Do people actually realise how few are dying from coronavirus now?

[Mrschickpeabody]

It’s all still doom and gloom on the news as normal regarding coronavirus. Loads about cases going up, local lockdowns, negativity regarding schools going back but nothing about the fact that hardly anyone is actually dying from coronavirus or being admitted to hospital. Can we not hear about positive things for once?

@Alex50

So how can anyone on mumsnet know 1000’s of young people have long term health issues from coronvirus when there isn’t any data yet?

It say 30% of patience who obviously were not asymptotic, who had been quite ill so yes you would expect long term health issues.

it's bizarre isn't.

Not only do the good folk of MN know all these long term sufferers, they also seem to know all 1,500 (approx) people in the UK who have died with coronavirus having not had any pre-existing health conditions.

Please understand that I don''t want to identify my friend. For her (very experimental) transplant to happen, someone needed to die before the new pancreas could be harvested. She was on standby for a couple of months before the right organ became available. (She stayed with my mum waiting for it, so I do know the detail). After a fatal road traffic accident, it all started. She was called in, and taken by ambulance to the JR where the surgical transplant took eight hours. It worked out, just, but the pancreas was attached to an organ that produced complications and was vulnerable to infection so it was moved, and moved again. Her recovery involved weekly visits and endless calls between two or three hospitals 200 miles apart. It is still considered an experimental treatment on an otherwise end of life geriatic patient, which is why it's not routine treatment.

The misinformation on this thread is spectacular, on both sides of the debate.

Did you read that on a thread once and make a note of it? It is strikingly out of keeping with the rest of your post. But well done, great gaslighting.

XingMing

That's a lot of info to give out about someone else who is probably quite easy to identify, given how rare this treatment is.

@fromdownwest has it spot on:

"Project fear has people running for the hills. Would these people not get in a car if we had annual car crash fatalities published?

Do we disclose the number of daily deaths due to hear attacks, cancer, strokes with such vigor?"

But as others have pointed out above, we don't really know yet because Covid19 hasn't been around for long enough.

Various studies are now being done though, including a large one (10,000 people) which will follow people for a year.

^Proal points out that chronic conditions are associated with many pathogens. Parents should be aware, she said, that all well-studied bacterial or viral pathogens that she knows of have related chronic syndromes, including Zika, Ebola, measles, and polio.

While she cautions that researchers simply cannot know whether the long-haulers will become life-longers, “it’s very unlikely,” she says, that SARS-CoV-2 would be the one virus that doesn’t have an associated chronic condition.

O’Leary, the pediatric disease specialist, who himself has had intermittent, on-going Covid symptoms since March, has heard researchers conjecture about what could be driving long-haul symptoms. “But we don’t know, it’s all speculation at this point,” he cautions. O’Leary says that it will be difficult to determine if long-term symptoms after SARS-CoV-2 are more common than with other viral infections — some of which can result in persistent symptoms in some kids. With SARS-CoV-2, he noted in a follow-up email, “we still need to understand if children with persistent symptoms have immune system abnormalities that can be measured with currently available tests — most children with ongoing symptoms from other viruses do not — or if somehow the virus is persisting within the body.”

Without more data, both doctors and patients are left with few resources in the middle of a fast-moving pandemic. ^
undark.org/2020/09/02/kids-covid-19-long-haulers/

@Whatnext2018 Hope things improve for you soon (and for anyone else in a similar position).

Still think it is rather strange to suggest that people with T1 Diabetes ‘remediate their health’

Project fear has people running for the hills. Would these people not get in a car if we had annual car crash fatalities published?

Hyperbole helps nobody. Least of all those using it.

Annual car crash fatalities are published, just not publicised as much.

The key difference, though, is that car crash fatalities aren't transmissible. They are not likely to rise exponentially.
Even so, to avoid them, people tend to keep to one side of the road, use seat belts, use their brakes, use indicators, keep a safe distance from other cars...
Not sure if the similarities are as obvious to everyone as to me, but the point is that we do our best to avoid car crash fatalities. We don't just ignore all road rules and safety practices and hope for the best when we drive because fatalities are low at the moment when we use those safety practices and equipment.

indeed - on an individual basis we do our best to avoid car crash fatalities

but as a society we have decided that the benefit of having no deaths caused by car crashes (which we could achieve simply by banning cars) is outweighed by the benefits that car ownership and usage brings to us all.

Therefore, we mitigate as best we can but we acknowledge that there is a number of deaths that we will consider acceptable to ensure that the rest of society can function in an efficient and effective way

I don't doubt some people are suffering but it's not pointless is it? We are "controlling the virus" and "saving lives". Otherwise there'd be even more people suffering wouldn't there?

It has been suggested by a government report that deaths caused by lockdown could actually exceed those caused by the virus. At the moment the estimate is that there have been 2 'lockdown' deaths for every 3 'covid' deaths, and that figure is only going to increase. Certainly in the UK things like cancer screening are way down. Allison Pearson in the Telegraph has been collecting many, many examples where people with life threatening illnesses have had their treatment stopped due to covid precautions. Some have died, some have been told they need to wait till 2022 for a telephone appointment. These are people with serious illmesses who need urgent treatment.

