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Covid

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For the people who think they've been duped...

415 replies

mac12 · 01/08/2020 17:18

I'm not trying to start a bunfight but I'm just curious about this thought process. People who think they've been duped by coronavirus & think lockdowns were a hysterical over-reaction...

  • what do you think is going on when countries like China haven't rolled back from their strong stance on this? Do you think it's just to save face? I mean would a country really take a wrecking ball to their economy to save face?
  • why have countries like Israel or some US states, which did reopen, decide to start closing down again? Why wouldn't they just crack on and carry on with full reopening if it was so clear that they had been duped & it had all been an overreaction?
  • why wouldn't all governments be taking the Sweden line? Our govt isn't averse to the odd U-turn, why wouldn't they do this if they genuinely thought it was safe and they had overreacted?
I'm just wondering why people think governments would persist with this if it was so obviously an overreaction?
OP posts:
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TheDailyCarbuncle · 03/08/2020 18:21

I also struggle a bit with the arguments around people who are at risk. I understand that some people have a greater chance of being ill with covid - that's true of lots of other illnesses too. But locking healthy people down because of that doesn't make sense to me. Healthy people are needed to keep taxes coming in and services running. Preventing them from living their lives doesn't make sense, especially as at some point they absolutely must go back out in the world again, at which point the same risk that they posed to vulnerable people remains - it's just not possible to protect vulnerable people indefinitely by controlling the movements of healthy people. It has to stop at some point. And what then?

larrygrylls · 03/08/2020 18:22

TheDailyCarbuncle,

Well, the death rate, actually, is a bit of a viewpoint until we can accurately know the infection rate across the population.

However the number you quoted for 60-69 year olds seems too low. A recent study in the lancet put the IFR of 50-64 year olds at 0.14% and 65+ at 5.6%. Not an exact comparator, but if 57 year old (simplistically) IFR is 0.14%, then 64.5 year olds will be considerably higher.

www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/laninf/PIIS1473-3099(20)30584-3.pdf

TheDailyCarbuncle · 03/08/2020 18:30

At this point @GrumpiestOldWoman the arguments are just going around and around in circles.

I do agree with slowing the rate of transmission with the aim of ensuring that not too many people are infected at one time. In Stockholm, a typical European city, not special or different, not some strange nordic parallel universe, that was achieved by basic measures like good hand hygiene, voluntary social distancing and prevention of large gatherings. No edicts not to see your own family, no children kept home from school. It worked. There is no evidence from anywhere in the world that draconian measures where you isolate millions of healthy people are necessary or even work at all - there is more evidence that they are over the top and actually lead to the creation of other problems (obvious problems like deaths of the elderly due to lack of human contact).

The real problem now is that the aim seems to have been diverted from 'reduce pressure on the NHS' to 'win a pissing contest about who's doing the best at lowering infection.' The NHS is nowhere near overwhelmed at the moment and yet some businesses are still shut down. Now I know the argument is that if they open up the infection rate will go out of control but that hasn't happened in Sweden or anywhere else in the entire world so why is that being used as the excuse? Why make people suffer for a hypothetical situation that has never actually happened yet? At what point will we finally be released from this? It has to happen at some point. There is no point at which everything will be absolutely fine and there's no danger. So how many people have to suffer in the meantime?

TheDailyCarbuncle · 03/08/2020 18:35

[quote larrygrylls]TheDailyCarbuncle,

Well, the death rate, actually, is a bit of a viewpoint until we can accurately know the infection rate across the population.

However the number you quoted for 60-69 year olds seems too low. A recent study in the lancet put the IFR of 50-64 year olds at 0.14% and 65+ at 5.6%. Not an exact comparator, but if 57 year old (simplistically) IFR is 0.14%, then 64.5 year olds will be considerably higher.

www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/laninf/PIIS1473-3099(20)30584-3.pdf[/quote]
If anything your numbers seem low. 65+ includes people in their 80s, 90s and even 100s (potentially). It's strange to lump all those people in together because it makes the risk seem artificially low for the 80+ age group and artificially high for the 65+ age group. According to that study, if you're over 65 you have a greater than 94% chance of recovery which is considerably higher than the 85% chance given by the office of national statistics in the UK.

larrygrylls · 03/08/2020 18:41

TheDailyCarbuncle,

'If anything your numbers seem low. 65+ includes people in their 80s, 90s and even 100s (potentially). It's strange to lump all those people in together because it makes the risk seem artificially low for the 80+ age group and artificially high for the 65+ age group.'

I did not choose the groupings (which, I agree, are strange)! I found a recent credible study which estimated the IFR based on seropositivity. The important point is that your 60-69 IFR seems VERY low.

Can you tell me the source of your data, please?

eeeyoresmiles · 03/08/2020 18:43

If you start from a premise that the measures we implemented in our lockdown were objectively unnecessary, and that somehow this is an agreed fact, then I can see you would start thinking accepting them is a sign of some kind of dangerous irrationality in the population. But that those measures were unnecessary is just some people's view - it's not some kind of objective fact. Lots of people accepted and still accept the measures we've taken, not because someone has told them they should and they've blindly accepted it, but because they can see the implications of a new disease like this and what will happen if it spreads widely.

