I genuinely don’t get it?!

[Rapphue]

Hopeful for balanced and sincere posts here rather than the assumption that I’m ‘playing ignorance’ or some other accusation because my question undermines the government narrative.

FWIW I’m educated and well read, albeit I don’t have huge in depth knowledge politics, nor do I claim to!

But I don’t understand why we are having restrictions imposed for a virus that is no worse than other illnesses. Even if I accept that it is harmless to the NHS should it escalate fast and make many ill at the same time (so far no hospitals have been maxed out with corona - my SIL works as a hospital doctor in intense care and has said there hasn’t been even 50% corona patients in any ward at one time. She works in a busy London hospital)...even if I accept it could escalate and we don’t want that, then:

1. Why is there suddenly a lack of concern about public health in general? People are dying because they are having treatment postponed due to Coronavirus. Hospitals are not busy and certainly not full of corona patients. It seems crazy to me that anyone who may fall ill non corona related is now at the back of the queue. Tough shit if that ends in your death.

1. Pubs open until 10pm. I use this as one example of many arbitrary rules. Why does the virus suddenly operate after 10pm? Is it a vampire? Surely you can infect just as many people at 9:59pm as you can at 10pm. Is it just to reduce risk overall? If so then I think someone needs to read a gcse science textbook... the risk has already been taken if the pub is open full stop.

1. Cashless society...erm. Why?

I’m not trying to incite some sort of dramatic post. I hope there are honest reasons for operating as we have the last few months. I hope I am wrong to feel cynical. I hope - and suspect - I’m not knowledgeable enough to understand why this is happening how it is.

As far as I can tell this is very much about controlling people’s lives to their detriment. If it was about health why on Earth are we letting people get sick and delaying treatment because of a virus?

Is there something in the London protests yesterday? Am I missing something medical, political or scientific here?

HoratiotheHorsefly. Spot on.

Covid has the potential to run rampant through society. For the sake of argument let's assume that we send the sick home to either die or get better. At any one time you will still have 20% to 30% of your workforce off sick for the next 6-12 months. The issues we have seen in schools and hospitals won't go away, in fact they'll multiply.

This thread from a doctor, might help you "get it".
mobile.twitter.com/tristan_cope/status/1310162805241401346

@Orphelia2020

I can understand people arguing against restrictions from a perspective of personal freedom or the economy, but to argue against them from the perspective of cancer care seems bonkers. If we’d let Covid rip, do you really think cancer care would have been better? All those cancer wards contaminated with Covid... All those people turning up for chemo in Covid-riddled hospitals? Really?!

As for Ferguson’s models, his 500,000 figure was for an unmitigated outbreak, where we carried in as normal. We clearly didn’t carry on as normal! Only 8% have antibodies... So with 50,000 deaths so far, that’s not far off! (Ok, antibodies don’t tell the whole picture, but with some localised world hotspots having 60-80% antibodies, 8% is miles from herd immunity).

Criticising Ferguson’s figures is a bit like a patient saying a doctor: “You said I’d be dead within a year if I carried on without taking my medicine.”. Doctor replies “yes, but you took your medicine didn’t you?”

Patient: “Yes, I did... but you said I’d be dead in a year! You were wrong!”.
Doctor: “But you took the medicine like i said in order to avoid dying.”
Patient: “Yes, but you were wrong!”

The Doctor would then probably be questioning the sanity of the patient!

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/25/france-covid-cases-hit-record-high-as-anger-grows-over-restrictions

Also worth looking at what is happening in Europe right now.

@Southernsoftie76

I was well educated but I’m not particularly bright, I do however have plenty of common sense and understand why we had lockdown and continuing restrictions. Maybe all the ‘fuss over nothing’ members of society would like to volunteer to be infected with covid to help the scientists with their research.

That's an excellent idea!

They're currently recruiting aren't they?

I am not a conspiracy theorist, I don’t think it’s just the flu, I accept that though the death rate is low the numbers are big due to exponential growth, and that we don’t know much about long term effects yet so need to be cautious - but - there’s just something not adding up now in the whole way this is being managed by our governments. I can’t really put my finger on it. Maybe my spidey senses are just on alert given the way the gov has fucked everything up.

