Are we through the worst of it?

[Vandelion]

I purposefully avoid the news because the frightening headlines are just too much.

I do know we have reached the peak so does that mean things are likely to get better from now on in terms of new infections and less deaths?

No. This is the result of locking down. The next thing is to ease the restrictions and let the second wave hit while we lock down again. Rinse and repeat. History says that the next wave will be worse.

I don't feel we are I am afraid. We are still getting the same amount of new cases each day. Deaths are still up and down. The numbers may spike a lot this week as they are now texting more key worker staff. So don't be alarmed if that happens,
But no, I don't believe we are through the worst, I believe this is as bad as it will get but I reckon this will take a couple if weeks to get through.
I hope I am wrong. But I am not ready for lockdown to end yet, far too soon for my liking with regards to numbers.

I'm prepared for lockdown to be extended for sure, I would be extremely surprised if much changed by the end of May.

I'm looking for glimmers of hope where I can find them and when I heard that the daily death count went back up by several hundred I felt deflated

I understand. Have a new rule for yourself if you check the daily numbers.
Ignore Sunday and Monday as they are weekend reportings. These are always much lower. The glimmer will come, just keep strong and keep staying safe. We are all in this together and are all feeling the hard times. Some in different ways than others, but with regards to the lockdown (not including those who are losing family to this)we all have our own struggles...none are worse than the others. We are all searching for that bit of hope. ❤️
The time will come where we all slowly start emerging from our homes.

Oh op if you're looking for hope this thread might not give you what you want. It'll attract all the doomsday gloomers who love to scare and panic people. The predictions will get competitively worse until somebody tells you that the world is ending next Thursday
The truth is that nobody really knows what comes next and the "experts" will have a tricky balancing act to try to keep this at a steady trickle rather than a series of peaks and troughs. Wether they succeed depends on luck, how good they are at their jobs and how far people are willing to comply.

The virus might mutate to become much less damaging and gradually fizzle away that way.

We may have one or more peaks that are the same as this one or we may have another, worse peak to come.

At this point though, nobody knows so don't let the scaremongers do too much of a good job on you, they're as much in the dark as the rest of us.

Ignore Sunday and Monday as they are weekend reportings.

Well not quite, weekends are lower yes, but you can compare weekends over the last few months and see how a low figure on a Monday compares with other Monday figures.

Look at the graph, it goes in up and down waves for sure but you can see if a general pattern is up or down.

I will be honest, I do not look at the graphs. I don't watch the news. I literally look at the daily numbers and that is it. All I know is the deaths in hospitals are lowering slightly but the new cases are always bar a couple of days in 4-5k range.

I am far from the doomsday gloomer. I want my family to come out of this safe. My daughter has not seen her dad who may die within the 12 week shielding...not of covid. For her, I searching for hope desperately and the hope I am holding on to is that the spike has stopped rising and it is a table rather than an up hill mountain.

It is ok to look for an end but to know we as individuals cannot actually find the answer. Who know when that will be. Nobody can predict it. We can only speculate. I cannot even imagine second wave right now.

Take each day as it comes and do not think too far ahead as Pp said...nobody can really say...not even the professionals.

@Idroppedthescrewinthetuna

That comment wasn't aimed at you or anybody on the thread to be fair, I just know how some of these threads end up.

I know what you're saying, yesterday's figures were good but we can't get all excited about one good figure. The trend is generally downwards but painfully slow at present.

I'm hoping a good dose of rain drives people indoors and speeds them up a bit

No no I was kind of just pointing out to OP that I wasn't one of those people. I know exactly which ones you are on about though.
As I said on my last post, I need the hope to be able to help my daughter believe this will all be ok. (The next few weeks is going to be the toughest for her, I just hope he holds his health so when his time does come she can say goodbye in the way she has always planned to)

I said exactly the same about the rain when I saw the forecast. I see people complaining about how the sun was the only thing getting them through. I practically cheered as I know people will be reluctant to go out. I live opposite a childrens park which has been taped off and no entry signs put up...adults have been popping their children over the fence and they have climbed over!! I then have to explain to my young children that Mummy didn't lie about the park being closed and that the other children's parents are just blinking thick!
So the rain will hopefully help. No kids in park today! Yay!

Oh for goodness sake!! People are idiots.

Hope things work out for your dd and her dad, what a horrible situation for you all to be in.

I think as a country we have not observed lockdown as strictly as other countries and therefore our results are not as consistent, also the way deaths have been counted I.e not counting care home deaths means that we can not be sure on exact numbers

I have a good view of where I live while I am working. I can't even tell you how my once quietish street is now busy! My neighbour opposite got in his car 9 times in one day last week. (I am working at my desk in front of my window so I see everything) It drives me nut. My poor daughter is desperate to see her dad and it is the idiots that are going to make this lockdown even longer!

She is doing well. She is breaking my heart. (He is my ex, so I am only going through watching my DD hurt...which is hard but not as hard as what she is going through)
She said she has always known she will lose him to what he has and she has accepted that, but she won't accept that she could lose him to a cough or without being able to give him a cuddle and say goodbye. When I see the idiots just ignoring everything I want to shout and scream at them, if I could, I would show them a video of my daughter sobbing herself to sleep every night because she sees no end. I would show them a video of her talking to her dad, her face shows how scared she is to hang up just in case that is her last goodbye.
The poor people who are suffering from loneliness (her dad lives with nobody and has no family a part from her, his best friend died 2 months ago so he has nobody)
The elderly who feel a burden to those who are doing their shopping.
The list is endless. I can only speak my experiences!
The rain is a good thing! It may be the thing that helps us turn the corner.

