The majority of people seem genuinely terrified

[thewheelsonthebus23]

I keep reading threads on Facebook and elsewhere, I will also include my own mother in this. There are so many people genuinely petrified of life returning to normal right now.
I can’t get my head around this. Yes, it poses a threat to some, but the survival rate is incredibly high for most of the population. It seems a lot of people think lockdown will eradicate it completely and it also seems that they believe if they get it, they’ll almost certainly die. I know that’s what my mum thinks. She’s adamant if she gets it, she’ll end up on a ventilator.
Someone posted about sending their child back to school and said something along the lines of: “I’d rather pay the fine, than pay for her funeral”.
Has the media been really irresponsible here? I feel the mass media has a lot to answer for.

Studies on countries which have done exhaustive contact tracing to work out where people caught it from) show:

• it’s incredibly hard to catch COVID outdoors. Countries doing contact tracing have unearthed just ONE single outbreak outdoors, resulting in just two cases.
• it’s very hard to catch with passing contact. Very few outbreaks in shops.
• where you are likely to catch COVID: prisons, religious services (especially weddings/funerals), call centres, meat packing factories, restaurants, offices - basically closed indoor places with lots of adults sitting or standing still in close proximity for extended periods, and worst of all, singing, shouting or lots of talking.

Another study in a country where contacts have been exhaustively traced has shown COVID is VERY hard to catch from children. In one example, it found that one child with COVID failed to infect a single other member of the 170 person ski trip he was on, including his own siblings, although he also had flu and a cold which he HAD managed to give his siblings....

This would suggest people can stop getting angry with joggers, the police can leave sunbathers and dog walkers alone, and schools are probably fine to reopen. Shops would be fine for shoppers - although shop workers stuck behind a till all day, especially in a small shop with limited air flow, might be at higher risk.

The bad news is that restaurants, theatres, offices and churches should not reopen yet, and you are kid of stuffed if you are in jail.

Sorry but many of these “healthy” people catching/dying from it are overweight/obese, which is an underlying health condition in itself, but people in Britain don’t want to know/accept that. In general Britain has a very overweight/obese population compared to the rest of Europe and that won’t be helping at all.

Saying that, the risk of death is still infinitesimal. The % of deaths is basically 0.02-0.03% of the entire population. If that.

Plus, if you actually get it, your odds of death on average are between 10 and 20%. Meaning 80-90% chance of survival. The way the papers are going on you would think we were all going to die.

I think it's such a difficult position. The government have to scare people enough into complying with lockdown, but then you get people terrified to leave their homes!

To be honest, I'm nervous. I have a partner with a brain tumour who could die from as much as a chest infection and a three year old. I worry about other relatives, however we have to get the fear in proportion. We can't live like this forever - I certainly don't want my daughter to live like this indefinitely. People have forgotten that people used to live with the risk of catching TB, measles - all sorts of horrible things and just got on with it. I think a gradual relaxation of the rules will help people ease out of it. Life on general is not without risk.

I know someone who is a few years younger than me in their early 30's with no apparent health issues who died leaving behind young children a devastated family and husband because she never believed in the hype. I also have 3 close friends in the same age group who have beat it. But by heck I would not want to go through it, and we don't truly know the after effects. I may survive it but I don't want it on my conscious that I could have killed others including my older parents. The other worrying thing is the possible link to a kawasaki like disease in children. The economy can wait a tad longer, I have been flat broke before, I've never been dead.

@ChablisandCrisps do piss off teachers are at very high risk with 1500 young adults around them a day anyone who doesn’t understand this is a utter twat. Sick and tired of this suggestion that teachers are being unreasonably for not wanting get a dangerous disease

Personally, it amazes me that so many People are saying things such as ‘oh, most of us will be fine, let’s get back to normal’, with seemingly no regard for the future who will not be okay? Surely everyone matters equally and we should be doing what’s best for all not most. There are also the hundreds of people with no underlying health conditions who have died. I know doctors have said they may have had some underlying undiagnosed issues, but on that view, so could any of us!

Can't believe posters like cadburyegg, as if deaths of anyone over 45 doesn't matter.

Are you happy for all your old relatives/friends/co-workers to die, cadburyegg?

What about your friends' parents?

And what about people with pre-existing conditions - which is vast numbers of people?

Happy for them all to drop dead too?

Can't believe this I'm Alright Jack attitude, the not caring because they think it will only affect the old and ill.

What horrible people there are in our society.

Also such a stupid attitude as it's not only about the death stats, it's about the unknown effects of the illness.

If you're young and healthy and get it and survive, you might be healthy afterwards. But the MN threads from people who've had it now for 6,7, 8 weeks and counting and still aren't getting better - and many of them are young and were healthy before this - should make it clear that surviving doesn't necessarily mean "well". This is an unknown disease and the precautionary principle should mean we are as careful as can be until we have greater knowledge.

Well they aren't all going to die, are they?

It's estimated today at 0.7%, so statistically it's quite likely no-one I know will die at all. Risk is mostly of course the over 70s and above. They're going to die fairly soon anyway. Where I live in fact, they are already living beyond their life expectancy for the area.

