There's been around 40 deaths of under 45 year olds with no underlying health conditions.

[mywayhighway]

I'm always amazed how so many people on MN know someone (or often 2) under 45 who've died from Coronavirus with no underlying health conditions.

@Alex50

You can get long term health conditions from many illnesses, we don’t lock ourselves away. In children, long lasting health conditions from Covid will be a lot less than other conditions.

But would you do your utmost to avoid HIV, syphilis and polio? Because it’s becoming apparent that covid is also one of those multi-system diseases with long-term effects.

I don’t believe children’s education should be thrown under the bus as the result. But I do believe that other precautions must be a no-brainer eg masks, even if inconvenient.

Yes it will be interesting what happens in the next 6 months. I will come back to these threads and update.

I don’t mind wearing masks, i’d quite happily do that and my family, especially if it gets children back to school.

Loss of life for under 40s, 30s and 20s is lower at the moment than previous years

Thank fuck I don't live in the UK any more. I am late 50s so I guess I would be pretty expendable, you people are nuts!

OP - what is it most about lockdown that you resent? Having to be with your own children all day?
I lost my income. Lots of people have lost a lot. I'm wondering why you and others on here are saying lives of 46+ don't deserve protection, why the NHS didn't deserve to be protected. Was going to the park everyday and out for cycling trips with your own DC in this lovely weather really that bad? That you have zero empathy for 500 families and another 40,000+ families grieving a 46+ relative?. The numbers are only that 'low' because of lockdown. I'm exasperated and concerned that children have been experiencing 'homeschooling' with parents who don't understand even the basics of cause and correlation.
And what's with the posters saying children should all go back to school now? Why bother this close to the holiday?

@runrunrunrunt

This is why schools should reopen in full straight away and the 2m rule should be relaxed to 1m.

We have destroyed the economy and ruined the education of millions of children because of a disease that mainly effects the over 60s. It is madness.

@AlecTrevelyan006 you're an arsehole. Yes this will get deleted but worth it. The over 60s are living breathing people with families and valuable lives.

@runrunrunrunt - it should go without saying that there are no 'good' deaths. I am certainly not celebrating the death of anyone of any age nor am I suggesting that some lives are more valuable than others. But any way you dress it up, the statistics show beyond doubt that coronavirus directly affects the health of older people way, way more than it does young people. And in applying broad blanket measures (albeit that some are now being relaxed) across the whole of society has done a disservice to those most in need.

The more you drill down into the numbers the crazier it is;

England and Wales W/E 29 May
population 59,439,840
Covid deaths 46,421

Aged under 60
Population 45,119,060 (75.90%)
Covid deaths 3,086 (6.64%)

Aged 60+
Population 14,320,780 (24.09%)
Covid deaths 43,335 (93.35%)

so, 24% of the population account for 93% of covid-related fatalities.

For an even more stark comparison

England and Wales W/E 29 May
Population 59,439,840
Covid deaths 46,421

Aged under 20
Population 13,984,847 (23.52%)
Covid deaths 14 (0.03%)

Aged over 90
population 547,789 (0.92%)
Covid deaths 10,005 (21.55%)

I cannot believe it is beyond the wit and wisdom of society to come up with a way of protecting the vulnerable while speeding up the process of rebooting the economy and restarting education.

I'm glad children aren't dying. Schools are not staffed by children though.

If you are concerned about the quality of home schooling maybe they should go back to school?

All children should have had the opportunity to return to school for a small amount of time at least to meet their new teacher, see their new classroom, to relieve returning to school anxities. If they went back now they would have been away 3 months. Returning after the holidays means being away for 6 months. My children are 4 and 7. 6 months is a huge chunk of their life!

For every report saying children don't transmit COVID, or get it at all, there is one saying children are super spreaders and schools are centres of transmission in communities. Similarly to the NHS, lots of school staff aren't very healthy.

There is no trustable information on this - for the DfE, for school leaders, for teachers, for other school staff or for parents. The 'best' one to test it all was Sweden, and even they haven't done it. Germany is only just starting to do something non anecdotal.

