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.

@tillyteatowel yes, but both could cause you to die, statistically which is the higher risk, that's my question?

care to explain what was the point of the lockdown?
Nothing has changed, and nothing is likely to change anytime soon.

Why did you even listen to the guidelines if you felt they were pointless?

Regarding the schools, why isn't the lockdown and ALL restrictions lifted if it's safe to go back to school?

So many mix messages. I mean, why do you bother with the MMR jab? most kids are completely fine when they have childhood disease.

Looking at my local Facebook a business even thinks about a plan to reopen( not actually reopen) it's too soon, most businesses will make a reopening plan you are a idiot if you dont.

I think history will judge society poorly in the over reacted response to this, of course all deaths are sad, but the vast majority will survive this.

you might be happy with surviving, but some of us would like to stay healthy - have you even researched what "surviving" covid 19 means?
How many victims have long term and life-changing health issues?

It's funny how people have to keep everything black and white, death or live, without looking into the details. The foreign press is full of testimonies and reports, they are not hard to find

“Why did you even listen to the guidelines if you felt they were pointless?“

I obeyed the law so I didn’t get arrested or fined.

I’m not quite sure what “following guidelines” would mean in my case.

I have a friend who has left her city centre flat once since a week before lockdown. She is absolutely terrified to go out. Her son in his early twenties lives with her and he hadn’t been out at all in eight weeks. She’s frightened to go back to work and is thinking of handing in her notice if she has to return. Just not normal.
My brother thinks he’s had it, other than that,
I don’t know anyone who has had it.

It’s inevitable that businesses have to reopen and life needs to go back to normal as much as possible very soon or the economy will be be utterly devastated.

Roses - what I don’t understand is if these people had any awareness of infectious diseases before this?

I obeyed the law so I didn’t get arrested or fined.

what law? no one is stopping people from having friends over, spending weekends away, no one is actually checking what you are doing.
No one is stopping you from going out, going shopping every hour, from driving around.

People have always been allowed to work, many businesses have never stopped.

I think I've had the virus mildly but don't know for sure. Rationally I think this is a good thing if )even for a short while) it might confer some immunity or help me secure my freedom in antibody tests. It should have the effect of making me more relaxed about catching it as I should have less fear being one of the unlucky few who get it really badly. And I am a very pragmatic and stoical person.

But there's something about the whole abnormality of our lives, lockdown and distancing, plus the effect of day after day of wall to wall depressing corona virus news and cabin fever that has given me this background feeling of nerves. I have tried to operate on the basis of expect the worst and hope for the best but what I'm really doing is expecting the worst exacerbated by the never ending bad news agenda.

And I can't bear the constant blaming and criticism of government and other people as if humans could have some great control of infectious diseases (and of course I know things could have been handled better). Its just the constant moaning and anger. Its not what the history of black death, the plague, spanish flu, ebola and Sars has told us. And I cant bear the gun toting red necks using it to reinforce their partisan politics and the hate attacks against chinese people and the conspiracy theories. All the righteous indignation and hatred also gets on my nerves.

The reality is that unless it dies down with the warmer weather or a vaccine appears out of thin air (unlikely in my view) many many more people will get it and it will continue to take lives for a considerable time longer. Whether or not we lockdown again or ease up considerably. More people will die. So I'm not really sure why I have a sense of unease about relaxing the rules and getting back to normal.

Its also hard to put my finger on what I'm missing exactly. Its not necessarily commuting to work on the tube but it is variety of life. Change of scenery, pace, mixing up who I'm spending time with, travel, cinema, meals and drinks out with friends, art galleries, walks in different places. Its just varying the pace of life and having more things to talk and think about. And to see my kids and everyone else I care about happier and having lots of fun.

“ what law? no one is stopping people from having friends over, spending weekends away, no one is actually checking what you are doing.”

The local police are moving people on in the park if they dawdle.

They check on the Tube where you are going - hopefully they’ve dropped this now.

If I had a friend round, my neighbours would snitch.

I think lockdown experience varies massively according to where you live and if you have a car.

As for spending a weekend away, where would you go? Are hotels open? I fully admit I don’t know because I don’t have money for that.

A friend of mine is like this: early 30's, fit and healthy but is absolutely terrified of getting it. I've stopped following her on social media as her posts are so aggressive towards people breaking the rules as she sees them.

I'm not afraid of the virus, I am concerned it has been developed for something else.

People are stupid and poor at understanding risk. They don’t understand that for the majority it is not life threatening. They also haven’t understood that genie is well and truly out of the bottle in the UK and we can’t eliminate it so we need to live with it. Obviously there will need to be changes to the way we live our lives and for some people lockdown will need to continue but we need to exit lockdown soon.

I just had it 39and have been left a mess 11days in ICU no heath issues

"you might be happy with surviving, but some of us would like to stay healthy - have you even researched what "surviving" covid 19 means?"

The problem is the majority won't even get these, and will have very mild symptoms.