You’re the one being horrible effingterrified, when all I was doing was summarising the main points of the article! Did you read it, or are were you too busy single handedly saving the world from this virus?

People over 45 are not old.

People in general are very poor at assessing risk, eg relative risks of dying from Covid vs driving.

Maybe for you. I used to assess project risk regularly so know how poor many people's understanding is. Risk profiles also vary according to circumstances too. But the point of understanding risk is not to accept it, but to mitigate it and have a contingency plan for if the worst happens. Very few people do this. If they think at all, they only think about their own risk profile, not the overall risk to their community.

If you had a relative and a young friend poleaxed by Covid and two colleagues die from it (as I have), and you know you have several conditions that will make you very sick indeed if you catch it, then your perception of the risks will different to someone who is fit, young and untouched by Covid. Remember that death is pretty final, so we'd like to avoid it if there is any chance we can.

My concern is that too many people aren't taking it seriously at all, because THEY aren't at high risk of death. They don't get that their actions will have an impact on the risk profile of others. Quite frankly, my risk of death in a car is considerably less than death by Covid. Especially as I'm not driving anywhere at the moment.

Ilets - statistically, 55,000 people in the UK have died already and we're clearly a long way from the bottom of the peak.

Let's say we were really lucky and it bottomed out at 100,000 (assuming no big second wave) - and yes, astonishing that 100,000 excess deaths in spring/summer in 3 months could look like a best-case scenario.

Let's say each of those people knows 1,000 other people - because realistically, we all know far more than that. Think of all the people you were at school with, work with, friends, relatives, kids' friends at school, etc etc. But let's say only 1,000.

100,000 X 1,000 = 100,000,000 or 100 million. Which is more than the population of the UK.

So yes, t would be EXTREMELY unlikely that you wouldn't know someone who had died of this within a few months.

And as I said, that's not counting the far larger number who have survived but are still suffering from the virus.

@SMJYellow whoever said they were?

cadburyegg - the whole point is that no-one can 'singlehandedly save the world' from this virus.

To defeat it, it's going to need EVERYONE to stop being a selfish arse and putting others at risk.

And that includes you.

I'm not counting friends of friends of friends of friends in my 'people I know' list. If less than one in a hundred die, and 80% or so of them are elderly, they're highly unlikely to be my friends, relatives or coworkers.

Well they aren't all going to die, are they?

It's estimated today at 0.7%, so statistically it's quite likely no-one I know will die at all. Risk is mostly of course the over 70s and above. They're going to die fairly soon anyway. Where I live in fact, they are already living beyond their life expectancy for the area.

Wow! That's a pretty cynical and selfish way to look at things! I'm guessing you're an advocate of euthanasia for all those who aren't contributing fully to society too i.e. the mentally ill, the disabled, the retired? In fact, if we follow your logic, why not stick them all in a room and gas them. It would save on NHS costs.

There were reports of cats having symptoms and being tested and tested positive.

How anyone can not be afraid of that aspect of the disease, I will never know. I don't have any cats and if I had I would maintain distance indoors from them. I don't know what other people would do. If they would get comfortable with their cats.

It virus has jumped from bat's into another animal and then into humans. It has now gone from humans to cats. If cats can pick it up from an infected human, probably from getting in contact with infected saliva and mucus, well cats lick and they can sneeze too.

Will the virus mutate in cats and jump back into humans? Here we are all living with restrictions and cats can go about going to and fro neighbouring houses.

I don’t know what makes you think I am putting others at risk, considering I have been wfh and homeschooling since March 23

Gosh I didn’t realise that posting a BBC news article and summarising the main posts means that I am a selfish arse. Should I have quoted the Daily Mail instead?

FFS covid is not the only thing that people can die from, if we don't have a plan to end lockdown people will die in vast numbers due to other things. Staying in extended lockdown is not doing the best by everyone, in actual fact it is doing the worst for a lot of people, we need to start a plan so people can safely access health and support services, and people can work, to pay tax, to fund these services.

It is more selfish to be demanding a lockdown that just goes on and on.

Angelil - are you seriously suggesting that odds of dying at 'only' 10-20% are good?

If I said, eat this chocolate bar, there's a 10-20% chance it would kill you, it tastes nice, would you eat it?

Or would you go, what the fuck, I don't need chocolate that bad, I'll pass, thanks?

As per your earlier quote, Effingterrified, which saw a future where all friends relatives and coworkers died. No wonder you are terrified if that's what you think is coming our way.

I'm not counting friends of friends of friends of friends in my 'people I know' list. If less than one in a hundred die, and 80% or so of them are elderly, they're highly unlikely to be my friends, relatives or coworkers.

@ilets So if you don't know them, they don't matter?

Yes I'm with you there, it does seem as if the media is quite sensationalist. Picking out the tiny handful of people who are quite young and seemingly healthy, because ultimately there's not much of a story in "24 year old lost their sense of smell for a few days"...