Should we treat covid like flu now and just get on with life?

[947EliseChalotte]

Is it time to accept covid as another flu and just get on with life and back to normality. The whole point of lockdown was to flatten the curve.

@millymollymoomoo

Yes This is danderius predominantly to the same categories as flu - is old and vulnerable 2017/18 saw 50000k flu related deaths in England in the sane categories and to be honest it went unnoticed

If you’re under 50 and in good health the risks are minimal. If you’re older and more vulnerable we need to think how they can be protected while others go about their business
Distancing / marks etc cannot be the way forward indefinitely!

FFS. The 50,000 deaths from flu were

1. Over a year
2. a partlcularly high year ( 20,000 is more the average in a year)
3. NOT DURING A LOCKDOWN

Covid killed the same number of people in 4 months despite us practically shutting down the country. How many would.it have killed in a year if we had just carried on as normal?

If you can't see the difference between those two I despair , I really do.

.... wasting all the resources on a generally trivial illness

Covid may have been trivial to you, and I agree it has been for very many people... but it’s non-trivial for enough number of people for it to be non-trivial for all of us.

Your attitude seems a bit like my great uncle who spent most of the war as a soldier either in India or Gibraltar and saw hardly any action. War was trivially dangerous for him, but it doesn’t follow that the war itself wasn’t dangerous and deadly to many thousands.

Or a Russian Roulette player who, after escaping unharmed after pulling the trigger says “I’m not sure what the fuss is about... I didn’t die, so Russian Roulette is clearly only trivially dangerous”

Healthcare was diverted towards manage Covid was in response to the scale and severity of infection, and nothing to do with lockdown. Indeed, there may be arguments against lockdown, but it did help ensure the NHS was not overwhelmed, which had we waited another week as cases doubled every three day, we certainly would have been..... with the consequence that even more of the NHS would have had to shut down than actually did so.

2017/18 saw 50000k flu related deaths in England in the sane categories and to be honest it went unnoticed

And it nearly overwhelmed the NHS.... The clear and obvious difference was lockdown.

England had peak excess death rate of 107% in mid-April (ie deaths were over double the average), with this after we’d been on lockdown for nearly a month. Compare this to Bergamo in Italy - the epicentre of the outbreak in Europe - where the excess death rate was 847%! They showed what happened in a situation where it was left far too late (and with numbers doubling every 3 days, arguably that would have been us had we not acted for a further 10 days or so).... and the 50,000 or so excess deaths we did have, would
have been more like 400-450,000!!

Of course, the figure of 400-450,000 I quoted above is still only a small proportion of the U.K. population, and most people would have been fine, but to find that level of death acceptable is positively psychopathic!

@SengaStrawberry

Scotland is aiming for elimination

Maybe it won’t work or maybe it won’t work longer term but surely it’s better to try?

Exactly. It is worth a try. In this country we were talking about herd immunity and that nothing could be done ( except maybe save the NHS, whatever the hell that means) from the very beginning. I found that astonishing and depressing in equal measure. It was in direct contrast to the message being given by the Italian government ( I only use that because. I have family in Northern Italy so know a bit about it). Maybe the Italians haven't done any better overall ( probably too early to tell) but I found the UK attitude infuriating at the beginning. It was all ' give up before we even try' . Even if the message had been, it is quite unlikely we will eliminate this but we are going to give it a damn good try, it would have felt like we at least tried and gave it our best at shot in the circumstances.

My view is that, lacking any good treatments, we might as well focus all healthcare provision on the illnesses we can treat. And, lacking any immediate hope of a vaccine, most people in society (the people for whom it's almost certainly a trivial illness) should just behave as normal, other than wearing masks sometimes, washing their hands more, and being super-scrupulous around the elderly or sick.

The problem with this is that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. If enough people are ill at once, it doesn't matter that many will individually experience a trivial illness. If enough people are ill at once, the numbers needing medical help right up to hospitalisation (even without dying) will still be huge and other medical treatment will have to stop again. If enough people are ill at once, schools will close anyway, businesses will fail, etc. etc.

