Playing down the virus

[YellowWave]

I notice a lot of comments online either on Facebook on the news and the comment sections or on forums. Not so much on this forum but on some other ones. Not so much American based forums either.

Anyways comments from people playing down the virus as if it's just a little cold or a mild cough. I don't have any first hand experience of the virus but I do know it's something that you don't mess with. I recognised early on that this virus is going to be more than the flu symptoms that we were told it was going to be like. Straight away I put it into the category of measles, munps, rubella viruses but all them viruses we have vaccines for and many of us don't have first hand experiences of them viruses. Basically, I was watching experts on the TV speak out about this back in February. I saw an element of fear in their faces. I sat up and took this virus very seriously.

I know how important it is to follow the guidelines on social distancing and hygiene measures. I keep my close contacts low.

On online discussion forums, there's comments from people saying
this virus is nothing;
biggest storm in a teacup;
its just a little cold;

There's actually a type of bullying going on from that side of the fence painting pictures of anyone with concern about the virus or taking the virus and measures seriously, as scaredy cats cowering in corners.

I'm taking the virus seriously and avoiding crowds etc but I don't feel like I am deprived of a social life or a poor summer. I looked for unique experiences to do with my partner and many of them magical. Like we took a cooler box of alcohol to an overnight stay in an air B&B at a castle. No one else around once we were given our keys and shown to our room. Just me and him.

There's an attitude online that this virus is nothing and that attitude is growing and growing and it's beginning to drown out the people who are doing their best to be sensible around this virus.

If you want to balance out posts from people who think it's nothing you've come to the right place, there are a large number of posters on here who wildly overestimate the risk and have over-reaction down to a T

Btw A I had a positive test

It's affecting people very differently - for me it wasn't even as bad as a normal cold. Just annoying because for 10 days I had no taste or smell. So yes I can downplay the virus, the headachy cold I have at the moment is worse.

Some people are getting very sick, but that doesn't make my experience any less valid

ACautionaryTale I wouldn’t expect you or your husband to have died. Even those over 80 “only” have a 1 in 8 chance of dying. Age is the biggest risk factor and you’re only 44.

However if you were to infect 3-4 people each and they infect 3-4 people each etc them quite quickly the numbers can increase and elderly and vulnerable people are affected.

The virus is different for different people.

There have been excess deaths compared to previous years. I have seen no evidence that more people in the UK have died of flu in one month than the 4 months of this virus. I would be very interested in seeing the evidence for that.

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Featured snippet from the web
The number of winter deaths last year the hit highest level in more than 40 years after the failure of last year's flu jab. There were an estimated 50,100 excess winter deaths in England and Wales in 2017/18 - the highest recorded since winter 1975/76, figures from the Office for National Statistics show.

[quote EmilyDickinson]Posting a link re the case fatality rate. It’s quite long I’m afraid. I absolutely agree that for most of us the risk of death or serious health consequences from Covid 19 is very low. I am certainly not trying to exaggerate the dangers. The risk is very, very low for children, very low for most people under 40. But it isn’t low for everyone and it is so infectious that unless the vast majority behave responsibly we cannot suppress the virus enough to stop huge numbers (yes almost all of them elderly or vulnerable in other ways, but their lives have value too) dying.

The link below, in case you don’t want to read the whole thing, includes a calculation of the case fatality ratio for New York and works it out as being 1.4%.

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-rate/[/quote]
The case fatality rate is meaningless though. It is the infection fatality rate that is important

Well we haven't had a winter with uncontrolled covid yet. So it isnt comparable. Excess deaths in march to June?

It is 6 in 100,000 where I live but more business going bust /suicides etc

Most recent stats in Spain showing 0.3 mortality rate and over half of people having no symptoms, so for many it is mild...it just depends, it is not as simple as saying it is for everyone, it really depends...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53832981

It seems to be that due to much more testing more mild cases are being picked up

maybe this is why you are noticing more stuff about mild cases OP.

Jrobhatch29 apologies. I’ve read the bit about the New York calculation again and they do refer to it as the infection fatality rate.

I think to be honest we need to hear more about mild cases as the media has portrayed it as always being very serious which for many is not the case.