The number of new infections counts those tested outside of hospital. It didn't weeks ago. So yes there are still X amount of people testing positive but testing is no longer confined to those requiring treatment in hospitals. It's all relative. There's always hope, this too shall pass

Wow sorry, I just typed and everything just gushed out of me. I apologise for that very self absorbed post!

@Idroppedthescrewinthetuna why not? Get it off your chest..... it sounds extremely stressful.

As @EskiSummerleaze says, the daily cases reflect increased testing so the plateau we're on may actually be a little more positive.

It's so hard for you if you're counting the days for your dd sake.

If it helps, I read somewhere that the lockdown results were modelled on the expectation of 75% compliance so the idiots may not do as much harm as we think.

It will pass, just hope it's in time for you and your dd.

does that mean things are likely to get better from now on in terms of new infections and less deaths?

Yes, that's the idea. They want to keep suppressing the virus and stop it spreading by moving from the strict lockdown we have at the moment to using more testing and contact tracing of people who've been infected. That's difficult to pull off but if they do, it'll mean they can loosen up this current lockdown without an increase in infections and deaths.

@stuckindoors77 do not tempt me. I could go on and on!

But the current rate of deaths although less is still high, which is why they are saying it is too soon to end it. They will also know how many people are in ICU and so will have a rough idea of how many deaths are coming.

I really don't think so. As soon as they relax the restrictions the new cases will go up, and then 17 days after that, the death toll commences for REAL.

A lot of people will say ''oh scaremongering'' blah blah blah but it's obvious to anybody who has their eyes open.

I think that by the time the kids are all back at school in September, a lot of people will be at work. People will have given up trying not to catch it apart from handwashing. I think late October to January are going to be horrendous.

Apologies to people who think this is scaremongering. I don't think it's scaremongering. I don't see how people can envisage it going away when such a small percentage of the population still have no immunity.

I'm in Ireland, but I don't see why it would be different here. People are dying to get back to work.

Also, although this is absolutely awful, in my country, atm, it's under fairly good control in the general population but sadly running rampant in care homes. So although I have not heard this verbalised, I think there is probably a staggering of crises going on there. Get one crisis dealt with (care homes) before relaxing restrictions in the general population.

I'm bracing myself for high deaths in the general population starting September ??

@Idroppedthescrewinthetuna let it out, you have good reason I'm sorry things are so tough for your DD and yourself.

I read your post with a heavy heart when you described your DDs heartache. Bless her, how awful.

Your neighbour is a selfish prick to say the least. Nobody need go out nine times in one day unless they're shopping for nine different people and I'm guessing he isn't.

Thank you, you are all so kind. She found yesterday quite hard so I was feeling alone in my worrying for her. DP is very supportive and listens to her worries. But yesterday it just felt like I was watching her be sad alone. So I just started typing and just couldn't stop.
Today she seems more positive. How long that will last for I don't know, any good day is a relief.
She is now talking to me about how she would love a bacon sandwich on thick stodgy bread. She has been diagnosed with coeliac so she has gluteny cravings. She has a smile in her face and is ready to start her day of home learning.

And yes, mr neighbour went out 9 times. First time was in his dressing gown for about 15 mins, he left the house for 10-25 mins a time, never came back with bags of shopping (they do it on a Saturday) his wife goes out 2-3 times a day in her car a day. She works but he doesn't. Doubt 20 mins a time is shopping for others. Funnily enough they are out clapping every Thursday, it seems hypocritical to me. Clap for the key workers, the nurses who are doing their best to keep patients alive but that day they have made unnecessary journeys which could result in them getting ill, spreading germs or car accidents.
People are only supportive when it suits them. I am on week 6 of not leaving our home at all. DP is shielded. I just don't understand why people cannot follow rules!

First peak is over, so less infections and deaths for a while

We don't know how it will be in the future - it could mutate to a more or less dangerous form, who knows? Too dangerous and it will die out though.
Second and subsequent peaks are likely to run along the same kind of pattern as this one though so we should get a few months respite and I personally doubt it will affect different profiles of people in the near future. By then, testing might be better so less effect on work sickness levels as well.

For now, we are definitely past the worst. But what the government do when lockdown is relaxed or ended will determine whether we have a second wave and how bad this will be. If they handle it badly it’s possible that things could get a lot worse (and, let’s be honest, they’ve ballsed it all up so far haven’t they?)

But for now, things are getting better. The new cases per day figure has been similar for quite a while but they are testing double the
amount of people per day than they were a week ago and probably around two thirds more than a fortnight ago, so the percentage of positive tests is way down. The daily numbers are slowly dropping. You need to compare like with like - compare yesterday’s number with the numbers from all previous Tuesdays and you will see the drop. The figures that come out on Sundays and Mondays are always low because less deaths are reported over the weekend, so it only works if you compare those figures with other Sundays and Mondays. This first wave is definitely going down and we nearly 3 weeks past the peak. It that doesn’t mean that there won’t be further peaks - there almost certainly will be.

I'm glad she's more upbeat today, idropped. I'll second her with the bacon sandwich

Some encouraging perspective here. I tend to focus on those and not the MSM because fear sells doesn't it.

too dangerous and it will die out though.

I'm really fascinated by that. Is anybody able to explain to me why it is that a virus would die out if it mutated to become more dangerous?