We can't assess the effects of 'carrying on as normal' just by looking at how likely individuals are to become seriously ill or die. We have to assess the effects by taking into account what will happen when hundreds of thousands of people are ill at once. We also have to consider what will happen if millions of more vulnerable people aren't at work, or are at work and then become ill and don't experience a trivial illness. Again, education, businesses, health all badly affected.

Yeah the problem is and always has been the numbers. If it didn’t spread exponentially the government and probably most of the rest of us wouldn’t care. The problem is that even if “only” 1% of people die 1% of a lot of people is still a lot of people.

@bumblingbovine49 I also wonder if the 'give up before we try' approach also contributes to the declining compliance amongst individuals? There's little point trying personally if your government is trying to achieve anything nationally.

A very low speed car crash is trivial and rarely causes serious injuries, but if you had a hundred times as many as usual occurring in your local area you'd certainly notice! There wouldn't be enough tow trucks, there'd be traffic delays, people wouldn't get to work, there wouldn't be enough healthcare staff to treat the minor injuries all occurring in the same morning. It's the same with covid - each individual having a low risk of serious illness doesn't translate into it being fine for society to have loads of people having it at once. It wouldn't be fine, it would be a disaster, so we have to keep infection levels really really low. There's no natural ceiling (yet) to the number getting it at once, the way there is for illnesses that have been around for a long time and to which we have some immunity. We have to create those limits on infection numbers ourselves, by our behaviour.

If you’re under 50 and in good health the risks are minimal.

The risk of death, yes. But it isn't just about death, why don't people take this in? I've had these COVID symptoms for 5 months now; I think I'm getting better but then I have another flare up.

I'm 50 and already had CFS following flu that turned into pneumonia last year and I'm overweight so I'm vulnerable admittedly, but if you look at the thread for long-term COVID sufferers you'll see that the majority are relatively young and were in good health before they caught COVID.

Please don't trivialise this. It's been life changing for people like us.

@Mittens030869 for you and thank you for speaking up, I think it is vital these stories are heard. I am aware doctors are most concerned about long term health issues, and it could be around 10% of 'mild' cases.

Hope you do feel better in the end.

I am in NZ. My partner is stuck in the UK and we cannot be reunited until our borders open. He has had it, I was exposed but didn't catch it.
I can't see how we can just continue living on this little island in the middle of nowhere with noone coming or going, forever.
I feel quite trapped. I'd rather wash my hands, wear a mask, stay fit and take the risk. BUT I have friends who feel very scared, who are older, immune compromised, have elderly relatives, and who would want us to stay shut forever.
I will continue to do what dear Dr Bloomfield tells me. But I am sad.

Athrawes is that due to the cost of quarantine? People can enter if they pay for that can’t they? (I realise not all can pay)

Yes.

@SheepandCow if you’re going to use a surgical analogy, you could also suggest amputation of the limb. Short-term shock, but better long-term prognosis does the body as a whole.

@ListeningQuietly you’ve got my vote!

Listening to R4 atm Professor of disease and control

Elimination from now would require harder lockdown than we had in March

Surely that depends on how quickly you are aiming for elimination? Currently, the aim seems to be to open as many things as possible whilst keeping the amount of cases roughly level, i.e. an R of 1. Any drop in infectivity rates would eventually mean tending to zero cases.

I think these are the three main approaches:

Open as much as possible and deal with local increases via local lockdowns (possibly the only way for some sectors to return to normal anywhere in the UK)

Open as much as possible up to the point at which cases start increasing then stop (short term minimisation to economics, but reliant on vaccine for full return to normal)

Open only as much as enables cases to continue decreasing (with the aim of allowing a much more complete return to normal in the near future)

I think currently, we're doing the top option, whilst probably trying to find out exactly where the middle option is. The third option is a more cautious approach, but I can see that whilst cases are dropping, there is a lot of pressure at that point to loosen restrictions. This pressure will continue until cases start rising, because the government hasn't persuaded people of the usefulness of following an elimination plan, and most people are under the impression that it's an impossibility. But I think that if you view elimination as a continued in decrease in cases, rather than a deliberate aim for actual zero cases (even though the end result is the same), then it doesn't seem quite such a daunting task.

