I can’t believe this is how people think

[Tigerlily31]

My MIL told me she’d rather die of “anything else over Covid”

My own mother is convinced she’ll end up in ICU on a ventilator if she gets it, despite having no health concerns.

I fully blame the media. It’s becoming frightening how big it is in people’s minds.

Whilst I agree there are people who think like this OP, I think there are a growing number of people who are beginning to move towards "this is no way to live, I'll take my chances".

What is a RTA?

Excess deaths figures widely reported www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/health-53592881

The normal risk figures I got from UK actuarial mortality tables 2018 and the covid 19 death figures from a Lancet paper.

It is hard to be certain on the impact of being obese/ heart disease etc e.g. the study used a BMI of 40 and it wasn't clear how having BMI of say 30 would affect it which is why I've quoted it as an upper bound but I still think it's disingenuous of people to say there's lots of viruses around which we just live with when even at my age group its a bigger risk than normal and is a huge extra risk to my parents for example.

I couldn't give a shit about dying from COVID, but I know many do and for that reason I respect all the rules and regulations that the government has issued.

I do hope the government plays hardball with schools to make sure they reopen and stay open, and I find the pub reopenings etc bizarre ahead of it as Covid cases will doubtless pick up prior to September now, although I think schools should have opened over the August period for catch up studies.

Longer term there needs to be a sensible online education portal set up for home schooling whereby if school close parents don't have this good school/shit school lottery of whether their children get the opportunity to learn anything.

RTA is road traffic accident.

The headline figures on deaths will include people who have died of other causes than Covid - although deaths from RTAs are not that common and it's a stupid example. It will also include deaths that people dont want to be counted as Covid because the person took 28 days or more to die.

ONS figures come out later and for those Covid has to be on the death certificate. It wont be the cause of death for an RTA so ONS dont count it.

The government are using a problem with the data that they created and could easily resolve if they wished to try and make you think all the available data are false.

“ Apparently 1 in 5 people believe the conspiracy theories that abound and believe the virus is a hoax hence 20 per cent minimum are NOT taking any precautions.”

This sounds like an exaggeration to me

Is there anywhere showing how many of the excess deaths are due to cancer treatments being cancelled, suicide, etc

[quote mathanxiety]@TheMurk
ReefTeeth but this is just what the media is telling you.

The fuck it is.

I take it nobody you know is still suffering the after effects of having it in March?

And presumably nobody you knew has died of it?[/quote]
If it's about personal experiences the only people I know who have had confirmed tests are:

• My Dad's friend, a man in his 80s with other health issues who died
• A friend's father who they had already been told had only days to live due to Camcer and who died "with it", not of it but who goes on the stats as a Covid death
• A Covid ward nurse who had no symptoms but who has now tested positive for antibodies
• An asthmatic friend who works in a care home. Was very poorly with "flu like symptoms" for 3 weeks in April, is now back to running 50 miles a week and I did a 40 mile bike ride with her on Sunday
• Her husband, who is older and often in poor health, was ill for about 3 days and now appears to be back to normal
• A friend who works in a Hospice who had no symptoms but has tested positive for antibodies and has continued running and cycling regularly all the way through, without even suspecting anything was wrong.

Now I know there have been other more distressing stories and I've felt the need to be careful all the way through but there really isn't any need to be so dramatic.

@ReefTeeth

It's the damage it does to the body afterwards that is more concerning.

A young person who can fight off Covid with permanent lung damage? No thanks

The whole world hasn't shut down for nothing 🙄

This can happen with many other conditions too. I had glandular fever (a very mild case) at 14. For my entire twenties I was on heavy medication to cope with the M.E/CFS I will suffer from for life. At times it is dibilitating. I have my kidneys checked every year. I'm not saying it isn't scary I'm just saying people seem to think Covid is the only virus to have ever caused long term side effects.

Schools can't open in August as contrary to popular belief teachers have been working at home/ in school throughout, including Easter etc and of course the government would not fund the extra pay this would contractually. require.

Lots of people say they don't understand why pubs were allowed but not schools but this is simple surely. You can easily tell a pub to open and limit the normal attendance to 1/2 of normal although whether this is financially viable is a different matter. Where the other half get their alcohol is not the pubs problem

You cant open a school and say only half are allowed in without making plans for how the other half will learn on that same day not to mention impacts on childcare and working parents. Logistically it's a far more complicated situation.

