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AIBU to think in the future we will look back on this and think this was such a big overreaction?

316 replies

JUSTJUDY10101 · 04/05/2020 00:12

Preparing myself to get flamed for this.
Isn't it true that the majority of us will get mild symptoms and not even notice we really had it?
Yes hundreds of people are dying a day from it and yes they are not just numbers, but are they dying 'of' it or 'with' it?

People.die everyday, why have we locked down for this but we never did for the swine flu?

Is it worth ruining the economy for?

I just want other thoughts incase i'm just being stupid

OP posts:
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lynsey91 · 04/05/2020 09:53

No I don't think it was an over reaction. We have had that many deaths with a lockdown which most people abided by. Imagine the number of deaths if we had all gaily gone out as usual.

I honestly think once we start going out again and shops, cafes etc open we will get a second wave, most likely far worse than this has been. Wonder if you will still have the same opinion then?

Yes the economy is going to take years and years to recover but I think lockdown was the right thing to do and, in fact, should have started earlier

Blackforesthotchoc · 04/05/2020 09:56

You're right op.

This info is from 2010 but provides nice context I think: www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/oct/28/mortality-statistics-causes-death-england-wales-2010 - one example , about 160 000 people a year (at the time, this will have increased) died from circulatory diseases. People are looking at absolute deaths as if there is no other risk to life - and lots of these deaths are anyway 'with, not of' deaths. It doesnt make them less sad. It does make shutting down the country absurd.

Spirali · 04/05/2020 09:58

My friend wrote this

Buys insect repellent spray
Does not see any insects around
“God damn, I have been conned! I don’t see any insects around anywhere”

Pandemic logic.

Blackforesthotchoc · 04/05/2020 09:59

Thousands more people will die from the consequences of this - screening programmes stopped, gps not seeing huge numbers of patients, people to terrified to actually get seen for problems. Cancers will be diagnosed later; people will die because of this. Are their lives not worth the same? I think people have been encouraged into hysteria and are no longer capable in many cases of rationally assessing risk. Some are at far greater risk - but the vast majority of the population take a much greater risk every time they get into their car and turn the engine on.

DoubleTweenQueen · 04/05/2020 10:04

@Querlous - I'm not sure if your response was to me, but I wasn't talking about an earlier lockdown.

babbaloushka · 04/05/2020 10:04

In the US they are storing bodies trucks.

IMO if you think it's an overreaction you likely haven't experienced a significant loss of a loved one because of the virus.

A 13 year old boy died in our local hospital from it, alone, without his family, no known health conditions. A nurse died after being infected on the COVID ward leaving behind three kids, 5, 8 and 10.

Imagine what it is like for them. I know a family who lost their 9 year old daughter and they are broken, just shells of the people they used to be. In their shoes, you wouldn't think it was an overreaction.

ChavvySexPond · 04/05/2020 10:13

"We are seeing the highest number of deaths each week that we at the Office of National Statistics have recorded since weekly records started in 1993. Each one of these deaths represents a family grief." Sir Ian Diamond, head of ONS on Andrew Marr.

Is it a form of denial or lack of understanding to think there's been an overreaction to this pandemic that has led to unprecedented death in our country in a matter of weeks?

I'd love to see a Venn diagram of the overlap between the people who say "See. Nothing bad happened" when we "left the EU" on January 31st and think Y2K was a hoax and now believe we're "overreacting" to thousands of us dying all of a sudden.

LaurieFairyCake · 04/05/2020 10:17

I think we don't know how contagious it is - but we think very

We don't know how many are symptomatic- but we hope many

We don't know if we build immunity once we've had it - but we hope we do

Without the above ^^ we have to be cautious as a society

Reginabambina · 04/05/2020 10:19

@Nekoness er well quarantining a ship is hardly the same. They locked people in their homes in many outbreaks in an attempt to stop the spread and from a modern perspective it seems completely pointless.

notalwaysalondoner · 04/05/2020 10:33

I agree OP. If this was a disease already in the community I don’t think it would get any attention and no one would be very worried about it - it’s not like Ebola which kills indiscriminately in 2-4 days and is incredibly infectious and has no asymptomatic carriers. It’s only because it’s a new disease we’re acting like it’s the end of the world.

I think the health and personal tragedies that will come from practically shutting down the NHS and destroying the economy cannot be justified any more - the NHS is not overloaded, the Nightingale hospitals are empty and so the country needs to open up. Yes, some will die and that will be devastating, but some die every year of all kinds of diseases and yet life goes on.

Kirschcherry · 04/05/2020 10:48

One thing that living through this time has taught me is that many people simply can not understand the exponential function.

