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Covid

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I'm finding the reaction to covid utterly bizarre

999 replies

TheDailyCarbuncle · 15/05/2020 21:17

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.

OP posts:
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rawlikesushi · 15/05/2020 22:11

"A balance? How is it a 'balance' to condemn huge swathes of children to poverty so that some people don't get a mild-moderate virus?"

What do you think the recession would look like if the virus ran unchecked through the population?

randomer · 15/05/2020 22:11

Sweden is absolutley nothing like the UK, nothing at all.

TheDailyCarbuncle · 15/05/2020 22:11

@Oaktree I suggest you google because there is strong evidence that everything you said is incorrect. In fact it's almost 100% definite the 15% number for hospitalisations is completely wrong.

OP posts:
converseandjeans · 15/05/2020 22:11

I don't know what the right thing to do is. However deaths from measles which you have compared it to were 26 in the UK in 1980 - so not really comparable?

www.gov.uk/government/publications/measles-deaths-by-age-group-from-1980-to-2013-ons-data/measles-notifications-and-deaths-in-england-and-wales-1940-to-2013

Meruem · 15/05/2020 22:12

My great grandchildren will still be dealing with the effects of it

Really OP? And you talk of the lockdown being an over reaction! I think you’re doing some serious over reacting yourself there. It’s been a couple of months. Hardly something that your great grandchildren will be feeling the effects of.

GabriellaMontez · 15/05/2020 22:12

Totally agree

PinkyAndTheBrian · 15/05/2020 22:12

@TheDailyCarbuncle yes we have to live with it.

I would prefer to have a safety net of knowing how to treat it effectively, knowing that patients will be admitted to hospital in a timely manner, not when their lips are turning blue.

And to be honest had the government actually put some plans into action earlier and didn’t have a weird jingoistic attitude about the prospect of covid 19 hitting the country, we would be in a much better position right now, in terms of the economy and with the population’s health.
Obviously that’s too late now, but this country has been put into a position of having to live with it, because without a hell of a lot of organisation - which I don’t think the government are capable of - our options are mainly limited to winging it and survival of the fittest.

Walkaround · 15/05/2020 22:12

Funny how people who clearly think they are good at assessing risk are spouting about how human beings are bad at assessing risk. What form of alien life do we have posting on this thread? Funny also how they are simultaneously saying people are bad at assessing risk and any scientists and mathematicians who have assessed the risks differently from them are also getting it wrong. Anyone would think these alien lifeforms merely hold a different opinion.

Itsjustmee · 15/05/2020 22:13

I agree OP
The difference though from when you got measles and probably the same for myself Is the constant 24/7 news and social media & the internet
We didn’t have that back then and I would say thank fuck we didn’t .
Social media & the next internet can be great and most of the time it’s extremely useful .
I’ve used it to help people who need help during lockdown but it also fuels panic and terror for a lot of people as well.
Personally I’ve been out pretty much every day during lockdown . I’ve been doing shopping for family members and people from FB groups
I’ve paid attention to the “rules”and followed them within reason but also applied my own common sense as well

TheDailyCarbuncle · 15/05/2020 22:13

Why do people say that @randomer? Stockholm is a large, densely populated city, just like the cities of the UK. No exponential growth, no overwhelmed health system. A French journalist said everyone wants Sweden to seem different so that other countries don't have to admit that they've done the wrong thing. I think he's right.

OP posts:
Doryhunky · 15/05/2020 22:13

Yanbu

Cantata · 15/05/2020 22:13

There are some fantastic posts here.

I almost flounced from MN entirely last night (for the first time since about 2008) because I was so sick of reading about how brilliant the lockdown is, how we're all saving money, how we're loving having our children at home, etc, etc, etc - but now I have read some of these responses, I am glad I didn't.

I still have no job, no income, and no treatment of an on-going health problem which sometimes makes me vomit with pain. But these things are all more bearable if I don't also think I'm going mad for thinking exactly the same as the OP so eloquently expressed in her opening post.

maddiemookins16mum · 15/05/2020 22:14

I hear you Op BUT do you really think the Govt would be dishing out millions and millions of pounds, telling people to stay at home and paying millions of them to do so, if this wasn’t very, very serious.
There’s probably stuff none of us know about this.

VaTeLaverLesMains · 15/05/2020 22:14

OP are you suggesting no restrictions and just 'riding the wave' of the virus?

If so, how many do you think would die and is that acceptable to you.

Serious questions.

LivingThatLockdownLife · 15/05/2020 22:14

Agree with OP but there's no one I can say it to IRL as all have succumbed to the fear and froth.

Talking about not going back to school as classrooms not big enough to socially distance all the kids. Missing the point utterly.

Remmy123 · 15/05/2020 22:14

Totally agree OP.

rawlikesushi · 15/05/2020 22:15

"Members of the same expert community created our lockdown and Sweden's and they couldn't be more different."

Yes, because they are different countries with different cultures, populations and geography.

Seriously op, people like you spreading misinformation are actually quite dangerous.

There are lots of people on this thread who agree with you, but not based on anything other than a general feeling of unease, being bored of lockdown, an inaccurate understanding of virology and maths, a fear of losing their job.

Wanting it to be true doesn't mean it is.

TheDailyCarbuncle · 15/05/2020 22:15

@Meruem have you heard of the Great Depression? I guess you have because it was so devastating it's still spoken about over 90 years later. What we're facing will make the Great Depression look like a nice picnic.

