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?

@IceCreamSummer20 - sorry!

Norway and Denmark’s infection rate is now above Sweden and rising rapidly. Sweden’s infection rate continues to fall.

This is based on USA population numbers but still sets out the reality of small percentages translating to really figures succinctly. It’s fairly old now but the point remains valid I feel.

I don’t think the country should stop but I do think that we have to take precautions and behave realistically. That’s the only way to achieve a sense of normal life. Abandoning any notion of infection control knocks over an already fragile house of cards since we’re still not entirely sure how this virus behaves.

We are much better placed for recovery if we can manage this with restrictions than if we allow society to be traumatised by further deaths and repercussions on services. People lose their minds if their bins aren’t collected for a couple of weeks, we won’t retain any semblance of society if we have to endure months of dodgy infrastructure.

@MorrisZapp Sweden’s economy was no better at all and the economy still suffered. You seem to not grasp the facts and just want to say... I don’t know what? You want everything as normal now? You do know that there is no normal anymore don’t you?

What exactly would your plan be? All the entertainers are back in jobs, but healthcare systems collapse? You can’t have it all in a pandemic. Because it’s a pandemic.

@tornadoalley

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?

This is so emotive and unnecessarily hysterical, look at the rates for health care workers and calm down. Posting things like this is just horrible. She’s clearly not wishing death on hcps and it’s appalling to suggest she is.

Honestly take a step back and calm yourself.

@LavenderWashes

Would someone be able to provide any evidence that you can now be held in custody for 80 days?

www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/953/pdfs/uksi_20200953_en.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Here

The poster did actually link to it, and its 8 months, not 80 days, as the poster corrected her/himself.

Fucking chilling.

MorrisZapp

There are people arguing on this thread to end all restrictions, including people calling for the vulnerable to be isolated and then everyone else to get back to normal. How is that not ending restrictions? Me questioning that belief is not me not arguing in good faith.

@corythatwas

OP, you haven't factored LongCovid in there. Your category of "mild infection" covers a substantial number of people (currently estimated at 10% of total infections) who will still be ill 6 months from first infection and may have sustained permanent and irreversible damage.

The category of "mild infections" includes people like my colleague who was recently rushed into hospital with a suspected heart attack (turned out to be Covid-related damage). Or my other colleague, young and previously healthy, who after falling ill in late March cannot stand for long enough to make a mean without ending up in bed the next day, and whose blood pressure is still fluctuating wildly. Neither of these two were hospitalised for their initial illness. Both still have breathing problems due to scarring of the lungs.

"Mild infection" can mean a person who has mild flu-like symptoms for a week and is then fine. Or it could be any of the above.

It's important to note though that the estimate is 10% of known positive cases (around 30,000 out of 350,000). In reality that percentage will be much much lower as in March/April only a tiny number of people were being tested, so it's probably 30,000 out of 1m or more. Many many people reporting long covid never had a test so won't be included in the 350,000 cases.

@MH1111

Norway and Denmark’s infection rate is now above Sweden and rising rapidly. Sweden’s infection rate continues to fall.

And your point is?

Are you a public health care expert? Do you understand epidemiology?

You do know that thousands more died in Sweden than Norway or Denmark don’t you already? Are you trying to say Sweden is really totally OK and the economy is fine? Which is factually incorrect.

No.

[quote IceCreamSummer20]@MorrisZapp Sweden’s economy was no better at all and the economy still suffered. You seem to not grasp the facts and just want to say... I don’t know what? You want everything as normal now? You do know that there is no normal anymore don’t you?

What exactly would your plan be? All the entertainers are back in jobs, but healthcare systems collapse? You can’t have it all in a pandemic. Because it’s a pandemic.[/quote]
I'm not going to answer you any more because I've stated repeatedly that I think reasonable measures should stay in place yet all you can hear is that I want no measures. I also stated that the Edinburgh Festival was cancelled rightly. I mentioned theatres in direct response to a poster saying that SD doesn't effect the economy when clearly it does.

But I might as well be speaking in a foreign language so what's the point. Good luck to you.

@Layladylay234 yes the inconsistencies are amazing. We were specifically told initially that masks don't work because they increase the amount of time non medical people will touch their face. That won't change just because the government n lectures us about it. I take some random scarf or an old dirty mask out of my handbag, because I just can't really be arsed with constantly buying them or washing them and having them in a plastic bag. They're also really itchy so I end up rubbing my nose from the outside. And anyway, it's a joke to keep saying we should all be getting back to the office, but then blaming people for the rise in cases. I thought we accepted back in March that there will always be deaths and that it was about buying time for treatments to be found (dexomathasone, tick), and time to build capacity - we built entire hospitals that never had any patients. So what justifies the ongoing removal of democratic norms?

What we actually need to have is a sensible, grown up conversation about death, and how it is a perfectly natural and normal part of life that will happen to each and every one of us.

We are so scared of it that we seem happy to totally destroy our way of life in a wholly futile attempt to avoid it.

Is it really so much worse to die of Covid than anything else? Sure, it might bring the time of a person's death forward by a few years, but surely throwing our DC under the bus in order to buy the elderly a few more years is just a non-starter as an argument. What kind of elderly person would seriously want that to happen?

