Anyone Changed Their Mind?

[ClimbDad]

As the second wave approaches and hospitals and ICUs start to fill up again, have any of those who spent the summer saying the pandemic was over changed their minds? If so, what caused that change? If not, why do you still believe this is nothing to worry about?

Let me help you rephrase this.

Told you so, is that what you wanted to say?

I follow the NHS.gov website. It tells you how many beds are taken up by COVID patients, how many are on ventilators. Honestly look at it. We have 55 million people alone in England - hospitals are really not filling up. I think lady time I checked ( this week) it was around 400 people.

It’s less than 1% of the entire country. Stop scare mongering

Last not lady

thank you!

But I agree. We are very far from a second wave.

@Codexdivinchi

I follow the NHS.gov website. It tells you how many beds are taken up by COVID patients, how many are on ventilators. Honestly look at it. We have 55 million people alone in England - hospitals are really not filling up. I think lady time I checked ( this week) it was around 400 people.

It’s less than 1% of the entire country. Stop scare mongering

It's not just the filling up that matters. You only need 1 covid patient to need a covid ward. A ward that would have held 28 non covid patients who can't get admitted with other things. You need to create a red pathway through the hospital which pushes other patients out the system. You have to move services to protect the vulnerable areas (cancer, elderly care) - that mans closing some down to make room. Have a look at the NHS thread - hospitals are seeing an increase in cases and it's having an effect already both covid and non covid. It may only be a small amount but it's in exactly the same way as March.

@Codexdivinchi

I follow the NHS.gov website. It tells you how many beds are taken up by COVID patients, how many are on ventilators. Honestly look at it. We have 55 million people alone in England - hospitals are really not filling up. I think lady time I checked ( this week) it was around 400 people.

It’s less than 1% of the entire country. Stop scare mongering

Brace yourself to be told that in two weeks there'll be patients lying on the floor in corridors.

@Codexdivinchi

I follow the NHS.gov website. It tells you how many beds are taken up by COVID patients, how many are on ventilators. Honestly look at it. We have 55 million people alone in England - hospitals are really not filling up. I think lady time I checked ( this week) it was around 400 people.

It’s less than 1% of the entire country. Stop scare mongering

It's 988 people in hospital with covid (in England).

I find it distasteful how many people on MN seen to positively relish the idea of a "second wave".

Whether the pandemic is over or not is irrelevant IMO. The answer to dealing with it is not locking down and living in fear and having our liberty taken away. Echoing Lord Sumption's comments, a virus does not listen to government policy.

Let it spread, let people take their chances and those who are vulnerable or fearful can adapt their lives as they see fit.

Millions of people globally die every year from cancer, obesity, war, famine, natural disasters. The numbers of individuals who die from suicide each year globally is on a similar level to those deaths from Covid. Yet we don't see the same level of hysteria and economies collapsing left, right and centre.

The quicker we get on with life - and accept the fall out in the interim - the quicker we get back to normal. And yes, I have an elderly mother in a care home with dementia and family members with cancer, but still do not support any kind of lockdown. My mother's last few years would be far better served by us being able to see her, take her out and hug her, rather than her never leaving her care home, never again going for a walk or a drink with us, never again seeing her granddaughter. And if, during that time, she caught Covid or any other illness, then so be it. Why are we adamant that we keep the elderly and vulnerable alive far beyond an age that anyone would ever have considered a good innings?

A snapshot like 400 doesn't tell you anything. If it was 200 last week and 100 the week before and 50 the week before that, you'd be nervous about it being over 20,000 in 6 weeks without tougher restrictions.

The fact that numbers are growing even with social distancing, masks, quarantine, and now many local lockdown and national gathering restrictions, indicates this thing has legs and is snowballing. Looking at the graph of numbers I'd say we're in the second wave now.

What will be interesting IMO is how fewer people die as a result hopefully, building on all the lessons learnt from the first wave.

Plus horrible though it is to say, presumably a lot of the more vulnerable people died in the first wave, and hopefully anyone getting it again has some immunity to fall back on?

Given its not going anywhere soon, and vaccine seems shaky, how much of a threat it is in the future will be understood much better after this second wave, and that's valuable information IMO

@codexdivinchi the last report on there is dated over a week ago, with data from the week before that (barely out of August). It's gone up in the intervening time.

Agree @DimityandDeNimes

Did anyone really think it was over? We all knew winter would likely mean trouble again,

@Climbdad Some people think it only badly affects Other People (and they don't care about these Others). They're either under 40 with no preexisting conditions (and don't have any vulnerable loved ones) and/or live outside of an urban area. They also won't accept that death is not the only danger. Long Covid is a risk to everyone, young and healthy included. As is the economic fallout from continued failure to effectively deal with Covid.

@DappledOliveGroves

Whether the pandemic is over or not is irrelevant IMO. The answer to dealing with it is not locking down and living in fear and having our liberty taken away. Echoing Lord Sumption's comments, a virus does not listen to government policy.

