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.

"And for people with limited common sense it is difficult to look at a complex problem space and choose a solution that aims to provide the least harm to the greatest number of people"

How does tanking the economy for everybody provide the least harm?

@Annamaria14 problem with an idea like that is only three regions (according to ONS) run a surplus in the U.K. London (by far the biggest), SE and East Anglia. Devon people can’t afford to look after Devon people.

@mrpumblechook so looking at the graph, for under 45 about 500 people have been admitted to hospital out of 17,749?

^So, as per your thinking, a 35 year old gets it, they're fine and have no symptoms so have no idea there even got it.
They trot off too work in a bank, an office, a care home. They don't know they've got it after all so why shouldn't they?
Unfortunately they pass it on, their colleagues have an undoagnosed lung disorder.
Unfortunately they pass it on, their colleague lives with elderly parents.
Unfortunately they pass it on, their colleague has a child that's just gone back to school with 14 other kids, a teacher and a TA.

It's seems this is what people forget.
If OP got it, a healthy person, not know and unknowingly give it others that aren't healthy, those people could end up seriously ill and dead. So? fuck the unhealthy ones that OP may come into contact with? Is that the solution?

A virus doesn't miraculously appear in towns, cities, care homes. It's taken there by carriers. So every single person that has died has caught it, often unknowingly, from someone else. That's why stay at home was to stop the spread.

You can't just say healthy people will be fine so fuck the unhealthy they come into contact with or are connected too.^

There are ways to protect the vulnerable without requiring people to stop their entire lives and tank the whole economy. Lockdown has not protected the vulnerable - the main spread of the virus in recent weeks has been in care homes and hospitals, where the most vulnerable people are. So that's a total failure.

Also, if you are so concerned about passing on a virus to someone, why are you not concerned about the effects of lockdown on that same person? Is it the case that as long as they don't get covid, everything else doesn't matter?

The 'I care about others' brigade only care about others when covid is involved. If the others are losing their jobs, or being abused, or dying from a lack of treatment for other illnesses or are seeing their mental health destroyed from lockdown, fuck them. They are just collateral damage, totally necessary casualties

LOL, after how many years of austerity and one Tory government voted in after another, as well as Brexit - the crap from the above paragraph has been going on for years.

DV isn't new. MH destroyed by the stress of austerity and joblessness and chronic health conditions and DV isn't new. Massive underfunding and systemic financial problems in the NHS (because taxes are Bad) isn't new and neither are the attendant delays in diagnosis and treatment, and other totally unnecessary casualties of England's insistence on blaming the poor for their own predicaments. Now, because the economy isn't working for the comfortably off any more, all of this is suddenly a problem?

@starfro

Very interesting stats - thank you.

Also, underlying conditions are not included in those figures, so if you’re under 40 without an underlying condition your risk is very low indeed!

I think part of the problem is that whereas these figures are very low for most of us, they are non-negligible for far significant people than, say, the flu. That Spanish study gives 1.1% mortality rate from Covid-19 (which is comparable to the 500,000 UK deaths forecast back in March if we’d let it rip), so more than 10 times more deadly than the flu in a very bad season.

So whereas, perhaps, 95% of us can go about our lives with very little threat, 5% can’t... and as we’ve seen from care homes, it’s not easy to keep it out even in a lockdown.

We need a middle way that doesn’t go to the extremes of “its deadly, we all need to lockdown like hermits until we have a vaccine” and “it’s only as bad as the flu - we should carry on as normal!”

Lockdown is so extreme that is has to be worth it. It has to be the only possible solution, with no other choices.

Sweden shows there are other choices. It is possible to both control the virus and keep the economy going, albeit at a reduced level.

What we have in the UK is people frightened to send their children to school.

OP at the end of the day it is open to anyone to get out there and join the herd. So go for it, lead the way. Not sure why you feel the need to drag people with you.

Jesus Christ @mathanxiety that's the coldest post I've seen in a long time.

Are you saying because all of those problems - DV, mental health issues etc - existed before covid, we shouldn't give a shit if the government's measures are making them significantly and measurably worse? Or am I picking you up wrong?