...and whatever people may say to the contrary, the facts show that this is almost exclusively a disease of old age.

@NikeDeLaSwoosh

What we actually need to have is a sensible, grown up conversation about death, and how it is a perfectly natural and normal part of life that will happen to each and every one of us.

We are so scared of it that we seem happy to totally destroy our way of life in a wholly futile attempt to avoid it.

Is it really so much worse to die of Covid than anything else? Sure, it might bring the time of a person's death forward by a few years, but surely throwing our DC under the bus in order to buy the elderly a few more years is just a non-starter as an argument. What kind of elderly person would seriously want that to happen?

...and whatever people may say to the contrary, the facts show that this is almost exclusively a disease of old age.

We'll said

@NikeDeLaSwoosh

What we actually need to have is a sensible, grown up conversation about death, and how it is a perfectly natural and normal part of life that will happen to each and every one of us.

We are so scared of it that we seem happy to totally destroy our way of life in a wholly futile attempt to avoid it.

Is it really so much worse to die of Covid than anything else? Sure, it might bring the time of a person's death forward by a few years, but surely throwing our DC under the bus in order to buy the elderly a few more years is just a non-starter as an argument. What kind of elderly person would seriously want that to happen?

...and whatever people may say to the contrary, the facts show that this is almost exclusively a disease of old age.

So you're ignoring all the vulnerable people of younger ages with life long medical conditions then - the people who could live another 10/20/30 years, or even a normal lifetime, but have immunity issues or lung issues caused by their medical conditions? Many of these people will be living normal lives, working, caring, etc.

Is it really so much worse to die of Covid than anything else? Sure, it might bring the time of a person's death forward by a few years,

The extremely vulnerable include children and young people, many of whom will lead normal lives. Are you honestly saying that it's no great shakes if these people die now from Covid?

The absolute inhumanity shown in these discussions disgusts me. How dare you put a value on someone else's life and decide, that in your opinion, it's worth less than a "healthy" person.

We know that age and certain medical conditions put people into a higher-risk-of-death group, but we really have no understanding yet of who is vulnerable to complications, or why. We don’t know, for instance, why Dr Xand (Operation Ouch etc) , a fit and healthy early forties man, had heart problems, or why others not in an obvious risk group, are experiencing Covid delirium which is then leaving them with dementia. Loss of taste and smell is a neurological issue, we don’t know what the long term results of this will be.
Doctors are saying that Covid is like no other illness they have ever seen. We are making decisions in the dark, because the information may take years, decades even, to be apparent. We all want our old lives back, but it doesn’t benefit the population in terms of health or the economy, to let Covid run through us all, killing and maiming as it goes.
Huge numbers of people left chronically unwell will have its own impact on the economy, and is a disaster for individual families.
Personally I am taking as many precautions as I can, and praying that we get a vaccine sooner rather than later.

No. Which people don't you mind dying?

@NikeDeLaSwoosh yes apologies I got that wrong in my initial post.

Did you also see that 900K people have died in less than 8 months. If there were no restrictions think how many would have died.

@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.

I didn't say that nothing should be done with regards to Covid. I follow guidelines, wear masks. I caught it at the beginning of the year and still have effects now, shortness of breath wakes me several times a night and I use an inhaler when I never used to. But this chaos is so unbelievably detrimental to society, education and other illnesses being ignored. The virus is clearly less potent than it was initially (yes cases rising, but minimal deaths). I've watched the numbers from the beginning.

So you're ignoring all the vulnerable people of younger ages with life long medical conditions then - the people who could live another 10/20/30 years, or even a normal lifetime, but have immunity issues or lung issues caused by their medical conditions? Many of these people will be living normal lives, working, caring, etc

They are a tiny minority.

When it is not possible to meet the needs of all (as it seems to be the case here) then the majority should be the ones who are prioritised.

I agree its an awful situation, but what we are doing now is destroying society entirely. It can't continue.

@MorrisZapp how long do you think people would flood back to the theatres for if the numbers of COVID infections rises again? Do you really think we'll be saying "Oh there's 1,000 dying a day, let's book for the panto"?

It's important to note though that the estimate is 10% of known positive cases (around 30,000 out of 350,000)

That’s incorrect. The 10% figure comes from the King’s College London study. It is a percentage of people with self-reported Covid symptoms not a percentage of people with positive tests.

There were basically no tests available for non- hospitalised cases in March/April when most people caught long Covid.

20,747,915 Cases which had an outcome:
19,845,609 (96%) Recovered / Discharged
902,306 (4%) Deaths

OMG, 4% deaths... That’s 300,000,000 people dead worldwide if we let it spread! WW2 x 6!! We need to lockdown now and hard until we’ve exterminated it!..... Of course, that’s all bollocks for all sorts of reasons I haven’t got the time to go into, but it’s no different to some of the absurd out of context cherry picking and ridiculous extrapolations that many seem more than happy to produce in the Covid-minimising camp.

Covid’s not a Ebola, but it’s not the flu either. It’s not an all or nothing response that many seem to think it needs to be.... but if we treat it as nothing, then it would be insane to think that cancer and other treatments will proceed unaffected. If you are happy with non-Covid deaths skyrocketing, by all means treat Covid as being “over”.