Is it time we learned to live with Covid? BBC article today

[PennyDreadfuI]

From the BBC

I'm beginning to think that it might be (and I'm higher risk). It's here to stay, after all, and lockdowns every few months cannot go on indefinitely. All the money spent on lockdown measures could perhaps be ploughed into the NHS to pay for staff/hospitals to provide care for those who need it when they become ill (and to ease the backlog the last lockdown created).

Not if you want the NHS staff not to walk. Do you realise the horror you'd be signing them up?

I hope anyone who was out there fucking clapping a few months ago isn't advocating for this "strategy". You think it's ok to traumatise doctors and nurses? To let them deal with a tsunami of patients with no where to put them? To be their own lives and families at risk so that you could "get on with it"? I don't have enough middle fingers I really don't.

because they’ve had to stay home a lot for half a year and educate their own children?

Have you ever actually done this while holding down a demanding full time job?

No, didn’t think so.

Quitea lot of us have now though @TheKeatingFive so not sure what point you're trying to make. Wasnt pleasant but not exactly the Blitz either.

I agree, a lockdown should be enforced ONLY as a last resort, if things are worse than in April. Let those who are not in shielding groups keep the country going as much as possible. Money should be directed to support those who are in the shielding groups and cannot work from home.

I agree .I think that in the past we have lived with many viruses TBH. Covid is an unknown enemy as above PP points out.However in the long term we face financial ruin as a country if we completely lock down any more!

Why not extend services to cater for vulnerable people so that risks are minimised whilst day to day life can continue? Have, say blue buses for shielders that have a max occupancy of 17(the max allowed currently in my area) and yellow buses for people that consider themselves low risk which can seat more. Extend the opening times for customer facing businesses so that people are spread out in the times they visit, dedicating 6am to 9am the priority time for shielders, and staying open later. This would spread out the number of people visiting over more hours, reducing the amount of people in a place at any one time.

I would prefer we adapted to live with the virus rather than stay locked away. I understand its emotive depending on your viewpoint but cancer referrals are down, stillbirths are rising and so is suicide. Away from health, domestic violence is also rising.

Only protecting the physically vulnerable seems to be doing more harm in the long run so maybe we should look at ways for people to live as normally as they did before, with extra services to help the high risk individuals shield.

I think you might struggle to find bus drivers willing and able. Unless there were significant ways to kerp them safe. Bus drivers are sounding the alarm about school busses now

Yes. But we have to remain flexible to build resilience, mental as well as physical.

Some may not but there are a hell of a lot of low risk people that would be willing and happy to. Bus drivers have been working throughout the past six months where I am. They all have perspex screens separating them from the passengers and their own windows they can open and close. I don't see how they're being asked to do anything drastically different?

Frankly with unemployment about to skyrocket, it would surely relieve economic stress if businesses widened their opening times and recruited more people to cover them. I know there's extra costs involved but sometimes you have to speculate to accumulate. It might mean more people needing help topping up wages but it's surely better to provide a little help rather than end up subsidising the whole lot.

Instead of just giving up and claiming‘it’s impossible to protect the vulnerable’ why not divert money and think up strategies to do that.

First care homes. Shit hot infections control and prioritise testing. So quick testing for all staff and patients.

Have COVID and non Covid hospitals?

Financial support for those shielding rather than encouraging us to go out for meals!

Yes maybe private transport available.

Wow at worried mum.

That was in response to me I assume.

Is that how you normally react when people say I've had enough it's looking like have over for me, in the middle of the night? You're ashamed of those not coping and thinking hey bridge time. Jesus. Glad I didn't see that.

Glad I didn't see it last night I mean.

What a fucking thing to say to someone.

Hello I'm drunk and depressed and thinking of chucking it all in.

Well. I'm ashamed of you.

Fucks sake. What are people like.

Blobby I'm sorry you're struggling as well.

When a lovely previously happy 24 year old bloke says what's the fucking point. It's not trivial.

Maybe I should tell him I'm ashamed of him and to think of the war. That's right, I think?

@Nellodee

*We can’t all live like this to protect the vulnerable unfortunately.

Does that sound awful? Of course it does, it’s it’s the harsh reality of life and nature. Always has been and always will be.*

As I thought. Protect the vulnerable actually means fuck 'em, it's their problem not mine. Yes, it does sound awful.

This sort of bullshit makes me really angry.

'Vulnerable' includes children, who were stuck at home for months with no school, no access to friends, no contact with adults besides their own parents. For children in abusive families, that time was likely to have been a living hell, absolutely horrendous. Do they count? Or is it only a certain type of vulnerable person you're so desperately concerned about?

What about people with dementia in nursing homes, who were prevented from seeing friends and family for months 'for their own good.' Research showed that a significant number of them died because they simply gave up - many died of dehydration. Do you feel that was worth it? As long as they don't die of covid, it doesn't matter?

How about people who've lost their jobs, who are now vulnerable due to poverty? What about the children who will struggle because their parents don't have a job? Are they just not a concern?

They're only a few in a very very long list of people who, in the absolute fixation on 'staying safe' from one single virus, are being sacrificed and ignored.

