I know no one who’s had coronavirus and neither do my friends or family

[mywayhighway]

Or any of their friends or families.
But I have 3 friends who’s businesses probably won’t survive, another who’s husband has just been made redundant, possibly more to follow, a friend who’s teen has sunk into depression. All the dc have missed out educationally and no prospect of getting back to school anytime soon. That’s just my selfish perspective. There’s loads worse off as a consequence of the impact of lockdown and the slow easing out.
Feeling so frustrated with this now. We’re all suffering and I’m not quite sure if the benefits are going to outweigh the losses long term.

Feels bizarre to see the amount of deaths when you don't anyone who had it or died. I think it's some sort of media game that's going on.

LavenderLilacTree Your trivialising of the millions of lives that have and will be destroyed as a consequence of lockdown is horribly insulting.

Pretty sure you could have made your point without putting the word death in capitals!

@LavenderLilacTree

OP we have had 41,000 deaths. DEATHS. Each one a terrible loss with terrible suffering for bereaved families. At the end the of the day children can catch up education, you can new jobs or go on benefits, depression can be treated. DEATH is the end. That's it. No chance of recovery from death. Lockdown has saved millions of lives. Lockdown is essential. Lockdown prevents much more harm than it causes. Lockdown has damaging effects for sure but none are permanent like death is.

actually the numbers of deaths linked to lockdown but not covid are massive, theres been a big spike in depression related suicides and cancer deaths... those people arent coming back either and could have had a chance if they werent locked up and ignored

the death toll of neglected is estimated to land far higher than the actual covid death toll

Do you have any stats on the suicide and cancer related death spikes?

The trouble is that we will never know what the death toll would have been if we had not gone into lockdown. So we can never truly compare.

I think you will also find that many children will not catch up. I am a primary teacher and children who were already behind for whatever reason and receiving intervention will now find it virtually impossible to catch up. There are many children I am worried about!

@LavenderLilacTree

OP we have had 41,000 deaths. DEATHS. Each one a terrible loss with terrible suffering for bereaved families. At the end the of the day children can catch up education, you can new jobs or go on benefits, depression can be treated. DEATH is the end. That's it. No chance of recovery from death. Lockdown has saved millions of lives. Lockdown is essential. Lockdown prevents much more harm than it causes. Lockdown has damaging effects for sure but none are permanent like death is.

Deaths from cancer, deaths from influenza, deaths from road accidents. Do you get this hysterical about these? Do we lock the country down to prevent it? No. Can children catch up gaps in their education? From my own experience having lost chunks of education due to illness no they don't. Go on benefits? How do we pay for that when the economy is bluntly fucked. Death is something we cant avoid or prevent. Do you understand that? this lockdown has to end. The country is fucked, we have rioting, anarchy, the economy is screwed, people refusing to work as hysterical about the VIRUS what the hell has this Government done?

The trouble is that we will never know what the death toll would have been if we had not gone into lockdown.

We can make fairly good estimates.
And by we, I mean people who are trained to do just so.

@mywayhighway

When you’re financially secure and unaffected by the impact of lockdown it’s easy to say we should just focus on coronavirus and anyone thinking of anything else is a nasty person. It’s not so simple.

You've got a chance of recovering from financial insecurity though haven't you. I won't get my parents back.

Depends where you are in the country I guess, and also what demographic as it is absolutely not an 'equal opps' virus. As it's actually such a small percentage who have /have had it (symptomatically) and an even smaller percentage who die, it is of course very very unlikely that we genuinely know (as opposed to 'have heard of on SM') someone who has died of it.
On the other hand, most of us know someone who has had cancer and pretty much everyone who reaches middle-age knows someone who has died (not of Covid) as between 500 and 600K die every year in the UK of all causes.
I think that people feel the pain of Covid because it's all over the press. No one but genuine friends and family cared at all when anyone that I have known died (of various common things - cancer, heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, dementia, simple old age) but somehow Covid is different because the (actually pretty low) numbers are in the media every day. It's a pity for those grieving other deaths but I suppose it's the world we live in that people tend only to care about stuff that's on the news.