Let it spread, let people take their chances and those who are vulnerable or fearful can adapt their lives as they see fit.

Millions of people globally die every year from cancer, obesity, war, famine, natural disasters. The numbers of individuals who die from suicide each year globally is on a similar level to those deaths from Covid. Yet we don't see the same level of hysteria and economies collapsing left, right and centre.

The quicker we get on with life - and accept the fall out in the interim - the quicker we get back to normal. And yes, I have an elderly mother in a care home with dementia and family members with cancer, but still do not support any kind of lockdown. My mother's last few years would be far better served by us being able to see her, take her out and hug her, rather than her never leaving her care home, never again going for a walk or a drink with us, never again seeing her granddaughter. And if, during that time, she caught Covid or any other illness, then so be it. Why are we adamant that we keep the elderly and vulnerable alive far beyond an age that anyone would ever have considered a good innings?

And what do you propose regarding many NHS and healthcare workers? Shattered and demoralised from the first wave, under immense amounts of pressure to get ‘normal’ services up and running, with huge waiting lists, and now facing another onslaught of covid hospitalizations.

Do you really think they ‘owe’ it to society to head back into those ICUs, get into PPE again for those gruelling 12 hour shifts, while the virus runs its course (as you propose). Or maybe, in the spirit of self-interest, and since everyone else is doing what they want, they should just call it quits. What happens to our society then?

It doesn’t matter if you’re vulnerable. It doesn’t matter if you know people who are vulnerable. Those are decisions you make for yourselves. You’re not the ones on the front lines dealing with the crisis. Go to the thread here of NHS workers and see how they’re feeling about the situation. It’s incredibly volatile and everything must be done to ensure that healthcare staff remain motivated and capable of dealing, not just with this crisis, but with the crippling backlog of work they have already have to do.

@DappledOliveGroves

Whether the pandemic is over or not is irrelevant IMO. The answer to dealing with it is not locking down and living in fear and having our liberty taken away. Echoing Lord Sumption's comments, a virus does not listen to government policy.

Let it spread, let people take their chances and those who are vulnerable or fearful can adapt their lives as they see fit.

Millions of people globally die every year from cancer, obesity, war, famine, natural disasters. The numbers of individuals who die from suicide each year globally is on a similar level to those deaths from Covid. Yet we don't see the same level of hysteria and economies collapsing left, right and centre.

The quicker we get on with life - and accept the fall out in the interim - the quicker we get back to normal. And yes, I have an elderly mother in a care home with dementia and family members with cancer, but still do not support any kind of lockdown. My mother's last few years would be far better served by us being able to see her, take her out and hug her, rather than her never leaving her care home, never again going for a walk or a drink with us, never again seeing her granddaughter. And if, during that time, she caught Covid or any other illness, then so be it. Why are we adamant that we keep the elderly and vulnerable alive far beyond an age that anyone would ever have considered a good innings?

You are a charmer arent you?(!) Just because you seem to be willing to 'sacrifice' people doesnt mean we should.

I have never been one of the people who thinks it is over. Do you have any update on the treatment?

Hi ClimbDad. How are you?

I definitely never thought it was fully over so changed my mind? No. I knew there was a risk of cases rising over the winter. That's what I expected to happen. I think I had hoped we would be waiting longer before seeing deaths rising, though, and I had hoped any outbreaks would be FAR better contained at a local level so I think the government has got responsibility for that and much of this is on them. However, I have always said it is a sneaky respiratory virus and its success at spreading through asymptomatic carriers does mean we don't really have that much control about what happens overall which is the line taken by one of the Swedish experts.

It makes me sad to think of NHS staff going through more tough times in particular. I am still hoping that the various steps being taken things will slow the spread and I do think we are in a very different position to March so I hope there won't be so many deaths overall. It is still possible there won't be a very large second wave but things like be a bump spread out over time. There are still lots of reasons to have hope whilst also being cautious.

This is a really interesting graph from Twitter showing growth (from here twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/1306627044386758657/photo/1

There is also Dr Ron Daniels on Twitter who is an ITU consultant in Birmingham. He said that whilst they're seeing more admissions, so far things feel nothing at all like March.

I always reckon that those advocating "a really harsh lockdown Now!" or who think "We never had a proper lockdown in the first place!" are precisely the same ppl who think that it's even possible for the pandemic to be "over" simply due to strict control measures, presumably by pursuing an erradication strategy.

The rest of us are just trying to figure out the best way to endure.

Sorry, showing hospital admissions, specifically.

Specialwgm Lockdown and associated restrictions sacrifices other people. Are you happy with that?

I'm sure Johnson and Hancock prattling on today was a second wavers wet dream.

My opinion of "the virus" hasn't changed from day 1 of all this. It's out there and will continue to be. If it gets me, hard luck me, life has to be lived.

Not changed my opinion since day1. This is a fact of nature, we are tanking the world economy, our children's future, our older people's present and our own mental health for something over which we have ultimately no control whatsoever!