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?

OP you seem to be rather choosy with the numbers you're showing.

On the same current Worldometer figures -

20,747,915
Cases which had an outcome:
19,845,609 (96%)
Recovered / Discharged

902,306 (4%)
Deaths

So yes, a 4% death rate, nearly a million people worldwide, seems like a good reason to put in some basic safety measures to protect people.

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Deaths are significant and should not be dismissed. 1% is huge, we would not accept this as a level of risk for other things we do. Imagine if there is a 1% risk of dying per year from driving a car? Or eating breakfast?

1% of deaths is hundreds of thousands of people dying in the UK years before their time, within a year.

The health system would totally collapse in this scenario. As we have already seen, deaths would also occur from the health service being unable to treat cancer patients and others. Just to underline - this woudl be because of high numbers of Covid patients - it is not ‘policy’.

Long term illness is also significant. Possible 1 in 10 people however we don’t know the true figures yet.

Sickness is also significant even for a few weeks, there is a cost.

And no Sweden has not, under any measure, done ‘well’. This is a complete myth. Sweden has one of the highest rates of death per 100,000 in the world. Thousands more died (unnecessarily) compared to it’s Nordic neighbours. Their economy has been hit has badly as it’s Nordic neighbours (which are the only real comparisons). One of the reasons for this is that older people at risk did not want to go out and eat at restaurants etc - funnily enough they did not want to risk dying just to prop up a restaurant owner and I do not blame them!

So no OP and others - you have not understood the situation correctly. Leave it to the experts.

[quote UnexpectedItemInShaggingArea]@EDSGFC I can find the number of cases in the last week in my town and it's less than 10.[/quote]
With respect, the number with it last week is irrelevant to your claim that as only seven people died during lockdown that restrictions are an over reaction.

Death is not the only danger from Covid and we need to move away from determining what is proportionate based only on the death rate. You need to factor in all of the negative outcomes from removing restrictions including deaths, sickness rates, absences from work and the implications, numbers of long term sick and disabled as a result of Covid and the implications.

@ArabellaScott - just as a side note - the 1% wasn't the mortality rate, just the rate of seriously ill people at the moment - so morbidity (roughly)

Mortality rate is the death rate (strictly speaking per 1000, but in this case it's as a %) - and it's 4%

So just to reiterate

The economy will not be saved by ignoring Covid.

I agree, OP.

I'm sorry but no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that this is no big deal, for whatever reason, will not make it so.

The reality is that at the moment infection rates are rising whilst deaths and hospital admission rates remain low. That's it. We have to wait and see how it plays out, no one can predict the future, but it's bonkers to just say fuck it and go back to normal right now.

Oops, muddled the terms, thanks for clarification, Multiplying!

@IceCreamSummer20 mortality is 4%, not 1%
(see above and www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)

@SirVixofVixHall

Too much focus on death being the only bad outcome. I know of someone who had to be sectioned due to Covid delirium, and now appears permanently brain damaged and will never work again, plus another person with a damaged heart, both fit, well and working prior to this, neither of them in a higher risk group. We are not seeing the stats on people left permanently damaged post Covid, people who only had a “mild” illness.

^^ A very good point. @SirVixofVixHall

I know two also, both very fit and young. Neither will get back to normal it seems and one has brain damage.

[quote newyearnoeu]@timeforanotherusername get your maths right.

Approx 7million are infected out of a world population of just under 8billion. So less than 0.1% (more like 0.089) are infected and then only 1% of this number is serious (much fewer will be criticial). So even if every single person who is seriously ill from covid dies (which they wont) then it will be a maximum of 0.001% of the world's population. [/quote]
It’s even lower than that, because your figures are assuming everyone in the world has been tested. There are huge numbers of people who have had it who have never noticed or had a test.

The figures are tiny and the worldwide response is now totally over the top

From our local newspaper today:-

"The number of people on ventilation in the region's hospitals has risen from 15 to 77 in the last 24 hours."