1. Why is there suddenly a lack of concern about public health in general? People are dying because they are having treatment postponed due to Coronavirus. Hospitals are not busy and certainly not full of corona patients. It seems crazy to me that anyone who may fall ill non corona related is now at the back of the queue. Tough shit if that ends in your death.

has it not occurred to you that the reason hospitals are not inundated is exactly because of the measures that have been in place over the past months? I struggle to understand how someone thinks of themselves as educated and bright and then complain about measures in place by citing the low rates that are low precisely BECAUSE of the measures that they are complaining about

1. Pubs open until 10pm. I use this as one example of many arbitrary rules. Why does the virus suddenly operate after 10pm? Is it a vampire? Surely you can infect just as many people at 9:59pm as you can at 10pm. Is it just to reduce risk overall? If so then I think someone needs to read a gcse science textbook... the risk has already been taken if the pub is open full stop.

nothing 'suddenly' happens after 10pm. 10pm is a fairly arbitrary time. The point is to lower the time people socialise. Less time socialising = less time for transmission. There is a spectrum from 'everything open like pre-covid' through to 'everything completely shut'. The further towards open, the more transmission. The closer to 'everything shut', the lower the transmission. So by closing at 10pm, the point is to REDUCE social time to REDUCE transmission time.

1. Cashless society...erm. Why?

really??? Seriously???? Because cash is filthy and touched by thousands of people. DO you really not understand this?

As far as I can tell this is very much about controlling people’s lives to their detriment. If it was about health why on Earth are we letting people get sick and delaying treatment because of a virus?
Because Corona virus's are very very dangerous. Because people who know far more about them that you are terrified of the potential if we did not have these measures in place

If the threat is so dreadful then we shouldn’t be going out at all to establishments. Outside for walks, fine. For food, fine. But wining and dining, surely not at all

Restaurants can enforce social distancing. Staff can take precautions. Temperatures can be checked on the way in. Masks can be worn. Visors can be worn. This way, the economy keeps turning over.

Government will struggle to control what goes on in our homes but it can control businesses to a bigger extent.

so the answer is that we are selecting who dies and who doesn’t - on the basis that if we don’t focus on reducing Corona spreading then in the end Corona will cause more deaths than deaths from other causes.If that’s the case then I get it. But we surely need to stop pretending that the virus is deadly to all

There is some treatment going on in the background and emergency treatment is also available. If the NHS is over whelmed, this won’t happen either. There is no one pretending the virus is deadly to all. You’re clearly being selective in how you interpret the messages. What you can’t tell by looking at someone is whether the virus will be deadly to them - lots of young, healthy people getting dreadfully unwell with it - so the message needs to be ‘this affects everyone’ because as a society, we have an obligation to look after each other. None of us live in a vacuum. Our actions or inactions can cause other people’s deaths - never has this been clearer than it is now.

Deniers, conspiracy theorists, nutjobs, stupid. Why do you think it's ok to insult people who question absurd policy's?

Does it make you a conspiracy theorist to question why elderly people with covid were sent into old people homes?

Does it make you a denier to ask why the government paid people to go out to restraunts in the middle of a pandemic?

Is a person crazy for believing it's too dangerous to see your mum but safe to chase a fox?

Am I a fucking idiot for believing the government when they say covid can live on surfaces for 3 days? If it's true why am I putting a potentially deadly sample of covid into a post box with my mums birthday card?

@SheepandCow

We have an epidemic of stupidity.

It's making my head hurt now that after months of living then Covid experience', people still aren't getting it.

Is basic maths still taught in schools these days? That's all that's required, a pile of building blocks and some basic maths to understand how exponential growth works.

And I do actually have a friend who, is a consultant in a big London hospital and they were re-deployed in to icu in March. They said it was fucking horrendous, so I'm not sure where OP's sister works that it was so bloody quiet.

@MadameBlobby
I think with our government it's simply a case of incompetence and negligence.

Cardboard, paper and fabrics will not provide as "good" a surface for virus to persist on as metal and plastic.

Wash hands frequently is still a big part of the public health advice.

That’s maybe it @SheepandCow

Haven't read the full thread but my question is WHY did government do the 'eat out to help out' thing when they had all that scientific information saying it was so contagious! Then a swift u turn when the number of Infections obviously rocketed

@SheepandCow I believe they are......round them up and send them to the research facilities, after all its nothing worse than the flu is it?

Source please?

