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).

You crack on with whatever you do @CursesAndMagic . I am so over discussing masks. 20 mins ago you didn't even understand how they worked.

Hope you and your family all stay safe. Even though you seem very casual about people getting ill and dying.

Yes it affects people and yes people die. Many diseases and viruses do that. It’s life.

OP and supporters, you are probably aware of the Cambridge professor David Spiegelhalter. His work as a statistician makes sense of the frightening figures that the media throw around. He has calculated infection (covid) fatality ratios for different age groups - ratio for ages 10-19 is 0.006 rising to 9.3% at age 80+.

This work is helpful when people wish to intelligently assess risk. His writing is also elegant and thoughtful, and would be a refreshing antidote to anyone dismayed by the rude and dismissive responses made by some posters on this thread.

For those not wanting to wear a mask , are you prepared for another lockdown this winter, for your job to go, you’re on benefits struggling to find a new job and pay your bills at the same time as your DC’s school has closed due to Covid cases and you’re back to home schooling with only an hour allowed out of the house each day?

@sunglassesonthetable

Flu is not as dangerous as Covid *@Fosler* There is no drive to eradicate it.

But flu kills more people each year than Covid has in the UK so far. Just because we see flu as a winter thing that we will inevitably get at some point, it's still deadly to some regardless of the flu vaccine. As for that vaccine, because flu mutates it has to be boosted every year. Who is to say we won't need a yearly booster for Covid 19 too? That's already mutated many times over in a short time. It always annoys me when people play down flu and other winter bugs.

Well good for you if you “wouldn’t mind getting covid” . I know two youngish , previously healthy, working adults who have been left damaged by covid, one of them brain damaged. I very much do not want to catch covid, or for any of my family to catch it, or anyone else frankly. I am happy to do whatever it takes to minimise spread and to protect people.
I think distancing is hard, of course, but a small price to pay if it saves someone’s health or life.

100% agree with you OP

Do you think parents moaned like this in the Blitz?!

Yes, I imagine plenty if them probably did.

So sick of all the comparisons to the Blitz and ‘wartime Brits were so much pluckier/more resilient/altruistic/morally superior to us’ posts. It’s just baseless nostalgia. Of course people whinged, and of course people broke rules - there were widespread black markets in rationed foods, for example. But back then they were facing a very different ‘enemy’, one that was visible and tangible, and people were allowed and encouraged to lean on each other in their struggles, rather than viewing each other as potential disease vectors.

With Covid it’s the isolation, atomisation is society and being compelled to behave in a very artificial, counterintuitive way that so many people are struggling with. That’s nothing like the solidarity and camaraderie of wartime.

FWIW I agree with many of your worries OP, although I’m somewhat more optimistic about the prospect of an effective vaccine and treatments to get us out of the worst of this mess.

The Southern Hemisphere has less flu cases this winter due to lockdowns.

And all those quoting the current death figures, the government admitted that some of these are unreliable due to the way the numbers were counted originally.
Some people who tested positive in March later died in June of an unrelated to covid 19 illness or accident but it was still attributed to covid 19.
I know personally of a lady whose dear father passed away after a long battle with cancer. He was suspected of having had Covid 19 but refused a test as he wanted to die at home and was fearful they would take him into hospital if it was positive and he positively did not want to die in hospital.
Despite never having had a test positive or negative, despite having secondary cancers on top of his original one which he had been diagnosed with two years before. Despite being told the year after that he was terminally ill, his daughter got his death certificate back and it said, due to the hospital, covid 19 as cause of death. She actually called the registrar and she was told that was what the hospital had written on his form. She explained he hadn't been on hospital, he died at home and she was told as his death was confirmed by a doctor linked to the hospital, they had handled the forms.
As she said, the doctor, herself, her child, and her brother would not have been allowed into the home if he was dying of Covid. They refused to remove it though.
I've no idea why they have been so determined to write covid 19 on death certificates, but there are videos on YouTube from families all saying their loved ones died in car accidents or other causes all of whom later got marked down as covid 19.

Also, if the government advice wasn't so contradictory, I doubt so many would be doubting the method. Covid can't get you if you eat in a restaurant or drink in a pub, but it can if you get a take away without a mask or go to the supermarket. It can't get you in school with very little Social Distancing, but it can on the bus on the way there. But it's still OK for kids to go back to school yet politicians couldn't possibly go to Westminster or meet constituents.