Yes but a low death rare is contingent in adequate hospital care if necessary.

Boris Johnson is one if the survivors but if the healthcare system had been full and unable to admit him the outcome would have been very different.

This sort of implication, for a start! One of the basic problems that comes along with any pandemic of a novel disease is that it doesn't matter how good our healthcare is, if we don't have enough of whatever it is that makes it good (beds, staff, machines, PPE, meds, ...), then once we have more simultaneous infections than our healthcare can cope with the death rate will go right up. It won't matter that you could have been saved with oxygen or CPAP machines or ventilators or antibiotics, if they've all been used up before you get to the hospital with covid.

You can tell people their individual risk from the illness is low till the cows come home, but you can't make them un-know the fact that with too many cases at once, that hospital treatment won't be available. Or that with too many cases at once, hospital treatment for other things won't be available either. Our individual risks of dying are not the only thing that should be governing our behaviour at the moment.

askmehowiknow · 03/08/2020 18:48

I think we all agree the aim was/is not to overwhelm NHS. This was never even close to happening. If this was the aim why wasn't lockdown opened up months ago?

eeeyoresmiles · 03/08/2020 18:50

I do agree with slowing the rate of transmission with the aim of ensuring that not too many people are infected at one time. In Stockholm, a typical European city, not special or different, not some strange nordic parallel universe, that was achieved by basic measures like good hand hygiene, voluntary social distancing and prevention of large gatherings. No edicts not to see your own family, no children kept home from school.

www.tes.com/news/have-swedish-schools-really-carried-normal

Swedish schools did not stay open as normal. Read what they were like - nothing like ours would have been able to be if they had been fully open (and actually a lot more like what ours were like, partially open). And no face to face education for year 10 and above.

larrygrylls · 03/08/2020 18:52

Askme,

'This was never even close to happening'

You think? Tell that to the patients who called ambulances because they could not breathe and were told that they were not sick enough to go to hospital. Or to the hospital who lowered their acceptable oxygen saturation level from 93% to 90% due to a national oxygen shortage. Or to the cancer patients who are now condemned to death as their chemo was postponed due to Covid.

askmehowiknow · 03/08/2020 18:55

@larrygrylls

Askme,

'This was never even close to happening'

You think? Tell that to the patients who called ambulances because they could not breathe and were told that they were not sick enough to go to hospital. Or to the hospital who lowered their acceptable oxygen saturation level from 93% to 90% due to a national oxygen shortage. Or to the cancer patients who are now condemned to death as their chemo was postponed due to Covid.

That was more to do with medics not knowing/understanding the best treatment for covid early on

No hospital breached capacity during the peak. Nightingale hospitals were never really used.

Cancer treatment and operations were postponed due to risk of catching covid rather than a capacity issue in the main.

larrygrylls · 03/08/2020 19:00

Askme,

Nightingale hospitals were only really available too late, and had no staff anyway.

No hospital breached capacity as they changed the criteria for admission so you had to be much sicker than normal to be admitted and they coerced a number of elderly and sick to sign DNR orders and left them to die at home. And not breaching is not the same as 'did not some close'. Some came very close indeed.

Do you honestly want to stand by your statement that 'we did not come close' to breaching capacity? Personally, I think that we breached it; we just defined it away. You could argue that we were close but did not breach it. I think it is very hard to argue that we did not come close.

user1497207191 · 03/08/2020 19:01

There are still people who believe the Earth is flat!

GrumpiestOldWoman · 03/08/2020 19:02

In Stockholm, a typical European city, not special or different, not some strange nordic parallel universe, that was achieved by basic measures like good hand hygiene, voluntary social distancing and prevention of large gatherings. No edicts not to see your own family, no children kept home from school. It worked.

I don't see how this would work in the UK, we have a tendency to assume rules/guidelines don't apply to us. Amidst lockdown there were people on MN who would proudly defend their right to trawl round 3 different supermarkets looking for a single cucumber just because they fancied it and it didn't say in black and white that it wasn't permitted. Even if we deemed Stockholm a good example (and I'm not convinced it is), just because something works there doesn't mean it would here.

eeeyoresmiles · 03/08/2020 19:04

Cancer treatment and operations were postponed due to risk of catching covid rather than a capacity issue in the main.

Yes, although the fundamental result is the same: hospitals did not have the ability to treat cancer patients because of coronavirus infection rates.

A 'bed' that a cancer patient needs not just a physical bed; you need a bed they can actually safely use, which means a bed that does not come with a high risk of catching covid-19. Hospitals have been unable to provide enough of those beds to cancer patients. With tiny number of covid infections in the community, more areas of hospitals can be kept covid-free, so there's more capacity to treat cancer and other things.

Bollss · 03/08/2020 19:05

@GrumpiestOldWoman

In Stockholm, a typical European city, not special or different, not some strange nordic parallel universe, that was achieved by basic measures like good hand hygiene, voluntary social distancing and prevention of large gatherings. No edicts not to see your own family, no children kept home from school. It worked.

