Shield the vulnerable. Back to normal for everyone else.

[treebarking]

I keep seeing this literally everywhere.

I don't understand how it works!

Vulnerable people are through all walks of life and in all essential services. By virtue of them shielding means things can't run as normal as there isn't enough staff.

Do vulnerable people never leave home and never let anyone in if it's rife everywhere ripping through communities? Ever? What if they need hospital treatment? What if they have a heart attack or need cancer treatment? What if their central heating broke and needed fixing or there was a fire or a leak. What if their children go to school? Or have shared custody?

I feel like I must be missing something really obvious for the amount of people suggesting it. How does it work practically?

[AntiHop]

I agree op.

Since covid, I have discovered that some friends and colleagues are ECV. These are people who were working full time and their condition was well managed.

[AntiHop]

@bumblingbovine49

For me it is not that it is a selfish view ( though it is) but that it is a shallow , unthinking, knee jerk reaction. When you give it even a moment of thought , any idiot can see it won't work. it just isn't possible to : carry in as normal' without some sort of serous repercussions.

If you let the illness run through, you just get people dying anyway, either because people can't get treated for non Covid things because hospitals are full of Covid patients or we just turn away Covid patients to make room for everyone else.

Also they just ignore the fact that the reason we didn't overwhelm the NHS is because we locked down and because we were so worried about overwhelming the NHS that we actually didn't try to treat lots of people that we should have done

We need to continue to ensure that we minimise the numbers if people in hospital while at the same time providing trearment for anyone who needs it . It is a balancing act and there is no place in it for ' black and white ideas'but a lot of people just can't cope with that, they need simple answers. Unfortunately there just aren't any .

Perfectly put @bumblingbovine49

It particularly annoys me when people say "well the NHS wasn't overwhelmed in the spring was it? Huh? So let's just get back to normal."

It wasn't overwhelmed BECAUSE of the drastic measures the government took.

[AntiHop]

We also cannot expect people not to see their friends and family indefinitely.

But for most of the country, we can see our friends and family @Ecosse, albeit in a limited way.

[Browneyesbigbum]

So what would you do then?
Lock down strict for 2 weeks/months/years....

Suggesting everyone that goes back to normal is selfish because there are ecv people....so then we all just pause life the economy work......

People have to earn a living....

[Eyewhisker]

I agree with Ecosse. The reason for this is not because I am heartless but because I can’t see how a total suppression strategy works. If we want no virus to spread at all, then a full lockdown is needed. If any semblance of life is resumed e.g. educating children and young people then the virus spreads rapidly.

We cannot continue in lockdown indefinitely so have to do something else. Actually, the latest rules are not too bad. At least children are educated, there can be some socialising and some work can continue. It won’t suppress the virus though, it will keep it spreading but at a slower rate as that is what happens with an endemic airborne virus.

That will mean that those at higher risk need to take greater care. That is not my fault but that of the virus and the alternative of not educating our children is unthinkable.

[Derbygerbil]

For me it is not that it is a selfish view ( though it is) but that it is a shallow , unthinking, knee jerk reaction.

Yes, it was incessant “everyone back to normal, just shield the vulnerable” - job done - without any apparent thought of what or how that has really frustrated me. My frustrations got the better of me on another thread and someone did respond with reasons to their credit.

[Derbygerbil]

Having said that I do wonder if it might be least worst approach if a vaccine isn’t forthcoming, but it would need to be really well planned and resourced, and would still require a certain level of restraint and restriction as it was implemented until immunity reached a certain level.

[Bluelinings]

Great completely shield the vulnerable and elderly. No life for the vulnerable. No seeing family. No watching grandchildren grow up for elderly. No education for millions of vulnerable children or children of vulnerable parents.

A second rate life of drastic measures for tens of millions.

Because the rest couldn’t take light measures.

Isn’t that discrimination?

[Chessie678]

@booandbumpp
I don’t think there’s a good answer here. However, around 1m under 60s were advised to shield. Over 60s were over represented in the shielding population and as the majority of over 60s don’t work it would be relatively easy to protect them.

The c1m under 60s are more difficult. Around two thirds of the work force worked from home in April. So probably a majority of shielded people and their households could have worked from home particularly if they were prioritised for it. Some would have been furloughed so presumably they weren’t key to the functioning of society. Some shielded people will be living alone (and although they may need to work presumably they didn’t from March to August this year anyway). That leaves a significant number of households with a shielded person where at least one person needed to go to work in person but I think we’re looking at max 200-300k. Some but not all of those will have jobs which are critical to society.

I’d suggest that what we should have done is a furlough for households where someone was advised to shield (if people can’t work from home) and maternity leave style protection of employment until people are released from shielding).

These figures are rough but mostly based on ons stats.

This would have meant losing some additional critical key workers from the workforce for a time (but we lost those shielding from the workforce anyway for months). You might have been able to mitigate the effect of this in some sectors e.g wife of shielded person is a doctor. Wife asked to continue working throughout but offered some combination of regular testing, lower risk work e.g providing care to shielded, enhanced payment to cover separate accommodation if desired.

