How can you do this to your children (and yourselves)?

[endoftheworldaoife]

It has been six months and it's now very clear that covid won't be doing away in our lifetimes. A vaccine won't eradicate it (just as a vaccine didn't eradicate flu).

Most of you seem to be willing to accept social distancing and masks for the foreseeable. And I don't get it. We are a tribal species. We literally die without contact and get sick without communication. Kids are learning arrange, stilted ways of being that will just worsen their digital reliance. OCD is being normalised. Dating will be neurotic and masked. Freshers won't make new loves or lifelong friends like we did. As for their working lives...

I wouldn't mind catching covid (indeed I'm sure we all will sooner or later) so can someone explain to me what on earth is happening in their heads to tip the balance? If it only affected us, I could understand (well, I couldn't but this feels like child abuse on a giant scale).

I have days of feeling the way you do, to an extent, OP, and then most days where I'm pragmatic. It's ok to feel the way you do and to question how things are, we all do it.

I question why airports weren't immediately closed and curfews imposed to prevent large outdoor gatherings of teens and any others who felt the need to congregate. I think that most of us have viewpoints on how this could've/should've been handled better.

I don't like that some posters can't allow people to vent. If you can't do it on an anonymous chatboard rather than to your family, what's the point? We seem to be an intolerant and smug people, largely.

Interesting how noone has dared to say disabled yet but we can assume that is bunged in with "elderly".

Also, BAME are more severely affected by Covid, I understand. As we going to sacrifice them for the common good too?

Vaccine highly likely. People thought this about Spanish flu. It lasted two years.

If you stopped being hysterical you'd feel better.

If you still don't understand OP then (a) no further explanation will make any difference and (b) we're all doomed.

@Dominicgoings rip through lungs? Honestly.

Yes I would prefer 1 day with my family rather than 6 months without.

You hear people complain, but you don't hear the other side. People like me are perfectly happy not to gather in groups of more than six if that is enough to keep schools open and industry ticking over. I have no problem with prioritising like that, it makes good sense to me to limit unnecessary contact so that necessary contact can continue. What alternative is there? Human beings are hugely adaptable and resourceful which is why we are such a successful species. We will adapt temporarily until the virus fades, treatments become better, vaccines work at least a bit.

young people student age and 20s are probably the ones with the brunt of the biggest impact on them and that is not particularly fair.

Seriously? They'll be stunted forever by not being able to party for a few months? How about the people living alone, in care homes, waiting for operations, or those who are shielding? Or the dead?

Most people don't realise that this is forever.

Eh?

Even the Black Death, Bubonic Plague and Spanish fly weren’t forever

(flu)

If you accept that the government is trying to balance the harm of the pandemic (including the economic harm of a high mortality rate) with trying to keep the economy going, you can rest easy that this government in particular will not be giving undue preference to vulnerable people.

@hilariousnamehere it was supposed to be 3 weeks...

No, it wasn’t

It was REVIEWABLE every 3 weeks

I think you’re over-dramatising the negative effects of current safety measures. Mask-wearing & social distancing where appropriate are not, in themselves, enough to create a generation of delinquents. Things as they are will change; no situation remains static for long. They’ll be other things to worry about in 5 yrs or much less.

@ptumbi, can you repeat your whole post again, much, much louder? BORIS IS BRAINWASHING THE PUBLIC. It is so painfully obvious that his press releases are carefully timed, it's even boringly predictable.

it was supposed to be 3 weeks...
And then good old Saint Boris declared "we can turn this virus around in twelve weeks". It's been practically double that now.

I'd love to believe that the restrictions won't be permanent, but having seen the lies, spin and brainwashing from Saint Boris and his merry men, I would believe anything of them. It's been drip, drip, drip: keep the public scared, confused and docile, so they don't dare to question anything. Make sure that the blame goes anywhere but at Her Majesty's clowns. Make sure the public is divided, distracted and at war with itself.

The difference between this and the war is that the war was a proportionate reaction

So has the WHO, CDC, leading epidemiologists, the whole world’s governments got it wrong and indulged in a masochistic collective act of hysteria and shutdown for shit and giggles?

Has it?

Just checking your qualifications OP? Do you have any evidence based knowledge for anything you’re saying or just a drama queen with an uninformed opinion?

[quote chocolatesweets]@Dominicgoings rip through lungs? Honestly.

Yes I would prefer 1 day with my family rather than 6 months without. [/quote]
Honestly what?

How do you think Covid kills frail, elderly people in nursing homes? You want more details? What do you think happens?
The problem is that you, and the rest of the tinfoil hat brigade have NO idea of what this virus does to the human body. And I say, with sincerity, that I hope you, or your loved ones, ever do.

But please do not attempt to minimise the lived experience of myself and my colleagues who witness it first hand, and will continue to do so.

I know the reality of what a covid death actually looks like is an uncomfortable truth that the conspiracy theorists don’t want to face.

Vaccine highly likely ...

Is it? Obviously the money being thrown researchers' way is a major incentive to claim this is so, but the countless diseases for which no effective vaccines have ever been found might suggest it's far from the case

And what happens if we get into another year or even several without one, by which time as I've said there may be yet another virus coming our way ... what happens then?

I almost wouldn't mind the restrictions if they were accompanied by some fucking HONESTY. If they had said "This is what we know, this is what you must do, get on with it," I might have respected that. Instead, we had:

"The virus is not a threat to us."
"The virus will kill us all if we don't act."
"It's just for three weeks."
"This is now the new normal."
"Stay home. Don't go to work."
"Go to work."
"I'm closing the schools."
"Children's education is important."
"Masks are useless."
"You must wear a mask to avoid killing people."
"Eat less - you're all too fat."
"Eat out to help out."

How can we respect a blustering government that comes out with the above?

@endoftheworldaoife

Steeper - I don't think it's right that your children should feel responsible for keeping their father alive by giving up their freedom.

It's not just about holidays, is it.

So, if one of the children catch it, passes it to their dad and he dies you think the child will just shrug that off?

We cope as best we can. That's what we do.

@Fartleking

"This isn't difficult, it's beyond anything our species has ever had to endure."

OP, our species has never had it so good. Many of us are able to keep working and contacting others because of the Internet. We have clean, modern hospitals that are staffed with highly educated people.
Past pandemics will have seen entire families die, leaving children orphaned. With no social care safety net this could mean penury, the poorhouse, slavery or starvation. I'm not saying this hasn't been hard for everyone and traumatic or tragic for some but put it into perspective please. We're so f*ing entitled we don't even know we're born. This will pass, we'll all adapt, life as we know it might be changed but not necessarily ruined. Get a grip.

This exactly. We are not asking the kids to sweep chimneys We are not asking them to work in mines/mills etc We are not sending them to war or evacuating them away from their families.

My 8 year old has asd he’s already had to have 4 days of school due to a bad cough - negative result.
But do you know what he’ll be fine.

@endoftheworldaoife I can’t decide whether you are being goady for attention or if you have genuinely lost perspective.

Of course it’s not forever. All we are trying to do, collectively as a society, is to buy a little time and balance the risks while we do. That’s all.

It’s very likely there will be an effective vaccine, relatively soon. And more effective treatments going hand in had with that.

Every day of time we buy be being careful is a step further towards being able to control the virus better.

I get that this feels like the end of the world as we know it, but it isn’t.

amp.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/09/09/some-good-news-on-covid-19?__twitter_impression=true

There is more harm being caused by the hysterical anti maskers than anything else. People's behaviour will prolong this virus, nothing else.

This isn't difficult, it's beyond anything our species has ever had to endure.

Christ on a bike.