I don't see how this would work in the UK, we have a tendency to assume rules/guidelines don't apply to us. Amidst lockdown there were people on MN who would proudly defend their right to trawl round 3 different supermarkets looking for a single cucumber just because they fancied it and it didn't say in black and white that it wasn't permitted. Even if we deemed Stockholm a good example (and I'm not convinced it is), just because something works there doesn't mean it would here.

Ah yes the mythical wise Swedes.....

Because clearly they are 800 times more intelligent and thoughtful than your average Brit. Hmm

askmehowiknow · 03/08/2020 19:05

@larrygrylls

Askme,

Nightingale hospitals were only really available too late, and had no staff anyway.

No hospital breached capacity as they changed the criteria for admission so you had to be much sicker than normal to be admitted and they coerced a number of elderly and sick to sign DNR orders and left them to die at home. And not breaching is not the same as 'did not some close'. Some came very close indeed.

Do you honestly want to stand by your statement that 'we did not come close' to breaching capacity? Personally, I think that we breached it; we just defined it away. You could argue that we were close but did not breach it. I think it is very hard to argue that we did not come close.

Criteria for admission were never changed. There was never national guidance on this.

Nightingale hospitals were not built to late

There were plenty of staff that could have been redeployed (and many were). Research nurses, student nurses, recently retired medics, paediatric staff etc. Obviously not all to staff nightingale hospitals. But redeployment as necessary was absolutely achievable

Sunrise234 · 03/08/2020 19:07

This issue I have with people who don’t believe in COVID/the lockdown (even though there have been some good discussions on here) is that not only can it cause people to bend the rules and therefore make the number of cases rise again which can increase deaths, overwhelm the NHS etc and may even result in a full lockdown again. But it is scaremongering people for no reason.

One opposing argument is that the media or government scaremongered people with false information about the virus but the advice came from medical professionals who would have no reason to lie.
But scaremongering about how thousands of people will die from cancer or commit suicide, how mental issues will massively increase, schools will close indefinitely and kids will have no education = we’re all going to die from lockdown. Surely this is more damaging for people to hear/believe than the virus and lockdown.

larrygrylls · 03/08/2020 19:08

Ask,

The below is a good and detailed article on how we just about coped with Covid.

www.economist.com/1843/2020/07/26/the-inside-story-of-britains-fight-against-covid-19

askmehowiknow · 03/08/2020 19:09

I've worked with covid patients in a hospital throughout...

GrumpiestOldWoman · 03/08/2020 19:10

*Ah yes the mythical wise Swedes.....

Because clearly they are 800 times more intelligent and thoughtful than your average Brit. hmm*

or, perhaps, was their strategy more successful than it would be in the UK because they have a fraction of the population we have?

GrumpiestOldWoman · 03/08/2020 19:11

@GrumpiestOldWoman

*Ah yes the mythical wise Swedes.....

Because clearly they are 800 times more intelligent and thoughtful than your average Brit. hmm*

or, perhaps, was their strategy more successful than it would be in the UK because they have a fraction of the population we have?

Posted too soon...

It's apples v pears.

jasjas1973 · 03/08/2020 19:46

@askmehowiknow

UK Govt has done nothing to stop CV from hitting the elderly, not my conclusion but a cross party commons committee, they said allowing CV into care homes was negligent.... so much for throwing a protective arm around the elderly...

My partners son worked on the Covid NHS 111 line, they decide when to send the Ambulance not the patient, Oxygen therapy, right from the early days, was known to assist, Germany had specific units going to homes to give this treatment.

The whole "prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed" was all about protecting the govt from criticism and zero to do with helping the general public, let the elderly die away from the glare of a hospital car park and back in a privately run Care home instead.

Derbygerbil · 03/08/2020 20:23

Those who love to cite Sweden as being a great example tend to be those who, had they been Sweden’s inhabitants, would have led to it not working. Sweden didn’t have a catastrophe because people generally took heed of the advice, albeit they had a much worse death toll than their neighbours. Those who promote Sweden tend to be selfish libertarians who would have carried on regardless given the chance and let other try and limit the spread.

TheDailyCarbuncle · 03/08/2020 20:30

What I find interesting is the extent to which people are willing to trust a model, the creators of which say themselves is not accurate (because that's how models built without much data work) and are willing to bet their entire lives on it - the future of their country, their economy, the welfare of children, pretty much everything, even though there is nothing to say it's in any way true. At the same time when there is actual, living evidence from Sweden that a full lockdown isn't necessary to control the spread of the virus, people just disregard it, citing a whole range of reasons. I always say STOCKHOLM instead of Sweden because there is some small chance that people won't be able to trot out the 'Sweden is another planet inhabited by strange aliens' excuse but it rarely works.

If you think lockdown was necessary, that's great for you. You will be shown to be wrong and you will be among the people who will, in the future have to face the fact that lives were destroyed for nothing. Because there will be endless, endless articles and tv programmes and PhD theses about it.

I'm out.

GrumpiestOldWoman · 03/08/2020 20:39

I always say STOCKHOLM instead of Sweden

Stockholm is a relatively sparsely populated city though, less than Manchester or Birmingham, why is it comparable to big UK cities who have far more people?

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