To think people need to be released from the idea that they must 'stay safe'?

[TheDailyCarbuncle]

IMO people's heads have been messed with on an absolutely massive scale during this pandemic. So many people seem to be locked into the idea that they absolutely must avoid getting covid at all costs, no matter what, to the extent that they're convinced that if they don't do everything possible to 'stay safe' then they're definitely going to die.

I genuinely think that the extent to which governments around the world have convinced people that the only thing that matters is this virus is a far far far bigger problem than the virus itself. I think governments are too cowardly to say what needs to be said, which is that there is no way to prevent everyone from getting it, and that attempting to prevent it is causing so many other problems that it just can't be done any more.

I think people are being driven around the twist with the idea that this threat is out there, lurking at all times, waiting to get them. It's like a form of mental torture, with people questioning everything and worrying about everything, while the economy crumbles around them.

There is no guarantee of a vaccine or of more effective treatments. There is every chance that covid will still be circulating, along with every other virus, in 2030. You could do everything absolutely 'right' now and still get it next year or in five years.

I get the fact that it was new, unprecedented, etc. But where do we draw the line? When will the acceptance come? When it's too late and there's no way to restore the millions of jobs lost? When economies have collapsed so much that poverty, violence and starvation make covid look like a walk in the park?

"On one hand we get poster who are completely terrified of leaving their houses"

There really is very little to none of this. But it is a useful thing to kick against, if you are more concerned about the economy (oh how we criticised the government for that, earlier in the year, when the clamour was to lock down)

@nether yes definitely
I'm mid thirties, work FT, not disabled or ill and I've been shielding for 110 days alone now

@RoseAndRose

"On one hand we get poster who are completely terrified of leaving their houses"

There really is very little to none of this. But it is a useful thing to kick against, if you are more concerned about the economy (oh how we criticised the government for that, earlier in the year, when the clamour was to lock down)

One example from today www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/3957907-How-are-people-so-calm-about-Covid

That's not meant to be unsympathetic to Emmet btw.

Businesses would have collapsed just as finally if there had been fewer restrictions and greater spread (eg the Swedish model, where the per capita death rate exceeded ours). Higher death rates and widespread illness (often lasting many weeks with frequent relapse - dip into the support thread for those affected) plus need for significant time convalescing with rehab, and the sick leave that entails, and the disruprion it brings; that would cause just as much business collapse.

There wasn't a good answer to this one.

The least worst is the least heartless, which meant saving lives and avoiding chaotic collapse of a peak.

No comfort to those affected though. Whether by death, life changing or protracted illness, psychological effects, redundancy or business failure

Agree QueenCT

DC at school, active, working in voluntary sector, marathon training, fitter than I’d been for years

Shielded

“ I think we all need to be a lot more understanding of the range of feelings about the virus”

I am very understanding of those who are really worried. Very little understanding in the other direction however, such as people who are very worried about the virus acknowledging that for some people the effects of lockdown carry greater risks for them.

I completely agree with you OP and as time goes by more and more people will get on with their lives, realise it's not as scary out there as they thought. And stop thinking endlessly about covid. The press will stop reporting it. People will no longer know the daily death rates (we never used to have this as a pleasant weekly reminder ).

In 50 years a lot of us will be dead. I wonder if covid will still be around? If it is I very much suspect everyone will be working and socialising and going to school as normal. Even without a vaccine.

And the thought of humans keeping up with social distancing in the long term is laughable!

Totally totally agree

@crumpet

And some people in Leicester! (Not whole city, very well behaved where my house is but huge organised cricket matches this week despite lock down)

It is odd how people like to rail against the government, regardless of what they do. When Boris spoke about herd immunity, he was (rightly) castigated.

Now that we understand the virus better, we are cautiously unlocking but, according to OP, we are not going fast enough.

The ‘Imperial’ model has not been proved wrong in a material sense. Sure, they maybe misestimated some parameters (amount of symptom free cases, for instance) but the SIRS model they used is the same one all epidemiologists use.

If we just go for it to ‘save the economy’, cases will still more than double weekly until the NHS is overwhelmed and work venues and entertainment venues will still empty as people are either sick, fearful or caring for the sick.

The economy will take a massive hit whatever we do. However, managing the virus will both minimise this and save lives.

War and pestilence has happen throughout history and we always recover eventually. Government does, however, have a role to play in managing how the pain is spread and, so far, they seem to be doing only a little bit better than 2008. Time will tell.

We don’t meet any vulnerable people so don’t worry about passing it on

The virus does not stop after the first person you pass it on to. If you allow yourself to be a link in a chain of transmission when you could prevent that by following the guidelines, you contribute to infection rates rising, with all the consequences of that for the economy as well as for health.

The bottom line is we need our overall national infection levels to be falling or at the very least stable. Even just keeping infection rates at the current level takes work though, needs us all to make the effort not to be links in chains of transmission, needs us all to follow the guidelines. In a way we're now running to stand still. If we stop trying now, that won't mean infection levels stay at current levels, it will mean they rise again. That will harm business and the economy, not just the health of vulnerable people.

People won't use nonessential businesses if they can see that illness rates from covid are rising again, if they're seeing their local hospital once again having to take in lots of covid patients. I have family members who lost all their income overnight and weren't covered by any government scheme. It won't help them if my behaviour makes me a link in covid chains of transmission, I'll just be pushing the day when they have a chance of working again even further into the future.

I may have caught it and was fairly ill, but not worse than a bad cold with cough, not as bad as flu and I would’ve been able to work most days, DH did.

Are you saying you and your husband had possible Covid and your husband kept going to work?
Well,yay.
And a bad cough with a cold isn't "fairly ill" it's a bad cold,lots of moaning,and wishing you were actually ill enough to stay at home but you aren't...