All this utter utter hogwash about caring about the vulnerable is just pure mindless drivel spouted by people who seem incapable of anything close to complex thought. I am shit sick of it. Your fear of a virus is NOT a good enough reason to destroy lives. It's just not.

It's funny also that this terrible concern for 'the vulnerable' has only appeared now. Where was it in previous years, when flu was killing anything up to 650,000 people a year? Where's the concern about other infections killing 11 million people a year? People aren't even aware of those figures, never mind being concerned about them. But suddenly with covid, the only thing that matters is not getting this one virus, it doesn't matter if people die of mental health issues, despair, poverty, it doesn't matter if children are denied education, businesses collapse and the economy is irreparably damaged. Deaths don't count if they're not caused by covid. That's the only thing anyone is allowed to be concerned about. It's absolutely beyond craziness. It's beyond belief.

What really exhausts and irritates me is that it'll be the same people who are so 'concerned' now who will whinge and whine and moan endlessly when taxes are increased, the NHS is even more shit, education is stripped to the bone etc etc because so much money has been spent on 'keeping everyone safe.' Safe from what??? Covid isn't going to go away, so the only thing that's happening is that infections are being delayed so that they fall right in the middle of winter, so they can compete directly with flu and all the other winter infections. What the fuck is the point of that?? And even if you never leave your house for the rest of 2020, it'll still be around in 2021 and 2022 - it's likely to be around forever more. So you'll have the absolute joy of a completely destroyed economy as well as covid. What a pointless waste of time.

Aim your straw man rant elsewhere.

@Nellodee

Aim your straw man rant elsewhere.

What a sensible response.

Your fear of a virus is NOT a good enough reason to destroy lives. It's just not

And neither is your complacency. Where does that leave us?

@Cornettoninja

Your fear of a virus is NOT a good enough reason to destroy lives. It's just not

And neither is your complacency. Where does that leave us?

It leaves us where we always were - in a world where viruses go around and where children still need to be educated, people still need to work and get on with their lives. Stopping everything for months on end is not a solution - we already did that and we're still here, with the infection still going around. So what was the point? How many times do we have to do the same thing over and over before we just stop?

I think that maintaining R rate at 1 is impossible but we have to put up with fluctuating restrictions for at least 6 or 9 months.

@TheDailyCarbuncle but we’re not stopping everything and the aim is to continue as close to normal as possible without overwhelming the health provision.

The rate covid infects and incapacitates people isn’t sustainable for the country either. We can either restrict ourselves by design and retain an element of control or we allow nature to take it’s course and deal with the random hand it deals us. It won’t be people who get it mildly merrily carrying on, they’ll be the ones picking up the pieces.

The (Tory!) government understands the populace is our economy and that there is a threat to that. The way to protect it is to control it and this is how that’s done in the face of so many unknowns.

[quote Cornettoninja]@TheDailyCarbuncle but we’re not stopping everything and the aim is to continue as close to normal as possible without overwhelming the health provision.

The rate covid infects and incapacitates people isn’t sustainable for the country either. We can either restrict ourselves by design and retain an element of control or we allow nature to take it’s course and deal with the random hand it deals us. It won’t be people who get it mildly merrily carrying on, they’ll be the ones picking up the pieces.

The (Tory!) government understands the populace is our economy and that there is a threat to that. The way to protect it is to control it and this is how that’s done in the face of so many unknowns.[/quote]
When lockdown happened in March, covid had been spreading for months, possibly four months or more, over winter, with no checks whatsoever. No one even noticed it until it was pointed out, at which point all the infections were suddenly 'discovered.' That's as close as we have to what the reality is when covid is totally uncontrolled. It wasn't good, but it also wasn't the case that huge parts of the population were incapacitated. People noticed a 'nasty virus' going around, absences in schools were higher, but at no point did everything fall apart or grind to a halt.

All the assertions about covid stopping everything have no actual evidence to back them up - they're just guesses. What does actual stop things and grind things to a halt is lockdown. I'm really tired of hearing about the effect the virus has had on jobs etc. - the virus hasn't had any effect on jobs, lockdown has. The virus hasn't had a huge impact on whether women can stay in work or not, lockdown has.

I know anytime I mention Sweden I get the usual nonsense about how Sweden is so so so different etc etc etc, and I know they admit they didn't protect the care homes (the UK also didn't protect care homes, so no difference there) but the fact still remains that the one country that kept primary and lower secondary schools open the whole time, that didn't close pubs and restaurants, that allowed gatherings up to 50 people, now has a death rate hovering around 1 a day. The virus there has all but disappeared. Why? Because they kept life going through the summer months, allowing the virus to move through the population until it comes to a natural stopping point. They are now on the brink of the virus all but disappearing. Meanwhile, we all sat at home pointlessly for months, miserable, with children stuck at home and businesses closed, for what? So that we could all go out and start the transmission process again and listen to endless warnings about how we're all doomed? What has that achieved only ongoing misery, ongoing disruption and stress? When do we just call a halt to it all, accept that the virus will go around, take the simple minimal precautions we need and just get on with it? How long do we have to endure this for?

Meanwhile in Wuhan, the nightlife is in full swing www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/nightclubs-wuhan-packed-coronavirus-epicentre-22712888.amp