Death is something we cant avoid or prevent. Do you understand that?

You seem incredibly dim, or worse.
We can certainly prevent and avoid untimely death.
That's the whole point of medicine, and in particular preventive health services.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/articles/deathsinvolvingcovid19interactivemap/2020-06-12

See how many have died in your local area. Doesn't tell you how many have had it of course. We dont know that.

How is Lweji being stupid? We can try to avoid and prevent covid deaths by social distancing, hand washing, staying away from those vulnerable and by lockdown.

Well good for you. I know lots including myself!

When you’re financially secure and unaffected by the impact of lockdown it’s easy to say we should just focus on coronavirus and anyone thinking of anything else is a nasty person. It’s not so simple.

Do you think permanent lung or kidney damage is easier to deal with for people who are not financially secure?

I haven’t seen the death rates for untreated cancer or for suicide but no matter how high they are, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have locked down or should just skip back to normality. It means we should look at how to increase services to prevent those deaths too.

You can't know many people.

I only live in a small town. I've had one elderly family member die of it, I know of two people (friends of friends) who've been seriously ill in hospital with it and recovered, and about ten more who've had it without hospital treatment (one of whom is really struggling with her health after about ten weeks)

Someone earlier mentioned the 500,000 thousand deaths that were forecast from a team at Imperial College a few months ago and which the government took notice of. Seems that the code used wasn't the greatest:

www.theaustralian.com.au/world/coronavirus-uk-modelling-that-forced-lockdown-messy-as-angel-hair-pasta/news-story/c7a5ea882a1a4066333d998e2a206f48

Also, Ferguson and his colleagues believed predicted 200million could die from bird flu and 65,000 from swine flu. Actual fatalities were far fewer.

Deaths from cancer - vast resources spent on preventative screening, anti-smoking & obesity campaigns, vaccination, pre-emptive surgeries, research, genetic medicines
Deaths from flu - nationwide vaccination programme
Deaths from RTA - seat belts, speed limits, cameras, pedestrianisation, Chassis redesign, Assisted driver systems
But COVID, an unknown infectious pathogen 10 times more deadly than flu, yeah just let it run

OP - do you think coronavirus is a myth / conspiracy etc?

Do you think the world has had collective mass hysteria and a perverse economic suicide wish?

I really struggle to understand how posters who blame lockdown for excess cancer deaths, suicide etc can't see that if lockdown hadn't happened the most likely scenario is that these deaths - cancer, heart attacks, anything needing emergency treatment - would have been even higher in number and out of control. If the NHS had been overwhelmed why do you think they'd suddenly have the capacity to treat all of these things simply because there were no lockdown? It's more likely that covid would have rampaged even more through every department and many staff and claimed far more lives - including of those with these illnesses. As it is most hospitals have been continuing with cancer treatment (I know some haven't) as best as they could under the circumstances. As for suicides, do you not think the effects of this pandemic claiming hundreds of thousands of lives in 2 months and leaving millions with long term health issues would contribute to even more mental health issues?

There is no win in this. Lockdown causes a whole load of issues, economic and social. Lack of lockdown would most likely have also caused a whole load of issues reaching into the long term - probably more.

One does not win over the other. This is a virus, without agenda, and we can only respond to the experts we have working on a new virus with no knowledge of it. It is not flu and it is not a scam it's just a virus that's so virulent it's caused a pandemic.

Just don't get all the infighting with this. No one is to blame for it (besides the government, some would argue), so why so much insensitivity and hatred on these threads? It's baffling!

As for suicides, do you not think the effects of this pandemic claiming hundreds of thousands of lives in 2 months and leaving millions with long term health issues would contribute to even more mental health issues?

How do you know hundreds of thousands of people would have died in two months without lockdown?

Quite @Madhairday

The narrative of opposition between health and economy as priorities has been dismissed by the head of the independent SAGE as a false opposition, expert consensus seems to have been that all along.

A huge amount of COVID related discussion on MN has been wasted on false oppositions and extremes. Utterly ridiculous.