Coronavirus is awful but...

[Keepgoing88]

I do believe so would be continual lockdown and not just to the economy, the affect on people's mental (and in some cases physical) wellbeing is massive.
I believe Statistics have shown you are more likely to drown than die of corona if you are healthy and under 60 with no other conditions. If that is the case then would we stop all people going swimming Indefinetly...doubt it!
I think where I am getting at with this is that it's sad but I feel that if we truly do have to live with this terrible disease then unfortunately it should be those most vulnerable to the Illness that should isolate but not everyone else. I don't think this is a great solution but also I don't think it is fair on all healthy people to have to go on lockdown when the risk to them is so low. Anyway got most of my thoughts down / my two pennies worth! Does anyone else feel like this or have other views?!

But we are no longer in “lockdown”. We can do most things now and have 90% of our freedom back. If you’re advocating that we go completely back to normal and dispense with all social distancing/masks/extra hand-washing etc. then we’d very likely be back to where we were back in March in a couple of months.

The thing is, healthy people are also catching this and suffering horribly, let alone dying. I've had 1 healthy family member die (in his 50s) and his wife, who was also perfectly healthy, has just been diagnosed with heart failure following a hospital stay in April. I have 2 students who have lost a parent, and countless grandparents. 2 doors down from me are a couple in their 60s and they are still ill, again after being hospitalised at Easter. Considering we know so little about this disease and the long term effects, we need to act. Many people will catch this and be asymptomatic, and that is also very concerning; you can pass it on to someone who is seemingly healthy with an undiagnosed condition (which is happening, especially in people with unkown heart defects) and they will be very ill or die. I don't think there will be a countrywide lockdown again, but local lockdowns will be needed when there is a surge in cases.

Society as a whole is not in lockdown

So I'm wondering what your point is?

Is it to fly the flag for the shielding community, whose shielding pause starting on 1 August, looks a lot like lockdown did in March (plus bubbling with one household and allowed to visit places of worship), but food shopping only, exercise outdoors only and WOH only n Covid-safe workplaces

@Keepgoing88

What do you want to do now that you can't?

The risk now is low because of social distancing. If you remove social distancing ( which I think many people would continue with anyway) then the risk will rise again.

The reason the swimming analogy doesn't work is each individual's risk remains the same whether another hundred people swim or only another two.

With infectious diseases it doesn't work like that.

Good plan OP

Now tell us how to identify the 1 in 20 who would be badly affected by long-tail COVID sonthey can shield too.

"have 90% of our freedom back"

Except to

send our kids to FT education (where DC should have been since March)
get a tooth filled (my dentist isn't doing, anyway)
go swimming indoors (my pool isn't opening any time soon)
enter a crowded shop
Hug anyone consenting
visit care homes (will happen sometime in future)
visit lots of countries without 2 weeks quarantine upon arrival there & 2 weeks quarantine on return
go to live performances in an indoor venue
use public transport without wearing face covers
have a wedding as large as we can afford to pay for
try on clothes in a shop before buying
work in usual office (covid-safe means most of us will stay WFH)
(long list of other stuff I haven't listed)

I don't know how one defines 10% of freedoms, but doesn't feel like only 10% restriction to me.

Maybe it is because I have 3 young children but for us there is still a lot we cannot do... We cannot go to the playgrounds where I live as they are not opening them yet. We cannot do soft play yet and a lot of the activities we normally do are not open. So maybe I am a bit biassed. I know we are not in lockdown now but I'm just saying for the future. I know somehealthy people get Ill but I wasn't talking at a personal level just general.

Yes, I wouldn’t say I have 90% of my family’s freedom back. We can’t go swimming (pools only offering adult lane swimming), to various local attractions (either closed or impossible to get restricted number of tickets), to soft play or trampoline park, we can’t visit my parents and siblings at the same time, we can’t have normal play dates, can’t get dental check ups, can’t get routine medical appointments face to face, can’t attend our usual social groups, we can’t get within a metre of anyone outside our family and if my kids get more than a month or two of time in school between now and Easter I will be pleasantly surprised. Even if they do miraculously stay in school lots of things I value, like being able to talk to their teacher, watching school assembly or helping on trips won’t be happening.

That’s before we get to just the inconvenience involved in lots of stuff we can do - fewer toilets, face masks, no trying on, restrictions on holiday lettings, quarantine, the constant threat of track and trace and 2 weeks isolation....

It might be necessary, but it’s really not 90% normal for many of us.

Things are going back to normal, slowly, with some obvious safety measures in place. I can’t understand people who think everything is going to open at once and be as it was. We still don’t know a massive amount about this virus or it’s long term implications. Young, seemingly healthy people do catch it. There can be complications. I think slowly opening stuff up is the way to go.

I agree with you. Life cannot stop indefinitely because of a virus. It's another of many that we will have to learn to live with.

Honestly though I'm quite pragmatic about death and think if it's my time to go it's my time to go, so I'm not particularly worried.