There are ways to protect the vulnerable without requiring people to stop their entire lives and tank the whole economy. Lockdown has not protected the vulnerable - the main spread of the virus in recent weeks has been in care homes and hospitals, where the most vulnerable people are. So that's a total failure.

Also, if you are so concerned about passing on a virus to someone, why are you not concerned about the effects of lockdown on that same person? Is it the case that as long as they don't get covid, everything else doesn't matter?

I asked this upthread but I didn't notice a response:
How is testing going in the UK, OP?

How could an easing of the lockdown be accomplished while still protecting the vulnerable?

If you are advocating an easing of lockdown without millions tested weekly then basically you are braying for a cull of the population.

@Annamaria14

Which might be what the people want. But I fear quite the opposite will happen.

The worldwide recession and obvious next push to cashless will open the door to new systems of currency such as bitcoin, and soon there will be talk of a centralised “world government” (in fact Gordon Brown has already mooted this.

Somehow I don’t think what the people want is going to be factored in much as we move into this “new world”. That’s why it’s terribly convenient that we’re all already obeying the rules that remove our choices and freedoms on this supposedly temporary basis.

It’s a test.

It isn't open @Porcupineinwaiting that's the problem. If it were open, I'd be happy with that. I'd be happy for people to sit at home in fear while I actually lived whatever days I have on earth.

You most certainly are picking me up wrong.

All the hand on heart, save the victims of DV by sending them back to work business is self serving codswallop. They will still come home to abuse. And nobody will care, just as before.

I do believe there will be s deep recession, but if anything the controlled supported lockdown is likely to make it less severe than it would have been without lockdown

No, no, no @feetfreckles. Have you lost your job as a direct result of lockdown? I have. And the reason I have lost mine is that other people have lost theirs. I work(ed) in a sector which was completely wiped out overnight as a result of lockdown. If it ever re-opens, social distancing will make it impossible. A lot of businesses will fold completely as they won't be able to afford to run at quarter-capacity.

If the lockdown hadn't been imposed on us, we would have carried on. Our takings would have been down because lots of people would have chosen to be cautious - but enough people would have carried on going about their business as normal for us all at least to break even.

This is replicated across countless sectors.

Waves to @LilacTree1!

If the others are losing their jobs, or being abused, or dying from a lack of treatment for other illnesses or are seeing their mental health destroyed from lockdown, fuck them. They are just collateral damage, totally necessary casualties

Yes, this @TheDailyCarbuncle

@Annamaria14 I am so sorry to read about your experience .

^I asked this upthread but I didn't notice a response:
How is testing going in the UK, OP?

How could an easing of the lockdown be accomplished while still protecting the vulnerable?

If you are advocating an easing of lockdown without millions tested weekly then basically you are braying for a cull of the population.^

That's laughable coming from someone who reckons children being stuck in abusive homes with no school to go to isn't a big deal.

It isn't the school children whose lives I'm worrying about if they return to school too early. They will be fine. It's the school staff and the children's family members at home who may be infected but will then go on to infect the wider community and yet more vulnerable people.

I'm sure that so many people don't understand the meaning of exponential and the importance of R rate.

The daily briefing yesterday had figures stating the percentage of people nationwide who have Covid19.

0.27%

So by mathematical logic, 99.77% of people DON'T HAVE IT. So the total fear that everyone is contaminated, everything is dangerous, bleach your veg because you know someone might have TOUCHED IT is so totally out of proportion.

Agree OP that we have totally lost our sense of reason and perspective over this.

Yeah, cos for people with limited empathy it is difficult to care for more than one group of people at the same time

Yeah i was thinking this feetfreckles

Can i not worry about people getting the virus and people who may lose their jobs, children at school, and the future of graduates and school leavers and the economy at the same time

So by mathematical logic, 99.77% of people DON'T HAVE IT.

Maths is crap. 99.73% of people don't have it.

"All the hand on heart, save the victims of DV by sending them back to work business is self serving codswallop. They will still come home to abuse. And nobody will care, just as before."