Whether the priorities are correct is a different matter.

@DeepTreacle

But the OP is talking about someone saying they would rather die of anything than coronavirus - as though it’s the worst way to die. That’s different to “Taking the virus seriously” etc. It suggests that someone might take greater risks with their health and well-being in order to avoid coronavirus, which isn’t a sensible or helpful route

Personally, although I imagine a covid death would be pretty bad, I'd prefer it to being stuck in quicksand and being eaten alive by crabs. That would be a scary way to go.

I agree that it is a shame some people are so frightened, but on the other hand this is a serious situation. The excess mortality rate surged up to the middle of June. England had the highest excess mortality rate in Europe for that period, Scotland the third highest, Wales the fifth despite the lock downs. What would have happened if we hadn't locked down?

@Catsup

I know 3 people personally who've had the test and been confirmed for COVID. All have worked in a close personal care setting. All are under 45, no additional health conditions. All have recovered but stated they felt very unwell whilst having it. Its a very small sample (very small!). But I can only state what I actually know. My parent whose isolated from the start also developed shingles via stress as the virus will have laid low for years but they've massively struggled with isolating. Would they have been better to take their chances? Who knows? It's a hard call and currently no one seems to have all the answers.

Shingles is often associated with low immune systems, so probably best they avoid covid.

I think I’d rather covid than Ebola.

Thank you, walksen.

There are lots of other viruses around and for the most part we live with them, but they can have catastrophic consequences for some. I agree with PPs that there is a bit of an air around of Covid being the only thing to have ever caused a threat.

I had several years of lung complications which I think I can trace back to swine flu and at one stage was under investigation for bronchoectasis after multiple bouts of pneumonia in the same year. I also had an abnormal ECG during all this that needed cardiologist follow-up. This experience both makes me cautious about coronavirus and puts it in a degree of perspective - as one risk among many.

This thread is bordering on conspiracy theory tbh, excess deaths are excess deaths. Minimisation/denialism are as common as exaggeration - and are on display in this thread

People are processing a changed health landscape, and dying of covid does appear grim, due to lack of treatment options, the nature of dying due to drowning in lung fluid and the fact visitors can't come as infection risk is too high.

I'm not saying sepsis, cancer or RTA are fine, but we all have those possibilities built into our personal risk register already, we've grown up with them.

Maybe a bit of compassion and trying to understand fellow humans would help? A change like a new illness on the landscape inevitably provokes wide-ranging psychological responses, on a spectrum from denial to terror.

@Yellowbutterfly1

Is there anywhere showing how many of the excess deaths are due to cancer treatments being cancelled, suicide, etc

No, and even if there was, these things would happen with or without lockdown.

How do you think cancer patients are getting on in Texas? You really think it would be a good idea for someone with a reduced immune system to visit a Texas hospital ATM? No

I imagine suicides have increased in Texas. It's probably pretty stressful over there.

Let's not beat around the bush, because that is what people are saying. They are saying we want to be like Texas. Whereas what they think they are saying is, we want the disease to just disappear.

But I'm sorry but that's not going to happen anytime soon. Winter is coming.

@CatteStreet

The fact is that both sets of experiences - 'I know several young fit healthy people who are now long-term ill with it' and 'my mother in a care home was asymptomatic' (just putting the two positions as briefly as possible) are ancedata. I do think Covid can have some very nasty complications - as can other viruses, including the much-derided flu (but these a) are not media-worthy so not reported b) possibly occur at a lower rate, in part simply because Covid is a novel disease c) may not be diagnosed as such, while Covid is an obvious cause of suspicion for complications atm) - and that it is more than worth being cautious. I'm certainly risk-assessing my activities more carefully and not doing some things I might have done before this started. At the same time, particularly in the UK (mainly due to the drastic U-turn in public messaging that needed to happen once it became apparent this was serious and not to be dismissed, as Boris and co had done originally), fear has been stoked to a degree where, when it interacts with people disposed to be anxious and/or impressionable to drastic messaging, is having unpleasant MH consequences. I've read 'I've been told I'd likely not survive Covid' quite a lot on here, and I don't think these posters are lying or exaggerating - I can believe that people's doctors (who to a degree are also still in the dark about all this) have used words to this effect - but at the same time the figures simply don't bear out that this can be true in all these cases.

