It's just an overreaction.

[madcow88]

Now don't get me wrong I followed the rules to the letter and still am doing as I don't want to break the law.

However I think it's all a massive overreaction and I don't want to sit by and allow my children's generation to be destroyed.

Their education is totally fucked, they will not get to have the same social experiences as we did as young people.

Why is everyone happily sitting by and allowing our government to restrict our lives over a virus that kills 0.01% of people. Whilst 1000s of people are dying every day due to the lack of treatment and social interactions.

I really just do not feel comfortable with all the laws on our freedom being changed so dramatically over a virus if truth be told is not as deadly as they would like us to be believed.

Don't get me wrong I have sympathy for those people who lost their lives and for the people who will lose their lives in the future but no more than for the people who die of flu and other viruses each year.

I thought I had seen a statistic showing Stockholm had a much higher death rate than London

Re: Sweden, why are people suddenly portraying the country as a bastion of social discipline in comparison to ‘stupid old England’?

It’s as if all that racial tension & rioting over recent years never happened.

[quote Ecosse]@mrshoho

Sweden has had around 5500 deaths out of a population of 10 million. Scotland alone has had 4500 deaths from a population of 5 million.

Which one has done better?[/quote]
Scotland has one of the highest obesity rates in Europe, these countries are not comprable in terms of Covid.

@TheSunIsStillShining

So you admit that you were pulling your earlier figures out of the air? I personally don't see the point of being patronising to other posters on Mumsnet threads. But what's the satisfaction of opining on a topic where your opinion is formed by intuition or taste preference rather than data and then inventing completely false figures (2 million people dying!) to back you up?

If GENE x or y is activated by Covid, the vaccine may do it too. In theory, the genes that the virus switches on and off may also prove beneficial.

In reality, this seems highly unlikely given the strong similarities between covid-19 and other coronaviruses. People who survived the far scarier SARS are not all invalids.

But the point of the inoculation strategy would be to reduce deaths. Not because it sounds like a fun wacko experimental thing to do. It would be much much better not to do it, and have a vaccine. But I don't think our society can take another year of living like this (and worse than this) while waiting. Even since strict lockdown kicked in, in April, the excess death rate has been considerable. Lockdown is already killing an unacceptable number of people.

Besides, people aren't going to put up with it for another year, even in the current non-stringent form. Lockdown is too damaging to too many people at very little risk of covid. What happens when they get fed up, and completely stop social distancing or following any government rules? Are the police going to arrest 30 million people? What kinds of civil unrest could this produce?

War is possible, in part, because young people are praised as heroes when they show a willingness to make huge sacrifices for others. The rhetoric of praise is very important psychologically.

Here, young healthy people are being asked to sacrifice a lot of things, and then when they slip up in any way (going out to the pub after four months of not seeing their friends, say, or having one holiday a year after working very hard to balance WFH and young children) the rest of society excoriates them for their massive selfishness!

That's not a stable situation. People have seen through the government's initial (deceitful) scare tactics, which were meant to make low risk people feel that they were actually at high risk. Now what? The real risk is that people get so fed up with being called selfish, when they're actually making huge efforts, that they BECOME selfish and stop making any. That's when everything really goes to shit.

[quote Ecosse]@mrshoho

Sweden has had around 5500 deaths out of a population of 10 million. Scotland alone has had 4500 deaths from a population of 5 million.

Which one has done better?[/quote]
But you were the one who said the argument of Sweden's low population density didn't apply as the majority live in urban areas. Yet when we study the city of Stokholm in isolation, the death rate is far higher than the rate of London.

Plus I'd imagine having large uninhabited spaces between your big cities as opposed to sprawling commuter belts is probably pretty advantageous in terms of spread.

Scotland has one of the highest obesity rates in Europe, these countries are not comprable in terms of Covid

@Votesforpedro

If that’s true, it could be argued that those that are obese have a choice. For most people, lifestyle changes would bring them in to line with a more average BMI.

It’s well documented that obesity is a risk factor for covid. They would then (I assume) fall in to the vulnerable category.

You can’t help change being over 65, or having many illness that makes you vulnerable, but for many, as I’ve said, they could take themselves out of the vulnerable group.

Is that the Covid equivalent of "She was asking for it?"

@Nellodee

Is that the Covid equivalent of "She was asking for it?"

If that was directed at me -

It’s the equivalent of ‘do what you can to help yourself, before you get outraged at others (those unaffected) for not putting your needs above their own’

Everyone needs to take responsibility, staring with themselves and look at how they can help themselves!

