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.

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.

@EarringsandLipstick, agree wholeheartedly with you.

@stretchedmarks that’s absolutely correct.

"I think an an analysis of the global response to this in a few years will cause some introspection."

No I think it's the people not taking it seriously who will be on the wrong side of history.

Thanks @Guylan I agree with you, based on what I read / watch about Boris & his Government. Testing has never seemed to be addressed, especially at the community level.

I think the programme was excellent - I always admire BBC approach to programmes like these. I think it's commendable, to the programme makers and the participants - those busy, pressurised staff - that they were able to make such a programme. (It would be hard to imagine a similar programme being made in Ireland, we do have them, but I think maybe because we are smaller and 'everyone knows everyone' kind of thing, the level of access would be less). I think it was important to be able to see what life was like for those directly affected.

I can't remember the man's name (was it Derek?) but he was just lovely. So utterly dignified, thanking those caring for him, even in on his worst days. I would say that he exemplified (what I would think of!) as a particularly British dignity and manner, but actually he was born in Germany and came over as a small child as Hitler came to power)

The NHS was not overwhelmed because (even in the small hospital where I work)
Cancelled all planned operations except some critical cancer
Cancelled all non cancer outpatient appointments
Redeployed and refresher trained all staff who would usually do the above
Doubled the itu size
Doubled the high care size
Rewrote entire medical staffing rotas to increase staff on 24/7

And yet, we are still operating on more patients in ITU/high care than we would normally have beds. And that is past the peak and without any planned surgery.

It is not flu. There is no direct treatment for it, it is the virus that keeps on giving and can affect anywhere in the body. It will have long term effects for some people. If infection rates can be controlled to a point where testing/isolation can be used then we will buy time and lives while we find a treatment.

Putting aside the rights and wrongs of how this pandemic has been handled by governments, it just blows my mind that the whole world has almost ground to a halt because of it.

Me too, @TheDailyCarbuncle

It's bewildering.

As I said an 85 year old man has a 1 in 6 chance of dying within a year. Ignoring COVID

No, they don't, they have about a nine percent chance of dying within a year according to ONS life tables underpinning its 2018 base to population projections. You're suggesting nearer to a 17% chance...are your figures global, or..?

I'm glad there are threads like this that question the compliance and scare mongering. It gives me hope that other people are WTF? at the loss of jobs and freedom of us all.

"The point of lockdown was not just to keep the NHS functioning. The NHS is also a proxy there for other things. If levels of severe sickness are so high that the NHS is overwhelmed, what do you think is happening in the wider society and the economy with all the severe sickness, both covid and otherwise, going untreated, with staff in all sectors off sick? "

^This.
Another poster working in one primary care trust wrote recently that about 500 of their NHS staff were off sick with the virus (let's say mild symptoms for the sake of argument). They have been at risk because they are in contact with people who are actually very sick, and they've probably actually been tested and have a positive result. A lot of care homes may well also be in that position. This is something that's not being shouted from the rooftops because at present, the system's still coping.

Workers keeping the deliveries going, the broadband and Internet running, the National Grid working, the food and medication supply chains reaching their destinations (and much more) - they have probably not been tested, but imagine if all these and many more were showing the same sickness rates as the example above, all at once, alongside reduced health service staff ratios. Whether or not the deaths worry you, major sickness rates in all sectors should, surely?

Perhaps also think about the scenario when schools start back and one staff member or pupil shows symptoms and tests positive. Presumably a sizeable proportion (or all) of the adults and children who have been exposed to this will have to self-isolate themselves and their families. That is likely to have a much larger knock-on effect in the adults' workplaces.

Thanks @withadivinebeatlesbaseline

That is sobering reading

It really puts everything in perspective, particularly when you say If infection rates can be controlled to a point where testing/isolation can be used then we will buy time and lives while we find a treatment.

Putting aside the rights and wrongs of how this pandemic has been handled by governments, it just blows my mind that the whole world has almost ground to a halt because of it.

I think about this too Ipadipod

It's incredible to think of huge parts of the world having the exact same experience at the same time.

In a way it feels like the world has got a lot smaller.

