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.

The article below is very informative about the mistaken idea that most people who die from Covid would have died anyway soon. I really would recommend anyone who has been suggesting that to read it in full.

www.theactuary.com/features/2020/05/07/co-morbidity-question

The dreadful choice is: more lives lost to the virus, from getting everybody out and about again - or an even further damaged economy.
No. Lockdown protects the economy as much as if not more than individual lives.

Because we've started easing lockdown without taking the same measures other countries did to make it safer, we'll face a slower and more difficult economic recovery. Easing lockdown too soon has caused more economic damage and prolonged the agony.

That's why the markets fell and the pound dropped after Boris's announcement on Sunday encouraging people to get back to work get out and increase the infection rate. They know we face more economic disruption as a result.

Hairydogmummy

"Covid 19 is a new virus that scientists knew little about (and still don't know much more), it's more easily transmissible than measles."

Please could you link where you have read this? Measles is one of the most contagious viruses in the world with a R0 12-18, as far as I am aware no research has suggested that Covid is anywhere near that.

There is nothing I’d like better than things to go back to normal tomorrow. I’m not scared of the virus. I have a month long USA vacation planned for the summer, that I will take in a heartbeat if by the smallest chance, it goes ahead.

But I also have to ask myself this...why have all of these countries locked down at the expense of their economies? Why would they if they absolutely didn’t need to?
They haven’t done it for fun and they haven’t all done it due to hysteria and media pressure.

The evidence is there that this disease does not just effect the elderly. There are many factors that make a person more susceptible, from existing illness like diabetes, to the colour of one’s skin or a person’s gender. It’s a strange disease and we still don’t know all that much about it.

I do get your point regarding the economic cost being a far bigger problem than the virus. But...again, that’s the situation we’ve been able to manufacture. We’ve made the virus a lesser problem than the economy by staying home. But none of us know how this may have panned out if we’d done the opposite instead. So I think actually, the question is more complex. 30,000+ deaths from ONE cause in just a few months is devastating. And the virus deserves respect.

As I said, I’m not hiding inside. I’m shopping daily and I’m exercising multiple times a day. I’m barely in. I will go on my holiday IF it goes ahead. But I cannot bring myself to fully agree with you that our actions have been a waste of time or an overreaction. I do agree however, that the repercussions are going to be painful and felt for years to come.

Rock and hard place springs to mind.

I find it bizarre that you find it bizarre OP.

Of course people are reacting like this, the extreme fear they are experiencing was created by those in charge because fear is the easiest way to get the public to comply. You don't get millions of people to walk out of their jobs, take their kids out of school and stay at home by asking them nicely. You scare the living bejesus out of them, via internet/media, until they are so terrified that by the time you are ready to implement lockdown people are already DEMANDING to stay at home.

If you want parents to DEMAND school closures MN would be a good place to hang out and chat ;)

Of course, prior to lifting lockdown you now need to reverse all of this, you need people DEMANDING schools re-open and DEMANDING to go back to work, INSISTING they NEED a coffee that isn't made in their own kitchen.

I think it really was the only way to get the lockdown done quickly and successfully - but yes, people now need to be encouraged and prepared for getting back to some sort of normality.

I don't think the way to do that is by ridiculing them for feeling the fear that was expertly instilled in them or making them feel guilty, paranoid or responsible in any way for sending the country into recession and putting healthcare, education and public services at risk for years and years to come.

sending the country into recession and putting healthcare, education and public services at risk for years
Why would anyone blame themselves for a pandemic that's caused all of that. And killed huge numbers of people. More here than most other countries in the world.

There's no need for the government or media to 'instil' rational fear when people have brains, eyes, and ears.

We're not ready to return yet. We could've been but we haven't yet done what other countries have. We can pretend we're ready but then we'll end up with worse economic damage and many more avoidable deaths. Haven't we buggered it up enough already?