You want everyone to live in fear, I live in.fear more of the effects on society.

I was never that worried about me or my children getting it. We aren’t in a high-risk category. (And I think I did get it and it was fairly mild, I’ve had flu that was worse.)

Was more worried about some of my family getting it who are older with some health conditions. The one I was most worried about actually did get it and was in hospital and got better and is home now.

I have some friends who have practically barricaded themselves in their house and have said they won’t be letting their children leave the house/garden until there’s a vaccine, they’re that terrified of all dying. I think the fear of Covid is causing them more harm than Covid itself would.

If you don't know anyone with underlying health problems or have any family over 70 then yes you probably think people are being stupid.
Both my parents are over 70, MIL is over 60 and diabetic, my daughter and husband are asthmatic and I'm pregnant so sorry if I'm not exactly jumping for joy about restrictions being lifted when hundreds are still dying

I'm 37 weeks' pregnant and have not been anywhere since 16th March. I'm at the point now where mentally I don't know if I can take much more of being stuck indoors 24/7. I will obviously stay at home until I've had the baby but then I think I'm just going to start doing little things on my own for my own MH - even just going to the supermarket. If I get it and die then so be it, I can't live like this indefinitely.

People keep mentioning asthma and vulnerable groups

That’s me

Didn’t believe in lockdown in the first place. I hadn’t seen that meme someone posted upthread but tbh I can’t see what’s wrong with it. This whole exercise has been about managing resources.

I don’t approve of the government scaremongering but that meme poster is just factual. It’s a lot different than “stay at home or you’ll kill people” though a lot of MNers clearly love that message.

'Terrified' and 'petrified' are (presumably deliberately) dramatic words, but, speaking for myself, yes, I'm very concerned about the risk of being extremely ill or dying if I should catch it. This is a new and poorly understood virus, which affects different individuals in varying and unpredictable ways. Many people with no apparent risk factors have been very ill and in some cases have died. If you then factor in the quite large number of people who do have one or more of the many known risk factors, it's not difficult to see why many people are very concerned about either their own safety or that of someone they love. Appreciating relative risk isn't the point: the fact that most people will not be severely ill doesn't alter the fact that it could be devastating if you are one of the unlucky ones.

Given that we know an increase in the number of people circulating in public will directly correlate with an increased transmission rate, it's no kind of stretch to see why relaxing the lockdown is an alarming prospect for many. Even if you believe, as many do, that that is a necessary evil for economic or other reasons, I'm not really sure why anyone would find it hard to understand the concern.

So for people who think lockdown was wrong and that most people who get it will only have a mild illness, did you have your children vaccinated for MMR? Because let’s face it, those illnesses can be mild, it’s only the unfortunate few who would die.

I was fearful a few weeks ago and massively in favour of the lockdown at the time. I’m not fearful anymore. A lot of my fear stemmed from social media and the MSM. I’ve dealt with that by reading studies, listening to interviews with different experts and trying to sort the fact from fiction (and take the politics out of it). The media want a big audience, so will use the headline that will grab the most attention. I saw an image on the news today which was a collage of photos of people who had sadly died. At least 3/4 of photos were of youngish people, I’m talking 20s-50s. Very few people looked 70+, so a very disproportionate image considering this age group makes up the vast majority of deaths.

I also don’t know why we’re not reporting recoveries, people need to see that, even if you do get seriously ill with the disease, you have more chance of survival than death, even if you’re elderly and/or have health conditions.

I do think that if this had happened 10-15 years ago, there wouldn’t have been anywhere near as much fear. We live in a world with access to so much information, but we’re too busy or lazy to process it properly, so we just read the summaries or headlines, which is dangerous. And SM makes that even more dangerous as you’ll then share an article that you haven’t read properly with other people who won’t read it properly.

It’s difficult. The stats say chances are you’ll be fine, as does logic - but then the human experience comes through. I know of 4 cases (inc me) - 2 ended up in hospital, one in ICU where she is still ventilated. Aged 40. The two of us who luckily stayed out of hospital still ended up with ongoing chest issues. On the other hand, I have a friend who has taken it to the extreme ‘coronaphobic’ and her DD hasn’t so much has had an open window since lockdown due to her fears.

I suppose what I’m saying is - logic doesn’t always win out against personal experience, and it’s human to want to protect your kids from sickness and pain. At the same time, extreme fear is damaging so striking a balance - hopefully with a gradual ease of the lockdown - is so important.

agree, so many are fearful, myself included, and i dont really do social media, apart from here, and i read the newspapers, sometimes, and watch the daily briefings
occasionally watch frightening TV programmes, just saw channel 4 tonight with NHS staff, crying, they are so worried, NHS staff are dying
that is pretty frightening situation.

“ So for people who think lockdown was wrong and that most people who get it will only have a mild illness, did you have your children vaccinated for MMR? ”

Complete straw man. Getting a vaccine is nowhere near as problematic as shutting down the entire economy!