’m not talking about those in the vulnerable group.
Are we doing poor risk management? Again to clarify I don’t mean the current lockdown situation to protect the NHS (which is needed) but I mean the fear of it.
We are more likely to die in our cars but we risk manager that (with precautions) to still use them. What are people’s thoughts?

I don't really buy the argument that half a million deaths would be worse for the economy than lockdown. We are yet to see the real impact this will have on the UK economy because of government interventions but those interventions can only last so long. The worst is yet to come. Look at the US - 22 million people have already been made unemployed since the start of this crisis.

I agree totally about the levels of fear in the government adverts "Go out and people will die' for example, and on here 'it is deadly' which make people think, OK it is likely I might die of this. When in fact it may be very low risk for them as a person

I think it is sad that it was felt necessary to scare people into going with the rules as people can understand that overall it is important for others and for the NHS. It could have been worded much better, maybe even in a positive way Stay home to help / save the NHS for example, focusing on what people are doing to help rather than scaring them

I feel it will then be very difficult to try and switch this message to try and encourage people when the restrictions lighten, even with social distancing etc still in place as people are so terrified now. Even supermarkets such as Tesco and M&S have been trying to encourage people in to shop as they are so quiet and there are limits to the deliveries they can do.

it is not the same for other countries either, a survey showed in other countries they are less fearful than here, Germany in particular however it does have a lower death rate and apparently more testing and healthcare support for the with milder versions of the virus which maybe reassured people there. I think maybe the media / gov approach may have been different too.

I agree about risk, especially to under-40s. But what no-one seems to get is that loads of kids (mine for one) are living with people who are in vulnerable groups, perhaps their entire family and extended relatives - sending them back to school means bringing back infection to all those people who have a much higher risk rate.

@azaleanth90

I think people do understand that, I certainly do. However, there are also plenty of children who live in households where no one is low risk. So are we saying that no child can return to school until it is “safe” for every child to return to school?

22 million in the US? That's really concerning...

Also the harm that's going to be caused emotionally to those children who's parents intend of keeping them in indefinitely and feed into all the disproportionate fear.

In "normal" times if a family was that harmfully over protective it would warrant a safeguarding referral. If parents choose to keep their kids off for a bit longer if they open in summer that's their call, I get it. If non vulnerable kids are still being kept away in winter then that's a concern. We are supposed to protect our kids from emotional harm as well as physical.

That should be “no one is high risk”

Until very recently the UK messaging was overwhelmingly that "most people have nothing to worry about this, only elderly and vulnerable people whew, not you, other people need to worry". That was by far the most common message - have people forgotten this already? Because of that message, no one really bothered to be that careful at first. Then we hit a point where numbers were rising exponentially, the NHS was sounding the alarm, emergency measures (lockdown) were needed to slow things down, and some younger deaths started to make the news – it’s only since then that any sense of fear has belatedly spread out to most of the population.

The idea that the big problem here is that the media have overhyped the whole thing from the start is laughable. Swinging right back to the extreme of ‘nothing to see here’ now will take us right back again to a situation where most people see no reason to take any precautions, and illness and death rates start shooting up again. The problem here is really not the media – the problem is the virus, whether people like that or not. Relabelling it as really not a big deal will not keep hospitals and the economy functioning as numbers shoot up again. Only boringly sensible precautions (i.e. collective effort, based on an awareness that this is not trivial) will do that.

Fear isn't the same as panic, and it isn't the same as obsessive worry. It's a useful emotion that can prompt us to take appropriate precautions in the face of risks.

Swinging right back to the extreme of ‘nothing to see here’ now will take us right back again to a situation where most people see no reason to take any precautions

I think this is exactly it. People needed to be scared in order to follow the restrictions put in place. Realistically many people would not be happy to sacrifice their jobs, their freedom (if only for a few months) and their savings to stop elderly people they don't know from dying. They needed to be scared for their own safety. So here we are.

I would say the issue was more with getting people to comply with physical distancing without a government ordered lockdown. I hope the lockdown will not continue for long but I have no doubt that once it's relaxed, there will be many who are going to ignore any advise to continue physical distancing or other such advice.

The government have been promoting the Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives message for what feels like ages!

My DM is 74 but has no underlying health conditions, she hasn’t left the house for 5 weeks and is quarantining cardboard and post.

My pregnant friend had a panic attack because a child on a scooter passed her slightly closer than 6ft when she went to take the bin in. She is terrified of going into hospital to have the baby as she is convinced they will both die.

This type of response to this is rife. There are huge numbers of people who think the virus is akin to Ebola and tantamount to a death sentence.

I do wonder how some people on here would cope if they were permanently housebound. It can happen to anyone at any time. As PP say, RTA and strokes and other accidents and illnesses happen everyday. Temporary inconvenience is hardly comparable.

Millions in the UK are in the vulnerable to Covid category. It's not a small group. The government didn't include several of the conditions with the highest mortality rates on the shielding list. Perhaps because they're such common conditions like hypertension, diabetes, and obesity. Covid is also disproportionately affecting the BAME community, and men. We shouldn't risk a premature end to lockdown just yet. It's not just "mild flu" either. A lucky few have no or mild symptoms. Others won't be hospitalised but will be bedbound for several weeks. We have lower death rates amongst younger healthy people because there's currently hospital capacity. Something we wouldn't have if Covid ran unchecked through the population. Imagine the impact on the economy if that happened. Large numbers off sick for weeks or dying. Not to mention the mental health effect of all that.

