Feeling a bit duped about the seriousness of Covid....

[mostwonderfultime]

Found out my district of 55,000 people there have been 156 confirmed covid cases since March. Now I hear there is an enquiry into the over reporting of Covid deaths in England. Average death rate has now lower than average indicating many people who died from Covid would probably died in the next month or so. No surge in Covid cases or deaths since relaxing lockdown measures (I know about Leicester, but we all know reasons why they have more cases and again they haven't had a spike in deaths).
In the meantime, the economy is screwed, Kids have been off school for months, best friends business has gone bust.

I think only time will tell. But I am inclined to agree with you. I think the care homes were a disgrace and should have been handled much better. But the rest. Yes what an overall cost we are bearing and will continue to bear...

The only numbers anyone should be looking at is the excess deaths over five year means as reported in the FT. It will take time for them to be meaningful.

I'm not angry with the government over lockdown per se, I am only angry that they are so guided by social media which seems to whip up so much hysteria and misinformation and is really not driven by the best information available. Consistent with that view, I am prepared to be patient before deciding how well we did because so much is not yet known about why certain people are vulnerable and how those demographics influenced the excess deaths rates. I think it is best not to jump to uninformed conclusions - my approach is stay calm be sensible follow the best advice and just hang in as best I can.
I am sympathetic with the government that they have to make decisions based on extremely imperfect science - that is a responsibility few would wish for.
If I'd lived in Sweden, I would have been okay going with their approach too.

It takes several weeks for a spike in covid cases to turn into a spike in covid deaths. So don't make any assumptions about Leicester's spike yet.

We're also only just beginning to understand and assess the extent of long-term physical damage to people of any age who survive a serious episode of covid.

A friend died of Covid she was in her late thirties no underlying conditions.

Another friend is still having breathing difficulties and has no stamina since being hospitalised by covid, she is in her mid-thirties says she feels like an old woman now.

There have been a lot of deaths amongst our families and friends of elderly people and people with underlying health conditions, they caught covid and died, one friend was in her late twenties with a toddler son, she had cancer. She may have died anyway had she not caught covid, but she did die from covid.

I'm not sure what people want, real personal experience of covid to take it seriously because it hasn't hit them yet?

My daughter had it she is in her teens, I've never been so terrified in my life as when I watched my child struggling to breathe and there was no medical help available. I was told later when she was in recovery I should have rocked up at A&E with her, altho every advice everywhere was saying not to and NHS 111 was passing us form pillar to post and then telling me the measures I had taken were wrong, but which the doctor we finally spoke to agreed were right.
I'm still worried about DD's breathing and lung capacity, I will be till I am able to get her checked over to make sure there is no lasting damage.

We shouldn't be facing a choice between our health or our livelihoods.

jrobhatch29 there seem to be rather a lot of excess deaths by pneumonia in Florida, but it'll all come out eventually.
The reason I mentioned these American states is because they have not got their infection rates under control yet, whereas we have in the same time period.

@mostwonderfultime

Found out my district of 55,000 people there have been 156 confirmed covid cases since March. Now I hear there is an enquiry into the over reporting of Covid deaths in England. Average death rate has now lower than average indicating many people who died from Covid would probably died in the next month or so. No surge in Covid cases or deaths since relaxing lockdown measures (I know about Leicester, but we all know reasons why they have more cases and again they haven't had a spike in deaths). In the meantime, the economy is screwed, Kids have been off school for months, best friends business has gone bust.

Looking at the year-to-date for England until July 3, the number of excess deaths for England is 52,242 more than the five-year average.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending3july2020

If 70% of the population had contracted the virus, there would have been over 500,000 deaths in England alone.

Our economy was scuppered anyway.

In years to come, they will say we did the wrong thing.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, whatever had been done there would be someone criticising.

So you think there's another lung illness going around?
They don't all have unrelated pneumonia do they?

4 years ago, I got a weird lung illness that lasted MONTHS. Trouble breathing, an absolutely debilitating cough that pulled numerous muscles in my ribs, I had to use blue inhalers multiple times a day for around 3 months having never previously in my life needed to use them at all. Numerous doctor visits, who just confirmed it wasn't an infection or pneumonia and to just give it time. It took around 6 months to fully shake off. I was a previously very fit and well 30 year old with no health issues.

Obviously, as this was 4 years ago it wouldn't have been covid. But shitty bugs have been around since the dawn of time and can just come out of nowhere and knock you for six and take a long time to recover from. Not everyone with a poorly chest has Covid19.

A lot of the people reporting "long term lung issues" are actually just psychosomatic.

Also a lot of the people calling for tougher measures are those whose careers don't depend on an open economy or society.

I think lockdown was the right thing to do with the information we had at the time and with the number of cases we had at the time. The whole point was to "flatten the curve" and stop the NHS being overwhelmed and it did that and also bought us time to investigate treatments, develop test and trace, find out more about how is spreads and who it affects etc.

I think some things should have been opened sooner I.e. childrens play areas, seeing close family

However I do think the economic crisis is a bigger risk now than covid, especially for young people. While being cautious it is time to start getting like back to normal and learning to live alongside the virus. Things like social distancing from strangers, which really is easy to do, washing hands etc. But getting back to work from furlough, earning and spending money, is how we protect each other now.