I do think that lockdown was necessary in the the early days, but medical services desperately need to be opened up again and treatments resumed.

www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/nhs-looks-like-heartless-behemoth-deaf-peoples-suffering/

www.theweek.co.uk/107564/could-more-people-die-from-lockdown-than-from-coronavirus

www.bbc.com/future/article/20200528-why-most-covid-19-deaths-wont-be-from-the-virus

[quote Whitegrenache]@fromdownwest has it spot on:

"Project fear has people running for the hills. Would these people not get in a car if we had annual car crash fatalities published?

Do we disclose the number of daily deaths due to hear attacks, cancer, strokes with such vigor?"[/quote]
The government publish car crash deaths in an attempt to get us to drive more safely.

The government publish cv19 .....

@Lweji - ok to carry on from your comparison.

It is statistically safe to walk somewhere, than drive. So although we have all these systems in place to make it safer, people still drive?

Why?

Because the benefits far outweigh the risks. I could walk to work every day, however it would take me 2 hours and I would get soaking wet most of the year. So, I take a risk, albeit minuscule, for a better quality of life.

Same as `Covid, we could strive to a minimal contact and social society? Or accept the minimal risks, and learn to live again, no exist.

@AlecTrevelyan006

indeed - on an individual basis we do our best to avoid car crash fatalities

but as a society we have decided that the benefit of having no deaths caused by car crashes (which we could achieve simply by banning cars) is outweighed by the benefits that car ownership and usage brings to us all.

Therefore, we mitigate as best we can but we acknowledge that there is a number of deaths that we will consider acceptable to ensure that the rest of society can function in an efficient and effective way

I don't think it is that rational. For starters society could run a lot more efficiently without cats and with really good mass transit.

Cars evolved, they weren't a decision.

Without cars obv.

Cats are essential for an efficient society.

.... but as a society we have decided that the benefit of having no deaths caused by car crashes (which we could achieve simply by banning cars) is outweighed by the benefits that car ownership and usage brings to us all. Therefore, we mitigate as best we can but we acknowledge that there is a number of deaths that we will consider acceptable to ensure that the rest of society can function in an efficient and effective way

And that’s exactly what we should be doing with Covid, not blithely behaving as though it doesn’t exist, and naively thinking it will remain at current levels if we did.

Same as `Covid, we could strive to a minimal contact and social society? Or accept the minimal risks, and learn to live again, no exist.

True, but the risks to society is neither minimal if we go back completely to normal, nor minimal if we restrict society excessively. We need to find a reasonable path through.

the number of daily covid deaths is currently 'acceptable' - imho - and would need to be much, much higher (among the general population) before it becomes unacceptable

I do think that lockdown was necessary in the the early days, but medical services desperately need to be opened up again and treatments resumed.

Are there still medical services that haven’t resumed? If so, that’s outrageous.

Same as `Covid, we could strive to a minimal contact and social society? Or accept the minimal risks, and learn to live again, no exist.

The risks are only minimal while protective measures are in place.

Mind you, I'm not advocating locking ourselves at home. I certainly go out and about and see people. There's a middle ground between a completely normal life, like a year ago, and locking ourselves at home.

We do need to accept there is a risk and act accordingly to avoid it as much as possible by taking precautions.
It's silly to think we can all go back to normal and that we'll all be fine.
Better to think how to live the best we can with the threat, while doing our best to avoid it.

@AlecTrevelyan006

the number of daily covid deaths is currently 'acceptable' - imho - and would need to be much, much higher (among the general population) before it becomes unacceptable

But, as seen before, deaths can start rising fast. And when we react it will be too late.

We need to act while cases are rising before we can see a significant effect on deaths.

the number of daily covid deaths is currently 'acceptable' - imho - and would need to be much, much higher (among the general population) before it becomes unacceptable

I agree that the current number is “acceptable“, and if we were confident it would remain at that level, or even somewhat higher, the argument for any continuing restrictions would be thin. However. whereas there’s a chance that things would fizzle out even if we went back to normal - my reading of the evidence is that the chances of this are very low, and we are much more likely to have a repeat of what happened in spring, only even worse if we just tried to “tough it out”. We’d be playing a Russian Roulette with one barrel empty rather than one barrel full.

but as a society we have decided that the benefit of having no deaths caused by car crashes (which we could achieve simply by banning cars) is outweighed by the benefits that car ownership and usage brings to us all.

And for covid as well.
The last I looked, no country in Europe was striving for elimination but rather management.
We know there will be deaths. We just want to keep them low so that the countries can function.
And lockdown deaths or others are kept low too.

If we let cases rise, and deaths rise, then new wide-scale lockdowns are inevitable again.

It looks like a vaccine will be available before long.

Not much point learning to live with a virus that is soon to be vanquished!

@Alex50

I don’t know anyone who is young and disabled from coronvirus? i’m not doubting there is, i’m just curious on numbers? No one can answer this?

Surprisingly Alex there isn’t a lot of detail on numbers given that we’re only 5/6 months into large numbers of people having been infected.

My son was one who caught covid in March. Completely healthy kid, no underlying issues yet he has been ill for the 5 months since he caught it. Two doctors have confirmed “long covid”. I doubt you’ll think that’s significant as it’s just 1 child, but I can’t imagine he’s the only child in the whole country who’s been affected.

As we’re so close (in relative terms) to the start of this pandemic, you’re not going to get the figures you’re asking for, as research (and even basic understanding, to be honest) takes time. Which is fun and games when you’re trying to prove a point, Alex, but very fucking frustrating when it’s your child whose suffering.

Try asking again next year.