Wow,look at the actual numbers on worldometer at the moment ..

[Layladylay234]

Current levels of infection: 7,007,039
Number of mild infections: 6,946,649 (99%)
Number of serious/critical cases: 60,390 (1%)

Do these numbers make anyone else think,what the fuck are we doing damaging the economy,our children's future and mental health for figures like this?

What do the Powers That Be (sic) gain from borrowing 100% of our GDP in two months and destroying huge swathes of the economy?

The continuing votership of the over 60s, and another term in office, mainly.

@echt

*While we're on the subject of the Nazis though, perhaps worth remembering that the main reason for the widespread acceptance of totalitarian fascism was the fact that the State had scared the living daylights out of the masses by massively overstating the threat posed by Communism. When a society is scared out of its wits, it will all of a sudden accept pretty much anything under the guise of 'being kept safe' Sound familiar?*

Are you on glue?

What an incredibly naive and facile response to a very well made point.

I am simply putting forward the possibility that this is a whole new world, in which we no longer have the luxury of that way of thinking.

I'm never going to agree that retaining the right to go to the pub without social distancing, or the right to go to the supermarket without wearing a mask, is more important than the lives of millions of vulnerable people.

@NikeDeLaSwoosh

What do the Powers That Be (sic) gain from borrowing 100% of our GDP in two months and destroying huge swathes of the economy?

The continuing votership of the over 60s, and another term in office, mainly.

Yes a bankrupt, insolvent population prone to unrest is the New World order dream.

We’re much easier to control as a fat, spoiled lazy populace than we are a scared one. They had a good thing already going which has been majorly fucked up by covid if that was their aim.

This idea that we must stop all people from dying at all costs is nuts.

People die. ALL THE TIME. News flash - each and every one of us will die one day. 2000 ish people die in the UK every day. If you're over 75, you have a 1 in 15 chance of dying in any given year. And that rises to 1 in 6 for the over 85s.

The whole world has gone completely nuts over this Covid risk, which is just one of millions of other risks which could kill us. Governments around the world have scared the pants off the population, who now think the aim is to prevent all deaths. The people who probably have cancer, or about to top themselves because they're mental health is so poor don't matter because covid covid covid.

Assessing risk and interpreting statistics is something which most people are shockingly bad at. No government is reporting statistics in the same way. Nicola Sturgeon stands at her wee podium every lunch time and solemnly pronounces that there are 200 odd people hospitalised in Scotland and everyone thinks shit, that's a lot. How awful. But the figures are people in hospital who have tested positive for covid, not people who are in hospital because of covid. No context given. Entirely possible that 199 of those 200 are long term patients who would be in hospital anyway.

The death % which everyone is hung up on is "fake news" too. In March when there were lots of cases, nobody was getting tested. Most of us know people who are absolutely sure they had it but who won't ever appear on statistics. So really, we only know the percentage of people who died who were ill enough to seek treatment and who were tested. Not the same thing at all. The official rates are anything between 0.1% and 1% depending on which figures you look at, and again, every government does it differently. But that's not counting the unknown numbers who never have a test.

All these people worried about their healthy children dying or even themselves dying as a 30 or 40 something need to catch themselves on. It's probably more likely that they win the lottery.

@NikeDeLaSwoosh

What do the Powers That Be (sic) gain from borrowing 100% of our GDP in two months and destroying huge swathes of the economy?

The continuing votership of the over 60s, and another term in office, mainly.

What?! How exactly?

The pensions triple-lock is under threat, the already depleted social care budget will be slashed, they will have seen a disproportionately large number of their peers die and their childred and grandchildren will be poorer.

Please explain exactly why pensioners would be prompted to vote conservative due to the addition of £350 billion of government debt (that's 7 times the expected annual total btw).

@Layladylay234

Current levels of infection: 7,007,039 Number of mild infections: 6,946,649 (99%) Number of serious/critical cases: 60,390 (1%)

Do these numbers make anyone else think,what the fuck are we doing damaging the economy,our children's future and mental health for figures like this?

45,000 people have died in 6 months because of COVID. 45,000. 1 death from a disease that didn't exist here a year ago is enough. Stop using figures to desensitise the horror that is happening here.

Didn't think it would take long for the thinly veiled eugenics proposals to start.
Sickening.

The hatred pouring from your every post for the elderly and disabled is truly gut churning Nike.
Your soul must be in permanent turmoil.

People die. ALL THE TIME. News flash - each and every one of us will die one day

Have you informed the WHO of this amazing revelation? I feel it might be important in the formulation of their advice.

45,000 people have died in 6 months because of COVID. 45,000. 1 death from a disease that didn't exist here a year ago is enough

But what the point is, @CharismaticVic, is given that most of the people who died were elderly or very ill, how many would have died anyway? We'll never know. And what are the excess deaths going to be in the next five years, of all the people who right now can't access the NHS because of covid. Or who have a GP like mine who puts in place several barriers you must jump over before they grace you with an appointment. Loads. But again, they don;t matter, because covid.

Just because someone has Covid on their death certificate doesn't mean they 'died of it'. Surely the majority of that 45k deaths were primarily from other reasons? The way that pneumonia 'killed' my gran, but didn't really?

There needs to be a moderate approach.

We can't feed the elderly to the wolves of covid, but nor can we close up the country and stay at home until it passes (and it may never pass!)

We have to find a middle road to enjoy some quality of life without risking tens of thousands of hospital admissions. At the moment we are on a motorway of choices flipping from the slow lane (lockdown) to opening up everything and letting rip in the fast lane.