"Only around 3% of current cases require hospital treatment, less than 0.5% need intensive care and the current death rate is as low as 0.3%.

Most of the transmission is now between young people, and around three-quarters of positives are in patients who show no symptoms."

(from that link)

Don’t they think there are more mild cases because young people are perhaps being less cautious whilst the elderly and vulnerable are still being very careful and limiting their contacts? So the age profile of infected people is changing from being large numbers of people in care homes and hospitals to lots of young people who are only mildly affected, if at all.

The difficulty is that it has not so far been possible to entirely shield the vulnerable. A large pool of mildly affected and asymptomatic young people will pass infection on to the vulnerable eventually.

I don't think anyone considers that we are in the same position as March or April. As with anything, treatments and safety measures will have had a huge impact. I mean essentially life stopped completely for the entire country. The risks should be currently very very low indeed.

But the claims that this virus is meh, nothing just do not match the excess deaths recorded over the last 5 years ny the ONS.

I don't find the elderly I know are trying to shield, in fact ones I know have just been quarantining from trips abroad (while continuing to moan about the young) they have been lucky so far

But for many it is mild, and yes now they are testing more for the people, they are maybe saying about their experience...which is fair enough.

If you look here you can see there is a spectrum of severity from mild to serious

www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2911

We've had millions of threads of people saying how we needs to take it serious and you are a fool for not staying home etc etc .
God forbid that others may be fed up of the scaremongering now and are trying to live a life the best they can because life does go on it's not because we don't take it seriously.
I honestly don't see why it's helpful having another thread of the same opinions . It's almost goading others to say the opposite.
Just stop worrying what others think and you crack on with your life .

It's certainly more than a cold even if just a mild case
For you this was the case. For many, it is really not more than a cold.

I think part of the issue here is using the term "risk" as in "high risk" or "low risk".
"High risk" sounds really bad, like you're very likely to be very ill. Where as really what they mean is "low risk = tiny risk" and "high risk = slightly higher than a very tiny risk"

In looking at general excess deaths don't forget the ones caused by lockdown / not seeking or getting medical help due to being sent home from hospital (to clear it for covid, as happened to many older people with health problems)

It's a bit tiring to read people saying 'it's not that bad', 'I should have died but I didn't'. Dead people can't write on this board, and there's +40,000 of them.

@ChimmyMyChangas

As we have seen, this means that unless actively suppressed by the behaviour of the whole population it has the ability to increase exponentially killing huge numbers of people

Wrong, wrong, wrong.
You're just making stuff up.

How is that wrong?

That's what happened?

Unless you think this virus is made up by WHO and the whole world is being duped then obviously there is reasoning in the advice from them!

Some mild cases are asymptomatic. Some are quite bad. There's a huge extreme.

I don't disagree right now the epidemics in the U.K. are controlled and deaths are low. But that's because of the guidance.

Yes, the 2018 flu season was horrific because they got the wrong vaccine. But remember back then it was reported constantly in the news about people waiting in ambulances for hours, dying in corridors and people were complaining and talking about suing.

It wasn't accepted back then and won't be now.

The worry about what other people are doing stems from the fact that everyone’s actions affect everyone else.

*Yes, the 2018 flu season was horrific because they got the wrong vaccine. But remember back then it was reported constantly in the news about people waiting in ambulances for hours, dying in corridors and people were complaining and talking about suing.

It wasn't accepted back then and won't be now.*

But people were not guilt tripped and told that was their fault, or terrorised with pictures of people with pneumonia in ICU (as they would have been then as well)

Or had to lose their jobs or education,

@EmilyDickinson

Jrobhatch29 apologies. I’ve read the bit about the New York calculation again and they do refer to it as the infection fatality rate.

There is no standard IFR really. The average IFR from different locations is pretty meaningless as it varies massively by age. It depends on the demographics infected. It will be higher in new york because it went on the rampage in carehomes probably to a greater extent than anywhere else so it has pulled it up. In most places it is around 0.6% but that doesn't mean it is a 0.6% for everyone. For under 40s much lower. For over 70s much higher.