@BlueRaincoat1 Got to say, I’m with you. Most of my friends and family are behaving reasonably, public polling suggests people are frightened, but - whenever I come to the Mumsnet COVID forum - it’s like they’re on a different planet.
What’s even weirder is all the ‘we need to get on with life - won’t hurt me’ brigade are on the same forum as the ‘40+ days lungs’ threads (!).
Let me explain something... about eight years ago now, when I was 33, I caught a virus. Just a normal, bog standard virus - nothing unusual. I was, at the time, a very healthy, athletic person with a low/normal BMI and no underlying conditions who prided myself on my ability to work and workout harder than everyone else.
That virus triggered some problem with my immune system. The result was very similar to the ‘40+ lungs’ threads... but without the breathing problems.
I have now had this disease for eight years. In so far as it’s ‘treated’, it was treated using off-label rheumatoid arthritis drugs during fertility treatment. I needed fertility treatment because, untreated, my disease not only causes me pain, exhaustion, insomnia, rashes, chronic fevers and poor concentration, but apparently also complete infertility.
My last pregnancy ended at 38 weeks with an emergency c-section because the vascular problems and insulin resistance caused by the chronic over-activity of my innate immune system had compromised my placenta. At the time he was delivered, we estimate my baby had 48 hours to live.
I’m now reading accounts of thousands of healthy people getting similar symptoms to what I have, for months on end, as a result of having COVID-19. If we let 60% of the UK population get that disease, that’s 100s of thousands of young people with immune disorders that aren’t bad enough to kill them - but will nerf their productivity at work and put a heavy burden on the UK welfare system.
But... we should all apparently just wander around infecting each other because, provided we’re young and healthy, it’s going to be okay.
I would say ‘rather you than me’, but I wouldn’t wish my situation on my worst enemy. No, I’m not dead, but sometimes - in the darkest moments - I‘ve wished I was.
Seriously, people, we need to test, track and trace this disease to ensure as few people as possible catch it. And we need to all play our part in acting responsibly to make contact tracing easier and to reduce the spread.
The UK government has been systematically incompetent in rolling out a test, track and trace programme, so we shouldn’t be unlocking the economy until we know it’s definitely working. If there are still too many cases to get contact tracing working, we should keep locked down for a few more weeks (not forever, a few weeks), until the case count is low enough that we can trace every case...
None of this should be hard... South Korea is among the many countries that are managing without lockdowns by using contact tracing to contain the spread.