The vulnerability of cancer patients is discussed here

www.pharmaceutical-journal.com/news-and-analysis/news/not-all-cancer-patients-should-be-regarded-as-vulnerable-to-covid-19-says-expert-oncology-group/20208235.article

It was also discussed in the BBC Panorama programme about cancer treatment during Covid, and an accompanying podcast

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08k158y

FWIW I don't think Deborah James's journalism is all that great in the Panorama investigation, she isn't exactly impartial (she herself has Stage 4 bowel cancer) and she doesn't seem to listen at times. But there is definitely discussion about whether it was a mistake to do what they did, which obviously also affects things going forward as well. There was a Chinese study done which influenced decisions about what to do with cancer patients, but the cohort was very small and evidence suggests that a lot of cancer patients aren't as vulnerable as previously thought.

And yes, people have definitely died before their time due to their treatment being stopped/changed - I personally know of some of them! We are talking very young people in their 20s and 30s who could have had more time left had different decisions been made.

And yes, of course there is hindsight now, which is what I said in my post, and as the oncologist says in the podcast, heartbreaking decisions about cancer are made all the time, even in normal times. But it's important that as we are in this second wave, all this is taken into consideration.

I am not anti-lockdown or anything like that, i totally understand the need to try and stop Covid spreading, I just think it's important to highlight other things as well.

Tbh I'm sitting outside at cafes and pubs if I go. If the figures keep going up I am probably going to stop eating out.

A twenty year old me may have made a different choice.

Criticising Ferguson is nothing like arguing with a doctor. The guys a fucking crackpot and has repeatedly made serious mistakes. I have no idea why anyone listened to him.

[Imperial College epidemiologist Neil] Ferguson was behind the disputed research that sparked the mass culling of eleven million sheep and cattle during the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. He also predicted that up to 150,000 people could die. There were fewer than 200 deaths. . . .

In 2002, Ferguson predicted that up to 50,000 people would likely die from exposure to BSE (mad cow disease) in beef. In the U.K., there were only 177 deaths from BSE

In 2005, Ferguson predicted that up to 150 million people could be killed from bird flu. In the end, only 282 people died worldwide from the disease between 2003 and 2009

In 2009, a government estimate, based on Ferguson’s advice, said a “reasonable worst-case scenario” was that the swine flu would lead to 65,000 British deaths. In the end, swine flu killed 457 people in the U.K

Last March, Ferguson admitted that his Imperial College model of the COVID-19 disease was based on undocumented, 13-year-old computer code that was intended to be used for a feared influenza pandemic, rather than a coronavirus. Ferguson declined to release his original code so other scientists could check his results. He only released a heavily revised set of code last week, after a six-week delay

@Ophelia2020
Those are indeed very valid and important questions. (And quite different from denying Covid exists or downplaying the serious impact it has on economy and lives).

My answer to your questions is it's because of government incompetence, negligence, and shortsightedness. A touch of moral bankruptcy too.

We should've done what Australia and New Zealand did. Protected the economy and health. We could still belatedly do it but we'd have to act fast. We're looking at around another year of this. We either stick with this shit for all dragged out mess, or we use our island advantage whilst it's still worth doing.

The government have tried all along to not put curbs on imo. To the detriment of public health imo.

Not read the full thread.. got to your 'why is coronavirus worse than stage 4 cancer.'

So they continue cancer treatments as normal, which I'm sure you know destroys your immune system. They catch COVID from the hospital as it's rife, can't get a hospital bed as we have let it run so all the beds are full, so they die anyway.

Or do we keep COVID patients out the hospital so cancer treatment can happen and see the death rate go up to around 20% of the population?

There is no win here unfortunately.

It’s a novel coronavirus. The clue’s in the name. It makes no sense to let it rip through society in pursuit of herd immunity (which may never come), and without knowledge of what long term effects may ensue for even the mildly infected.

I genuinely believe that concern has shifted to the side affects of C19. I don’t for one second believe joe public has been the full facts on the virus.

OP, just because your SIL works in one hospital and isn't overwhelmed with covid patient doesn't mean all are that way. My friend works in A & E, next to the covid ward. The covid ward has been at full capacity, every day, since March, and guess where the overflow goes...A & E. So much going on behind the scenes that you dont see or know.

The long covid has certainly been an eye opener.