At the garden centre....on home oxygen

[Clemmieandareallybigbunfight]

Went to buy plants. Lady in the queue looking frail and with husband carrying her home oxygen tank. Life is for living

I'm sure many would say she should stay at home but I applaud her.

I hope she has many happy visits to buy plants.

@milveycrohn
How do you know she was on oxygen because of Covid-19?
Nobody suggested she had Covid19 .

I'm with you OP. This is within her rights and she (presumably) has the capacity to make an informed choice based on her circumstances and public health guidance. None of that is anyone else's business.

I cannot stand all the moral hierarchy stuff going on right now either. So what if she infects and HCP? That's arbitrary because you're unlikely to know who infected a given HCP. Ventilator triage based on rule compliance? No freaking way am I living in a society dependant on that kind of social credit. It's downright dystopian.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that so much of society has a predisposition for hatred, discrimination and authoritarianism.

A lot of people assuming she has coronavirus in the first place. She might have another illness

I don't think anyone is assuming she has active Covid.
She most likely has COPD or emphysema.
She is unlikely to have aggressive treatment if IF, she developes Covid

She won’t deny anyone else a ventilator. 80% of them are sitting idle and at the height in April she would not have been admitted to hospital ‘in order to stop the NHS being overwhelmed’.

People are entitled to make their own decisions. We are all ordered to stay at home to protect the vulnerable, but some vulnerable would rather not spend the rest of their lives at home in isolation. That is their risk and they know that NHS triage would not let them in.

She may have life limiting illness and is following the guideline saying you may not want to shield in that instance.

Exactly. If she socially distances in the garden centre, she is no more likely to actually catch it than anyone else there. The govt says that those with a terminal condition do not have to shield. So who is anyone here to tell her differently?
And if she is terminally ill, she probably won't be taken to hospital, never mind ventilated, if she does get it.

shes now taking up a much needed bed I doubt it , in my experience of the NHS if you’ve got a co-morbidity they won’t touch you with a barge pole . This lady is as entitled to go out as anyone else ,good for her .

I'd be the lady on O2 in the queue.

Is she really more likely to transmit it than a healthy young person though? I can only prese that people who cry murder at anyone going anywhere are planning for the collapse of society. If everywhere stays shut for the next eighteen months there will be no society left. It's about choice. Be sensible, but unless we want to live in a police state, the shielded also have a choice.

does everyone just think the virus has gone now? because garden centres and KFC are open, it’s all done and dusted?

the virus is having a wonderful time out in the wild. it’s not avoiding garden centres so you can buy your summer bedding plants without risk.

there’s a very real danger that the idea of the government having ‘over-reacted’ with the initial lockdown is growing legs, and infections and deaths will increase again, and everyone will look surprised.

it hasn’t gone away. being brave on the internet doesn’t give you immunity. i’m genuinely baffled by some responses here - as if an old lady in a garden centre is some kind of rebel figurehead, like Che Guevara in a cardigan.

Fucking hell.

As someone (with a visible disability) and shielding, I am feeling shit enough about the shielding aspect and struggling with it so much already, plus the impact on my family's employment and education let alone my health/life. Then to read this thread...

We have been advised shielding is a guideline not a law and we are free to do it. I had no idea other people would judge me (so horribly) if I made my own decisions about my risk and benefits. Comments about being responsible for killing nurses with young children, being selfish, stupid, irresponsible. I know not everyone has agreed with that but those comments, fucking hell.

FWIW I'm definitely not going out at the moment as the reason for shielding is lungs (amongst other stuff). But in the future and the situation changes and the risk lessens or my condition changes I would have considered making different decisions and weighing up the quality of what life I have versus the shortness of it.

The thought that other people would be looking at me and thinking I was selfish and stupid genuinely hadn't occurred to me (perhaps I am stupid). Reading this thread was a mistake. I didn't actually think I could feel any worse about it all but now I do.

I don't want fucking pity by the way, I want those posters being so fucking judgy and horrible to realise other people are human beings and have lives equally important to yours. We aren't just there to be sacrificed and have shit lives for everyone else to live their lives as they want, because we are ill anyway.

As someone who is been virtually housebound for months at a time, more than once, due to a chronic condition, I can tell you it’s soul destroying and had a terrible effect on my mental health.
I can’t judge her for wanting to leave the house for a bit. As others have said, she wouldn’t be admitted to ICU if she did catch it, and likely wouldn’t even end up in hospital. As an adult it’s up to her to make her own decisions, the same as the rest of us.