That isn’t a perfect system and in honesty would probably have resulted in more vulnerable people being infected but, as I see it, the alternative is millions in long term unemployment which shortens lives and no money for public spending plus on off lockdowns for over a year which doesn’t solve the underlying problem.

It’s not that I think that shielding the vulnerable is a great approach so much as that the alternative which we are doing is worse.

Usually we value one quality adjusted life year at around c. £60k in the Uk. For covid we are spending much much more than that to save a year of life and probably shortening many other lives in the process. It sounds sociopathic to think of lives in monetary terms but we have always done it and when resources are limited you have to.

If cases really did double every 7 days we would have hit some level of herd immunity very quickly from a starting point of 100k a day. I suspect we wouldn’t have seen that level of growth for very long though as even worst hit countries haven’t.

[Mymycherrypie]

Exactly, one year of having a quiet social life is a very minimal thing to do compared to the amount of lives it could save. The economy will have to adapt.

[ilovecherries]

Shielded is such a lovely, warm-fuzzy word. Cocooned. Protected. Valued. In practice - isolated, forgotten, a nuisance and worthy only of crap, poor quality food in your Boris Box.

[Ecosse]

Ffs @Mymycherrypie, it’s not about a quite fucking social life. Lockdown has huge health effects- the millions who will lose their jobs will face mental health issues (quite possibly suicides), their families will suffer malnutrition and their DC will be enormously impacted.

Young people trying to enter the labour market will face permanent scarring effects and therefore a lower quality of life (and worse life expectancy) than they would otherwise.

If schools close again, DC’s education will suffer- the most disadvantaged will therefore have even worse educational outcomes (and future health and wellbeing and life expectancy) that they do already. Child abuse and domestic violence will rise again.

Elderly people (some quite possibly in their last months) may not die from COVID, but they will face months on their own at home- is that a life many of them will want to save?

That’s before we even get to the 300,000 fewer urgent cancer referrals and the 100,000 fewer treatments or the huge increases in food bank usage.

[Chessie678]

@Bluelinings
There were 88,000 children on the shielding list and 2.2m total. A lot but not millions / tens of millions.

And the point would not be to lock up vulnerable people for ever but to facilitate that option until the immunity of everyone else reduces the rate of transmission sufficiently. If you believe that growth of the virus would be exponential until there are millions of cases a day such that the nhs would be overwhelmed etc that point would come very quickly because it would run out of people to infect.

[gallbladderpain]

@Ecosse

I think all this talk about ableism is a nonsense. The vast majority of people are at zero or no risk from COVID- unfortunately a small minority are at high risk. We also have a pretty good idea of who these individuals are.

It makes sense to protect these individuals if that is what they want. So I’d absolutely support giving people at risk the opportunity to re-shield, fully funded by the state.

I absolutely don’t think the rest of us should just ‘get back to normal’- measures like masks and social distancing should be in place to further reduce the likelihood of transmission to the vulnerable.

People should not be having house parties and clearly things like concerts and nightclubs can’t happen. But we just can’t afford another lockdown and the economic and health costs. We also cannot expect people not to see their friends and family indefinitely.

I feel you contridicted yourself there.
Let the shielder's re-shield but we cannot expect people not to see their friends and family indefinitely.....but it's alright for the vunerable to do that ? Many of them didn't see a single soul from March until July and then it's just expected they do it all again so the 'healthy' can see their friends and family !

[Chessie678]

And light measures for suppression clearly don’t work. The only way to suppress seems to be to close schools, not see family or friends and barely leave the house.

[SleepingStandingUp]

@treebarking

I keep seeing this literally everywhere.

I don't understand how it works!

Vulnerable people are through all walks of life and in all essential services. By virtue of them shielding means things can't run as normal as there isn't enough staff.

Do vulnerable people never leave home and never let anyone in if it's rife everywhere ripping through communities? Ever? What if they need hospital treatment? What if they have a heart attack or need cancer treatment? What if their central heating broke and needed fixing or there was a fire or a leak. What if their children go to school? Or have shared custody?

I feel like I must be missing something really obvious for the amount of people suggesting it. How does it work practically?

It works because my child doesn't need to go to school, see friends, have fun outside of the house. It's totally acceptable for my son to be kept Wotton 4 walls for months on end at 5 as long as Mary can book a restaurant take at 10pm and go out without a mask. Priorities!!

[Ecosse]

@gallbladderpain

Ideally we would have a system where friends and relatives of people shielding (particularly those living alone) can access tests in order to safely visit them.

That would be a far better use of our testing capacity than testing every DC who gets the sniffles at school.

[SpearmintPeppermint]

Nice to see so many sensible comments on this - I’m usually exasperated by people trotting this out as if it could work.

And to those saying we know who is at risk - no we bloody well don’t. I have a friend in her early 30s who has been ill for months with long-haul covid, my brother was hospitalised, neither were considered vulnerable before.