Chillipeanuts · 04/05/2020 10:51

Who knows, it depends how the virus plays out.
But we do already know that this situation isn’t comparable to previous 20/21 C epidemics (in the West, excepting Spanish flu)

B1rdbra1n · 04/05/2020 10:52

The fat lady has not yet sung🎶

SabrinaTheTeenageBitch · 04/05/2020 10:58

I think if Im lucky enough to look back on this period of time with my life and that of all my loved ones intact I will just be very grateful. And much more aware of my mortality but in a positive way. 28,000 people and counting have died, many, many more would have if we hadnt locked down. I cannot consider that an overreaction just because it hasn't affected me personally yet

EdwinaMay · 04/05/2020 11:05

We seem to move on quite quickly imv. Brexit is a distant memory for most despite being 3 years of arguing.
The 2008 banking crash. Not really talked about now.
I don't think we will necessarily get back to how it was before but we get on to the new normal and forget the past.

vdbfamily · 04/05/2020 11:18

Babalouchka.....these tragic stories were always there. Young women were dying and leaving children motherless. That number will increase of the NHS does not get back to business as usual soon. Children were dying and will die in greater number s if those feeling poorly at home ( assumed Covid but actually leukemia or something else far more lethal) are not able to get to a GP and be properly addressed rather than a phonecall to 111. All those elderly people not going outside their front doors will have a much shorter life expectancy after this as will be losing their ability to walk any distance outdoors. I am fully expecting hospital admissions with falls and fractures to ticket when they eventually return to trying to get down to the cornershop for their daily paper. Lockdown definitely needed to happen but needs to end soon.

T0tallyFuckedUpFamily · 04/05/2020 11:27

The fat lady has not yet sung🎶

The fat lady has probably saw the statistics on how this affects those who carry excess weight and is hiding in her house, if she has any sense.

SoVeryLost · 04/05/2020 11:29

@EdwinaMay we don’t move in the same circles as they are both talked about quite a lot both at work and socially.
@Kirschcherry I agree. I’d go further and say people also don’t understand cause and effect. I’ve tried to avoid this area on MN but I have found myself here a few times and I am shocked at how people explain this away as people die all the time. Yes people do, but not in the numbers they are dying at the minute.

ChavvySexPond · 04/05/2020 11:29

One thing that living through this time has taught me is that many people simply can not understand the exponential function

Or that we didn't "time lockdown to coincide with the peak." You create the peak by creating the conditions for infections and deaths to reduce with a lockdown. If we'd had a lockdown earlier we'd have had an earlier peak.

Ponoka7 · 04/05/2020 11:30

I accept that deaths from cancer may now go up, but if lock down hadn't have happened, those people would have died anyway. As would lots, of the other groups who are missing hospital appointments. That's if this virus was circulating.

The Government advised social distancing, but none of the shops implemented it and no one took any notice. So we don't know what the death figures would have been.

Not everyone has cars to get about in. We haven't been able to keep the correct distance away on buses and the football etc would have continued.

We did the right thing by locking down, it should have been done sooner. We ate concentrating on deaths, but the hospital admissions would have brought the NHS to its knees and treatments would have stopped.

The time people spend in hospital haven't been a barrel of laughs, either. We are starting to hear from people who have survived it. Younger people who have been left with serious health problems including lung and kidney damage. We didn't know enough about it at the start to not lock down.

We needed to have plans in place for all groups in our society, the homeless, the prison population, those forced to sign on, those on probation or seeking asylum, vulnerable people in work and education. It would have been impossible to do an even softer lockdown.

We aren't going to be competing with other countries who are in any better position than us. All of our economies are being fucked. But a global response was needed at the time.

Smartcasual · 04/05/2020 11:34

It's too early to know either way yet. Highly qualified virologists and epidemiologists across the world are saying that this virus is too new to predict what may or may not happen. Surely that's the point? For a myriad of practical and emotional reasons, people find it difficult to live with "we don't know yet".

Guylan · 04/05/2020 11:37

People are looking at absolute deaths as if there is no other risk to life - and lots of these deaths are anyway 'with, not of' deaths. It doesnt make them less sad. It does make shutting down the country absurd.

@Blackforesthotchoc, the statistic to look at to give the most idea of death rates by CV (not perfect) is excess death rates compared to a five year average. By that metric there may have been 30,000 excess deaths this year by April 21.

From the link below:

“The key points of this update are:

There were 77% more deaths registered in week 15 of 2020 than if death rates had been the same as week 15 of 2019. The difference was 59% in week 14.

These ‘excess’ deaths in week 15 were 30% higher than the number of deaths registered and mentioning COVID-19 on the death certificate.

There may have been around 30,000 more deaths in the UK for the year to 20 April 2020 than if mortality rates were similar to those experienced in 2019.”

www.actuaries.org.uk/news-and-insights/news/cmi-calculates-deaths-attributable-covid-19

babbaloushka · 04/05/2020 11:41

vdbfamily- but these tragic stories are (and will continue to be ) far more common because of this virus. So many more people are dying from the virus than from untreated illnesses, that has to hold precedent. We can't stop protecting hundreds of thousands of vulnerable individuals on the off chance someone somewhere might have a disease. GPs are still seeing people, A+Es are still open, emergency treatments are still going ahead. A friend of mine actually has ALL leukaemia and has stopped treatment- he is more at risk from the virus the from his cancer.

spellconnoisseur · 04/05/2020 11:42

The very first line in your OP was “Preparing myself to get flamed for this.” You don’t appear to have been very well prepared...?

MoltonSilver · 04/05/2020 11:44

It's a good thing that it looks like an over reaction. It means the measures are working.