As in many things, a middle way is what's needed. We can't have life as it was before this started, not atm. We do (and let's not forget that some people always have responded to this imperative) need to keep society functioning.

Eight in 10 care home residents are asymptomatic with covid19 whereas young/fit people who become extremely unwell with covid19 are outliers.

@labyrinthloafer

This thread is bordering on conspiracy theory tbh, excess deaths are excess deaths. Minimisation/denialism are as common as exaggeration - and are on display in this thread

People are processing a changed health landscape, and dying of covid does appear grim, due to lack of treatment options, the nature of dying due to drowning in lung fluid and the fact visitors can't come as infection risk is too high.

I'm not saying sepsis, cancer or RTA are fine, but we all have those possibilities built into our personal risk register already, we've grown up with them.

Maybe a bit of compassion and trying to understand fellow humans would help? A change like a new illness on the landscape inevitably provokes wide-ranging psychological responses, on a spectrum from denial to terror.

Agree with all this. Also interesting that OP is a first time poster. Manipulation can work both ways.

@PJ6M

I personally know of someone who had Covid, was discharged and died in an rta a few weeks later but their cause of death was put down as Covid

Buuuuull Shiiiiiit.... You inspected the death certificate of this super close personal friend that you "know of" I suppose? 😂😂😂

Not bullshit. It's the terminology of how deaths are being reported. Read the reports (the actual ONS ones, not the media figures) and if someone has tested positive their death is reported as "with Covid19 present". Dying of the Covid19 - that actually being the cause of death - is actually much rarer than the figures suggest. If you die within a certain timeframe from the positive test (and believe it or not that timeframe differs between the four countries of the UK) then Covid19 appears on the death certificate whether or not it was the cause of death. We do this with no other disease. If someone has cancer and dies, but also has flu (which is equally a risk factor for the vulnerable) we don't say that they died "with flu present".

If we could see figures that distinguished between those who die of Covid19 only and those who die of another cause but happen to have Covid19 as well, I believe that there would be shockwaves about what we have given up for this virus. Yes, in a very small number of people it has had unexpectedly terrible consequences. But it is far from the only disease that has terrible consequences for small numbers of people. We do not face the hysteria over those. In fact, most everybody doesn't even know about the everyday risks they face. Or care.

Absolutely brilliant post by walksen on page 2 about risk.

I also agree with the poster who said the arguments have become so polarised.

I like walksen’s post because it puts some actual figures to it.

@CatteStreet

Thank you, walksen.

There are lots of other viruses around and for the most part we live with them, but they can have catastrophic consequences for some. I agree with PPs that there is a bit of an air around of Covid being the only thing to have ever caused a threat.

I had several years of lung complications which I think I can trace back to swine flu and at one stage was under investigation for bronchoectasis after multiple bouts of pneumonia in the same year. I also had an abnormal ECG during all this that needed cardiologist follow-up. This experience both makes me cautious about coronavirus and puts it in a degree of perspective - as one risk among many.

I trace serious lung problems with winter illnesses back to swine flu. I’d never had them before and remember the very scary feeling of my lungs being attacked by the swine flu, fortunately arrested by tamiflu just in time, it felt like.

I also feel extremely cautious about Covid.

From

fullfact.org/health/coronavirus-death-count-data/

“ PHE has suggested that changing the way it counts deaths is unlikely to make a big difference to the overall death toll. In a series of tweets, it said that around 90% of the 40,528 Covid-19 deaths reported by 15 July 2020 had occurred within 28 days of a positive test. Of those who died after 28 days, Covid-19 was stated as the main cause of death on the registration form for 47%”

My auntie has been coughing up blood for 2 months now and said if there Is no cure then she wants to be put down! It's one of the worst things I've seen so that's where people get it from. It's very unlikely to catch it that badly but if you do it's really horrific

Well clearly there are plenty of other nasty illnesses you can catch, but I know two people who have been in intensive care with Covid (one who three months later has just started to lose her hair as a result) and one person who has died from it. I don't know anyone who has died or been in intensive care for any other reason in the last six months. So I don't think it's completely over-hyped, no. But that's the problem with anecdotal evidence.