You can't stop every industry in the world and expect things to just recover. That's not how it works. So many businesses will just never come back from it.

OP posts:
Maxandezra · 15/05/2020 22:15

attackwd as an NHS clinician working in mental health I can absolutely tell you that the mental health trauma of lockdown is already horrific and we will continue seeing the effects for a long time to come. I'm also fairly confident that the recession and chaos you mentioned are just a short step away.

MarieIVanArkleStinks · 15/05/2020 22:16

Even the UK government have admitted to surprise over just how easily terrified the UK has been. They in no way expected the level of compliance they received, and they made plans for 'lockdown' on the assumption that adherence to the guidelines would probably be a lot lower than it is.

This might have suited their purposes at an earlier stage, but it's coming back to bite them now questions are increasingly arising about getting the country back on its feet. Even worse news is that a malleable populous is good news for any government, but not good at all for the populous.

AlexaShutUp · 15/05/2020 22:16

Can I ask if those who think the lockdown is an overreaction know any young (below 60), healthy people who have died from Covid-19?

usernotknown · 15/05/2020 22:17

I've worked all my life and the last few years of that have been snatched away from me because of the media and Boris wanting to be the fucking hero.

I admit I'm more scared of my future with no job than catching the virus.

EarringsandLipstick · 15/05/2020 22:17

God, OP, I had to read your posts several times to make sure I was reading them correctly.

YANBU about the hysteria (that I only read about on MN, to be fair) about children returning to schools. Now, I'm in Ireland, and here, no-one is going back to school until September (primary school kids finish at the end of June anyway, secondary at the end of May) so there's less of an issue here.

YABVVU to talk about the response to Covid being disproportionate - particularly in light of the number of deaths in the UK, which are staggering per population, and can only be imagined if the lockdown measures were not imposed, although done belatedly.

No, lockdown can't 'stop' the virus. It manages a situation to allow capacity to be developed, testing to be enhanced, and solutions to be developed.

The thing that you are not realising is that it's utterly glib to say that it is unlikely to affect otherwise healthy individuals. To an extent, this is true - people with other co-morbidities, or from a particular demographic, are disproportionately affected.

But in other ways, you are SO wrong - someone can be very healthy in every other way, but be prone to chest infections, have asthma, have diabetes - in normal terms, these individuals are healthy, and yet Covid represents a huge risk to them.

A pregnant woman becomes at risk, even if otherwise healthy, because breathing capacity is reduced due to pregnancy, and I'm aware of several cases here (personal knowledge) where babies were delivered by section under general anaesthetic due to the mother's health severely deteriorating. In one of those cases, the mother was kept under and then intubated at that point, and remains very ill since.

Also, the whole issue with Covid is that very little is known about it. Again, I am aware of some individuals who were perfectly healthy and ended up in ICU with Covid. One man I heard interviewed was in his early 40s, extremely fit, ran marathons etc, and spent 21 days in ICU. Thankfully recovered but it was close. At the same time, there is wholescale testing in nursing homes here at the moment and one perplexing factor is that some very elderly, otherwise unwell patients are testing positive for Covid, and yet are absolutely fine (in that respect) and utterly asymptomatic, while the next patient presents totally differently.

This makes it nearly impossible to advise and manage the illness without very strict controls. Hence, lockdown.

There's no doubt that many of us have had Covid, and are unaware of it. Some of us may have had it (it's now thought) in late November / December, when GPs (in Ireland at least) reported very strange viral illnesses doing the rounds, flu-like that wiped people out for weeks, and there's a strong belief Covid may have been in Europe much sooner than when the first reports came from China in the New Year.

At one stage it was thought if we had it, we could be tested for antibodies, and then essentially would be 'safe' to be out, not infecting anyone else, or at risk of infection. The WHO has now rowed back on this and said it's not clear that contracting Covid once would make you immune to further infection.

So the point of lockdown was to control a desperate situation that modelling had shown was likely to run rampant throughout countries (and did - ref: Italy, Spain, pre-lockdown), and if you look at the way the deaths rose in both UK and Ireland, with restrictions in place, it's clear the situation would have been utterly horrendous without them. (ref: R rate)

Now that the situation has been controlled, the point is to manage our way of interacting to minimise recurrence and spread - it's not gone, and we can expect further surges (as has happened in countries that came out of lockdown sooner than we did e.g. South Korea). This isn't just about Covid - it's a completely different way of interacting and managing hygiene so that other viral pandemics can be controlled, too. All epidemiologists that I've seen commenting say that this was always expected, just when. Some expected it with SARS or swine flu, but largely those were confined to Asian countries and we were able to manage them in European countries when we had to deal with them. Covid is obeying any 'rules' as we know them - and that's why now, we are planning for an entirely different way of living.

It's quite shocking to read your posts, and I just wonder - have you read or studied any reliable sources in the last 2 months? Do you not have to address these issues as part of your daily life or work?

OutwardBound2016 · 15/05/2020 22:17

With you OP.

Bluntness100 · 15/05/2020 22:17

I think op what concerns me most is the government is not talking about it, this isn’t something that is a terrible disease for anyone under sixty five who is healthy.

People are refusing to go back to work. Folks refusing to send their kids to school, it’s all kinds of wrong. In terms of healthy people under 65 the risk is miniscule, likely a thousandth or a percentage point. Only 150 have died. Why is no one pointing it out?