I'm finding the reaction to covid utterly bizarre

[TheDailyCarbuncle]

If anyone had told me that healthy, fit people would willingly put their livelihoods at risk and deny their children an education for months on end, that they would send the country into recession putting healthcare, education and public services at risk for years and years to come to avoid getting a disease that had a very very small chance of killing them I wouldn't have believed it. If you'd said people would be afraid to talk to their healthy siblings I wouldn't have believed it.

I had measles in the 1980s as small child - the vaccination programme where I lived was slow to get off the ground - and it nearly killed me. In 1980 2.6 million people worldwide died of measles, a very large proportion of them children. No one ever considered a lockdown, it was never even suggested.

I think all the analysis of this situation in the coming years won't be about the pandemic, but about the contagion of fear that made people so terrified of something that wasn't a real threat to them that they created huge, long-lasting, in some cases devastating problems for themselves, problems that were nothing to do with their virus and everything to do with their reaction to the virus.

@earringsandlipstick

I think it is sad but not tragic. However these are just words. Nobody should ever die alone without a loved one by their side. Fact is it happens all the time whether we like the idea of that or not. Not everyone has the chance to say goodbye. I didn't watch the programme you describe but if I am lucky enough to live a full life until I am 88 what more can you ask for. At that age I will have had a full and rewarding life and we are not immortal. We cannot live forever. I lost one parent to a brain tumour at 51 and the other to dementia and Parkinson's which they had for 40 years. I consider this far more tragic than someone at 88 who has lived their life then passing away with covid.

So respectfully I disagree.

Please let this be the beginning of a tide of change...sanity returning to the masses.

@TheDailyCarbuncle

But it is not just this country so why do you think it has happened?

I dare you to go to Italy in the worse areas and repeat what you have said. They are devastated, they have lost thousands of loved family members . And now industry is battered as well. If you don’t understand watch the whitty lecture on you tube.

The government clearly said why we had lockdown and now they have clearly said we will have to live with the virus . It’s all about minimising risk now.

@Guylan

I support the testing, contract tracing and isolating strategy.

Absolutely. This is the approach favoured in Ireland. And it's acknowledged they are not there yet. Testing can still take several days - it's agreed in the long-term, to fully re-open society, testing would need to be carried out and results provided in 24-36 hours, with contact tracing happening another day or so after that.

Any longer and it is pointless, as the infection is being transmitted by the person, and their contacts and allowing the virus to spread.

Ireland has been very focused on the testing and contact tracing process. One of the major determinants of success of the 'Stay at Home' message was that once it was implemented, the number of contacts any person had (that needed to be contacted) fell to an average of under 5 contacts, compared with 20, when only initial restrictions were in place. I imagine in many cases that fell even further with many people having no contact at all most days, outside their own household.

I don't think it's bizarre that people are trying to prevent hundreds of thousands from dying. The risk of dying isn't "very very" small for everyone by any means. A large proportion population is over 50 so their chance of dying is over 1%. It would be pretty stupid to not try and avoid catching it and most will have loved ones who don't want to catch it and pass it on.

olives that is just so sad. We are treating these poor kids so badly.

I have the same dilemma to make. I know my youngest will be better at school and I think our chances against CV are pretty good. But I don't want to send him to a school environment which is so unnatural and the teachers are terrified.

But then Septemeber will be no different. If he can acclimatise it may help in the long run?

I am torn actually even though initially I was determined he was going. Just need to understand how the school will manage it.

Also the lockdown is not about individual risk, none of the measures are. If individual risk remained the same, but the susceptible population was lower and/or we wouldn't be facing exponential growth, then the measures wouldn't have been taken. The risk is on a societal level, given the numbers who would be infected and would be sick within a certain timeframe. The social and economic collapse caused by exponential growth is what then poses risk to every individual.

@Inkpaperstars, thank you for your clear explanation.

what on earth is your axe here rawlikesushi?

The lockdown may have been necessary - though the economic and social effects will be severe and have a huge knockon effect for a very long time - but I do wonder why people think all the hysteria is okay or at all helpful. A bit of pragmatism would make it all easier.

One child has died in the UK from the Kawasaki-like syndrome. One.

Yes OP completely agree. As soon as lockdown was announced I knew that was the end...The impact from the fear will be the death of so much if not so many...

Haven’t the WhO praised Sweden for their response? So advised social distancing, cancelling of big gatherings but business/shops/offices carry on?

m.youtube.com/watch?v=fgBla7RepXU

This may help some struggling with the concept of exponential growth, and with why acting when things appear normal is important. I hope the link works, apologies if not.

