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.

It is undeniable that the biggest risk factor for covid deaths is age ... 100% true, certain, proven ... I can’t believe people are trying to deny that. The facts are all around you ... here’s just one week from the ONS: of the 8,237 deaths 7,311 were in people older that 65 ... it is NOT predominantly younger & middle aged people dying.

Why would you lie about that? Do you think that ‘old’ people dying is not important enough?

oh I agree wtih this so much - good posts @TheDailyCarbuncle and @Mumlove5 (and lots of others).

Gosh the number of families who are pushed into poverty, the numbers of people not going to A&E with strokes, heart attacks, the lack of treatment for cancer patients, the deaths from domestic violence, the mental health toll and of course the economic impact of this. etc etc etc. it's all just so disproportionate. And the hysteria on here is ridiculous.

Most people dying from Covid are not the elderly but are in fact younger to middle-aged people.

No, I’m sorry - you can’t be allowed to get away with posting outright lies. Only 12% of deaths have been in the under-65s.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/may/13/pensioners-34-times-more-likely-to-die-of-covid-19-than-working-age-brits-data-shows

It just shows that if you say things that people want to believe, they will.

Well yes. Who was it you wanted to believe in so very badly?

About Sweden - their death rate is high but 1) we have little idea what the genuine death rates are for the whole world. Not very much idea for the rates in the western world or China, but even less for elsewhere and 2) I would think that their economy is likely to emerge in better shape than other countries' which means there may well de less knockon deaths.

We need to get the economy going slowly but we must not be complacent about Covid19 This sums it up best of all!

@rawlikesushi actually the vaccine for TB doesn’t work in people over 35, there was a long thread on here the other day

www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/when-is-bcg-tb-vaccine-needed/

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

Yes. I also have a DD who has not been to work since mid- February. Her job helped greatly with her MH which is now plummeting. I really hope that she is able to return back to work soon, but it is one of the jobs that will probably be the last to fully open. I've had to arrange the funeral of my mother because of covid I do NOT want to have to do the same for my beautiful daughter because of the continued lock down. So those dismissing people whose MH has suffered as having "no resilience" can jog on, because you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

@OneOfTheHerd No it isn’t. It’s full of misinformation/lies

Um OP, that's fine for you but I have a young family and elderly parents and I'm afraid we simply do not know enough about the virus to understand individual risk factors.

Do you not realise the reason more people haven't died is because we locked down and the R rate is now less than 1, and the hospitals haven't been overwhelmed? Would you like to make the decision about who to treat or not (as per Italy)?

That said we do need to come out of lockdown safely - but in all likelihood there will be further periods of lockdown if the R rate increases again.

I can’t agree OP, I’m trying to but I can’t understand the logic.

We know that the economy is on its knees.
We know that the virus affects all ages but younger, ‘healthy’ people are less likely to die from the virus.
At first we had very little understanding of the virus.

Now you’re saying lockdown was unnecessary, you do realise that lockdown was to slow the spread and to protect the vulnerable? I can’t connect the point of lockdown to your point about it being useless, it hasn’t been useless - it met its purpose and there are a lot of people who would have been unable to access medical care had they caught it because the NHS would have been overwhelmed. In other countries they have had to impose restrictions on who could receive help to cope with this.

People will get back to work, but of course they are scared of the real threat to themselves, they are scared of the threat they pose to other people if they should transmit it to the vulnerable. I can’t see how that could be considered as hysterical.

Is your point really that none of the lockdown measures should be in place because the virus would have been transmitted faster and the majority of people are fine? Are you also suggesting that we all go back to how we were to repair the economy and take the hit to our health because it’s low risk?

I think I’ve always picked up bad colds and sickness bugs from outside my house. Using that analogy is the only way that I can make my point really. I’ve always caught those things when people who carried them weren’t hygienic, breathed all over me by being too close in a queue, left the germs on items in shops, on door handles, on taps. So when society behaving typically is able to spread germs like that, of course Coronavirus will be spread amongst us in the same ways except it kill some of us.

