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?

There are lots of other ways to die or get ill - car accident, salmonella, seasonal flu - I try and avoid them too. I shall continue to try and avoid getting Covid 19.

@eeeyoresmiles

You say 'if infection rates are high, that will trash the economy' but infection rates are low currently and the economy is trashed.

The economy is trashed now because of emergency measures we had to take because infection rates were high. We can't afford to have to keep taking measures like lockdowns. But go round telling people they shouldn't care if they catch or spread the virus, and that's what we'll have to do.

Even if you could decide not to lockdown again (and you realistically wouldn't have that choice because of the effects on hospitals etc that would mean we'd have to try to get rates down again) - in new outbreaks people won't be going out to eat, they won't be spending money, businesses will still be damaged. There isn't realistically an option just to decide not to worry about the virus and then have the economy not be affected.

I at no point said that people shouldn't care if they catch or spread the virus. Of course people will care about being ill and about others being ill. What I said was they should be freed from the mental torture of believing that just by going about their normal business - seeing friends, going shopping - they are carrying the burden of other lives on their shoulders and they have to, at all costs, make sure no one ever gets ill. That's an impossible task and not one that anyone should be asked to achieve, especially if, in trying to achieve it, they lose their job, their home, their child's education, their mental health. There has to be a limit to it.

YANBU

So is the 'fire' caused by trashing the economy nothing to worry about then? 12,000 jobs were lost in the UK in the last two days.

No, that is the fire (or one of the fires) we'd be playing with.

If you go round telling people it's no big deal if they catch the virus and they don't need to be careful any more, you're part of the problem for the economy, not part of the solution.

YADNBU, and I agree.

Things need to get back to normal sooner rather than later.

This lockdown is far too damaging for the economy to keep the restrictions in place for any longer.

All we are doing anyway is delaying the next spike.

Whenever we get back to normal cases will go back up so we're not achieving anything except reducing the strain on the NHS.

If you go round telling people it's no big deal if they catch the virus and they don't need to be careful any more, you're part of the problem for the economy, not part of the solution.

Exactly that. It's like all the parents mixing freely in people's houses, and then complaining that it's not safe for their children to go back to school because the numbers of cases make transmission to adults in schools, and via schools to vulnerable adults, too likely. D'oh.

Yanbu. If you’re of working age you’re more likely to die in a car crash travelling to work than die of Covid 19.
True, but last time I checked I wasn't likely to be in a car crash without realising it and subsequently pass a car crash to someone else that could kill them.

@Lweji

Sweden has recently admitted they should have done better, particularly with regards to their elderly. And they have suffered economically from control measures, even if due to neighbouring countries to some extent. The UK went into lockdown because it was losing any control. Hardly any PPE, tests or tracking. Countries that performed better without lockdowns performed better at other control measures.

The UK let the elderly down in exactly the same way - that had nothing to do with lockdown and everything to do with a badly organised, underfunded social care system that failed to protect the people it was supposed to be looking after.

Sweden has suffered economically, but Swedish children haven't missed months of school and Swedish people haven't had the grinding misery of not being allowed to see their own families.

I must find the article, but I read recently that the high incidence of death from covid in people with dementia was partially due to the fact that people with dementia rely on family members visiting their care home and noticing a change in them. Because people with dementia are often unable to state their own needs, family members not being allowed to visit meant that dementia patients seriously deteriorated and a shockingly high number of dementia deaths were not due to covid itself but due to dehydration. Locking vulnerable people down from the people who care about them results in them dying of thirst.

I think perhaps some of the issue here is that it isn’t uncommon for people to announce (on here, on SM) that they’ll be dramatically changing the way they live their lives to avoid catching it or passing it on to others. And that generally seems to be a result of fear. This is a very selfish attitude. If everyone felt that way then society would collapse and they wouldn’t have a world to return to. Those people need the vast majority of us to find a way to live our lives and keep things going for them until they decide it is safe for them to return. We must find a way to minimise the number of people catching COVID at once, we must find a way to keep the vulnerable safe, and we must find a way of doing it without the disappearance of civilisation. Swathes of people too scared to do anything achieves nothing.

@LolaSmiles

Yanbu. If you’re of working age you’re more likely to die in a car crash travelling to work than die of Covid 19. True, but last time I checked I wasn't likely to be in a car crash without realising it and subsequently pass a car crash to someone else that could kill them.

You could however crash into someone else and kill them.

This is what you said:

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.

This is what I think is dangerous - suggesting that we should just give up on trying to prevent people from getting the virus.

Totally agree OP.

@eeeyoresmiles

So is the 'fire' caused by trashing the economy nothing to worry about then? 12,000 jobs were lost in the UK in the last two days.

No, that is the fire (or one of the fires) we'd be playing with.

If you go round telling people it's no big deal if they catch the virus and they don't need to be careful any more, you're part of the problem for the economy, not part of the solution.

