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.

We are not such wallflower to start suffering mental illness due to not being able to go to the office or pub!

It's more the lack of income for the foreseeable future that's doing it for me.

@TheDailyCarbuncle

Thank you for the kind words - I am fortunate to have my DP and my adult son and his GF around me as we live en famille in a shared house setting - we also have a vulnerable housemate and although I have been somewhat reclusive their company and support is really helping me keep afloat, and having my son close who was very close to his Nana is wonderful as we have that shared bond and history.

Your outline does sound sensible - I think the government and experts probably think this is what they have actually done though.

Do you think mass testing would help inform people of the actual risks, plus robust tracking and tracing at this stage?

Back at the start, a couple of weeks before lockdown I was incensed to realise that only people being admitted to hospital were being tested - a friend with what might have been a chest infection or might have been the virus was sent away from a hospital visit without a test despite being very symptomatic to self isolate. Her ex DP had been travelling and spent alot of time with their children after - her preteen DD had mild symptoms. Her current DP has Type 1 Diabetes so very vulnerable. It was awful for them all. Fortunately she has recovered but her MH took a battering. There are many such cases reported countrywide.

Do you think the government has either intentionally or inadvertently created its own monster by mis-steps at the beginning? I really thought, as it became clear that Italy and China were hotspots in the early stages, that robust testing would be the key to avoiding lockdown - I remember feeling aghast when mass gatherings were deemed to be acceptable even when klaxons were sounding about the spread. How do we unpick the truth about the risks when we don't have a clear breakdown of who has / has had the virus, how many are asymptomatic, for how many with underlying conditions was this the last straw so to speak? Figures are coming from many different sources - I think my first step if I was in charge would be to test every man woman and child on a fairly regular basis - say every 8 weeks - to get some sort of figures that truly reflect the spread and distribution of the virus. And then those who are asymptomatic should be further studied to determine why their physiology has prevented them becoming actively sick. I know the argument has been made that this would be unviable due to economic and manpower limitations, but maybe those NHS workers not swamped by the virus and not as busy due to the reduction in services could go house to house and carry this out? Adequate PPE should be provided of course, but the results of the exercise could reassure people that the virus isn't lurking in every house.

Or it could start with routine testing as people go back to work. The one thing I have never managed to understand is the cavalier attitude to testing.

One of the things that really frustrates me is that many of the people who are adamant that lockdown is vital will be the same people who will be complaining next year that the government is doing nothing about unemployment, a destroyed economy, a broken NHS and terrible education standards. The government won't be able to do anything because they'll have spent billions on keeping healthy people at home and preventing them from working. The sheer lunacy of that is hard to get my head around.

@RaspberryToupee

Very well expressed.

It seems, from the little I've read, that many older and vulnerable people are reacting like your Grandma and I don't blame them.

On the other hand, many others of that age are 'What will be, will be' and want to get on with their lives whilst they still can.

Have you not gone to anti lockdown parade OP?
Let them all know your thoughts via a megaphone?

Looks like there was a few organised round the country.

Looks like there was a few organised round the country.

Yup, by the same scum that organised the Britain First marches.

OP, what modelling do you think we should be looking at?

It must be wonderful to have the absolute absolute absolute certainty of conviction the OP has - no room for nuance.

Modelling that isn't built around guesswork, but is based on actual data.

For example, testing in New York indicated that over 2 million people could have been infected with covid over the last few months without them even realising. That is a huge number which indicates that a very high number of people have mild or no symptoms. It also indicates that the death rate is well below 1%.

There is evidence that covid was in the UK in mid December 2019. So it was spreading for 3 months without any controls or any awareness. How many people were infected during that period without knowing? How many died? Without testing, it's impossible to say. In other countries they've actually exhumed bodies to trace infections back.

Sweden is a living model of how the virus can be controlled without preventing people from working and without locking people away from their own families. That surely is the best example of how to deal with it.

Even just proper testing would be an improvement, both of current and past infections. That would give a good picture of how the virus has really moved through the population and how many people were actually infected vs how many died. Then real decisions can be made based on real data, not guesswork.

@Aridane, if you can explain the nuance to me I'll happily consider it.

The facts in this situation are that this is a novel virus - everything about it is a challenge: creating a vaccine, treatment, knowledge about mode of spread and effective methods to curb this. Everyone is groping in the dark, and, having seen what happened in Italy and Spain whose health services were at breaking point, there is no alternative but to err on the side of caution.

Doing nothing would have overwhelmed the health service and resulted in more deaths; doing something will result in economic deficits for some time to come. Which to choose? But, in making that choice, people should not minimise the seriousness of this virus.

I was beyond puzzled as to why we did not simply close our borders when it became clear how bad things were when the first cases appeared in Europe. But our bed has been made for us, and lying in it demands drastic measures. No-one likes any of it, but simply dismissing the seriousness of the is virus gets us nowhere.

The "contagion of fear" that OP refers to is a strange expression and a media soundbite. A virus that kills in its thousands and that we know so little about - what is not to be scared about? Particularly for those who are themselves vulnerable or who have vulnerable family members. Fear is a realistic response in the situation in which we find ourselves.

My OH has just died; as a medical scientist he predicted all of this.

That surely is the best example of how to deal with it

You're right. Absolutely.
All the UK needed to do was completely change out society to a Swedish style population density and way of life.
It's so obvious now.. why didn't the government think of doing that?

How many would e have had to kill to get our society and population down to Swedish density numbers? Is it 50milion or so?
We'd need a bit of land too, I think they're most double our size?...

So kill 50million and double our landmass and then we'll be just dandy....

