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.

Please can we just acknowledge that arguing for a return to life as before but with social distancing in place is iniquitous to people who have no choice but to use public transport, older pupils and adults working in schools and care home workers? Once we've been honest enough to accept that they will be at greater risk than those who want to send their kids at home while working safely from home themselves (or in some cases, travelling privately to a less crowded workplace) we can nail our personal colours to the mast in articulating whether we believe that's ok.

And please don't anyone say 'the risk is vanishingly small'.

TheDailyCarbuncle

It's beautiful how you present your own opinion as scientific facts.

It doesn't make any of it true - it's just your opinion.

I am not old. I am not extremely vulnerable. I do have an increased risk, as do around 20% of the working aged population.

A quick calculation suggests that I have between a 1 in 50 to 1 in 100 chance of dying if I catch this virus

That's not the level of risk I am at all comfortable with when people say we will/should all get it.

Agree wholeheartedly op

"You may be very unlucky and be one of the very small number who gets seriously ill or dies, but the chances of that are tiny"

But who wants to take that chance?

I'm mid 50s and have asthma & am rightly or wrongly terrified of getting it.

What I don't understand is why people who are very very low risk from covid are willing to accept the effects of lockdown?

You are unlikely to be affected by the virus - you may not get it, but if you do you may have no symptoms, or you may feel ill for a while and then get better. So essentially it's an unpleasant inconvenience.

Instead of having that unpleasant inconvenience you have all of the current problems of lockdown and all the longterm effects of it. It's such a bizarre exchange - huge problems instead of small ones.

want to send their kids to school

I only know of two deaths but they were both prisoners in their 80s in the prison my husband works in (and to be honest society is a lot better off without those particular ones here). I know a few people who've had symptoms but not tested, and I live in a high risk area according to all those maps.

@Whattodowhattodooo that is absolutely shameful. It's not just the increased chance of having a negative outcome from cancer, but the mental toll of the unknown isn't to be underestimated. So sorry for your colleague, how people can be applauding the NHS for coping when it has been at a huge cost is shameful really.

@Annamaria14

The person who died was mid-late 40's, the ones who recovered the same.

I was raped two months ago, I contracted a very bad STI. I went to the doctor in Ireland at the time. He took swabs and a blood test, and told me that it would be be very slow to get results because of Coronavirus.

He had to guess what STI I had and give me antibiotics for what he guessed I had. They didnt work. I also was worrying for two months that I might have HIV.

I finaly got the results 2 and a half months later. I was suffering all that time.

How do they care about people's health, when they are treating everyone else's health dangerously and negligently during this time?

I guess some low risk people care about others?

What I don't understand is why people who are very very low risk from covid are willing to accept the effects of lockdown?

Perhaps because they care about people who aren't at "very very" low risk. Also because whilst they might not be at high risk of dying there are plenty of younger people in hospital suffering with Covid and this will probably have long-term effects on the health.

In actual fact, now that I think of it, I also know of a further three people 70+ who have died, but they were acquaintances rather than close friends, hence why they didn't occur to me immediately.

More 'people I know' than 'people I have a friendly relationship with' if you see what I mean.

@Mumlove5

Fully agree. Covid has ripped through my Nan's care home. 11 deaths including my nan and that was 3 weeks ago. Fuck knows how many people have died since. I spoke to her ward manager a couple of weeks ago and asked him whether they had lost anymore. He said no whilst nodding his wide eyed head. Christ knows.

Yes it’s beyond ridiculous that we should have listened to health experts who have studied for years and lead their field. Let’s just turn to the mumsnet experts instead. It’s also a huge generalisation around the massive fear. Not everyone is neurotic about it but are choosing to listen to the advice. Why is that so unbelievable. It’s not about one person’s risk of catching it, it’s about who they are then in contact with, it’s about the asymptomatic people spreading it around.

AnnaMaria

Yes, two of my mum's friends died, both mid 80s. I think it's fair to say their friends and family think the shutdown is lunacy as well. Luckily they died before lockdown so they had their children with them and didn't see all the distress going on now.

@Annamaria14 Yes, two people. One had many underlying health issues, was on borrowed time. The other I'm not sure about but she was in her 70's.

What I don't understand is why people who are very very low risk from covid are willing to accept the effects of lockdown?

Then we all need a bespoke risk assessment. I'm 43. My immune system was knocked about due to an illness (picked up at school) last year and my BMI, while not above 40, is too high (I'm working on it). There is still something causing an immune response in my body - I don't know what because ordinarily I would have just got on with it and now I can't see a GP.

What are my chances if I get a hefty dose from my crowded workplace OP? Can you confidently convince me I'll be fine and my DCs stand minimal risk of losing their mum?

@whattodo did you see the person on this thread that wrote:

"My granny died in a nursing home. Her death was put down as Covid. And she was never even tested for Covid"

I haven’t RTFT. I’ve come on to mention that I know comparatively young, healthy people who have been hospitalised with this virus and threads like this exasperate me because you don’t seem to be able to imagine what would have happened if we hadn’t locked down.

How do they care about people's health, when they are treating everyone else's health dangerously and negligently during this time?

I agree that the NHS needs to sort out other health conditions and not just focus on Covid. This is separate to whether lockdown should be lifted though, particularly as if infections increase it will be even harder to treat other conditions as hospitals may be swamped.

@feetfreckles can I ask how you calculated that risk for yourself? Because that is extraordinarily high. Are you in a highly vulnerable group?

I have committed the MN sin of not reading the whole thread, at over 600 posts, but..... I would not have wanted what happened in Spain or Italy(healthcare overwhelmed) and the risks of societal breakdown.

I am going to state very strongly here that the whole 'I care about others' thing is total and utter bullshit.

The people who are scared to go outside aren't scared because of the risk to others. Their scared of the risk to themselves.