The government has fucked up there, and I'm not sure how they are going to get the trust back at this stage. This is all on the government, and realistically it's all on Johnson's lack of leadership abilities.

The problem is that the virus could exponentially spread in the first few weeks which means that flattening the curve takes much longer and that is why the economy and schools still can't restart.

The problem is, we are a society.

Many working families with children rely on grandparents to carry on working. Take grandparents out of the equation and lock them down.
Many teachers are over 50. Take them out and lock them down.
Many many workers are over 50. Factories, shops, industry, transport. Take them all out and lock down?
Lawyers, police, nurses, doctors ...all need to exit society to reduce death rates if they are in their 50s.

Who looks after the children, the disabled, the elderly if so many people are out of the equation?

So even if we could do this and still run schools and the economy, do we leave the virus to run rampant in that population and build up some herd immunity but also accept there will be a great deal of illness and many otherwise fit and healthy people will suffer weeks if not months of illness? Will schools and factories, shops and industry etc still run effectively with a virus infecting and making ill thousands of people a week?

Difficult decisions huh?

Many people who have some permanent "underlying health condition", would never dream of mentioning it to, let alone discussing it with casual acquaintances. It's kept private, unknown to anyone except their doctors and close family or intimate friends.

Similarly to the NHS, lots of school staff aren't very healthy.

The problem of unhealthy health and education staff is certainly being highlighted. Perhaps those responsible for recruitment etc should place more emphasis on employing people who are healthy, not grossly overweight, etc.

@Alex50

You can get long term health conditions from many illnesses, we don’t lock ourselves away. In children, long lasting health conditions from Covid will be a lot less than other conditions.

@Alex50

You’re not wrong but we try to minimise risks for our children; vaccinations, wearing helmets on bikes and seatbelts etc.
Lockdown may not have been the right thing but with a new virus and a pandemic, we will only know when we look back.

It's amazing how hard it still is to get properly analysed numbers, or indeed complete datasets susceptible to analysis. Here's what I've come up with merging the ONS data with the recently-released NHS stats.

296,603 people died in the UK up to the end of May. 50,107 (17%) of them had Covid19 on their death certificate. 44,796 of those (89%) were 65 or over. 4,789 were between 45 and 64 (just under 10%). 517 were between 15 and 44. 5 were under 15.

To give context, 8,018 people under 45 have died this year; only about 6.5% of them had Covid on their death certificate.

33,287 people between 45 and 64 have died this year. About 14% of them had Covid on their death certificates.

Consider co-morbidities (being sick, with something other than Covid). Let's ignore, shall we, the nosocomial nature of Covid apart from noting that 20% of eventual Covid fatalities in hospital didn't have Covid when they were admitted.

88% of people under 60 who died with Covid on their death certificates had an underlying condition, according to NHS data. The number goes up for older people - 97% of 80+ year-olds who died had an underlying condition.

Applying the 88% to the under 65 group, that means 574 people between 45 and 64 have died this year with a Covid diagnosis who weren't already ill. 63 people under 45 have died in similar circumstances.

We'll gloss over the fact that obesity on its own isn't counted in the NHS statistics, even though we know from ICNARC that it's a significant contributor to Covid fatality risk.

So 637 people have sadly died while neither old nor sick.

In the same time period 35,994 people under 65 have also sadly died, but without Covid on their death certificates.

We don't seem terribly exercised about them.

For the parent of a 4 and 7 year old saying it's vital for their well-being that they go to school now to catch a couple weeks of term. Erm, OK. The curve should rise for this reason?
Sweden is mentioned a lot on MN by anti-lockdown 'let the old people die' brigade.
Education is compulsory for children from 7 in Sweden. Your children wouldn't even be at school if you lived there. What's stopping you from getting together with other parents who aren't concerned about social distancing, or who aren't shielding someone. Have a Dominic Cumming style of lockdown and flout the rules in your own bubbles. You can make your own risk assessment.

