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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:
Alabamawhirly1 · 10/08/2020 22:55

Sorry missed a 0 off

7% would be 4 million dead. In the UK alone!

Only 0.0068% have died in the uk

ACautionaryTale · 10/08/2020 23:00

I only said 7 % because I was quoting a previous poster

Fact is in population terms - the deaths are barely significant (and I know that sounds callous but it’s true)

Keepdistance · 10/08/2020 23:06

Italy was reporting they couldnt treat over 60s in icu but were having all ages dying.
The reason there ate so many asymptomatics is likely because everyone is healthier in summer. (Note that Aus and Brazil only started having more problems later).
When it is widespread everyone is getting a bigger dose. Eg a bus driver getting hundreds say asymptomatics on his bus daily dies. Another in a low point gets 1 person on with a mask on bus driver 2 gets it but is fine.
Treating lots of covid patients in overflowing open covid wards isnt going to help hcp or the patient.
Women going into hospital can probably avoid catching it now.

The difference with flu
Vaccines
And immunity we can be guaranteed immunity which means getting ill several times and shorter life expectancy for everyone. (Children might only live to 50 after having covid 10 times we just didnt know)
Also when gov made the decision they knew that it causes a lot of people long term lung damage and other organs.
They didnt know about pims-ts (or whatever they changed that to). And that could easily have been worse.
Plus ethnicity seems to matter but we didnt know that.
Imo better cautious. More cautious than we were. We probably infected half the world as they werent tracking it and we happy for it to rip through

RaspberryToupee · 10/08/2020 23:07

It is entirely possible that our government has fucked up and will keep digging the hole bigger rather than just admitting they fucked up. They’ve done it before - Brexit springs to mind. As does Boris Johnson still leading the country.

Usually when we fuck up, the rest of the world stares at us in a puzzled way and wonders what we’re doing. Before shaking their head and walking away to leave us to our self destructive tendencies. However, we’re not the only country undertaking these measures. All countries are. All countries have tanked their economies. You don’t do that if every country in the world isn’t scared shitless. These are governments that are far right, far left and everything in between. Yet they’re all equally shitting it. Even countries without social media or with state controlled media.

The stats are quite frankly ridiculous. The number of deaths are what we have to date but we’re not out of the woods yet. We won’t know the full tally for many, many years. At which point we can examine that this number died as a result of covid (or secondary causes that covid caused such as illnesses that weren’t present before someone caught covid). We can also then examine all the deaths that occurred as a result of lockdown - those people who died at the hands of abusers; those who missed routine health appointments; those who had delayed screenings or were too scared to go to the hospital; suicide. It is at that point that we can determine the full effects. Although, it’s worth bearing in mind you will only have modelled data to go for in understanding what the death toll of covid would have been as all countries have reacted to the threat at some level.

It is also worth bearing in mind that the vast majority of covid deaths have resulted when mitigation measures have been place. When we have been told to practice social distancing, when we have been on lockdown, when we have been washing our hands and using sanitizer. All those deaths still occurred with those mitigation measures in place. The number of deaths would almost certainly be higher if we hadn’t been trying to protect ourselves from this.

Dominic Cummings' wife is commissioning editor of the Spectator.
Pretty much this. Given that Dominic Cummings, and his wife Mary Wakefield, broke lockdown in such a blatant way, yet this isn’t addressed in any Spectator articles that I’ve seen. Since all other officials/aides/scientists who broke lockdown were sacked and Cummings kept his job, I’ve felt that Mary Wakefield must have something over Johnson to stop her husband being fired. Taken from the spectator’s website:
Our writers have no party line; their only allegiance is to clarity of thought, elegance of expression and independence of opinion. Our writers opinions range from left to right, their circumstances from high life to low life. None make any pretence at being impartial: our motto is "firm, but unfair".
Given they have no allegiance to the left or right, they’ve failed to address the lack of trust from the general public that has resulted from the PM’s aide breaking lockdown restrictions.

ChavvySexPond · 10/08/2020 23:15

We really have to do something about maths education in this country.

All the libertarians with axes to grind seem to be quoting the same survey and don't understand median and mean.

Pretty sure those Asian flu numbers are wrong too.

cleopatrascorset · 10/08/2020 23:15

I take the Spectator and Shriver's a numbskull of the highest order. My favourite was her "lock down doesn't work" column, helpfully delivered by our postman 3 weeks late, just as lockdown levelled off the exponential increase in cases & deaths.

TooTrueToBeGood · 10/08/2020 23:16

It's like groundhog day.

Remember the millenium bug? Plenty of people are adamant it was all blown out of proportion because ultimately nothing much happened. Except, the main reason nothing happened is because countless millions of man hours were invested by IT professionals working feverishly to ensure that nothing happened.

Now we have the coronavirus and some people are claiming it was all blown out of proportion because only 46,000 people have actually died. Except, those number are what they are because we took a variety of measures to minimise the spread and optimise the NHS's ability to respond.

Now for starters, I don't know about you but I don't consider 46,000 deaths to be a storm in a teacup to begin with. That's 46,000 human beings who were somebody's mum, dad, partner, child, gran, grandpa or friend. If you think they don't matter because in your mind they were low-hanging fruit healthwise anyway then I pity your complete lack of humanity.