Well let’s be honest , she was probably sitting in her house this time last Friday and watching all the VE Day celebrations on tv and maybe out in her estate where people were celebrating without no social distancing and a care in the world and thought Well I’m going to the garden centre as soon as it opens and I will probably be safer there than out in my street !

Because if she needs oxygen to go to the shop, if she catches it, I would bet my house on it that she would need ventilation and the like!!!!! Putting extra pressure on the NHS.

Surely the opposite.is true. She is much more likely not to be given a ventilator than someone else who isn't on home oxygen. So really the taking the ventilator from someone else who.might need it is nonsense . The op is visiting a garden centre too,.so I can't see how either one of them is more or less likely to catch covid. Yest the lady on oxygen is likely to get more I'll if she does but she is probably much less likely to get a ventilator and be subject to the procedures that mean a nurse is more likely to catch it from her. In fact the op is just as likely to catch it and possibly pass it on if unaware she is ill.

Noone in the garden centre is doing Ng anything wrong, noone at all..

here's the guideline:

Shielding is for your personal protection. It’s your choice to decide whether to follow these measures.
People who have been given a prognosis of less than 6 months to live, and some others in special circumstances, could decide not to undertake shielding. This will be a deeply personal decision you may want to discuss with family or others that are close to you. You should phone your GP or specialist to discuss this as well.

Can people really write stuff like this and not realise what a heartless cunt they make themselves sound like?

"The joke in this is that she’s out clearly using up resources whilst the rest of us are expected to lose out jobs, homes, livelihoods etc to prevent people like this catching it......"

People like this

Go fuck yourself

So she gets Covid-19 and has to be admitted to hospital with complications due to her health issues.

Someone who's frail enough to be on home oxygen isn't going to hospital when they get COVID

It's her risk to take. Unlike a 20 year going about doing as they please, she is not going to pass it on to anyone who will do worse than her. So there's no moral conundrum, just her own decision.

Lol petitemuffin, all the other people at the garden centre are much more likely to be spreading the virus than one old duck who has probably only been out once in seven weeks. the op and everyone else there are more likely to be nurse killers than she is...

You should be ashamed of yourself @PetiteMuffin your attitude is obscene.

For clarification - they opened garden centres because Tory supporters go to garden centres.
Do they check your political persuasion before you’re allowed in garden centres now? Do all torys have to like garden centres? Green Party like tend to like well, green things. Are they not allowed in garden centres?

If you live in Tower Hamlets or Salford (for example) it does not make a lot of difference to you. However if you live in Chipping Norton or some other delightful shire town then it might well make a difference to you as you will likely have a nice house and a garden that needs plants and be very grateful to Mr Johnson.
You know that my relatives just outside of Salford are an equal drive from a garden centre than I am in my nice shire town? Actually, the garden centre near my family is a really, nice big garden centre with a lot going on - cafe, pet store, craft section. My local garden centre is a cracked concrete yard with a small selection of plants and no cafe. Also, hate to burst your bubble but just because you have a yard or balcony - it doesn’t mean you can’t have plants (or enjoy buying other things from garden centres). My grandad has a yard that is full of planters and plants. I’ve got a large garden that is filled with nettles. I know of which of the two of us are more likely to garden. The only thing I buy from garden centres is usually gifts or Christmas decorations. By the way, my grandad worked as a labourer for his entire life, he’s son the of a shop keeper. He has voted labour in the past but he will know only vote for the independent.

Are you really applauding her, or applying a Daily Mail style faux concern to start a goady thread?

If the latter, well done.

This sort of bullshit will be exactly why the govt is so cagey about any BAME implications.

The usual suspects will simply use their "concern" to have a go at a perceived more vulnerable person. "I saw a BAME person in line at the garden centre today. They should have been home! What if they catch it and infect an NHS worker! Or take up a bed! I'm going to go and have a word!"

In the meantime, there are single mothers at the supermarket and the disabled at a garden centre to focus on.

A lot of bored busybodies active at the moment and seeking out targets.

A friend of mine's dad has terminal cancer with about three months to live. He's staying at home shielding and not seeing anyone. If I were him I'd go to the garden centre and see my family.

*Sorryyou
*
Are you on the shielding threads? Plenty people on there who care. I'm shielding and I feel we will be blamed for this whole shitshow.

We aren't just there to be sacrificed and have shit lives for everyone else to live their lives as they want, because we are ill anyway.

@Sorryoo and the others in a similar position, I'm really sorry that you're having to read such horrible posts on this thread.

The fact that people are calling people like this person selfish, while they don't have to be completely incarcerated in their own homes for months on end, is really unkind.