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.

Agree OP. It's truly bizarre.

I'm with you completely. As are many other people.

🙌 Well said OP.....exactly what @daisydukes7576 said.....

I agree.
Some people seem to have the view that if they leave their house they WILL get Corona and they WILL die.
Look at the figures. Learn to be sensible about your actual level of risk. Listen to the lovely Chris Whitty emphasising how the huge majority of people have minor/moderate symptoms (and yes I understand what is meant by this)
I’ll be sending my dc back to school when they reopen. I work part time in their school and am happy to return as well.

"Totally agree OP. But it appears unless you are terrified and wanted to bubble wrap yourself MN covid mafia will accuse you of murdering your children, grannies or entire neighbourhoods."

Well yes because if you're asymptomatic and walking around as if you're fine, that's what you inadvertently do.

Like the lady who went to her socially-distanced choir in the US and infected 52 people in one session, 2 of whom died.

I'm not staying at home because I'm scared. I'm staying at home to do my bit at keeping the R below 1 and avoid prolonging lockdown or creating a second spike.

If everyone acted like they had it, it would be suppressed much more reliably.

I agree with vulnerable people being shielded, and it's going to predominantly be those people who will need hospital care, but we're talking about people with very low risk who are unlikely to need hospital care panicking about it.

Not overwhelming the nhs? Which has always had capacity, opened and shut some hospitals, and stopped most regular services plus allowed a message which saw a and e visits drop so much so that doctors had to tell people to come in?

I'm doing this because I'm law abiding not because I'm scared or I want to.

I agree with you OP. I am coming to the conclusion that huge swathes of the population lack critical thinking skills.

Yanbu.

I agree, it's astonishing. And we know it will cost more lives in the long term.

I can understand people who are vulnerable being worried.

There is very strong evidence that the model predicting half a million deaths was completely wrong, which is understandable given that it was built with no data. Regardless of that it is not the case that healthy people should be terrified of a virus that in many people causes no symptoms at all and in the vast majority of others causes mild to moderate illness. It is certainly not a reason to stop our entire lives and create massive, unsolvable problems for years and years to come.

I completely agree OP

Yes we will have to live with this virus until a vaccine is found.

And the Influenza season starts in September. Every year.

I dunno.

It’s incredible what’s happened.

We will never know how many lives we have saved through locking down so it is impossible to judge how right/wrong it was.

We should worry more about the swathes of people who are absolutely petrified about doing anything outside of lockdown or ask questions like 'would you stay in lockdown for 2 years?'

"I agree with you OP. I am coming to the conclusion that huge swathes of the population lack critical thinking skills."

No huge swathes of the population don't understand virology or exponential maths.

Huge swathes of the population like to think they're super-clever and have figured it all out better than the WHO and world experts.

People have always been bad at assessing risk. Couple this with the government communications aiming to induce fear and you get a situation where reality becomes distorted.

(And @EachDubh - my PhD is in Biochemistry. Specifically antibody response to viral infections).

What is interesting is that EVERY country near enough has locked down with very few exceptions, despite infection rates being comparatively very low in a lot of nations.

I feel the same op, said this in the parents group WhatsApp and I got jumped at. Dd in year 1 and the majority of parents will not send truer children back and I'm ridiculous to consider it.

People are right to be sceptical of the experts at the WHO......cause they were on the front foot with their expertise weren't they?!

Agree op, but if you say anything you could be accused of being a murderer

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.

Locking down for a virus that kills such a tiny proportion of people it infects is madness, utter utter madness.

My great grandchildren will still be dealing with the effects of it.

"People are right to be sceptical of the experts at the WHO......cause they were on the front foot with their expertise weren't they?!"

It's a good job we've got all the internet randoms with their top-notch credentials to set them straight.

totally with you OP. I too had measles in the 80`s.

we didnt have a shutdown!

ridiculous.