People are becoming far too relaxed.

[PecorinoPear]

I have been going to the supermarket once a week for food and petrol since this began.

I have noticed that people are becoming too relaxed. Whole families shopping together, no social distancing because they are incorrectly wearing a mask. Children wearing masks, if parents are so worried why don't they leave them at home?

Morrisons aren't bothering with a queue anymore, so there is no limit to how many people are in the store.

[BlueRaincoat1]

@RoxyTheProssie
Is it though? What about my risk of dying of one of those things vs risk of dying of coronavirus within the next two years?

[EarlGreywithLemon]

@ListeningQuietly

lljkk
There are stable vaccines for coronavirus diseases in animals.
NOPE
they need to be readministered EVERY YEAR

not like a lifetime jab eg smallpox or measles

Even assuming you are right, it can then be administered every year. So what?

[Somewhereinthesky]

Roxy is the one who said she would kiss 20 stranger rather than reading a comment made by dickheads, although she says she has underlying condition.

[EarlGreywithLemon]

This ones for the “‘tis but a scratch” brigade
www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/52760992

In a nutshell:

“ It’s not just the lungs being affected” says Hugh Montgomery, "it's the kidneys, the heart, the liver. We've also seen severely inflamed muscle which is doing a lot of damage." More than 2,000 Covid patients admitted to intensive care have suffered kidney failure.
In a growing number of patients, the brain has also become a serious cause for concern among senior doctors who've been exchanging information on a daily basis for weeks. "We now know that large numbers of patients are having significant inflammation of the brain," observes Hugh Montgomery.

Just the flu then.

[EarlGreywithLemon]

this one’s*

[Nonnymum]

Every single person that's now dead was given this virus by someone else. Every single mum, dad, brother, aunt, grandma, child that is buried right now was given this virus by someone.
I agree the scientists were very cautious today. They said the number if people getting infecting every day is. It low, its around 50 thousand a week and the R level is almost 1, if it goes over 1 it will start to get out of control again. It is still important to abide by the advise.

[Eyewhisker]

Every person that does of every illness was important to someone. Unfortunately one of the only certainties in life is that we will all die of something. For the under 45s there are no excess deaths compared to a normal year. There are many excess deaths in the elderly, particularly the over 85s. That is sad, and a reason for them to be shielded, but not for an indefinite lockdown that deprives their grandchildren of education, jobs, and the chance of making a life for themselves.

[Somewhereinthesky]

I don't know. I normally get on with my life, don't really care about what others do. Of course there are danger everywhere. But some how this seems more scarier than my dc being hit by a car.
I think people should get on with their life. That's life. But if some people seems to think one person dying is just simple statistic, it makes me want to cry.

[RoxyTheProssie]

Why is this more scary than driving and the risk of dying, instantly, in a car crash? Every time you get behind the wheel, do you worry you will die?

[AlaskaThunderfuckHiiiiiiiii]

@eyewhisker agree. There have always been illnesses that were more deadly to the elderly, it was ever thus. Not too long ago pneumonia was known as the old mans friend but we can mostly treat this now with good outcomes. I think we have become too accustomed to keeping people alive at all costs regardless of their health or quality of life. I do understand that there have been deaths of younger people and people with seemingly no underlying conditions (of course we will never really know) but since time began, with new virus, there will always be some younger deaths but these are tiny in comparison to the elderly

[AlaskaThunderfuckHiiiiiiiii]

@RoxyTheProssie exactly. I’ve been a serious car accident, didn’t stop me driving. I’ve also had serious pneumonia which put me in HDU doesn’t stop me going out every winter etc and Infact I’ve never been particularly worried about catching this and I’m in patient facing community nursing

[ListeningQuietly]

lljkk
Annual vaccines are a very very different situation than
vaccinate and move on

the problems with the MMR anti vaxxers will escalate exponentially
the annual vaccine may not match the disease that year (as in 2014/15)

People are not cats
they cannot be dragged in for their annual distemper boosters

better to learn to live with it than pretend it will go away

[Somewhereinthesky]

Well, it's not logical, when you are worried about your child, Roxy. My child spent all his birthdays in hospital for first 4 years of his life. He had about 80% attendance until he was upper primary mainly to do with catching cold and ending up in hospital. He is stronger now, but yeah, I do worry that I feel sick that if he gets it, he may die.

[effingterrified]

I wonder who would benefit from trying to persuade us all that it's no worse than the flu or than the risk of a car crash.

I must have missed the news that deaths from car crash have doubled the mortality rate in a month or that the mortality rate from flu has suddenly increased by over 1000%.

Anyone who thinks this is no worse than the flu or than the risk of driving your car normally is either:

A) an idiot
B) lying
C) being paid to say that by a foreign government
D) a mixture of the above.

I won't attempt to guess which category the above posters fall into.

[Waxonwaxoff0]

@effingterrified yes but it is age dependent. Coronavirus as a whole vastly affects the elderly more. So for young people the likelihood of a car crash is probably higher. Going by age range deaths, my DS has a higher probability of being struck by lightning than dying from coronavirus.

