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).

@ReadtheData

The second wave will bring a whole load more of Long Covid cases and I think people will think differently then.

I won’t think differently then. No matter whet the disease we can’t stop life forever. I supported it this year to give time for preparations. I’ll support it until the first vaccine trial results we announced this year. If the vaccine doesn’t work and we get no roll out started by 2021 I will no longer support it. A lot of people will feel like this.

Yes but I think ‘learning to live with it’ includes learning to wear masks long term, keeping up hygiene procedures, self isolating when you have symptoms. To be fair this should help to reduce all contagious illnesses not just Covid.

@Cornettoninja

This is what learning to live with it looks like (emphasis on learning).

You just don’t like it.

There is no easy way out of this, even with your proposal there are massive problems which will require just as much resources and have similar, if not the same impacts.

Yes, we're learning to live with it right now.

A winter of harsh, long lockdowns with no furlough scheme or schools open is not, however.

You have to give them chance to find a vaccine. By March we should know if one is forthcoming. If we get to 12 - 18 months from the initial lockdown (so, March - September 2021) and we don't seem to be making any progress then I think that we will have too.

@LadyCatStark

Yes but I think ‘learning to live with it’ includes learning to wear masks long term, keeping up hygiene procedures, self isolating when you have symptoms. To be fair this should help to reduce all contagious illnesses not just Covid.

That would be fair I think. Scrapping all social distancing but keeping public masks and isolating when you have symptoms (until a vaccine is filled out, not forever). I would support that.

@ginghamstarfish

If so many people weren't selfish ignorant twats, and would keep to the measures introduced, then we could surely have avoided much of the lockdown. Partly the government's fault for not making masks etc mandatory MUCH sooner, but partly the thickos who don't think rules apply to them.

I think that whatever happens, we need to stop playing the blame game.

Viruses do what viruses do. They spread, that's literally all they exist to do. No amount of lockdown or social distancing or mask wearing will stop viruses being viruses. It may pause or slow things for a while, but none of that is a magic bullet that will stop a virus in its tracks permanently.

You were looking for a thread on this? You didn't look very far. There's at least 4 a day in the Coronavirus topic

This thread is specifically about the BBC article today.

@PennyDreadfuI well yes it is. Do you think no other infectious disease is dealt with in the same way? Never seen reports of hospitals closing to visitors because if norovirus? Never heard of school closures due to chickpox outbreaks? Never isolated a child for two weeks or until their spot had healed for chicken pox? Are you aware of reportable infectious diseases that trigger announcements in areas of outbreaks?

This is on a much larger scale, but this is exactly how we deal with it.

I read this earlier it is the most balenced article I have seen in a long time and do agree the way we are behaving (or been told to behave) it’s causing chaos to lives especially young people who still have their education and life ahead of them, looking at the way schools have changed it goes against everything teachers are taught to do to create a healthy learning environment my children are preschool age so not as affected yet but hate the thought of their school experience been so different. This morning a mum friend with primary age children likened the classrooms to Victorian style desk settings which makes me feel sad

Interesting that this article has been run on the bbc. Media put out feelers through the news to see publics reaction. This is the first like it that has been run. I wonder if they’re seeing what we all think about it as it’s a valid option for the UK.

@wonkylegs if I could ‘like’ your post I would

@Racoonworld

Interesting that this article has been run on the bbc. Media put out feelers through the news to see publics reaction. This is the first like it that has been run. I wonder if they’re seeing what we all think about it as it’s a valid option for the UK.

This crossed my mind, too.

This morning a mum friend with primary age children likened the classrooms to Victorian style desk settings which makes me feel sad

Why though? Are the children sad?

Your projecting. You hear ‘Victorian school’ and make connections to that era and it wasn’t the layout that was the problem back then - more the corporal punishment, poverty, bullish teaching methods and general hardships of life.