Hi guys, i would just like to explain how much of an effect the media is having on people like me, I suffer from anxiety. I usually get dry cough when o get anxious and I always had them, tonight I convinced myself I had corona and started to have a panic attack, so my 'symptoms' got worse but as soon as my boyfriend calmed me down all these 'symptpms' disappeared.
Now, I'd say my anxiety can make me feel alot of things but tonight I actually was so scared but reading through this I see alot of you aren't scared, and I actually felt relief when I see people who have anxiety, like me, not panicking because it HELPS me calm down and HELPS me think about how rare it would be for me to die from it as I'm a healthy 18 year old with no medical issues... so just wanna say thank you because just reading everyone's messages on here has helped me calm myself down x

Agree with all your posts OP.

Lockdown is a very very extreme measure.

It will cause hundreds of thousands of deaths.

It should only be done when it is absolutely vital and even then only when absolutely unavoidable.

This is absolute nonsense.

Whatever it is that you are smoking, OP, I want some of it.

I didn't predict the denialism from the UK and batshit insanity and cruelty coming out of the US.

@SetYourselfOnFire, I did.

The UK went through a Brexit campaign and referendum and subsequent Parliaments, and the Tories had two party leadership contests and several party conferences, after all.

And the current President of the US is Donald Trump.

Donald Effing Trump, FFS.

But why should people who are vulnerable expose themselves and risk dying years before their time? And young people who are afraid to pass it to their elderly parents/grandparents or vulnerable children with health problems? I don’t care if I get it, but I’m concerned I get it and pass it to my elderly relative. And I have friends who have young children with all sorts of allergies and asthma who are already using nebulisers and inhalers. People are worried because of this. Not because they’re afraid to get it.

@midlifecrash
Sat 16-May-20 00:04:11

Bravo - you said what I wanted to say and you said it really well.

Please could you link where you have read this? Measles is one of the most contagious viruses in the world with a R0 12-18

Except in places where the population are vaccinated, which is most countries where measles used to be commonplace. The R value is near 0 in those places because the vaccine prevents the infection from taking hold in the receiving organism.

There is no vaccine for the novel coronavirus.

Of course bd67thSaysReinstateLangCleg, but that is not clear from the post I commented on.

I have heard a number of parents saying that they are not going to take their dc for their vaccinations, including MMR because they are afraid that their dc will catch coronavirus. This is a concern because the last thing we need right now is illnesses that we currently have under control re-emerging.

And as for the poster who equated wearing masks with fear, I wear one because if there’s even a slim possibility that it may slow down the spread of the virus, particularly as any of us could be asymptomatic carriers without knowing it, then I think it’s worth doing.

I don't wear a mask because I'm scared that I might catch corona again. I've already had it once and it didn't affect me much, there was one day where my breathing was noticeably laboured at rest and I spent about a week having to climb the stairs slowly.

I wear a mask because I might catch corona again and I don't want to give it to someone who it might kill.

Mask refuseniks are selfish pillocks.

[Delayed infant vaccination] is a concern because the last thing we need right now is illnesses that we currently have under control re-emerging.

Yep, you are absolutely right there. Earlier in the lockdown there was an AIBU from a woman who wanted to flee her violent H, the violence had got worse. She wasn't sure that travel to flee an abuser would be allowed. (It ended well, her final post was to tell us that she had made it safely to her sister's house.) The Blood service are having problems with donors staying away as well. There's a big difference between returning to normal with pubs and cafes and theatres open and making it clear to people that, yes, you still need to inoculate your children, yes, you can flee an abuser under the essential travel rules, and yes, giving blood is still needed and counts as essential travel.

Out of interest - to all those agreeing with the OP, do you have a family member who has died of Covid 19?

I stay home all day, everyday not because I am scared I will get infected. I am in my 20s and Really couldn't care if I got infected- ok being sick is annoying. I stay home because I am scared of infecting an elderly person I might come into contact with at the supermarket, or that I might infect a healthcare worker who comes I to contact with me. Healthcare workers are exposed to this daily and quite a few have died, some may have vulnerable family members.

We have decided as a nation that we are sacrificing our economy and our finances to save old people and some people with compromised immune systems. We are already in recession so we shouldn't squander the gains we made. I guess some people might say that the lives of old people are not worth saving. I disagree.

I just wish that after the crisis, the burden of paying off the debt doesn't solely fall upon the young and working adults.