@LilyPond2

covid.joinzoe.com/post/covid-long-term There seems to be an implicit assumption in these threads discussing death rates that if you get Covid-19 but don't die then you are absolutely fine. That is very far from the truth, as this report from Zoe app people shows. A significant number of people suffer long-term problems from Covid-19, in some cases due to organ damage, and there is minimal support available to such people. To the best of my knowledge our government doesn't even compile statistics on numbers of people who recover from Covid-19 where "recovery" means being back to how you were pre-Covid rather than simply not being dead. I wonder whether the failure to compile recovery statistics is because that wouldn't suit the government's "Everyone back to work now" agenda.

Yep. No one seems to want to acknowledge this though because they want to push through the argument that it's safe for anyone under 45 to just get back to normal.

I'd also love for anyone who is demanding everyone back to normal while the vulnerable are protected to please define who they mean by "the vulnerable"? Do they mean the shielded or do they really mean the vulnerable? Two very different groups.

@ohthegoats

For every report saying children don't transmit COVID, or get it at all, there is one saying children are super spreaders and schools are centres of transmission in communities. Similarly to the NHS, lots of school staff aren't very healthy.

There is no trustable information on this - for the DfE, for school leaders, for teachers, for other school staff or for parents. The 'best' one to test it all was Sweden, and even they haven't done it. Germany is only just starting to do something non anecdotal.

The government has fucked up there, and I'm not sure how they are going to get the trust back at this stage. This is all on the government, and realistically it's all on Johnson's lack of leadership abilities.

It's almost unbelievable that Sweden/the world didn't choose to set up studies on the impact of schooling on transmission. There was something a week or so ago from Sweden saying there was no impact but I didn't read it beyond the headline. Previously I read there were no attempts to gather data.

Perhaps those responsible for recruitment etc should place more emphasis on employing people who are healthy, not grossly overweight, etc.

I'm not at risk due to weight.
I have arthritis which developed when I was in my 30s - after I was employed by my current employer.
Arthritis doesn't make me unhealthy. It doesn't mean I will die early. It does mean I sometimes have issues with my joints and it means I am more susceptible for certain illnesses but I can reduce this somewhat with a flu jab and keeping good hygiene - even in a school. I take a heck of a lot of medication to prevent future damage and to reduce my daily risks.
My arthritis does not prevent me from doing my job and I've missed just two days in recent years due to it after a particularly bad flare up.

Unfortunately due to the nature of this virus it means I am at greater risk of Covid at present.

It does not prevent me, in normal circumstances, from doing my job.

@AlecTrevelyan006

“ 88% of people under 60 who died with Covid on their death certificates had an underlying condition, according to NHS data. The number goes up for older people - 97% of 80+ year-olds who died had an underlying condition.”

I’d be astonished if 97% of any 80+ years who died of any cause didn't have an underlying condition, quite frankly!

What is unclear is the severity of the underlying condition and what it really means by “underlying health condition”. In my 30s, I’d say half of my friends have some sort of underlying condition. I have a friend who has epilepsy, although hasn’t had a seizure for a decade due to meds, a friend with a rare but controlled blood condition and a friend with endometriosis etc. They are otherwise very healthy people.

These are the main pre existing conditions

As expected in a disease that mainly affects the elderly, dementia is one of the main pre existing conditions

The respiratory diseases one is copd I think.

What it doesn't cover is extreme obesity, but separate research places that high on the list of risk factors. I guess it just doesn't count as a pre existing condition?

*In the same time period 35,994 people under 65 have also sadly died, but without Covid on their death certificates.

We don't seem terribly exercised about them*

If they’d all died of the same thing across a three month period I think there would be a lot of interest don’t you?

I’m not looking to exaggerate covid (don’t think I need to) but I don’t think minimising it is the way to get people on board with getting a semblance of normality back. Covid has the potential to be utterly devastating on a practical level if nothing else but we have enough understanding to avoid that if we’re respectful of it.

I can have a pond in my garden but I’d be daft not to make it as safe as I could if I had children.

@DianaT1969 its not ok for kids to be in school but it is ok for my partner to be back at work in a factory with 7000 people. That wont raise the curve? Not ok for kids to be in school but it is ok to have a mooch in primark? Ok then!