We shouldn't panic or fall apart but equally we mustn't downplay.

They needed to be scared for their own safety.

It's not a trick. The government's life would be a great deal easier if they could have just stuck to the original message that there was nothing for anyone other than the elderly to worry about! The reason they couldn't stick to that message is because it isn't true - regardless of how deaths are distributed, this pandemic is happening to all of us.

Even with deaths disproportionately amongst elderly people, the fact that this is a new virus none of us have seen before means that the sheer number (not percentages) of deaths, and amount of illness, in other groups has the potential to be enormous, and catastrophic if concentrated into a short period of time.

It's appropriate for us all to be afraid (again, not panicked, not obsessive, just afraid) of this virus - it's not all a big con by the government or media. We need to work together against it. Deciding to cut certain groups loose as the only ones who need to worry about is a big mistake - the effects of it are not going to be limited to those groups, even if it's disproportionately members of those groups who die.

“ They needed to be scared for their own safety. ”

This way madness lies.

The problem is that we now know you don't become immune

No we don't know that at all. This is more scaremongering. Anti body testing has shown that some people do develop antibodies. The results of these were announced just in the last few days. What isn't known is how long these last or how many develop them.

People do not need to be scared for their own safety. They need to be given information and encouraged to risk assess. It can be simultaneously the case that the virus poses a low risk to an individual whilst being a high risk to the population at large.

Acknowledging that some younger people without underlying conditions will die of the virus does not mean that as a general rule individuals with that profile are at a high risk of dying from the virus. They are not.

None of the above means that people should ignore the current lockdown arrangement as it remains necessary to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed.

"Millions in the UK are in the vulnerable to Covid category. It's not a small group. "

Yes, it's around 30% for the UK, so almost 1 in 3 of the population. (Attached chart is figure for all of Europe, but from memory UK percentage was very similar according to ONS statistics).

This way madness lies

Well indeed. I'm incredibly concerned about the suicide/anxiety attack posts I'm seeing on a pretty much daily basis on this forum. I'm getting weekly phone calls from my mum in tears about how she's afraid one of her friends will die.

The government clearly turned up the fear factor when they saw people weren't complying with social distancing. I'm not afraid of dying from this and I don't think it's healthy to be afraid, especially if you are young and fit and the risk is low. What we need is to be less fearful and more pragmatic but, as PP have said, that's not human nature.

here is a link to just one of the recent antibody studies in the US

The Imperial college model was not peer reviewed and as far as I am aware the model itself has not been published.

The Imperial report does not include detailed modelling but it lists out key assumptions and it is very fair that most of them can be questioned:

www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

For instance, Imperial model assumes that in the absence of any suppression measures the virus inflects 81% of the population. It is not clear whether 81% is even in the right ball park (it might be for flu but, as we know, C19 is not flu).

Other assumptions (e.g. R0, mortality rate, people's behaviour) are also subjective. R0 is likely to be understated. Mortality rate may be overstated given the high number of asymptomatic cases.

We don’t have stats on asymptomatic cases in the UK

So are we saying that no child can return to school until it is “safe” for every child to return to school?

This is a big part of the problem for me, the blanket rules regardless of the risk involved. In my part of the country the virus has had only a minor impact so far. The lockdown, on the other hand, has had a huge impact socially and financially in an area already struggling with those issues.

No child should return to school until there has been adequate provision made for those who cannot, and for thuse who have to go intom2 week isolation during term time, or fall ill,and are off for longer.

I wouid not like to see the vulnerable and the isolating left behind. They might not be able to attend, but need proper remote support (for long term absences and at least some of convalescence) and this needs to be in place before sites reopen, so there is no avoidable attainment gap.

This will of course be demanding of schools. But 'no child left behind' must not be allowed to be mere lip service

Im alwys anazed at the fcat that peope are finding the 10k deaths from CV-19 awful but havent been that scared about the much bigger number of deaths due to austerity measures.
Im also interested to see a lot of talk about vulnreable people about CV even though the people who died from auterity measures were all vulnerable.

Ad if the 300k deaths are to be believed, then 1/4 million people dying didnt do that much difference to the economy....

The Wuhan area is bout the same size population wise than the UK. I'd be very surprised if we have about 100x more deaths than China.

Im alwys anazed at the fcat that peope are finding the 10k deaths from CV-19 awful but havent been that scared about the much bigger number of deaths due to austerity measures.

It's 16k so far and most of those deaths have been in about 3 weeks so 5k a week. Has austerity been proven to kill 5k people a week?

I remember when it was the singing 'Happy Birthday' message etc and it was all very reassuring being a bit sceptical and wondering why the gov weren't being a bit more, well, warning people to be a bit more careful and concerned, maybe if there had been more of a consistent message from the sorta things wood have been easier.

Feels a bit patronising. My concern if that even though for many healthy young people it will be OK, if they get symptoms they might get panic attacks and hyperventilate, making their breathing worse. Might actually make the illness worse. Whereas being calm and deep breathing can help. (with symptoms)