I think it's beyond madness too. The whole country's economy ruined for years to come. Perfectly healthy people die every day in car accidents. We don't ban cars. A lot of elderly people die every year of pneumonia.

"It gives me hope that other people are WTF? at the loss of jobs and freedom of us all."

Yes you are an elite band of super-clever critical thinkers. Well done.

I'm shielding and for me it's a similar worry to my usual daily worry. I deliberately avoid obviously ill/snotty/coughing people anyway because I catch anything going
The thing that makes me slightly more worried is coming into contact with someone who is asymptomatic and the fact my weak spot is chest infections. If I get bacterial pneumonia I can't fight it, I'm neutropenic and have had pneumonia once before mildly and that was bad enough!

So I'll stay home. If I was healthy I would be less concerned and going out and assessing the risk. But the risk assessing is what I do daily anyway, is it safe to sit in my workplace, is that person unwell and I need to sit in the hallway? Can this UTI wait a day or do I start rescue antibiotics now? That type of thing

I have noticed that the news is now changing the language to quoting numbers of people who have died ‘with’ Covid not ‘of’

Have you tried figuring out what the exact cause of death is for an individual? It requires a coroner to spend considerable time examining medical records and other evidence. We don't have enough coroners to be able to examine every case in that detail. We can use test results for the coronavirus diagnosis but beyond that, we simply cannot investigate further now. At the start, we could. This is not some illuminati conspiracy, it is accurate reporting based on what we can know now.

Why is this @vivienmary?

The whole country's economy ruined for years to come.

Such a throwaway statement. It's not even true. The economic situation is very severe. But it is recoverable from. Some sectors will actually benefit (changed work practices).

Again, I ask where your evidence of this is? (I notice that no-one I've asked this of has actually replied)

I was completely in agreement with you until you brought Brexit into this. You have no idea whether the U.K. economy would have tanked. It's utterly risible that you have made this assertion.
The effect of this lockdown makes Brexit look like a walk in the park.
In true Mumsnet style, give your head a fucking wobble.

"I think it's beyond madness too. The whole country's economy ruined for years to come. Perfectly healthy people die every day in car accidents. We don't ban cars. A lot of elderly people die every year of pneumonia."

Do 50,000 die in the uk from car accidents every two months?

And that's during lockdown.

"It gives me hope that other people are WTF? at the loss of jobs and freedom of us all."

Yes you are an elite band of super-clever critical thinkers. Well done.

@rawlikesushi

@bluetongue. As you have one of the lowest population density I think you are quite right to think it is madness . You could manage differently by region I would imagine .

The uk has a high population density and if you take that into account with deaths per million. We have nit dine as badly as the media make out .

It’s strange that no one mentions Belgium with a very high rate per million .

Maybe the answer is for all those who want business as usual to get deliberately exposed to the virus. Then they can catch it, fight it off and do their bit towards developing a herd immunity. Meanwhile those who would rather remain Covid-free can continue to isolate.

@EarringsandLipstick, sorry I have to log off now but I think his name was Peter. Was such a moving and insightful programme.

UK deaths from measles - the highest year on record was 1941 with just over one thousand deaths. Since the vaccine it has been below 100 and more recently below 20 each year.
I don't see the comparison with Covid-19? With lockdown it has killed around 40,000 in 2 months. It hasn't even been a year. Without lockdown one model estimated 500,000. Presumably that is inflated if we had practised good hygiene and shielding of the vulnerable. It isn't comparable to measles in the UK in my opinion.
It had the potential to completely overwhelm the NHS.

I was completely in agreement with you until you brought Brexit into this. You have no idea whether the U.K. economy would have tanked. It's utterly risible that you have made this assertion.
The effect of this lockdown makes Brexit look like a walk in the park.

WE'VE NOT HAD THE EFFECT OF BREXIT YET.

Its the PM's dismissal of experts and the fact that he is a liar and a cheat. Oh and that the Brexit campaign was based on lies that has brought us to this point.

There is not trust in this government at all.

FfS i am a Labour remainer, and I have more faith in the UK experts (not the govt) than most Brexiteers.