@mrshoho

It’s not over yet, Anders Tegnell himself said ‘judge me in a year’ as Sweden are playing the long game. Will their figures look good or bad in the end, we don’t know yet.

But they are coming out of the lighter touch measures they had...and we’re yo-yo-ing with the harder ones we had.

Going off on a bit of a tangent I thought this was an interesting article, extract and link below, on how the richer countries are not examining the poorer countries that have managed CoVid best of all. We could learn from them and our blindness to examining the public health measures they implemented shows the distasteful superiority the West often adopts towards other countries outside its orbit.

“The real story is that places like Vietnam and Mongolia have completely kicked COVID-19’s ass. The real story is that places like Rwanda and Ghana have innovated and survived. There are countless stories like this — from Sri Lanka to Trinidad & Tobago, but you wouldn’t know because we’re not rich or white. But you should know. Because we’re right. This information could save your life.”

medium.com/indica/the-overwhelming-racism-of-covid-coverage-78e37e4ce6e8

[quote MummyPop00]@mrshoho

It’s not over yet, Anders Tegnell himself said ‘judge me in a year’ as Sweden are playing the long game. Will their figures look good or bad in the end, we don’t know yet.

But they are coming out of the lighter touch measures they had...and we’re yo-yo-ing with the harder ones we had.[/quote]
Well yes and that's why I'm fed up with people saying we should have taken the Swedish approach. I'm in London and scaling up Stokholm's deaths to the population of London we would have had far more deaths. We need to stop comparing the UK to Sweden and who is to say there could be another wave on the way there too.

Today's England figures

12 reported deaths

• quarter no positive test

All over 60 4 -60-79 8 - 80+ No cluster Tameside got its daily in

www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/COVID-19-daily-announced-deaths-20-September-2020.xlsx

Same as always..

Today’s fatality figures simply demonstrate effectively the groups who are at risk of death from COVID- elderly with certain underlying health conditions.

These individuals should be supported and funded to stay at home and the rest of us who are not at risk need to keep the economy going.

Ecosse has now moved so far into fantasy land there is no hope of retrieving them, only making it clear to others that they know they are spouting drivel and continue to do so.

First Covid is not just about breathing difficulties, it's as much a blood disorder as a respiratory problem. Second the treatment now involves an intravenous line and you cant do that yourself at home. Third people actually find CPAP machines quite difficult at first, as you'd know if you knew anyone who'd had to use one. You will likely be on several drugs, not just the iv line, because you may need support for other organs.

There are very few nurses sitting around doing nothing, however there are empty wards because their nurses are now looking after patients who need intensive care. It really should not be hard to tell that intensive care actually requires a lot more staff than an ordinary ward, which would have people getting ready to leave and others who were ambulatory part of the time. A Covid patient may have to be "proned" - that can take 7 staff as you carefully manage all the lines and tubes going in and out of the patient.

We are not Sweden - ButBrazil, ButAmerica - we are far more like America.

And btw no-one ignores other countries - but their age distribution is not ours, their comorbidities are not ours, their deaths are frequently under-reported.

We are more ButAmerica or ButBrazil.

[quote Guylan]Going off on a bit of a tangent I thought this was an interesting article, extract and link below, on how the richer countries are not examining the poorer countries that have managed CoVid best of all. We could learn from them and our blindness to examining the public health measures they implemented shows the distasteful superiority the West often adopts towards other countries outside its orbit.

“The real story is that places like Vietnam and Mongolia have completely kicked COVID-19’s ass. The real story is that places like Rwanda and Ghana have innovated and survived. There are countless stories like this — from Sri Lanka to Trinidad & Tobago, but you wouldn’t know because we’re not rich or white. But you should know. Because we’re right. This information could save your life.”

medium.com/indica/the-overwhelming-racism-of-covid-coverage-78e37e4ce6e8[/quote]
I don't know if it's a superiority of the West but more of a realisation that our citizens would not tolerate the way countries such as Vietnam rule over its people. In Vietnam they closed schools from January right through to May. This was without the country suffering any deaths and very few cases. They closed their borders and anyone entering was sent to isolation centres for 14 days. In the UK hundreds were dying every day at one point and still many people were saying our lockdown was an over reaction.

The paper claiming that the average covid death has 10 years left significantly overstates the true years remaining. This is acknowledged by the paper’s authors (link below).

The analysis effectively assumed that those who died from Covid had the same years remaining as any other person of the same age. This is implausible. Almost half of covid deaths were care homes residents who typically have a year to live. The analysis took no account of this. The authors have said that they need to adjust for this and it would significantly affect the results.