By the time an uncertain vaccine ever arrives there's every chance yet another virus will come crawling into view, so are we going to create the same mass panic over that one ... and the next ... and the next?
I want to know this. I was thinking the same in March: the virus was the least of my worries. My was (and still is): is this paving the way for another mass shutdown the next time another virus comes along? We've been told we're heading for "the biggest recession in history" because of Saint Boris's lockdown: is this going to happen every time there's a virus? We have to put ourselves into a massive recession?

Thank you @Fosler for that video; I agreed with it all. Tuthbrushes, and yes, we are literally being muzzled.

And loads here are telling us "stop worrying about dating/lip-reading when PEOPLE ARE DYING FFS"... my big worry is not PEOPLE ARE DYING, but POLITICIANS ARE LYING, silencing anyone who disagrees with them, and the public are believing them!

@TempsPerdu

Do you think parents moaned like this in the Blitz?!

Yes, I imagine plenty if them probably did.

So sick of all the comparisons to the Blitz and ‘wartime Brits were so much pluckier/more resilient/altruistic/morally superior to us’ posts. It’s just baseless nostalgia. Of course people whinged, and of course people broke rules - there were widespread black markets in rationed foods, for example. But back then they were facing a very different ‘enemy’, one that was visible and tangible, and people were allowed and encouraged to lean on each other in their struggles, rather than viewing each other as potential disease vectors.

With Covid it’s the isolation, atomisation is society and being compelled to behave in a very artificial, counterintuitive way that so many people are struggling with. That’s nothing like the solidarity and camaraderie of wartime.

FWIW I agree with many of your worries OP, although I’m somewhat more optimistic about the prospect of an effective vaccine and treatments to get us out of the worst of this mess.

Yeah my gran still complained about the war right up until she died in the mid-2000s. She would complain about the crap food, cold nights, bombs dropping hither and dither. To say no one complained is bollocks.

I’m protecting my child from killing her father. It’s that simple. Can you imagine the guilt of knowing that attending a birthday party or eating in a restaurant killed your parent? A little social distancing and mask wearing is not going to harm her anywhere close to being responsible for his death.

And all those quoting the current death figures, the government admitted that some of these are unreliable due to the way the numbers were counted originally.

They have since been adjusted for that. They were adjusted down just under 10%.

@LadyofTheManners

Sorry, can you quote your sources please when stating facts.

Flu does not kill more people each year than COVID.

I will come back shortly with actual facts but this is completely incorrect.

But flu kills more people each year than Covid has in the UK so far.

Not true:

The number of flu cases and deaths as a result of related complications varies each flu season. The average number of estimated deaths in England over the last five seasons (2014/15 to 2018/19) was 17,000 deaths annually. This ranged from 1,692 deaths last season (2018/19) to 28,330 deaths in 2014/15. Of these deaths, many were in people with underlying health conditions.
questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2020-03-18/HL2727

Who is to say we won't need a yearly booster for Covid 19 too? That's already mutated many times over in a short time.

Also not true.

Lady, I don’t think that’s right about flu. Last year’s season was mild with under 2,000 deaths and 2015 was severe with 28,000. Average is 17-18,000 for a British flu season. However, many more people have died ‘with’ covid than ‘of’ covid so current figures are likely to be revised down when all this is re-analysed. You could end up being right about flu killing more!

Cross-posted with Coffee on the flu stats!

This thread is depressing.
Maybe I’m fortunate to know people who will do all they can to stop spreading the virus to others.

Coffee, I think it is assumed that a yearly booster will be necessary for covid, should a vaccine be possible. It has mutated but not as frequently as flu does, and presumably will continue to do so.

@Flyonawalk

Lady, I don’t think that’s right about flu. Last year’s season was mild with under 2,000 deaths and 2015 was severe with 28,000. Average is 17-18,000 for a British flu season. However, many more people have died ‘with’ covid than ‘of’ covid so current figures are likely to be revised down when all this is re-analysed. You could end up being right about flu killing more!

But either way the conclusion is that covid kills more people even with lockdown/subsequent restrictions

Lots of things kill more people that flu does. Smoking, 78,000 per year in the UK. We don’t suggest a lockdown while we get to grips with that. The discussion is not whether covid is da hero us but whether lockdown measures are proportional.

Thanks all...

As per previous posts FLU DOES NOT KILL MORE PEOPLE

Flu kills on average 17,000 people a year in the UK.

COVID has already killed 40,000+ even with a full lockdown across the whole of the UK

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-does-the-coronavirus-death-rate-compare-with-flu-and-how-long-will-the-outbreak-last-tlpnwxg89

...that odd-looking word should be ‘dangerous’ by the way...

Mojo, that article is nearly four months old. Knowledge of the virus has advanced since then.

Flyonawalk what measures would you have taken overall?