I passed on a virus to my DF a few years ago, he didn't survive it. I don't fancy doing the same to DM.

' (George Santayana-1905). In a 1948 speech to the House of Commons, Winston Churchill changed the quote slightly when he said (paraphrased), 'Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

I’m with you, OP, even 5000 miles away. It’s interesting that countries that had the most severe lockdown rules (Spain, for example, with written permission needed to go to the supermarket) have had some much higher rates than other countries where things were more relaxed.

In my state in the US, the death rate is currently 1/100th of 1 percent. For that we have completely crippled the economy, mental health issues and suicide are on the increase like never before, the industry I work in is predicting it will take at least 5 years to recover from this.

It would have been far cheaper and far more effective to separate those who are at high risk, in hospitals or care facilities, and let the rest of us continue to go about our business.

But it was never about our health. It was always about control. Staying home doesn’t save lives. But it’s easy to make people comply when it’s out like that. The point of staying home was to sloe the pace of deaths. Here we were told we must stay home and flatten the curve. Our state has done that. The goalposts were then moved and we were told it’s no longer about flattening the curve, it’s about “controlling the virus” when all they want to control is us. So this virus has been given some kind of VIP status that the whole world stops for it. How awful for the families of those who died of flu to see all this and realise that their loved ones weren’t considered worthy enough by the government for such an effort to “save lives”. Why is a COVID life worth so much more than any other life? My brother-in-law was killed by a drunk driver. We didn’t ban driving or the sale of alcohol after that.

Sometimes I think I’m in a surreal dream and I’ll wake up soon and none of this will have happened. That people are so happy to abandon their liberties and rights for 1/100th of 1 per cent is beyond my comprehension. Every death is sad, font get me wrong. But the living have a right to live. Right now it’s an existence.

@cheesemongery no, not of COVID but I have lost family members to other things that we don’t shut the whole economy down for and scare everyone into submission. Obviously they weren’t important enough and their lives didn’t matter.

It would have been far cheaper and far more effective to separate those who are at high risk, in hospitals or care facilities, and let the rest of us continue to go about our business.

How could you separate out society? Those at high risk need caring for, so either you keep them together in a care home and have a set if people - staff caring for them, how do you propose the staff don’t get infected? The staff aren’t at risk so can go where they like when not working

Then doctors, paramedics all care for the people that are more vulnerable, these people are more likely to need those services, so how do you keep them apart?

There is a difference between being scared about the risk and being annoyed that the govt is willing to risk a high number of deaths that they could prevent by following actions that other countries are taking.

We don’t know who these deaths will be. There is a low likelihood they will be people in our immediate family, but they will be someone’s family. Furthermore, the risk is higher in certain groups (shielding, but also BAME, males, poor socio-economic groups) and they are justifiably concerned.

Last year my Dgd aged 17 at the time caught an unknown virus unbeknown in other words she had no symptoms not even a temperature. Apparently her body had been fighting this virus for a while. Her bodies immune system went into overdrive. It turned on itself killing all her own platelets which clot the blood. She suffered internal bleeding and was on the cusp of complete organ failure she nearly died and was in ICU for 2 weeks. There were 5 children aged 5- 12 in there with her with the same thing. Because Dgd was older she has contracted the adult version of ITP. Usually it's a one off. She had a relapse of this condition in February and she will be on immune suppresent drugs till July. She has not been out the door since March 1st. If she catches Covid she will die. There are many cases of young people in their twenties and thirties that have had same reaction to Covid and died.
Point of me posting this is you never know how your body will react to this ( or any) virus. Fit and healthy people are dying of it too even if they are the minority. You may be one of those. Your children.may be one of those.
Schools have to go back but the teachers and children must be protected. Otherwise parents will be sueing the schools, teachers if one of their DC dies!
Economy has to be restarted but it will be the low paid more likely to die of Covid while others are safe working from home.
If the R rate goes above one again thousands will continue to die. So ask yourselves how many lives lost, how many families grieving will be a sufficient number for you to feel your continuation of your ' normal' life doing exactly as you did before is your human right? 100,000? 300,000? 500,000? 1 million?