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).

All written by the same person I notice. But generally less doom=y and more positive.

I thought this is what living with the virus did look like? DH and I both work outside the home, our children are in school, we can go to the shops, eat out and meet up with 2 other people. We wear masks, wash hands, the people we deal with are often behind perspex and we are spaced out a bit. We have to isolate if we get ill, just like we would if one of us had chicken pox and none of us were immune. Remember not being able to go to the pharmacy with your pox riddled baby to get lotion? My DH has never had pox and he was advised to not come home to stay until after the second child had gone down and was past the infective stage. Its just with covid we havent all had it aged 5.

My musing is this: oh look, yet another thread for those who would be the zombies in a zombie apocalypse to gather and moan hideously.

@MillieEpple

I thought this is what living with the virus did look like? DH and I both work outside the home, our children are in school, we can go to the shops, eat out and meet up with 2 other people. We wear masks, wash hands, the people we deal with are often behind perspex and we are spaced out a bit. We have to isolate if we get ill, just like we would if one of us had chicken pox and none of us were immune. Remember not being able to go to the pharmacy with your pox riddled baby to get lotion? My DH has never had pox and he was advised to not come home to stay until after the second child had gone down and was past the infective stage. Its just with covid we havent all had it aged 5.

With the new measures being considered you won’t be able to do all that, and especially not meet up with two other people. Household mixing will be banned. Is this how we want to live for the foreseeable? It’s not living.

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.

I agree that many children are flexible and adaptable, however they live in the here and now (as they should), and what we as adults should be doing is ensuring that the world they will be growing up into offers them the same opportunities educationally, economically and workwise that many of us had. They will have the burden of paying for all this as they move into adulthood.

They will have the burden of paying for all this as they move into adulthood

Just as we’ve had the burden of paying off the debt for WWII and various other conflicts?

Massive national debt isn’t a new concept and we’ve lived fairly happily alongside it for decades. Society adapts.

I've always been of the view that we're going to be careful going into our first winter with this, as hospitals struggle to cope every winter anyway. However, when we get out of winter this can't carry on. Yes, people can take different precautions but we need relative normality back next summer.

We are learning to live with it, but that will mean intermittent kickdown every now and then to slow the spread. This is us living with it. 🤷‍♀️ And yes, people will die before their time, including people who thought they would be alright.

Lockdown

@BabyLlamaZen

We are learning to live with it, but that will mean intermittent kickdown every now and then to slow the spread. This is us living with it. 🤷‍♀️ And yes, people will die before their time, including people who thought they would be alright.

But it's not like everything is normal before these lockdowns is it? The hospitality industry is decimated, no concerts or festivals, no live music, no nightclubs, masks in shops and on public transport, one way systems and table service in pubs and shops, people working from home, nobody allowed to go to football matches.

This is before further lockdowns or restrictions come into effect.

We are living with covid. This is life. It's different from before. It's different (hopefully) from what will be. But how it is now... this is us living with covid.

Just as we’ve had the burden of paying off the debt for WWII and various other conflicts?

Massive national debt isn’t a new concept and we’ve lived fairly happily alongside it for decades. Society adapts.

That's fine then. Cancel tuition fees, ensure houses can be bought for average wages, keep the retirement age as low as it is now, do away with the idea of an over 40s social care tax, massively expand council housing and do away with right to buy, and this generation will be happy to repay national debt, just as the last one was. Oh, how odd, apparently we can't afford any of that any more. Apparently, the repaying of these debts puts enough pressure on the national coffers that we need austerity. How strange, I thought debt was nothing new and we were just like the post war generation?

It’s a two edged sword - live with it and accept that additional people will die, or keep locking things down and see the consequences on mental health, people with other illnesses that are left undiagnosed/untreated, as well as people jobs.

A friend of mine is a Dr in a Manchester hospital. She said her ITU is already full - they’re using an overflow ward and they’ve also had to open 2 more Covid wards in the last few days due to an increase in admissions. The only “positive” (if you can call it that) is that the admissions are all people who were already classified as high risk, there’s been no increase in admissions in the young/healthy population.

On the topic of increasing covid and care for other conditions- the plan is to have covid free hospitals and specific ones for the virus.

Article today on this in the Guardian.

@annabel85 hence the emphasis on learning. We have learnt that mass gatherings lead to lots of cases but we haven’t found a way to counteract that yet. It’s interesting that air travel doesn’t seem to be as dangerous as was hypothesised but that seems to be down to factors difficult to replicate in a venue like a concert or festival environment.

Working on the presumption COVID will behave like other illnesses and people do retain a degree of immunity from previous infections then we will reach a point where infections reduce to identifiable outbreaks at which point these kinds of things will be able to go ahead. That’s without a vaccination. However there is no guarantee of this and although allowing COVID to run unchecked through the population would admittedly get us there faster the societal cost would be brutal and I suspect not what most people arguing for lifting of restrictions imagine or are prepared for.

The only way to not have anymore debts mounting up is to not lockdown at all. It is one or the other : lockdown and wreck the economy or don't do anything at all. These are stark choices and both will still affect the young regardless , in one way or another if you think about it logically.
I can see both sides of the arguments but not everyone can just not go to work and not everyone will comply with stricter restrictions either.
It's a tough call whichever way you look at it. You need an economy to have schools and an NHS.
I'm glad I'm not in power as it must be a nightmare balancing the two things.

Once pupils returned to school and more people went back to work then positive cases were always going to rise but The rise has been much slower and shallower than the spring, and for good reason.

Nothing exponential about it at all. In fact, most regions are seeing a slowing in rate of increase in transmission or are seeing tranmission rates flat-lining.

We're being prepped for a storm that won't come so that the pre-emptive harsh measures to come will be held up as having been vital and 'proven'.

This whole thing is bearing an uncanny resemblance to a rain dance.

@unmarkedbythat well I’d vote for you based on that post.. none of those things have ever been about the country not having enough money, they’re political and as a country we have voted in parties that prioritise elsewhere.

My point is the debt incurred by current COVID measures is not a reason not to carry on with them.

Jesus Fucking Wept. Not another one.

Chris Whitty was just speaking to you OP

It’s scary isn’t it, i’m more frightened by our freedoms being taken away, people reporting other people for being seen with a group of 7, reporting your neighbours. It looks like Boris went to Italy for his holiday, I never did believe he went camping in Scotland. We are being controlled while the wealthy are carrying on with their lives, the divide is getting bigger, health care is non existent unless you pay privately, education is the bare minimum. Affordable housing is non existent, i’m scared for the next generation 😞

Time to consult the public?

@CountessFrog

Time to consult the public?

Fuck no. Let’s see how the public’s last big decision pans out before handing them any responsibility for our mortality.

To clarify: I started this thread with regards to the article on the BBC today (perhaps I should've mentioned it in the thread title). I'm not saying I think we should just say fuck 'em with regards to the vulnerable, but many of those who are may are also vulnerable to further lockdowns.

Yes, we're living with it now - but future lockdowns won't look the way things are now. The way those of us in a local lockdown are living is restrictive, but nowhere near as much so as the last one.

It seems as if Chris Whitty is also musing on how to balance the need for vigilance and the need for a fairly normal life. He doesn't seem to have the answers either and he's much cleverer than me!

@CountessFrog

Time to consult the public?

Oh dear god no. The public gave us Brexit and many would like the death penalty reinstated.

@PennyDreadfuI I would bet that Chris Witty has more than one plan on how this is all going to go but he can’t publicly present them because people only hear what they want to and treat it as fact instead of possibilities.