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.

@SockYarn Was that based on the random swab tests? I think that’s extrapolating from a small study to population level so not Likely to be very accurate! It’s also the number of people who are testing positive at the moment - so won’t include people who have had it in the past or People getting false negative results.

@TheDailyCarbuncle, why do people here keep on bleating about Sweden's marvelous approach?

They are on track to wipe out their elderly population.

I love how all the data that says the danger is low are said to be 'not accurate' and then the model that predicted 500,000 deaths is still quoted when that had no accuracy at all (and wasn't intended to - it was a prediction, based on very little/no evidence). If you're not willing to believe the actual tests then don't hang on to the Imperial model either.

No they are not @Mathanxiety. They have had a high incidence of death in their elderly. The UK has also had a high incidence in the elderly. They are not on track to wipe out anyone, that's not how the virus works.

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

Agree OP.
Elderly people dying is sad but this is heartbreaking.

metro.co.uk/2020/05/15/level-student-found-dead-worrying-lockdown-effect-exam-results-12706535/

However, I am sure some would think that type of 'collateral damage' is justifiable. I would imagine 5 minutes spent with this young man's family they may think differently.

The peak happened before lockdown.

Evidence?

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

Society has never been "comfortable" with death. The human race or your children were at high risk from death from this you wouldn't feel so "comfortable" about it either.

Totally agree op. I'm nhs staff btw.

Can I also add that if you care about other people you should care a whole fucking lot about the children for whom school was their only respite from a horrific family situation. Because people are so terrified, those children are stuck at home for months on end with alcoholic, drug-addicted, sexually and physically abusive parents with zero contact with any other adults. School for them isn't just a nice option, it is vital. All those who reckon it's fine to keep children at home are full of shit when they say they care. They just care that they are ok, that's it.

The human race or your children were at high risk from death from this you wouldn't feel so "comfortable" about it either. That was meant to say the human race wouldn't have survived if society was comfortable with the idea of death. If you are feeling comfortable it is because you don't think you or your children are at high risk and you don't care that much about other people.

Reading these posts, who is "everyone" that people keep referring to? If you don't agree then don't follow the rules. People saying they aren't scared 👏 do you want a prize?

It's all mad, all of it I agree with that, but we are all in this together, being controlled and can't do a fucking thing about it unless we all break the rules.

This lockdown isn't because we will all die if we go outside , it's a control thing and we are all conforming.

Sounds like a conspiracy but sometimes I do wonder.

Can I also add that if you care about other people you should care a whole fucking lot about the children for whom school was their only respite from a horrific family situation.

It is possible to care about both you know..

We learn from history. That's why we're doing it differently to how things were done in the past.

Can you really not see that the number of deaths would have been so much higher without lockdown? You're ignorance and denial is laughable.

It is "only" 30k because of lockdown. It would have been so much worse.

Peak was before lockdown, or very shortly after it, showing that it wasn't necessary: theconversation.com/coronavirus-the-uk-could-be-over-the-peak-136757

TheDailyCarbunkle do we knows for sure that it was here in December? We were all ill over Christmas, with symptoms very similar to what are now associated with COVID-19. The interesting thing, though, was that our healthy 4 year old was the most ill and the only one to see a doctor. At the time, our GP said that lots of people were affected but luckily few needed to be hospitalised, and it was just a type of flu. A medical friend has now said that it might have COVID, but possibly a different form was doing the rounds.

I’d be interested to know if there was actual evidence that Covid-19 was here that early?

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?

When the number of extra deaths compared to this time last year from CV is less than the number of extra deaths not from CV, you will have a point. Until then, you don't. It's a numbers game.

@mrpumblechook I don’t think anyone said young people don’t get ill but the percentage is very low. Out of those 500, 300 people recovered. Out of the 200 that died 35 were healthy without any under lying health issues. If you are female you can cut your risk by 50%, i’ll take that risk. Thanks for the data.

I wouldn't have agreed with you at first, but the penny soon dropped.
I'm falling into mental illness. My children are withdrawn. My youngest is affected the worst. At the beginning it was all fun and games, and a novelty.
I'm worried for all the babies who have been into this and what the ramifications will be from not being socialised at a young age.

No one is at a high risk of death. All of us are at a slightly increased risk. Some are at a more significantly increased risk than others. No one should feel (as some people posting in AIBU have said) that they're definitely going to die, and this is like having a terminal illness, when they haven't even got the virus, and may never do so!

We all live all the time with the existence of deadly viruses. We all live all the time with some risk of death. But we know the risk is small and that living life is more important than attempting to avoid death at all costs. Especially since that's a futile exercise: no one avoids death.

We have done a sensible thing to avoid unnecessary deaths from an overwhelmed health service. We do want everyone who can be treated successfully to be able to access that treatment. But we can't avoid all risk. There is never going to be time when it is 'safe' to go out. There never has been and there never will be. So we do need to be taking slow, measured, careful (and occasionally, probably, reversable) steps back towards actually living our lives to the full.

children are stuck at home for months on end with alcoholic, drug-addicted, sexually and physically abusive parents with zero contact with any other adults. School for them isn't just a nice option, it is vital. All those who reckon it's fine to keep children at home are full of shit when they say they care.

These vulnerable children have been allowed to go to school throughout the lockdown.

That article bases its argument that peak infections occurred before lockdown on what Tim Harford said on More or Less. He later retracted it because he'd used the wrong measure - should be median time from infection to death, not mean.

Covid was in the UK in December. People carried on with life, totally unaware. Where was the utter devastation?

It wasn't there because, for some reason, it was only after the event that people went crazy. The "Diana-ification" of the NHS, the herd mentality of "we have to do as we're told, otherwise PEOPLE WILL DIE", etc, etc, etc.

I can't begin to understand it.

I think I had CV in late December. Sudden onset dry cough (no cough one minute, horrible dry cough the next). It lasted a few days then went away. Teenage DD had the same, but she had a temperature as well for a day or two.

Which doesn't mean that other people won't have a worse dose, or haven't had a worse dose - but I am completely baffled by the OTT response to it. Lockdown is infinitely more damaging.

Peak was before lockdown, or very shortly after it, showing that it wasn't necessary:

Lockdown stops the spread of infection and prevents the peak that otherwise would have happened, that's how lockdown works.

I sometimes feel that a test of numeracy and basic epidemiology should be a prerequisite for posting on CV threads.

@FFSFFSFFS
Tell me how it's not a cull.

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.
OP
So no answer about testing then. I suspected as much.

Essentially, you are prepared to take the risk of sending thousands of children back to school in order to save various sectors of the economy (that will ultimately be destroyed by Brexit anyway) with no idea of how widespread the virus is in the community.