[Bluelinings]

[quote Chessie678]@Bluelinings
There were 88,000 children on the shielding list and 2.2m total. A lot but not millions / tens of millions.

And the point would not be to lock up vulnerable people for ever but to facilitate that option until the immunity of everyone else reduces the rate of transmission sufficiently. If you believe that growth of the virus would be exponential until there are millions of cases a day such that the nhs would be overwhelmed etc that point would come very quickly because it would run out of people to infect.[/quote]
And what about the people who aren’t on the shielding list but still have underlying conditions. There are many conditions not covered especially relating to blood clots. I know. I have one of them. Who protects those people? The true list of vulnerable goes well beyond the shielding list. There are many who get no protection for their condition yet would be dismissed as having an underlying condition if the worst happened. What then?

And what of those who get long term COVID or worse who had no long term conditions?

What about the emerging evidence some get it worse the second time.

It isn’t as simple as you think. I understand your good intentions but it just isn’t that easy.

Herd immunity doesn’t even exist. Antibodies wane after a couple of months. Herd immunity requires a vaccine.

[Lua]

More importantly, it doesn't work!

People talk about vulnerable people as if it is a clear cut thing. It is not. Pleanty of healthy and youngish people get very ill. Ok, at al larger proportion, but they still get ill. Ok, they might not die, but they can still get very ill. If enough people are ill at the same time the schools will not run, the hospitals will not run, etc. Also, if there is ebough people living with non-vulnerable people, they will also not be able to work.

So increasing transmission, will increase problems. Even if you could lock away your definition of "vulnerable"

[Bluelinings]

@SpearmintPeppermint

Nice to see so many sensible comments on this - I’m usually exasperated by people trotting this out as if it could work.

And to those saying we know who is at risk - no we bloody well don’t. I have a friend in her early 30s who has been ill for months with long-haul covid, my brother was hospitalised, neither were considered vulnerable before.

Same here. I have four friends in their thirties and forties who were healthy and suffered badly. Two are still struggling now.

Viruses often stay with us and cause later effects (chicken pox/shingles, herpes, hiv)... it is reckless to assume it’s ok to just let people catch this.

[Bluelinings]

@Ecosse

Ffs *@Mymycherrypie*, it’s not about a quite fucking social life. Lockdown has huge health effects- the millions who will lose their jobs will face mental health issues (quite possibly suicides), their families will suffer malnutrition and their DC will be enormously impacted.

Young people trying to enter the labour market will face permanent scarring effects and therefore a lower quality of life (and worse life expectancy) than they would otherwise.

If schools close again, DC’s education will suffer- the most disadvantaged will therefore have even worse educational outcomes (and future health and wellbeing and life expectancy) that they do already. Child abuse and domestic violence will rise again.

Elderly people (some quite possibly in their last months) may not die from COVID, but they will face months on their own at home- is that a life many of them will want to save?

That’s before we even get to the 300,000 fewer urgent cancer referrals and the 100,000 fewer treatments or the huge increases in food bank usage.

Then let’s avoid another lockdown AND overwhelming hospitals with Covid.

Both of these will cause cancer patients and many other patients to miss treatment. Letting it run unchecked is irresponsible for mental health and all patients too

[Northernsoulgirl45]

10% of ECV have kids under 16. My dh is one of them. He couldn't cuddle our kids for 4 months. Now the kids are expected to be back in school in bubbles of 70, 150 and 90. I woh. Dh wfh. We are fine as levels are low in our area but letting thr virus rip through would be dangerously for us. I am clinically vulnerable too.
It is a common view on here that most
of the vulnerable are on their last legs and would die soon anyway. Not people with valuable jobs.

[gallbladderpain]

[quote Ecosse]@gallbladderpain

Ideally we would have a system where friends and relatives of people shielding (particularly those living alone) can access tests in order to safely visit them.

That would be a far better use of our testing capacity than testing every DC who gets the sniffles at school.[/quote]
But this doesn't work....because you can test negative but still be shedding the virus and test positive the next day. So Monday i test negative, visit the ECV person then Tuesday I test positive. It's too late then !
And what about the children ? ATM we are testing children in schools to protect those children in schools who are vunerable !
Protect the 'healthy kids educations' that's all I hear !
I've got 2 children of my own...one is vunerable and as a result of that neither of my children are attending school because people don't want to test their kids who are in school (when they have one of the symptoms that they can get a test for)

I've seen on social media many times....I will not be testing my child for covid it's torture etc etc....that person not testing their child could lead to my child having a tube shoved down their throat, having IV lines inserted into their scalp ....do we see where we are going with this ?
Everyone....absolutely everyone that lives in this society needs to play a huge part in all of this !
It's not as simple as just keeping the vunerable at home. Heck I bet the government wishes it was.
We also let it run through society and there will be healthy people get really sick as well and need hospital treatment...this then leads to the hospitals having covid in them and then they aren't safe for the vunerable to go to either and bloody hell we spend a lot of the year in the place so where would we go then ?