[quote mostwonderfultime]@Lightsabre many people on the lungs thresh never even had a positive Covid test....[/quote]
Because they were only testing hospital admissions at the time those threads were started so no many, many people have been ill but will never be counted in the numbers

I also think the 'it's ok, everyone would have died in a month or two anyway' attitude is bloody despicable, as it is so dismissive of those people and their families, as well as incorrect - elderly people and people with underlying health conditions are not necessarily at deaths door and I'm sure the family of the 30 year old midwife in Birmingham who died of it do not share your views

Not duped - figures seem more likely to have been under reported at first, all the pillar one/two stuff.

But the back to normal message from DFE and central govt is unwise. We are going to have a spike in the autumn, I'd put money on it - early to mid Oct? Winter is not going to look good. Not doom mongering, its just realism.

There is a good series of threads about stats on MN, with some intelligent answers to questions about reliable information.

It's pretty serious when you die from it

" Not everyone with a poorly chest has Covid19."

No, but it's too much of a coincidence that they're all having lung issues for some unrelated reason, isn't it?

Threads like this make me so mad. It isn't just the deaths ( bad as they are for families and loved ones to cope with) but there are many other COVID sufferers who HAVEN'T died but are still seriously ill months later. My OH is one. Four months on and he still suffers chest pains, breathlessness, extreme fatigue, aches and pains everywhere ...

So mask up, keep your distance and hope to God you and yours don't catch it.

Honetly, I just read another thread where someone posted no sd or facemasks needed as the government have lied and manipulated us all.

Most countries in the world have taken extreme unprecedented action at immense costs but so many people are still willing to believe it's the government "controlling us".

If lots of people really believe this then we probably do need controlling!

The likelihood is that the death figures are still probably too low because you had to be at death's door( aka lips turning blue) to go in to hospital and get a test when the virus was peaking.

The fact that so many people are dismissive of this virus suggests to me that very few people have experience of it in their social circle and most of us are still susceptible to it. I'd wager that Kate garraway for example would disagree with your assessment of the situation

@Commentatorz ; A lot of the people reporting "long term lung issues" are actually just psychosomatic.

So you know more than the GP's and Respiratory consultants?

The problem is that CV 19 is a new virus that little was known about at the start.
Over time, more has been known about the illness, and better methods of treatment available.
It is always difficult to specify cause of death (and on some cases there may be multiple causes). The only way is to look at total deaths compared to the previous 5 year average, and the ONS figures certainly show that for 3 weeks running, the total deaths are lower than the previous 5 year average.

I’m a GP and back in March one of our patients died, at a time when Covid tests were only available to patients in hospital. She was in her late 80s, had a cough for a couple of days, then died at home in bed. She had multiple ongoing medical problems. In all probability she died of a chest infection against a backdrop of old age and frailty. I was told by the coroner to certify the cause of death as Covid.
I often wonder how many other people that happened to. I’m just one GP with a patient list of 2000, so it’s easy to see how it could be extrapolated.

"A lot of the people reporting "long term lung issues" are actually just psychosomatic."

That's great, I'll let me friends know she's imagining it that she is unable to do the most basic of tasks without laboured breathing and resulting extreme fatigue.

She was tested positive for covid and spent five weeks in hospital in an isolation pod with help to breathe.

She still can't breathe well.

"My OH is one. Four months on and he still suffers chest pains, breathlessness, extreme fatigue, aches and pains everywhere ..."

Haven't you told him the good news sunshine. A poster on here knows it's psychosomatic.

OP, research has demonstrated that those who have died of Covid19 lost on average 13 years (men)/11 years (women) of life expectancy.

www.sciencetimes.com/articles/25448/20200424/covid-19-patients-losing-13-years-lives-average-study.htm

Not sure where you got dying in the next month from?
You didn’t get duped, this is a very serious Virus, many people avoidably died due to insufficient measures early on, but ten of thousands of lives have been saved by the measures of the past few months, that are now being eased.

Other research shows those closing schools and nonessential businesses have significant impact on reducing spread which is why these drastic measures unfortunately had to be put in place, sorry your friend’s business went bust.

(From telegraph:)“A separate study looked at nine interventions in 41 countries between January and April 2020 and found eight of them to be effective.
Closing schools reduced R by an average of 50 per cent. Other things that worked included: closing non-essential businesses (34 per cent); closing high-risk businesses (26 per cent)”

As a hospital we were only able to record the death as Covid under set criteria and it had to be the primary reason to be accepted. One doctor made the error or writing primary cause pneumonia due to Covid and that didn’t go into the numbers as Covid wasn’t the first cause.

Lots of scaremongering. There may be hospitals where it was recorded incorrectly but each of ours was scrutinised before submission.

If we didn’t lock down then presumably we would be like Florida and the kids would be off school in September. No one has dealt with this situation before so the attacks on the government are harsh imo. Not a Boris fan but expecting the cabinet to make perfect decisions is ridiculous (although Cummings should have resigned and I’m still pissed off about that undermining the whole government and being allowed to cause so much damage).

Well from where I’m standing it looks pretty fucking serious...