Somewhere there is a biting point in the middle lane, we are motoring at just the right speed to stay in control.

That will see us through until we are at the point of vaccine or cure.

Well if you want to take that arguement to its conclusion Morris then everyone dies because their heart stops beating. Those 45k died of cv, and no their deaths weren't primarily because of other reasons. All those NHS staff and bus drivers and security men and midwives and transport workers were not on the verge of shuffling off their mortal coil.

@MorrisZapp

Just because someone has Covid on their death certificate doesn't mean they 'died of it'. Surely the majority of that 45k deaths were primarily from other reasons? The way that pneumonia 'killed' my gran, but didn't really?

The way that death certificates work is why a cause of death and then contributing factors.

So, people don't die from cancer. The Cancer causes the conditions under which death occurs but people die of heart failure, or haemorrhage or sepsis etc. Would you argue then that we can no longer say people died from cancer?

Alternatively, someone with terminal cancer gets shot in the head - would you ignore the gun shot because they had cancer (a pre existing condition) and would have died soon anyway?

I watched a Dr explain it really well and that's did Covid contribute to the death in anyway ie had the patient not had Covid would the chain of events leading to the death have still occured, at that time?

@MorrisZapp

Just because someone has Covid on their death certificate doesn't mean they 'died of it'. Surely the majority of that 45k deaths were primarily from other reasons? The way that pneumonia 'killed' my gran, but didn't really?

Some will be yes! But when you compare previous years we have a large number of excess deaths.

It may be that deaths will be lower for the rest of the year because of the high number of people who died in the spring. But we don't know yet (I don't think that will be the case).

@Porcupineinwaiting

Well if you want to take that arguement to its conclusion Morris then everyone dies because their heart stops beating. Those 45k died of cv, and no their deaths weren't primarily because of other reasons. All those NHS staff and bus drivers and security men and midwives and transport workers were not on the verge of shuffling off their mortal coil.

ONS states that 88% of Covid deaths in UK were in over 65 age group. 2% were under 50.

The loss of public servants to Covid is heartbreaking and I don't diminish the loss, but the vast majority of deaths was amongst the non working population.

@Friendsoftheearth

There needs to be a moderate approach.

We can't feed the elderly to the wolves of covid, but nor can we close up the country and stay at home until it passes (and it may never pass!)

We have to find a middle road to enjoy some quality of life without risking tens of thousands of hospital admissions. At the moment we are on a motorway of choices flipping from the slow lane (lockdown) to opening up everything and letting rip in the fast lane.

Somewhere there is a biting point in the middle lane, we are motoring at just the right speed to stay in control.

That will see us through until we are at the point of vaccine or cure.

Moderation! Middle ground! Compromise! Balancing risks! Oh no this will never do. This thread is only for all or nothing types :)

@SockYarn

45,000 people have died in 6 months because of COVID. 45,000. 1 death from a disease that didn't exist here a year ago is enough

But what the point is, @CharismaticVic, is given that most of the people who died were elderly or very ill, how many would have died anyway? We'll never know. And what are the excess deaths going to be in the next five years, of all the people who right now can't access the NHS because of covid. Or who have a GP like mine who puts in place several barriers you must jump over before they grace you with an appointment. Loads. But again, they don;t matter, because covid.

They all matter. It sounds like original OP and now you are saying the old people that died of COVID were going to die anyway so fuck them..... and let's get back to normal(!)

I'm not against social distancing - but everyone saying how callous it is to say there is an overreaction and we can't just let the vulnerable die... No we can't just forget the vulnerable but there obviously has to be a balance between civilisation and protecting people. Thousands of people die of flu in the UK every year. Lockdowns every winter would definitely prevent loads of these deaths. So should we lockdown from Oct to March? Most people would accept that is absurd. What's the difference? Yeah lockdowns reduce Covid and prevent down deaths but we don't stop everything to prevent other deaths... We need to get realistic

Yes. I don't personally know anyone who doesn't think the same. Not saying at all that there aren't a huge number of people who think this is all worth it - I just don't work or socialise with them.

I can't speak for all care home residents but my gran would have been horrified at her kids and grandkids having to hugely compromise their lives to preserve hers. It's harder for my parents, in their 70s they're actively retired and not keen on chucking themselves on the pyre quite yet.

But most care home residents have a short life expectancy and its just ridiculous to think their lives must be preserved at all costs. Both my grans had do not resuscitate agreements in place because they had absolutely no desire to be kept alive artificially at this point in their lives.

@MorrisZapp

I can't speak for all care home residents but my gran would have been horrified at her kids and grandkids having to hugely compromise their lives to preserve hers. It's harder for my parents, in their 70s they're actively retired and not keen on chucking themselves on the pyre quite yet.

But most care home residents have a short life expectancy and its just ridiculous to think their lives must be preserved at all costs. Both my grans had do not resuscitate agreements in place because they had absolutely no desire to be kept alive artificially at this point in their lives.

Should we introduce euthanasia then?

Yes!!!

I'm in favour of euthanasia, yes. It wouldn't have suited either of my grans because it would have been against their religious views, regardless of their health issues.

But we had long conversations about this when both grans were suffering near the end. We didn't want them given eg antibiotics, as they no longer wanted to be kept alive. However, doctors are no longer able or willing to risk legal suits in this way so both of my grans unfortunately had over a year of desperately unhappy life to round off their otherwise glorious lives.