Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Covid

Mumsnet doesn't verify the qualifications of users. If you have medical concerns, please consult a healthcare professional.

Original poster

Never has a virus been so oversold

245 replies

StitchInLime · 10/08/2020 21:33

A friend just sent this article from The Spectator to our Whatssap group and I have to confess, I'm struggling to counter the statements made in it.

www.spectator.co.uk/article/never-has-a-virus-been-so-oversold

HAS this virus been oversold? Now we have a better understanding of it, is it time to relax a bit?

Or is this article wrong? And if so, how (no need to get into debate about the author and source, but I mean the quoted stats)? I feel I need to argue against it in the Whatssap group but am struggling with how.

OP posts:
ScorpioSphinxInACalicoDress · 10/08/2020 22:14

Dominic Cummings' wife is commissioning editor of the Spectator.

I'd really take anything written on Covid in there with a massive pinch of salt.

Especially a non-scientific me me me! piece by someone who doesn't half like to say things I don't think even she believes to get a rise.

It's a very facile article isn't it? It must have taken her a long 6 minutes to cobble together.

Yes, the final numbers are likely to be way different from what was imagined four months ago- more testing=more asymptomatic younger people who aren't dying from Covid is taking the % of those who die after contracting the virus down from the horrific 15% that it briefly touched in early April (iirc) to something far more "normal".

Doesn't mean it's not a killer or should be underestimated.

Lockdownseperation · 10/08/2020 22:15

Herd immunity doesn’t work if people don’t develop life long immunity. At the moment research suggests people who have had covid 19 are only immune to it for a limited amount of time.

The opening paragraph compares how many people have died in one country in the open months of a pandemic to word wide over the course of a pandemic. It’s not a helpful comparison.

PatriciaPerch · 10/08/2020 22:15

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

24balloons · 10/08/2020 22:16

How could 7% of the population have died? Out of 60 million people, 7% would be more than 4 million people? Where did this statistic come from?.

bibbitybobbitycats · 10/08/2020 22:17

@ACautionaryTale what about the recent local lockdowns and the decision to quarantine people coming back from Spain? I don't think any of that was driven by social media?

Also, I thought it was pressure from Macron that made Johnson finally go for the UK wide lockdown, (or possibly that Cummings got cold feet on herd immunity when he saw the modelling). Anyway, we will find out one day what really drove the decision and whether it was the right thing to do. Maybe next Spring we will be in a better position to judge.

PatriciaPerch · 10/08/2020 22:18

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

bibbitybobbitycats · 10/08/2020 22:19

@24balloons

How could 7% of the population have died? Out of 60 million people, 7% would be more than 4 million people? Where did this statistic come from?.
It's not a statistic. When people were asked what % of the population they thought had died from COVID, this was the answer some gave. It's in the article.
Pikachubaby · 10/08/2020 22:21

How she explains how people have interpreted statistics is shocking: Scots believe 10% of their countrymen have died from Covid?!

bibbitybobbitycats · 10/08/2020 22:22

@ScorpioSphinxInACalicoDress

Dominic Cummings' wife is commissioning editor of the Spectator.

I'd really take anything written on Covid in there with a massive pinch of salt.

Especially a non-scientific me me me! piece by someone who doesn't half like to say things I don't think even she believes to get a rise.

It's a very facile article isn't it? It must have taken her a long 6 minutes to cobble together.

Yes, the final numbers are likely to be way different from what was imagined four months ago- more testing=more asymptomatic younger people who aren't dying from Covid is taking the % of those who die after contracting the virus down from the horrific 15% that it briefly touched in early April (iirc) to something far more "normal".

Doesn't mean it's not a killer or should be underestimated.

^ ^ Very good points.
Pikachubaby · 10/08/2020 22:22

@PatriciaPerch exactly, the 7% example shows people have lost the plot

24balloons · 10/08/2020 22:23

Sorry I didn’t read the article but 7% is crazy, maybe I should read it

MrsPeacockInTheLibrary · 10/08/2020 22:23

Do people think 7% of our population have died?

FixTheBone · 10/08/2020 22:23

@ACautionaryTale

The 7% would have died anyway....