I haven't listed "Just go back to normal" as an option, because I'm hoping no sane government with the infrastructure to implement any of the other options is considering it.

Yes if R is just under 1 or below eventually it would be achieved.

He answered very succinctly. I suppose he must know the above knowing what he does, but for the public when they say elimination they mean in a shorter term than R just under 1.

I imagine that having some kind of concrete date for a vaccine and plan for its roll out would influence the decision between which option was the most economically viable. If we're thinking it's over a year before we can effectively protect the majority of vulnerable people and key workers, then elimination, even over a longer time period, becomes more attractive as an option. If, as some people gossip, there is the possibility of beginning roll out as early as November (I think this is unrealistic, but I have heard people say it) then elimination over that time period seems less beneficial.

If, however, a vaccine is not definite, and the time of its arrival is still largely unknown, then I hope our government are taking a long term view and not gambling on a best case scenario for the sake of a short term popularity boost.

nelodee

If, as some people gossip, there is the possibility of beginning roll out as early as November (I think this is unrealistic, but I have heard people say it) ......

The only person I’ve heard saying this is the CEO of AstraZeneca, working in conjunction with Oxford.
Bottom line, the share price is directly affected by such statements. A CEO would not make them unless he was supremely confident about progress.
Hardly “gossip”. No doubt he is considerably more informed than you or I.

@Derbygerbil. Did you miss the bit where I said 'my mother just died of cancer'? The usual response in these situations is, 'I'm sorry that your mother just died of cancer'... But never mind...

What does 'generally' mean? It means 'in most cases'. Not in all cases, or 99% of cases. Most cases.

For most people, covid is indeed a trivial illness and they neither need or are going to get treatment from the NHS. (Have you had it? I have.) This includes almost everyone under 45 (over half the UK's population) and quite a lot of people over 45. These people aren't going to overwhelm the healthcare system because they don't need healthcare.

@eeeyoresmiles I fail to see how many people being off work for two weeks at the same time would cause more damage than the 15 weeks of lockdown, followed by this weird limbo. In fact, in many hospitals something like this happened. In my brother-in-law's team, all the surgeons except one have now had covid.

For now. I am unlucky that a close relation with a serious health problem became ill after lockdown began. But the longer this state of affairs goes on for, the more other people will, alas, experience the same thing -- the NHS refusing to treat anyone who isn't young, basically healthy, or almost certain to be cured for most cancers; elective surgeries indefinitely delayed; inadequate screening; inadequate antenatal care. If the NHS carries on operating in its current form for another year, I expect most of us will feel the pain of treatment (even cheap, effective treatment) being denied, and the suffering and grief that ensues from that.

It would not be one of the terrible events of human history if this virus stayed with us indefinitely without a vaccine. However, the Doomsday clock is 100 seconds from midnight. Disproportionate, irrational, panicked responses to covid are a distraction from the real problems.

Once again, it isn't 'trivial' for most people. Have you considered the long-term effects some of us are experiencing? It's like you just ignore those of us who tell you that. We didn't die or go into hospital but it wasn't trivial.

Yes.

@hopsalong

I’m very sorry... That was shit of me to focus on what I wanted to communicate whilst overlooking the fact you did clearly say your mother had died recently. I am sorry for your loss.

You’re right that most people will recover ok... but how do we ensure infection is kept within this group?... especially when some will be vulnerable without knowing it, and there are 15 million adults old and vulnerable enough to be eligible for flu jabs each year, with another 5-10 million living with those people. We can’t go back to normal
If we require 20-25 million people to be shut away.