Second, yes lockdown was an extreme measure to take and the economic impact will be felt for a long time. However, if we had not voluntarily locked down, and instead allowed the virus to run it's natural course, the subsequent much higher infection and death rate would have shut us down anyway, but in a far less controlled manner. If you honestly think society and the economy would just have motored on quite happily you are deluded.

itsgettingweird · 10/08/2020 23:17

I don't think the media have ever said or done anything to make us think 7% of the population have died.

They've been crap - granted.

But we've had ONS releasing the same data they've released for years on number of deaths and cause.

It's not like the information isn't out there so they've made it up!

What they do is word the truth in a way to get clicks

Not their fault people are to stupid to do their own research.

Augustseemsbetter · 10/08/2020 23:31

Who answers surveys like this though with any level of serious thought. It's like a survey for the quiz Pointless. Was it online by any chance?

HipTightOnions · 10/08/2020 23:31

Of course it’s not 7%, it’s more like 0.07%, which sounds like a tiny number.

But 0.07% is also 1 in 1500, which sounds like a lot more.

Funny things, numbers.

nether · 10/08/2020 23:33

They would have died regardless

Simply not true

Blood cancers (commonest cancer of childhood, strikes any and every age) has has huge strides in treatment and most people living with/beyond it can expect a normal/near normal life expectancy. That's a tenth of the shielding group.

Not terminal. Not expandable

BikeTyson · 10/08/2020 23:40

It’s a deliberately provocative article (that’s her MO) and I disagree with a lot of it. But I do think that the 7% stat is indicative of what a lot of people think, and of how social media and 24 hour news coverage has made them react differently to how they might have done 30 years ago. I also believe we will be feeling the effects of the lockdown on ill health and premature deaths for many years to come and it will probably dwarf Covid in the end.

Heffalooomia · 10/08/2020 23:41

Cummings' wife
nuff said

GetKnitted · 10/08/2020 23:43

Hi @StitchInLime

a few pieces of reality that the Spectator won't tell you:

  • Only about 6% of the UK population has had Covid yet, so the final death toll if the pandemic was going to run its course at the same level could be almost 20 times as high. See Antibody data

What the Spectator and the government don't want to say out loud is that we are nowhere near the end of this yet.

Heffalooomia · 10/08/2020 23:44

Shriver's a numbskull
I guess the Kevin gravy train had to come to an end at some point 👀?

Heffalooomia · 10/08/2020 23:45

I guess we can look to the US to see what happens if you unlock too early?

Northernsoulgirl45 · 10/08/2020 23:51

Yeah my low hanging fruit dh ie clinically extremely vulnerable would probably need a hospital admission and drug changes at tbe very least due to being immuno suppressed if he caught it but with normal life expectancy. Still working and our youngest child is only 7.

I am sure some research was done which suggested average years lost more like 6 to 9. This means that some people must have lost a good 20 or so years given the care home fiasco.

Northernsoulgirl45 · 10/08/2020 23:55

Sorry 13 or 11 years in this one.

Never has a virus been so oversold
ScorpioSphinxInACalicoDress · 11/08/2020 00:04

www.politicshome.com/news/article/dominic-cummings-wife-denies-being-second-woman-allegedly-groped-by-boris-johnson

That could be what she has over Boris.

Fieldofgreycorn · 11/08/2020 00:10

She’s got a point though. We don’t really know if lockdown has had a significant effect. Some countries have done it, some haven’t. In USA there’s been a similar death percentage, very small like 0.05%.

In reality we don’t know it hasn’t been similar to a bad flu year. Maybe the whole human race has terrified itself into this like some sort of global group think?

Choccylips · 11/08/2020 00:31

There is also a lot of people with a lot to gain personally from this virus monetary wise and a lot to lose if it doesn't go on long enough. Some people like to fill their pockets quick and to hell with the rest of the country or what happens to it in the near future. If you have an off shore account fill it up and f to everyone else.Lets face it now we are out of the EU the Lisbon treaty can't touch off shore accounts. I think a lot of people know the rigged up figures are a fairy tale but these days so many believe in unicorns.

blurpityblurp · 11/08/2020 00:38

The 7% who died are part of what is scientifically referred to as low hanging fruit. They would have died regardless.

That’s quite possibly one of the most despicable ableist comments I’ve ever seen on MN.

Having a disability or medical condition that makes you especially vulnerable doesn’t mean you’re about to drop dead.

One of my friends is 22, works full-time, and is a mother. She had a kidney transplant when she was a baby. Transplant recipients are some of the most medically vulnerable to dying from COVID.

Disabled/medically vulnerable people who died from COVID would likely have lived for many decades otherwise.

blurpityblurp · 11/08/2020 00:42

And yes obviously referring to 7% having died pretty much flags up that you’re an idiot whose opinions are worthless.

Dominic Cummings' wife is commissioning editor of the Spectator.

And allegedly the woman who has Boris Johnson by the balls, due to her allegedly have inside info on some alleged very bad behaviour on his part.

Fieldofgreycorn · 11/08/2020 00:50

There is also a lot of people with a lot to gain personally from this virus monetary wise

Absolutely. That’s how this type of capitalism works, booms then busts isn’t it. Lots of cheap assets to buy now.

A resetting and restructuring of the global financial order.

PJ6M · 11/08/2020 01:09

There's nothing to argue with. The article is utterly devoid of facts.

A lot like this most of this thread, actually.

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