I want to see the other side to this because I hate lockdown, I hate having worries about employment and money. I want it to be over (or to never have happened) but I can’t understand how it makes sense not to do what we have done, or why we are releasing it so soon.

Do you really think the government would go on national tv in front of the whole world and say the risk to young people is very small? Do you think the scientists, doctors and specialists on virus’s wouldn’t be shouting from the roof tops from all over the world if the data didn’t back this up? Do you think Europe would be risking opening schools if there was a big risk to children?

@AnnaNimmity

Thank you. I can’t make sense of all this. This is beyond nonsensical to me. I feel like I’m living in the twilight zone.

If one steps back and looks at what the government has imposed on us, it’s maddening. You’d think the Black Plaque or mass warfare was taking place. The government has enforced the greatest draconian measures ever on it’s population during peace time. What’s more scary is the majority aren’t questioning it!

This is the article: www.spectator.co.uk/article/this-is-not-a-natural-disaster-but-a-manmade-one

For those who do not want to read anymore mainstream fear-mongering:
lockdownsceptics.org/

"Wow, it’s amazing how many doctors and epidemiologists are on Mumsnet 🙄"

It's not, really. It's a site with a highly educated user base. You might not know any, but there are lots of doctors and epidemiologists out there and it's hardly surprising that they'd be here commenting on threads about covid. Your own social circle is not representative of MN!

I think lockdown was the least worst option. There would have been mental health implications and non Covid deaths as a result of letting the virus run through the population.

You got trapped in binary thinking, op. It wouldn't be one or the other. Negative economical impacts, mental health impacts and excess deaths would not have been avoided if we hadn't locked down.

Um OP, that's fine for you but I have a young family and elderly parents and I'm afraid we simply do not know enough about the virus to understand individual risk factors.

Yes we do. We know the risk to your children is pretty negligible even with this auto immune reaction. We know the risk to your elderly parents is much higher.

So protect your youngsters from long term damage.

And stay away from your elderly parents now (if you can) whilst the risks are high.

Many of us are in the same boat. You are not unique.

If only the media would show the rest of the news people would have a sense of perspective.

The situation in Israel
Mass unemployment already across the world
China has cut wages by up to 50%
Brexit talks
The EU wanting to offer a €1.3trillion covid rescue package but the German govt are objecting because this will mean higher tax rates in Germany to fund this

But all we get are sob stories and hysteria.

The thing is, we are a civilised society. The lockdown won’t stop deaths but it will stop us being in a position whereby ambulances don’t come at all to anything, hospitals turn people away and the bodies pile up in the streets - like the scenes in South America. It gives the people who get it a fighting chance and the play for time means maybe treatments will be found. If we did nothing and just let the virus flow, killing swathes of people there would be less keyworkers keeping things sensible and also affect the food production shortages and routine medication shortages, leading to dying of ordinarily controlled illness, stockpiling food and ultimately looting and public disorder.

Look at it like this : worst case scenario is predicted half a million deaths. So given the icu survival rate is about 50% that’s a million people who would need admission to intensive care at the same time. We don’t have that many icu beds. There would also be millions more who would need admissions to hospital but not icu. All at once. It is unimaginably awful.

Then there would be those in 14 day isolation...millions more just not in work.

Then think of all of your friends with asthma, diabetes etc, take away their medication because the people who produce, prescribe, courier and dispense the medication are isolation, in hospital or dead. Those people will die of asthma attacks and diabetic shock.

It’s not like measles which is fairly well controlled. It’s different.

I’m sick of people saying “we need to just live with it”. Is that seriously what you want?

”The peak of infection was TWO MONTHS AGO and we’re still in lockdown??? The fact that the infections peaked before lockdown (peak of deaths = 8th April, average infection to death = 22-23 days) show that the lockdown wasn’t necessary.