Are you aware of the role schools play in spotting abuse in children? Having children going out of the house every day to interact with adults who have a duty to care for them is the main key mechanism that helps to prevent deaths from abuse. No school, no prevention, those children are just left at home with their abusers. Do you think that's a positive outcome?

@mathanxiety

"braying for a cull of the population". Death rate for cover 19 is about .28%. Of whom the majority have a pre-existing condition.

So.......

@mrpumblechook so looking at the graph, for under 45 about 500 people have been admitted to hospital out of 17,749?

That means one in 35 people are under 45 which I don't think is negligible. Regardless, the graph shows that it's not just elderly people who are hospitalised.

I think society needs to become more comfortable with death. It's life and it happens.

If people didn't die then we wouldn't have the world as we know, it's a healthy part of life that things have to live and things have to die for the cycle to be able to continue.

My point being all this extreme effort for keeping people alive (not all but quite a lot at the end of their life in a lot of cases) seems bizarre to me.

Yes I'll get flamed for this post but I don't care. And I wouldn't think any differently if I was someone at the end (or near to the end) of my life either.

Someone mentioned the 84 yr that wouldn't listen and ended up dying from covid, right on I'd say. And yes I'd refuse the medical care if I chose to ignore the warnings too before anyone starts.

Surely Sweden are going into recession anyway, no? I mean people's behaviours in wanting to stay in, shop less, not go to eat out, keep their children home from school had already started changing before any type of (very weak compared with elsewhere) lockdown in the UK. Also, before lockdown, the advice was to self-isolate if you had symptoms, this caused such a huge amount of teachers to be off, schools had all but stopped operating normally anyway.

There isn't a world in which if we just all carried out and looked away from the deaths and tried not to think about it then the economy would have been ok.

I also don't take to the minimising of the death rates, which if you look at excess deaths (bearing in mind that deaths from accidents, cars, drinking, will be done) are much higher than the actual death rate. 60,000+ deaths in a six week period is exceptional, and not flu like at all.

Also, it's taken time to build up a profile of the virus. Now we know that it mainly affects older people, those with diabetes, black and ethnic minority groups, those who live in poverty, those who are obese, it seems some people have decided these groups are now actually quite expendable in the scheme of things.

It was unclear how it affected children, so on a precautionary principle it was sensible to act first and work out how it affected them later. Now we know they are really rarely affected, that changes my own mind about the risks of school/my teens going out and about (they are going out to parks socially distancing from one friend, that's 'normal' but obviously not restarting the economy!)

Also, lots of viruses have life-long effects which we cannot predict at this time- polio (which people were VERY scared about and stopped going swimming, gathering kids together) in the days before a vaccine, now my relative who had it has related health effects 50 years later. It's far from clear what these will be, even for those 'mildly' affected (.i.e. not hospitalized).

Ultimately, 60,000+ odd deaths in a very short time is not normal, and expecting everyone to just act normal, even in the absence of direction from government is unrealistic. This will become apparent when lockdown is lifted and everyone's desire to trudge singly around shopping centres in a one way system is actually quite low (I am loving online shopping so much).

It's far easier in hindsight to say- well, the models were wrong (actually I don't think the latest model is wrong, it predicts around 100,000 deaths by August). However, it would have been lunacy to have just carried on 'normally' - countries were starting to shut their borders to the UK precisely because they weren't perceived to be doing enough!

There isn't a magic world we can return to where there's no recession (there would have been one anyway, esp with Brexit) and everyone just behaves normally. I'm actually for lifting restrictions which have no basis in science- so outdoors meetings, all to the good. I agree we don't need to shield everyone, only older people or those in vulnerable groups. I would send a child back to school if I had a younger one, my teens would be going back if the school would have them (it won't!)

But much of the tone of this discussion is extremely dismissive of the quite tangible and real fears and actual deaths that have happened.

People are entirely fixated on the Imperial model. They should make a statement to say that that model has now shown not to be accurate, because people still believe there will be hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Covid was in the UK in December. People carried on with life, totally unaware. Where was the utter devastation? As soon as people were advised to take precautions, the spread went down. The peak happened before lockdown. This whole shitshow is not necessary.