To those who think it's over

[user1497207191]

The Weston Super Mare hospital has announced this morning that it's closed it's A&E due to an increase in the number of Covid patients the hospital is currently treating.

This highlights why "tourist" hotspots have been trying to persuade people from away not to visit them.

Also highlights that there are still plenty of Covid cases around and it's still spreading.

This is why the lockdown needs to carry on, with very slight relaxations over a long time period. Those who think it's all over and we can get back to normal are deluded.

It will never be over. Life has to go on at some point.

Two weeks after the government's bank holiday weekend of chaos - where newspapers were briefed that lockdown was easing, and the messaging was changed from stay home to stay alert.

Entirely unpredictable.

I feel so sorry for the people having heart attacks and strokes in WSM who have to be taken to further away hospitals. Lots of lives will be affected by this - not just those contracting Covid-19.

For those that think we can stay locked down forever until the virus has disappeared are deluded!

How long do you think the lockdown can go on for? How long do you think the economy (which we all depend on, we all need to earn money to live) can survive with so many people out of action? This can't continue indefinitely. We are going to have to face the risks and try and rebuild life. I say that as someone very at risk.

Lockdown cannot carry on. It's unsustainable.

I think that it was madness to have lifted restrictions before test/track/trace was up and running properly

But the genie is out of the bottle now and we’re going to have to live through any consequences

Even when lockdown is over this virus will still be about! There's no escaping it! Whether we like it or not 🙄😑

That's not to say that we can just "go back to normal" but we need to create a new normal. Children need to be back at school and people need to be back at work. We can't pay people to stay at home forever.

This is why the lockdown needs to carry on, with very slight relaxations over a long time period. Those who think it's all over and we can get back to normal are deluded.

I would say that people who believe that a country of nearly 70 million people can be put under lockdown indefinitely are the deluded ones.

I don't think anyone thinks it's 'all over' or that we can get back to normal right away. But lockdown is not sustainable, nor was it ever meant to be. A surge in one small hospital is not reason for indefinite lockdown, however much some here would relish it. Things like that are to be expected, and will be seen regularly over the coming months, just as they have been seen in countries which relaxed their lockdowns weeks ago.

Who do you think is going to pay for the NHS to operate if nobody is working or paying taxes for months on end?

The measures at the moment are buying time for a vaccine or effective treatment. Whilst "only" 1% of people die (mostly the elderly) with good hospital care, about 20% need that care in hospital - and it is long and complicated. So until we have vaccine/treatment our hospitals easily become overwhelmed, and then they're not available to every child who breaks a bone, man having a heart attack, woman in labour.

But, of course, neither can the whole world stay on strict lockdown for months.

Personally I think it's clear that a localised, risk based approach is necessary. Where there is a local outbreak that causes an overwhelmed hospital, there should be a strict lockdown for a few weeks. No visitors in or out of that area for non-essential visits, everyone at home as much as possible. But where hospitals have plenty of capacity there should be much more loosening of the regulations - especially for the younger generations who typically are least at risk personally and have the most to lose from lockdown.

There were always going to be clusters in places where we saw a rise. It doesn't have much meaning for the wider country as a whole. Most cases are now in hospitals and care homes. Most countries coming out of lockdown as a whole are not seeing more than isolated pockets of outbreaks - in fact cases are continuing to fall as the weeks go by. So it's not deluded to think of life moving forward.

I think there is a balance, we couldn't go on as it was for long, but people can still go out and just behave sensibly.

We can all pull out stories that suit our narrative. One Oxford scientist has come out to say the vaccine trial is under serious threat because cases in the U.K. are declining so fast.

The fact is this is a virus which will be around in varying numbers for some time and we have to learn to accept and manage the risk.

You want to stay locked up forever, then you may choose to do that.

about 20% need that care in hospital - and it is long and complicated

I don't even think it's that bleak, although I agree with all of the rest of your post. We now know a very large percentage of cases are actually asymptomatic - maybe up to 80%. So it's only around 20% of symptomatic cases that need hospital care luckily.

It if they were tourists, and they contracted it some time ago, surely they would have gone home?

There’s nothing to suggest that this outbreak was caused by a tourist. The word ‘tourist’ will be synonymous with ‘plague vector’ if we’re not careful.

Weston supermare hospital may not even exist in the future if we lock down for a Further substantial amount of time. People need to work to even make the NHS and hospitals as we know it function!

www.thewestonmercury.co.uk/news/outbreak-of-coronavirus-at-weston-general-hospital-1-6669079

I don't want anyone to stay locked up for ever but neither do I want to go back to normal and just accept the risk, not when there is a perfectly viable solution called test trace and isolate that other countries got in place either at the very start, so avoiding lockdown, or got in place before any lifting of lockdown

Why is this government so incapable? Is the british public really less strong and sensible than any other nation save perhaps the USA?

It is a bit unclear from that where the outbreak arose within the hospital or just from new admissions, or a combination of the two. It seems it is closing A&E to protect patients coming in from being infected within the hospital.

The "new normal" needs to be an effective tracing system so that localised outbreaks can be contained. The infrastructure is not there yet, hopefully it will be soon, although we need some more competent leadership on this. "Living with the virus" can't mean go back to your normal life and let the virus run freely. That will just put us back to square one

Weston centre is a deprived area with a life expectancy of only 67

www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/local-news/deprived-town-centre-life-expectancy-2336972

rated as being in amongst the two per cent of most deprived areas in the UK.

I can't imagine that Weston super mare hospital is very big so I wouldn't have thought it's a huge number of cases.

Who thinks it's over? We can't stay locked down for ever though. There'll be no hospitals at all if we don't start making money again one day.

It will never be over. Life has to go on at some point.

Well, we can't carry on with hospitals shutting down at the drop of a hat when cases rise, which they inevitably will if we ease lockdown too quickly. They've barely started getting back towards normal as it is, shutting them down again will continue to kill and harm people without covid.