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).

I eoild love to see data of the average age victim being older than average life expectancy as I understood on average about 11 years of life was lost.

@Northernsoulgirl45

I eoild love to see data of the average age victim being older than average life expectancy as I understood on average about 11 years of life was lost.

Considering most people who die are over 85 that would be surprising

As you get older, your life expectancy goes up. The earliest year of life is quite risky, for example. You also wouldn't expect everyone over the age of 80 to die immediately. Here's a graph showing life expectancy based on the age you are now. You can see that if you make it to 80, you've got a pretty good chance of making it to 90.

@TheDailyCarbuncle my kids are managing fine, thanks! As are millions of kids around the world. Not sure why we have such low expectations of kids here?
And you know what, they don’t have to do it perfectly 100% of the time, even if just half the kids wore them it would have big impact on transmission & viral load.
It seems like a pretty simple & cheap measure to try out, what’s the downside if it helps keep schools open longer?

@Nellodee The authors of the over 10 years life remaining study have admitted that their calculation was incorrect as it did not take into account that almost half of deaths are in care home residents who typically have a year to live.

Essentially, their analysis assumed that those who died had the same remaining life-expectancy as anyone else of their age.

(There is a caveat in that they took into account whether someone had an underlying condition but as (i) over 90% of over 80s have an underlying condition and (ii) they did not adjust for severity the end result is to basically assume the average for the whole population.

They have not published an updated figure but the incorrect figure of over 10 years is still widely quoted.

See link below, particularly the care home admission
github.com/dmcalli2/covid19_yll_final/blob/master/Scripts/Addendum.md

I remember there being a fair amount of debate around the years of life remaining calculations at the time they came out. They really didn't collect good enough data to be making the kind of conclusions they did, if I recall correctly. It was always a bit "back of a fag packet".

True and quoted widely to serve a particular agenda.

Yes - we cannot continue to screw the economy and young people - especially those in education.

We cant continue to screw people. Our capitalist economy also screws people. We need to adapt it to serve people in this brave new world of pandemics and climate change not fuck over people yet again to serve the economy.