^in the Spanish flu outbreak many areas of the world introduced very similar measures to those we have now - masks, lockdowns and temporary laws restricting certain behaviours that's partially how the outbreak was brought under control but the other was time.
It was brutal and restrictive and the unfortunate thing about these outbreaks is one of the main things is they take time. Something our fast paced world is very bad at understanding. We have a 24 hour news cycle and that doesn't breed patience. We have numpties in charge who are more bothered about how they look rather than making sure they serve the people best.
Advice will change with time that's kinda how science works it evolves as will the virus bit that coupled with bad leadership doesn't help people understand what's going on. Bad decisions that prioritise profit over doing the right thing (a key priority in our current society) are what makes this unsustainable not necessarily the reasoning behind it.,^

Totally agree @wonkylegs And the second wave of the Spanish flu was much worse and went after the 20-30 year olds the second time around. After the first wave, people had become jaded by the restrictions and felt that it wouldn't affect them as they were young and healthy. But it did and that's when people really listened, because unfortunately not as many people care when it's the elderly dying or when people are being maimed by this virus inside their homes.

@Racoonworld you can't say that. But if you catch long covid, please private message me and tell me you still disagree with me. I'm at 6-months and it's been the worst time of my entire life.

We will have to learn to live with it. A vaccine is unlikely until next year and as an evolving virus any vaccine produced is unlikely to be effective against every strain, much like the flu vaccine.
Global eradication will take years even if a vaccine were 100% effective so changes to the way we live are inevitable for the forseeable future.
It's time to concentrate the medical efforts on protecting the most vulnerable in society and allowing others to responsibly carry on with normal life. The current controls are unsustainable for the future purely from a financial standpoint, with personal finance, business wealth and countries economies collapsing if the financial burden continues, not to mention the increased taxation required for years to come to pay for the medical, and financial interventions already put in place.

@ReadtheData ok I’ll agree to pm you if I change my mind. But me catching long Covid won’t change my view that people’s lives shouldn’t stop becaude of me, or because of the small chance of catching long Covid. And it is a small chance, I know of a number of people who have had Covid and none of them have major issues now. One of them has a slight problem with taste still but that’s it. There is a chance of long term issues with any disease, yes unfortunate if it’s you who gets it but it’s life.

I sat behind a desk at school and it was fine! ( long time ago now) The children at my school in a primary breakfast club seem happy and contented. They have told me all about lockdown and they seem to grasp that we need to change things. They are probably more flexible than the adults who have to adapt to a new way of doing things. Children are more resilient than we tend to give them credit for and they have kept to their bubbles in school.

The point I’d make to the people going on about eugenics etc- the NHS does and always has ‘rationed’ treatments. There are drugs and treatments that would extend the lives of young and healthy people that the NHS will not fund because they cost too much.

How can we now have a situation where we are shutting down the economy, DC’s education and effectively society as we’ve known it for the last 75 years for a virus whose average victim is older than the U.K. life expectancy?

Isn’t learning to live with it what we’re all currently doing?

We can’t just 100% go back to normal in one feel swoop, it is still a highly infectious, dangerous disease for which there is little immunity in the population.

Schools are back, business is building back up again. We are all learning the balance of how we get as close as we can to everything running as normal without infections excavating too quickly. None of us knows what that perfect balance is, so we’re all learning.

Well we are hopefully getting a vaccine in spring/summer 2021.

So we only have to get through this winter. I suggest some people should work on getting some patience and get creative with ways of enjoying yourselves while social distancing.

Hopefully that way we will avoid a full lockdown.

However as humans for some reason we seem to think we have a god forgiven right to extended every single life for as long as possible.
Yes. I was diagnosed with cancer this spring and I've had surgery etc.
I've been offered chemotherapy which gives me slightly higher odds of surviving. But quite frankly I don't want a year of misery in addition to this CV fear. It's a dilemma. Why should young people be locked away to extend some people's lives for a few months.

In honesty the restrictions as have been recently aren't that restrictive, but as people still can't stay within them we find ourselves in this situation again. The issue with letting it rip through is that it does still effect people and the economy. It needs ideally an actual test system and then yes, things to head even further towards 'normality'.

Yes. It might be a start to canvas opinions on this throughout the population.

You forgot again. We're making a vaccine and have already developed 3 (or is it more now?) treatments that make it safer now than catching it in the beginning. In the coming months it will become safer to catch than it is now.

If we'd listened to the people in the very beginning saying just ignore it we're be much worse off than we are now.

Interesting that this article has been run on the bbc. Media put out feelers through the news to see publics reaction. This is the first like it that has been run. I wonder if they’re seeing what we all think about it as it’s a valid option for the UK

Actually there have been a few in recent times, see

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53869671

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53656852