@okiedokieme

but huge organised cricket matches this week despite lock down

Didn’t that occur before their lockdown... just photos were posted afterwards.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8489421/Spain-locks-area-200-000-people-spike-coronavirus-cases.html

Shouldn't this prompt us to be cautious?

I may have caught it and was fairly ill, but not worse than a bad cold with cough, not as bad as flu and I would’ve been able to work most days, DH did.

I played Russian Roulette the other day.... pulled the trigger and, guess what, I was absolutely fine - not even a scratch! No idea why people say it’s dangerous.

Gosh OP, all of these people booking tables at pubs and restaurants this weekend, illegal block parties, people booking to get a haircut and I just saw queues for barbers. Friends having a party in their garden tomorrow. It's all at odds with the picture you paint of the nation cowering in their homes afraid to catch it.

The virus does not stop after the first person you pass it on to.

Exactly this. It's the missing link in all the government's messaging about schools, too - the issue is not whether the children or even teachers catch it, but who they pass it onto - their parents, their grandparents, the elderly or frail who their parents work with in care homes etc

@DianaT1969

This interested me as I feel simultaneously that people are out & about quite a lot but also aware that I have not been anywhere, and many friends the same, other than outdoor walks.

We still cannot do the things we might have spent our money on - train to city, theatre, museums - just can't be done yet. Even if we wanted to.

Really sorry, I haven’t had time to read the full thread but:

1. If you want to talk about just accepting that it’s out there and going about life as normal, you need to accept that we don’t treat other severe viruses out there that way. There are precautions for all of them: vaccines for MMR, polio and so on, a massive global effort to eradicate smallpox, known treatments for TB and so on. If you make sure to get your jabs before going abroad, you are taking precautions against getting a horrible illness. So far we don’t know enough to have similar precautions for COVID.

2. and much more important: have you read the NHS threads here, or been into a hospital, or imagined what it might be like for the NHS at the moment? It’s all very well saying we’ve got enough beds - the staff are exhausted, and running on adrenaline, and to argue that we just take it on the chin is asking them to risk catching it and losing more colleagues. I have actually attempted suicide in lockdown because it’s unbearably miserable but if we don’t try to reduce the strain on the NHS as much as possible there won’t be anyone to treat the second wave or the enormous backlog of other conditions.

Also, everyone on this thread seems to be completely ignoring the beginning of the outbreak in the Uk, where we were being told it was no worse than flu, the UK would take advantage of the situation by carrying on as normal, that we wouldn’t be able to abide by lockdown for long (IMO the exact way you make sure that people don’t abide by it! What kind of behavioural science is that ffs?) that might well have contributed to the idea that we can all emerge from lockdown and “take it on the chin” to coin a phrase. The government massively screwed up in its response, and that can’t be undone now, but that doesn’t mean we should just accept it now and there’s no point in fighting.

The messaging has been terribly confused.

If any of you have seen the ‘AD‘ threads on here, it suggests that the level of understanding is just abysmal.

Having a co-ordinated and vaguely sensible approach vs a Laissez afire sporks has is being tested a bit (Europe vs US). My bet is the US states letting it burn freely will not come out economically stronger.

Laissez faire approach-not sporks, whatever that is!

I played Russian Roulette the other day.... pulled the trigger and, guess what, I was absolutely fine - not even a scratch! No idea why people say it’s dangerous. hmm

More accurately, you may have played Russian roulette. You don't even know if the gun was a real gun.
But you can certainly conclude that playing the game with a real and loaded gun isn't dangerous.

Personally, I don’t think you’re asking the correct questions.

Your stance is dependant on the fact that the level of infection in this country was inevitable, and the government couldn’t possibly have controlled it.

The question you should be asking is how a country like Taiwan, off the coast of China, with a population that’s mostly packed into cities, have kept cases to practically zero during the entire crisis WITHOUT a lockdown?

Not to mention why we have been incapable of achieving similar results?

Once you stop accepting an incompetent response, I think a lot of things start clicking into place as regards the politics and political message.

None of this was inevitable with competent disaster planning and procedures in place...

This is a newspaper account of how Taiwan did it

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/how-taiwan-is-containing-coronavirus-despite-diplomatic-isolation-by-china

It sealed its borders, with strict quarantine with real time tracking of those in it.

It’s a pretty self-sufficient island, because of the history of relations with the mainland

And look at the pic in the linked article of what a classroom looks like.

@Calledyoulastnightfromglasgow

YANBU. YANBU. YANBU

I live in scotland. I’m in utter despair watching business collapse, jobs being lost, anxious children. We must STAY SAFE.

The time to stay safe was MARCH and we fucked that up by flying to Italy for skiing and ignoring the patently obvious warning signs. We also decided to release people into nursing homes. It was a bloody disaster but is done now. Unfortunately Nicola Sturgeon is a sociopath who will do anything - I mean anything - to gain separation from the dreaded “Westminster”. I can assure you in Scotland there is not a lot of support amongst non-SNP cult members for her approach. We are in despair

Completely agree that we fucked up by not acting early enough. But I don't agree that there isn't support for Nicola Sturgeon's approach outside her SNP base.

I'm not in Scotland, and I think she's doing the right thing. Basing decisions on the current situation, rather than Westminster's approach of floating it to the press, getting everyone's hopes up before the data supports it, then barging ahead regardless because that's what they've decided and they don't want to disappoint people.

For example - reopening of pubs was long ago decided for today, July 4th, because it could be branded as 'Independence Day' and it happened to be on a Saturday which is best for business. Then they just crossed their fingers that the R number would support that decision. Then they abandoned reliance on R number, ignored the local spike in Leicester and went ahead anyway.

It's a complete arse over tit shambles.