@Guylan completely agree! It’s the long term Unknowns that worry me, not the initial bout of probably mild illness for someone in my demographic.
Existing Coronaviruses are increasingly found to play a role in Parkinsons, MS & other neurological disorders. When you catch HIV, the initial symptoms are 2 weeks of flu-like symptoms - the horror of AIDS May be years down the line. Kawasaki disease (similarities to PIMS-TS now emerging in hundreds of kids & linked to earlier COVID-19 & also linked to other Coronaviruses) can lead to lifetime of heart problems. Who knows what problems we are storing up for the future? And what is the economic cost of a long term chronically ill population?

@Pootle40

I'm sorry for your losses - that must have been very hard.

I still disagree with your overall point. We cannot rank deaths. All loss is sad, and some deaths are imbued with even greater sadness and loss.

But you can't define what 'tragic' is. You can't say - you're 88, you've had a great old life, you should be happy now to die. No.

Of course there are situations where we in part welcome someone's death, due to their illness. I've had that situation, and have been fortunate that that person had a genuinely peaceful death, in her own bed, surrounded by her family.

I've also, not that long ago, lost my dad, who was only in his 70s, and had a difficult and unusual illness. He did not die peacefully, and I still struggle with the pain and suffering he experienced in the weeks before he died. I was still lucky, as were all my family, to be with him when he died.

So I have experienced different aspects of this.

What my point is, is that we cannot, in a compassionate society, rank deaths. That's utterly repugnant to me. The man I refer to had a life ahead of him to live - and thank goodness he will live it. His death absolutely would have been tragic. The trauma for his wife of 60 years losing her husband who had been healthy till then, and having no way to say goodbye, would have been desperate.

I really really hate the narrative that builds up around this, that older people should be grateful for the years that they've lived, and cannot really complain about dying.

Thanks @EarringsandLipstick, I am really concerned that Johnson’s govt are not focused enough on building a really good testing, tracing and isolating programme.

I read your moving post where you mentioned watching Hospital. I too watched that episode and the second one. I marvelled at how dignified the 88 year old man was and also so sad he was facing death with none of his family by his side. I was delighted when he made a recovery against all odds.

100% agree. The newly built culture of fear is mind-blowing. I think an an analysis of the global response to this in a few years will cause some introspection

Staff going back to work in offices where social distancing can happen fairly easily instead of remaining on furlough?

The lecturers at my institution usually have individual offices. Research associates, teaching assistants, and professional services staff work in open plan offices with 140cm wide desks that are manufactured in inseparable blocks of four or six. These workers cannot socially-distance without coming into work on alternate days. Even then, to leave their seat to use the loo, they have to pass closely to another worker. My desk is so close to the wall behind me that the colleague next to me has to squeeze between the wall and my chair to get out. If we moved the desk block away from the wall, the people opposite me would collide with the people behind them every time they stood up.

Ye talk shite, hen.

Have people forgotten the scenes from Italy already? Hospitals completely overwhelmed and the army being used to move truck loads of bodies around. This country escaped that by a whisker. Watch Hospital on BBC1 - major London hospitals needing to overspill from itu into operating theatres. That is unprecedented.

I work outside of London and our hospital had to redeploy clinical staff from virtually every area of the hospital to look after covid patients on itu. Operations and routine NHS care had to be postponed because of the virus not the lockdown. We are still looking after around 5 times as many critically ill patients as we would do normally. Staff are exhausted. We cannot deal with a second wave at the moment. And it really isn't just the elderly or the young who weren't 'healthy' beforehand who are dying. Believe that if it makes you feel better, but it isn't just morbidly obese men with heart disease who are dying. And just because someone had a pre-existing health condition like asthma or diabetes doesn't make them disposable

BTW, to be clear, I am not saying this is HIV. I am just pointing out that an initial flu-like symptom does not mean a virus is finished with you and as yet we simply do not have any data to think otherwise given known persistency of other Coronaviruses.

I have noticed that the news is now changing the language to quoting numbers of people who have died ‘with’ Covid not ‘of’.....Subtle but significant I think. So in 10 years time they can say well we didn’t say covid was the cause of deaths merely it was a factor . Meantime, we’ve just lost the good stuff of a society and what we’ll be left with is a total reduction of everything 😢

@stretchedmarks - agree. Two weeks ago we were praising the bin men. Now we are moaning because the tips are not open (forgetting that the men working at the tips have been redeployed to the bins because so many bin men are off sick). Our garden waste bin isn’t being collected - disgraceful lazy council workers we are told. Amazing how quick the sentiment changed.

100% agree. The newly built culture of fear is mind-blowing. I think an an analysis of the global response to this in a few years will cause some introspection

How? They're not going to say there was no need for the lockdown when there have already been hundreds of thousands of deaths. If anything I think the lesson will be that if this happens again countries need to act much more swiftly to quarantine people arriving in the country as if they have done that we wouldn't be in the position we are in now in.

@Smilethoyourheartisbreaking yes, of course. Clarified in my next post but my slow typing can’t keep up with this fast moving thread. Also so so tired..