That's very worrying and something for the covid deniers to think about

@ArabellaScott you're very welcome

Whenever people put this sort of argument forward, my reaction is to ask what their position would be if their child, Mother, Father or partner were part of the at risk group? These arguments “other” the people at risk as a very small number. It is a small number, but it represents a large number of people who have a right to live.

How many of those seven would have died anyway?

The trouble with this highly contagious illness is:

1. It can rise exponentially, which is to say, very fast.

and

1. We won't see the consequences immediately - remember there is a lag of a good couple of weeks before we start to see deaths from contracted cases.

So this is why we need to be cautious and keep in control of what are at the moment small rises.

@EDSGFC if you read my posts I have not said that lockdown restrictions are an overreaction. I don't claim to have the information or insight to make that proclamation. No one can say either way while the situation is still live. Including you.

I was merely contributing some numbers to the discussion.

I have long covid. I'd rather have it than the economy be destroyed

So, so many things wrong with your statement.

• The economy is not saved from doing nothing in Covid. Sweden’s economy has suffered a hit the same as all of it’s Nordic neighbours - no difference at all - so thousands more people died for nothing.
• So much of the effective prevention doesn’t impact the economy, such as mask wearing, social distancing amongst people, washing hands.
• A much better test and trace system would allow more of the economy to open. It would enable the economy to run better also as whole factories would not need to be shut down as so many staff off sick if we got to the initial cases quicker, tested quicker and isolated more effectively.

[quote Multiplying2020]@IceCreamSummer20 mortality is 4%, not 1%
(see above and www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)[/quote]
It might be but that is a very debatable point - as ‘true’ cases are not known.

The point I am making is that EVEN 1% is a high number for a highly transmittable global pandemic. I don’t think the OP is right at all for dismissing 1%. That is my argument but that does not mean that I disagree with you.

@EDSGFC

No I'm looking at the spike that brewed when our Prime Minister was still shaking hands publicly, and we were all merrily cramming into pubs and trains etc. Why can't you hear me? And nobody has advocated for letting anything run unchecked.

Because what the op, and others are calling for, never happened. We locked down early (not early enough). And people are arguing that it be allowed to run in checked. That's exactly what people want. They don't want the restrictions that we currently have so, of course that's calling for it to run un checked.

I don't think you're arguing in good faith now, sorry. OK, I know there are outliers in society who truly don't give a fk and who want to retain their right to cough loudly directly into the faces of strangers. Those people are beyond reason and won't respond to public measures anyway because they don't care.

On this thread, there are people like me who think the current measures are disproportionate and causing more harm than good. That doesn't mean they want to abandon all measures, many of the measures are sensible and cause very little to no disruption to our lives. We're objecting to the measures that no longer seem sensible or necessary and that negatively impact our lives.

A million people are going to be dead soon though. That’s a lot of people.

OP is clearly happy to throw the health care workers in direct contact with this 1% of seriously ill people, under the bus, as she isn't the one looking after them.

Haven't enough HCPs died for your liking?

@MadameBlobby

A million people are going to be dead soon though. That’s a lot of people.

People die all the time, and not all of those people died because of Covid. They just happened to test positive

@DeliciouslyFemale, best wishes to you and your daughter

@IceCreamSummer20

I have long covid. I'd rather have it than the economy be destroyed

So, so many things wrong with your statement.

• The economy is not saved from doing nothing in Covid. Sweden’s economy has suffered a hit the same as all of it’s Nordic neighbours - no difference at all - so thousands more people died for nothing.
• So much of the effective prevention doesn’t impact the economy, such as mask wearing, social distancing amongst people, washing hands.
• A much better test and trace system would allow more of the economy to open. It would enable the economy to run better also as whole factories would not need to be shut down as so many staff off sick if we got to the initial cases quicker, tested quicker and isolated more effectively.

Social distancing directly impacts the economy because it limits the amount of people able to function in workplaces, commercial outlets and on transport.

The Edinburgh Festival was (quite rightly) cancelled. Theatres remain mothballed. Businesses large and small are dropping like flies, each taking jobs along with them.