Meh, we've loved lockdown. I appreciate not everyone has though. All the things we did pre-lockdown, with the exception of visiting grandparents are now open to us but we are choosing not to do them.

As for economic impact, there is signficant evidence that coronavirus impacts the economy NOT lockdown (see Sweden as a very good example) due to increased sickness and people not wanting to go out and do things. So if we hadn't lockdown there is a likelihood we'd have an even higher death rate AND a screwed economy.

I don’t disagree with you wholly but I do believe that we’re still in the stage of managing what we know and importantly don’t know against what we need.

Nationwide lockdown was necessary because we were unprepared and infections were beyond control (only evidenced by people seeking medical attention, workplace sickness, school sickness - we’ll never know the exact numbers but these were already high enough to attract attention) We needed time to cope with those already infected without adding to the tally too much and to get strategies in place to manage infection numbers going forward.

Everything now is trial and error with the caveat that covid hasn’t been in known existence for even a year yet and we have no idea what the long term effects might look like (really long term not just a few weeks or months). We can only look at viruses we do know about and theorise what might be worth worrying about. Chicken pox, herpes and HIV are the better known ones that remain in the body and can cause relapses and problems years after the original infection and that’s without looking into the long term damage it might leave. My thinking is in line with a lot of scientists that it’s best to avoid infection at all if possible.

The problem now seems to be getting to grips with the timescales involved in gaining any certain knowledge but there’s not really anything that can be done about that so it would be a reasonable conclusion that while we want to get things back to as normal as possible we need to be careful.

FWIW I don’t think we will see much moving backwards with reopenings and it would take something catastrophic to see the case numbers rise to estimated spring levels so I doubt we’ll see another nationwide lockdown but that does mean there will be certain things that won’t be back for a long time.

The reason we don't stop swimmers is because most people who choose to go in the water know what they're choosing. Those who are vulnerable to the serious risk of cv19 might choose to protect themselves but they can't dictate what YOU do, and they are vulnerable simply by contact with you.

Totally agree with you OP

I don't really feel we are in lockdown now. There are definitely things we still can't do, and some things such as theatres which won't reopen for a while, but it's nothing like it was a few weeks ago. Things are more difficult to arrange and it's harder to be spontaneous, but we're not in lockdown. I'm going swimming tomorrow! (had to book a slot rather than just turn up at the pool).

I agree with you OP. We may not be in full lockdown but we certainly can’t do 90% of what we are used to. DH has a week off soon and we have managed to book a week in Cornwall. We spend most of our days on the beach rain or shine as DH and the kids love the sea so that’s fine but we normally eat out in the evenings. All the local restaurants where we are staying have restricted numbers and reduced menus. I have had to book our meals out in advance. No spontaneity. He has another week at the end of August so I have been thinking about our options. We would normally go out for days but the prospect of travelling into London masked up does not fill me with joy, neither does Thorpe Park or Alton Towers. I have looked at going abroad but again getting on a plane in a mask and then having to wear masks on beaches is not what I consider a holiday. I feel like every day now is Groundhog Day.

I'm sorry but wanting to go to soft play right now is just . They are germ festivals at the best of times.

In all honesty, do you really like soft play so much you'd want your children in an uncleanable environment?

I understand people missing hugging their parents, that's an essential part of a relationship.

then unfortunately it should be those most vulnerable to the Illness that should isolate but not everyone else. Maybe those who can't walk should just accept they can't go out and not expect reserved parking spaces? Those with server vision problems should accept that they just can't work or socialise, rather than special provisions be put in place?

"The vulnerable" are people, your fellow citizens. In a civilised society you cannot just leave them to moulder away out of sight.

And who would be covered by this vulnerability category? The entire BAME population? Whole families if 1 member is vulnerable. What about all medical staff over 50?

Our local pool is offering parent and child swimming from this weekend. Might be worth checking

I’m not saying soft play should be open, although if it was then yes I would absolutely go to a couple near us that are normally clean, but we used to go to soft play centres on average once a fortnight, especially in winter. They’re actually a big absence for my children, especially since we also can’t go to swimming, trampolining, bowling (though I know that’s coming), birthday parties, indoor play dates...

As for germ festivals, in general I want my children exposed to germs not living in a sterile bubble, it’s not healthy in the long term.

The whole BAME population are not the vulnerable.

@Triangularbubble my children never lived in sterility, but noro outbreaks are common at soft play, they are notoriously difficult to clean.

I think soft play will be a niche option in a covid world.

I feel like 'common' is a bit strong, but they do happen and they are at the germy end of the spectrum.

I agree and I think no matter how bad this winter gets there'll be no further lockdown. Possibly very short term local closures but no more than that.

Undoubtedly there will be tragedies as a result but different ones to the tragedies caused by lockdown, isolation and financial hardship. I respected lockdown to the letter and continue to follow the remaining rules but I'm still not convinced it was the right choice. I think we've sacrificed an entire generation of young people.