Get on it BoJo...

I couldn't agree more with you OP. The mind truly boggles.

@Whatsthis1515 - I've just caught up on this thread and what you said reminded me of my school whatsapp group where a couple of people tried to start a debate and thankfully no-one replied because they know they will be slaughtered whatever they say. Whether you send your children to school should be a private decision which should be made freely without fear of judgement. I fully expect, if my kids' school does reopen, a socially distanced protest with people waving placards outside claiming that we are teacher murderers etc.

On a completely separate point I feel sickened reading the numbers of people and especially children in the world who die from TB and malaria. We never talk about this in the West as it largely affects poor countries with no resources.

www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis

www.who.int/malaria/en/

Mischance I'm sorry for your loss
I agree that OP is using media soundbites that don't withstand scrutiny. They also seem very invested in pushing people to ignore lockdown whilst they (OP) ignore all the studies and research concerning viral load and contagion rates compiled by globally respected experts.
It's interesting that certain factions pushing very specific messaging don't actually understand psychology or communications. People aren't going to rush to embrace a pandemic because some random on the internet said they were 'bizarre' or buying into 'contagion'. When you rely on niches and nudges for your influence, you're left floundering when faced with a pandemic.

I do agree in principle but the problem is that even 1% of a lot of people is still a lot. If 50 million people get it and 1% die that’s still half a million people.

Modelling that isn't built around guesswork, but is based on actual data.

Some have to made before we have the amount of data we would like though. Do you have any links to actual modelling you would suggest studying? I am not goading, I would genuinely like to look at more studies.

I think Sweden is an interesting case, we should be looking at all other countries to see their results, as we are. I don't know enough about Sweden to comment, but from what I have seen their raw materials in terms of population, attitudes, exposure etc are very different to the UK. And their economy has also taken a significant hit. We may be able to learn from some of the things that happen there, but applying their approach here would probably have had very different results. One size does not fit all. A major issue for the UK is that our outbreak got too big before action was taken.

Mischance I am so sorry for your loss

"You're right. Absolutely.
All the UK needed to do was completely change out society to a Swedish style population density and way of life.
It's so obvious now.. why didn't the government think of doing that?

How many would e have had to kill to get our society and population down to Swedish density numbers? Is it 50milion or so?
We'd need a bit of land too, I think they're most double our size?...

So kill 50million and double our landmass and then we'll be just dandy....

Get on it BoJo..."

Why are people sucked in by this nonsense. The 'Sweden is different' is total bunkum used to appease idiots who can't seem to understand that Stockholm is a densely populated city, just like the cities of the UK. The number of people makes no difference, it's how close they are to each other and how they live their lives. And guess what, Swedes go to restaurants and cafes and pubs just like the rest of the world.

The model that the UK used predicted, based on Sweden's actual population and density, that they would have hundreds of thousands of deaths by this point. They don't. Because the model is wrong.

Sweden is not outer space. It's an ordinary European country. They don't have weirdly special conditions that mean they can manage to wash their hands and observe sensible social distancing in a way that others can't.

We never talk about this in the West as it largely affects poor countries with no resources
Actually people who genuinely care about this talk about it all the time. As someone who worked in this field, there is a very grim irony in watching people who have never cared about malaria or HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa suddenly thinking they can throw it into a post to justify why they've moved from ignoring malaria and HIV/AIDS to ignoring the genuine risk posed by coronavirus.
I would love to see the Venn diagram of people who voted Tory, people who pushed for the government to cut the aid budget, people who pushed for the government to decimate DFID and people now pretending they suddenly care about global health issues. Your opportunism makes me sick.

What are you fighting against OP?
Every suggestion you've made are ones that are being considered.
Every piece of data you've presented has been hard won, from a baseline of zero knowledge.

But the one thing you cant do is change the nature of a viral pandemic. The one thing that you can know, before you know anything else, is that keeping separate breaks the chain of infection.

After that, it is a numbers game. Model these scenarios.
Let the virus rip through the population. Everyone sick at the same time say 20% seriously, say 3% potentially fatally. How would that impact the economy, businesses large and small, education? What about routine screening then? What about people's mental health in a bodies in the street scenario, if family members died unneccessarily at home because there was no possibility of medical help.
If it was the flu, there would be more precise predictions. Doctors know how the flu pans out in the human body, how to treat it, who is most affected, what the long term repercussions are; they know how it pans out in the community. Here, there is oceans of new data being generated every day. That has to sifted through to separate the noise from the signal.

The measures are definitely a blunt instrument, but you would hope that now once they are being lifted, they will be sharper and more targeted because they know more now.

Some people seem to think theres some way of managing an epidemic in which no damage is done, economic, social psychological as well as the obvious lives lost or blighted.

That's just childish thinking.

I work in an area where models are relevant and I am generally anti models for very good and complicated reasons that I could explain but may be going off topic. Basically I've worked in so many situations where models have 'predicted' things that turn out to be entirely wrong that I wonder what the point of them is. I know with the Imperial model the argument was that something was better than nothing but at this point it's actually caused a lot more harm than good IMO - people are so fixated on that fucking model that they can't see what's actually right in front of them.

@7Days I'm fighting against a campaign of fear that makes people think that if a person walks past them at 1 metre they are in dire danger, that makes people refuse to send their children to school and be afraid of seeing their own healthy siblings.

If there is a model to go on the Oxford model is an interesting one - there is a discussion here about the two models and how they compare:
theconversation.com/coronavirus-weve-had-imperial-oxford-and-many-more-models-but-none-can-have-all-the-answers-135137