Can you point out where I said it's no big deal if they catch the virus and they don't need to be careful any more? Thanks.

There is literally no world leader publicly advocating what OP is, other than Jair Bolsonaro. There’s a reason for that. Sometimes the lesser of two evils really is just that.

The measures people willingly took before lockdown, eg significantly restricting their consumption, not travelling, not eating out or going to pubs, are sufficient to have trashed the economy. Nobody wants to browse the gift shop if the museum is on fire.

Fauci and many others are confident that there’ll be a vaccine by early 2021. And an effective cocktail of drug treatments by the end of the year. I’d rather take their word for it than OP’s scaremongering of ‘forever’.

Yanbu.

Yes, there is a massive ethical problem with locking dementia sufferers away to save them from Covid, which makes them totally miserable and much more likely to die of something else anyway (I read a similar article suggesting that the high rate of non-Covid deaths in dementia sufferers was due to them losing the will to eat or really do anything, as keeping them in their rooms without social interaction and family visits destroyed their remaining mental health).

OP, if I've misunderstood and you do actually think it really matters that we all carry on collectively trying hard not to catch or pass on the virus, because high infection rates would be bad, then I think you could make that a bit clearer in your posts. They do often give the opposite impression.

You could however crash into someone else and kill them.
Yes and a multicar RTA with fatalities would be tragic.

Thankfully most people drive for their surroundings to avoid the chance of being caught up on such a thing because the sensible thing to do is to adapt behaviour and actions for the situation.

It would be a bit stupid if we all drove at the speed limit all the time, regardless of the conditions because 'technically anyone could have a crash'

Right now there's a pandemic killing thousands of people so behaviour changes accordingly, or it does for anyone with an ounce of common sense.

I wouldn't take my child to a party if they had chicken pox on the grounds that anyone could catch it anyway.
I don't cough and sneeze without covering my mouth on the grounds that there's probably coughs and colds on all the surfaces anyway.
I don't drive in the ice the same way I drive in the summer on the grounds that anyone could have an accident.
Why would I expect to carry on as normal during a pandemic then?

I am not scared of getting covid 19.

But I am concerned about too many people getting it at once and overwhelming medical services. Also if too many people get it at once then other parts of the economy won't work well either.

At the same time...there can't be any public services without a functioning economy.

I don't envy the politicians who have to make the decisions on these things.

@eeeyoresmiles

This is what you said:

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.

This is what I think is dangerous - suggesting that we should just give up on trying to prevent people from getting the virus.

Can you read what I read? I don't know how to state it more clearly but I'll try.

There is no way, at this point, to stop the virus entirely. No matter what we do, it is still going to spread. So giving people the idea that it is possible to stop it entirely is wrong - it just can't be done.

I at no point said we should just give up on trying prevent people from getting the virus. I'm saying that because the virus is out in the population, it will continue to spread and giving people the idea that it must be completely avoided no matter what the cost isn't fair, because it isn't possible.

Sorry that should obviously say 'can you read what I wrote?'

I think a really difficult ethical dilemma is whether we accept a general level of suffering for an equally general good, or we set one group against another and say that one group must suffer a lot so that another group can suffer less.

We are seeing this all the time:

• Lock down the elderly, so others can go to the pub or on holiday
• Put teachers and other school staff at risk, because schoolchildren aren't made as ill by the disease.
• Shut away the vulnerable, so the non-vulnerable can enjoy themselves more freely
• Risk more harm to the vulnerable, so the economy can get going faster
• Force people to work in unsafe factories, so others can have cheap garments or food

What would work much better is to drive down the virus prevalent through a fully complied with, all in it together push, that then allows us to all move forward together once it is done. But the political will is not there for that.

YANBU

I have heard some ridiculous over the top comments from perfectly healthy fit people. Others have screamed 'murderers' to people visiting beaches on sunny days.
The number of people predicting a 'second wave' each time anybody goes out and about - WE day, year 6 returning to school, etc etc.
People shrieking and so over the top ...
When the football was going to return with no crowds - people saying 'football is not worth sacrificing players life's for - I mean we are talking very fit young men mostly in their 20's...!
The crap about throwing teachers under the bus because children are returning to school...

I could go on and on - mass hysteria.

Good post, @cantkeepawayforever

I don't see anything unreasonable in wanting to avoid catching the virus.

My husband is high risk - there is nothing he could do to reduce that risk level so all we can do to protect him is to prevent him from becoming infected. That means I have to be very careful. The more the virus is out there, the more difficult it is to protect our household from it.

I would probably be ok if I got it but the risk is higher than the flu. There are other vulnerable people around me - colleagues and family so I am sacrificing some of my freedom in order to reduce the risk for them.

I don't think there is anything panicky, OCD or unreasonable about my caution. If more people go out, the virus will spread more and more people will die. A more robust attitude does not overcome facts.