Second, although there was an attempt to take into account underlying conditions, the analysis was not able to do so properly - e.g. no account was taken of the severity of the condition as the vast majority of elderly have at least one condition, effectively the model assumes the same risk of dying as the average population.

github.com/dmcalli2/covid19_yll_final/blob/master/Scripts/Addendum.md

People have seen through the government's initial (deceitful) scare tactics - the government's initial response was the exact opposite of this.

They twiddled their thumbs when the virus hit Europe; failed to close our borders (which would have kept us safe); dawdled down the herd immunity cul-de-sac; were reminded that maybe letting thousands of people die was a morally dubious policy; then got into gear and tried to hold back the tide that they had unleashed, at which point full lockdown was inevitable.

@hopsalong

all numbers are from ONS, apart from the 10% death, which is a simple calculation of what percentage of the 390k diagnosed have died. And I even linked ons page at one point.
so NO, DATA IS NOT FROM MY ARSE!

But the point of the inoculation strategy would be to reduce deaths. Not because it sounds like a fun wacko experimental thing to do. It would be much much better not to do it, and have a vaccine.
Please get your words right. Inoculation means vaccine. Which means testing, scientists, protocols, etc...

For reference, before you say I'm making it up:
inoculation /noun/
the action of inoculating or of being inoculated; vaccination.

You were not talking beforehand about this, so don't mix it up.

Lockdown is already killing an unacceptable number of people
You really don't see the irony, do you? You suggest something that has the potential to kill millions, or 100s of 1000s. But yet complain about an unknown number. Btw: how many had died because of lockdown?

I do agree that lockdown should be better managed, health services should be stable and not intermittent or closed, treatments should not be halted, etc. That point is totally valid!

What happens when they get fed up, and completely stop social distancing or following any government rules?
Look around please. From daily few hundred we are in numbers we had in April.

War is possible, in part, because young people are praised as heroes when they show a willingness to make huge sacrifices for others. The rhetoric of praise is very important psychologically.
again, language is not your best friend
rhetoric: "language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect, but which is often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content."
Wars don't happen because young people want to be heroes (there are some, yes). It's way more complex and has more to do with hatred, exploitation and manipulation.

young healthy people are being asked to sacrifice a lot of things, and then when they slip up in any way (going out to the pub after four months of not seeing their friends, say, or having one holiday a year after working very hard to balance WFH and young children) the rest of society excoriates them for their massive selfishness!

Sacrifice what? Pubs, getting ass drunk on thursdays, vomiting in the bus stop? Shagging strangers?
On more serious note, yes, they are missing out, but it's only interim, not forever. There are rarely things that cannot be done later.

Yes. Because -everyone- can live without going to the pub or without having a holiday for a year. These are first world constructs that are not mandatory for a healthy, rounded life. Even if you believe so. They are lovely, but all people would need to do is stay put for a while. Not forever, not for the rest of their lives. Just maybe a year or two. And not even in total isolation, alone in a dark basement.
And since we have the internet and phone there is no such thing as being completely cut off. It's not the same, but you can keep up friendships through other channels than the pub.

Lockdowns are needed as people cannot be trusted to be thoughtful of others. It's simple as that. IF people would have skipped their holiday willingly and by their own choice we would already be in a better state.

IF people would have worn masks everywhere, all the time we would be in a better position. Did they? No. So we need rules and lockdowns. At the end of the day, if a person can't behave responsibly by their own accord, we -as a society- need to make them. In modern societies we have governments to do this.
The fact that this one is utter shitshow is highly unfortunate. (to say the least, but I would go as far as criminal negligence if I was a lawyer - which I'm not)

@mrshoho, that’s a valid point and certainly should be taken into consideration. I think there are other factors too such as locking down early.

To add, when I said locking down earlier first I wasn’t referring to Vietnam in particular, I don’t know at what stage Vietnam locked down, but some of the countries did I believe.

Better not to have inoculation but to have a vaccine?

Say what?

That's as good as the thread with the poster wailing that masks aren't "airtight" that is.

I might copy it over to FB for the lolz.

@Ecosse

Just done a bit of fact checking and:

Scotland has recorded 2,502 deaths with a population of 5.454m, so a death rate of 458 per million.

Sweden has recorded 5,865 deaths with a population of 10.113m, so a death rate of 580 per million.

@Derbygerbil

Rubbish- the 2502 figure only includes those who’ve died after a positive test (of which there were very few available back in March).

The actually figure from National Records of Scotland is 4500.