I wish I was getting paid to say that as I might be looking at redundancy soon. The money would help.

[nether]

There are however over 2milliion people inthe 'shield' group, which is not defined by age, nor by having a terminal diagnosis.

It's more than the population of NI, and far too many people of all ages to condemn to a life of isolation. Especially as things like cancer diagnoses won't be going away, and even if you come out of the other end cancer free, just think how much worse it would be if society was set up such that the most vulnerable had to live perpetually in isolation, and from the moment of diagnosis you had to isolate ad get through a year of treatment with no hugs

[Derbygerbil]

@Waxonwaxoff0

Yes, Covid-19 is very age dependent and the risk is very low for most people, but that misses the point.

With a death rate of about 10 times more than the flu, far more people are at significant risk.... so even if you’re in a very low risk group, the chances are you’ll have close family and friends that aren’t, and even if you’re very likely to be fine, you’ll be worried about getting infected and passing it to them and effectively playing Russian Roulette with their life.

[DomDoesWotHeWants]

Pretty sure Bozo and chums are sneaking in Dom's herd immunity idea and to hell with the vulnerable.

[larrygrylls]

There is so much wilful ignorance on this thread; it is shocking.

A disease, by definition, propagates exponentially. If it didn’t, it would never go beyond a few cases from time to time.

Diseases die down when herd immunity is attained. Although it is arguable that we have achieved this in certain sectors of the population, in certain places, we are miles away from it at population level. The central estimate are we are 10-15% of the way to herd immunity, which, for the mathematically ignorant (of whom there are clearly many on this thread), means 85-90% left to go, or about 6-9 times the cases and maybe another 200,000 deaths.

The NHS completely failed to deal with the first peak, despite all the clapping (not the fault of the doctors and nurses but of an underprovisioned and poorly managed service). You could not see a medical practitioner unless you were actually turning blue! Many, many people died at home without treatment and cancer patients with decent prognoses are now condemned to death. So, let’s not kid ourselves here! The main triumph of the NHS was PR. Most still believed it was here for them, even if they weren’t Tory grandees, very few panicked.

Most of Europe did so much better than us because they locked down properly and actually enforced it. With a few hundred new cases daily and efficient track and trace in place, they can afford to get back to normal life. We have 2,000 cases still and track and trace untested.

Now Boris is forced into releasing the lockdown prematurely due to Cummings, hoping that the nice weather and a degree of herd immunity will buy him a few weeks of triumph. It is a very high risk gamble.

We used to be known as the ‘sick man of Europe’ due to our poor economy in the 1970s. We are about to achieve this status far more literally, becoming the ‘infected zone’ which other Europeans will avoid.

Spun and epidemics are a very bad mix.

[lljkk]

Most of the elderly/shielded qualifying get annual flu jabs. The covid potion can be added to that annual combo for those willing to get annual jabs. it's a manageable, sustainable future infection control picture.

[Derbygerbil]

Anyone who thinks this is no worse than the flu or than the risk of driving your car normally is either:

A) an idiot
B) lying
C) being paid to say that by a foreign government
D) a mixture of the above

I’d add “sociopath” to that list based on the above. This brings them out into the open... They cannot conceive of seeing past their own personal risk. The risk of Covid may be no more risky than diving a car to some people.... but the fact it is vastly more risky to millions of others is irrelevant to them.

[Waxonwaxoff0]

@Derbygerbil of course, we likely all have someone around us that is vulnerable.

But personal circumstances have to come into play at some point. I cannot do my job from home. Therefore I need DS back at school so I can get back to work. That will mean having to sacrifice seeing elderly relatives for a while. But I can't live on air.

[twinnywinny14]

@Bluntness100 what about those people with no underlying health conditions who ended up in hospital? Ended up in ICU? Now have long term medical issues following that? What about the few hundred people who had no underlying health issues at all and have died from covid? Wasn’t mild for them was it?

[Derbygerbil]

Pretty sure Bozo and chums are sneaking in Dom's herd immunity idea and to hell with the vulnerable.

I’m no fan of Boris, and they may be incompetent, but you’d have to be insane to pursue herd immunity pre-vaccine at the moment. It would be suicidal economically, let alone politically and socially.

If 7% of us have been infected to date, we’re about 10% (optimistically 15%) of the way there. We’d need 10 more waves like the one we’ve had which would take around two years at the average rate since March, or 20 years at the current estimated rate of 9,000 new infections a day!.

Either that or they accelerate things and sink us into a second wave that’s far, far worse than the first, just as the rest of Europe was getting back to normal.

If what we’ve gone through has been bad economically, both of those scenarios would make us a third-world country. And then, the public would have to go along with it and behave in a way that allowed that to happen.... which they wouldn’t.

[Derbygerbil]

@Waxonwaxoff0

I agree, we need to get back to as normal as is possible whilst managing the risks. My issue is with those who minimise Covid and think it’s “just a little flu”.