It seems the peak of infections was probably before lockdown. However, that peak didn’t fall of its own accord. 22 days before 8 April - the day of peak deaths - was 17 March, the day after Boris’ speech about advising people not to go to pubs and for the elderly to isolate. People started to socially distance in earnest from that point. We weren’t locked down, but there was a huge change in our collective behaviour. So may be lockdown wasn’t necessary in hindsight, but that’s not the same as saying we didn’t need to do anything as some are implying, or that we could have “taken it on the chin” and not suffered any more in terms of deaths than we have done.... The Swedish model may have worked here - which basically amounted to strong nudge to socially distance that Boris gave on 17 March - but they didn’t carry on as normal in the same way we didn’t; their economy is in a big recession too.

I think we need to try and look to get back to some sort of normality that recognises we all need to take a level of risk which recognises that some us are a greater risk but for many of us it’s extremely low ... that won’t mean going back to how it was before any time soon, but it does trying to make school opening work rather than insisting it has to be 100% guaranteed safe before sending your child back (because nothing is), and it means stopping being petrified of someone passing within 2m for a split second.

Most people dying from Covid are not the elderly but are in fact younger to middle-aged people.

Anyone who says this is a 'mild to moderate' illness is an absolute joke.

Even if, by some miracle, your symptoms are mild, you will have lasting lung damage that is permanent.

This is just not true. Either you are very scared beyond being able to think clearly or someone has badly misinformed you. I think the lockdown was the right thing to do, but there is no need to make stuff up in order to justify that.

"It is when you compare it to the catastrophic implications it creates.... folk not getting diagnosed with caber quick enough and the like...."

No it's still not. Because people with cancer don't give it to hundreds of other people.

And the vast majority of them will be absolutely fine. If you don’t catch cancer quick enough, the outcome won’t be good

At last, a thread that looks at this in a different way. I am staggered too as to what the world has done in reaction to this virus. Especially the UK with the militant unions destroying any ideas to manage this. What they really want is their ‘members’ to stay at home on full pay of course with cast iron guarantees that no one will get sick.

We didn’t behave like this during other pandemics and god help us if another one hits.

I don’t personally know anyone who has been tested bar my DH in a care home who was negative, anyone that has passed away. Know plenty who think they might have had it, about to have it. The worried well who in real life I try and avoid.

We need to learn to live with this virus. The media have done a shocking job in getting people to froth up over this. Don’t get me started on the schools and what is happening there and as for the poster who said as she was being forced to go back to work she would go and see her elderly parents who were shielding. Well that will show them!!!

@Incrediblytired but what’s the alternative to living with it? If we knew there would be a vaccine/treatment by September, I think most people would say, “yes, let’s lockdown till then”, but in the absence of that, we have to learn to live with the disease as it won’t be going anywhere. That doesn’t mean everyone here is advocating we all do what we want, but what I imagine most posters here are saying in us we need to put in measures which protect the most vulnerable while allowing the economy to get moving again.

Phew, I was starting to believe I was the only rational person left in the world before reading this thread.

@oralengineer (back on page 4) brilliant post! The media are responsible for this madness and that applies globally. Time for an époque change in the way the media are allowed to operate across the board.

Well done OP for saying what so many of us are thinking. People need to realise that this virus will pass. I'm not sure where all the positive psychology that folks usually follow has gone.

What a difference in mentality compared to the 1968 Global Pandemic... didn’t Woodstock take place around that time?

www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-crisis-lessons-1968-hong-kong-flu-pandemic/

“We were more resilient then, there were no helicopter parents, and we were brought up in an era when it wasn’t unknown to get chicken pox, measles, mumps, German measles, or scarlet fever. Polio had haunted people’s nightmares until a vaccine was developed in the mid-1950s. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s earliest childhood memory is of the day he checked out of the polio treatment center in Warm Springs, Ga.

During the Hong Kong flu, Americans rode buses less often, washed their hands, and practiced social distancing. But they went to work.”