The 42 year old decorator that was working 36 hours prior to dying as i was amputating all 4 of his limbs in a failed last ditch attempt to stop a cytokine storm induced rhabdomyolydis from killing him hardly seems like low hanging fruit.

Pretty sure his wife and three young children weren't expecting him to spontaneously cook his own muscles anytime soon either....

itsgettingweird · 10/08/2020 22:25

They locked down during the 1918 flu pandemic.

Some estimates are 50 million people died.

So even for those who want to compare Covid to flu there's some stats to use.

Ok - healthcare now is better.

But then again I'm not expecting 50mol death toll.

HopelessSemantics · 10/08/2020 22:27

I feel the same about the second world war. Only 70,000 British people died in the second world war (45000 so far from coronavirus). What an overplayed piece of tosh. Everyone should just stop going on about it, it wasn't that big a deal. In fact, it could have gone on for another couple of years imo.

Ethelfleda · 10/08/2020 22:28

Do people think 7% of our population have died?

I think people on this thread think they have. They have spectacularly missed the point of the article.
7% was based on a poll asking the British public to estimate the percentage of the population that have died. We have over 70 million. 40odd thousand is not 7% of 70 million!!

Chloemol · 10/08/2020 22:29

Well I think the 20 million that have caught it worldwide, and the 750,000 and counting who have died may disagree

Any if countries hadn’t locked down then we would be heading for far worse figures than the pandemics mentioned

No mention I see of the longer lasting lung and heart and other organ issues that are much longer term either

Still everyone’s entitled to an opinion, in my mind however this one is tosh

KitKatastrophe · 10/08/2020 22:30

I think the actual statistic is something like 0.07%

Ethelfleda · 10/08/2020 22:31

We are looking at roughly 0.07% of the UK population has died so far...

notalwaysalondoner · 10/08/2020 22:32

This article sums up how I feel.

The Asian flu killed 2-4 million without lockdown. Covid has killed 730k with massive global disruption and an unprecedented recession. So it does seem like a reasonable comparison. I think social media caused a kind of social contagion among governments where they all essentially copied each other, leading to lockdowns everywhere because that is what the first few countries did. I also think that modern life is so safe people are unaccustomed to living with any kind of new risk, and so massively panicked when a new one came along. I read that for the average person under 65 (statistically including those with health issues) driving 160 miles is more dangerous than Covid. I appreciate it’s scary for old or sick people, but I don’t think in the long term the whole of society should shut down to protect the few, due to the multiplied long term damage it will have due to unemployment, tax revenues falling, austerity etc. I wholeheartedly agree with her premise that in any other era this virus would have gone basically under the radar.

And I have an Oxbridge science degree and masters so don’t say I don’t understand the science or stats.

KitKatastrophe · 10/08/2020 22:34

[quote FixTheBone]@ACautionaryTale

The 7% would have died anyway....

The 42 year old decorator that was working 36 hours prior to dying as i was amputating all 4 of his limbs in a failed last ditch attempt to stop a cytokine storm induced rhabdomyolydis from killing him hardly seems like low hanging fruit.

Pretty sure his wife and three young children weren't expecting him to spontaneously cook his own muscles anytime soon either....[/quote]
Obviously this is tragic but you are presumably a doctor so I'm sure you're aware that the vast vast majority of covid fatalities were those of advanced age and/or with serious underlying conditions. And also the fact that many healthy young people do unfortunately die of many causes - accidents, contagious and non-contagious disease, complications, suicide... Covid is not special in that respect.

Alabamawhirly1 · 10/08/2020 22:46

Do people on this thread not understand that 7% haven't died.

When the UK public were survaied, on average people THOUGHT 7% of the UK population had died of covid19.

That is as massive overestimate. That's the point in the article. The media has made you believe its much worse than it is.

45 thousand (soon to be reduced due to false reporting) have died. Of a population of 66 million. That's 0.06% of the population.

7% would have been just under half a million dead just in the UK. Only 650 thousand have died worldwide.

PatriciaPerch · 10/08/2020 22:51

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

bibbitybobbitycats · 10/08/2020 22:52

7% would have been just under half a million dead just in the UK. Only 650 thousand have died worldwide.

7% would be 4.5 miilion!

bibbitybobbitycats · 10/08/2020 22:55

4.6 million, in fact.