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?

rapphue of course you have a position, that's what you have been defending when people tell you that there are good reasons for the current course of action.

But you don't seem to be willing to change your mind, nor say what you'd need to hear in order for that to happen.

I can - for example if the head of the NHS and the GMC had a common, agreed position that the NHS was not at risk of being overwhelmed by covid I would likely change my mind about whether the measures were proportional in respect of protecting the NHS.

So, what would make you take this seriously?

@Rapphue WHAT IS YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE SCIENCE?

If we knew that, maybe there'd be more chance of a back and forth discussion?

delia we do understand it to the extent that most people survive it and have minor symptoms. Most as in over 90%

Another issue with covid is "long covid".

Many infectious diseases have a longer recovery time than you would think. Systemic (whole body) infections can take a year for full recovery, and there is normally a lengthy recovery period for people who've been in ICU.

A relatively high number of people with covid benefit from hospital admission (said to be around 20%) and a relatively high number of these have been admitted to ICU. Of course, globally, this depends on the availability of hospital and ICU beds. Up to 86% of people admitted to ICU beds have died.

From Indie SAGE, 87% of people who survived ICU are showing significant persistent symptoms 60 days following discharge.

As this illness is new and not fully understood, we haven't got a lot of data on what the sequelae will be or what is the exact process that causes this.

However, one issue is action via ACE 2 receptors, and these are high in density on the tests and fallopian tubes. So one scientific question is, will there be a long term effect of fertility? After all, this can be an issue with other infections, such as mumps.

There is so much that we don't know. We are aware that this is much more infectious than Ebola, and much more likely to be lethal than the flu. We don't have a cure, though we are evolving treatment strategies, and we don't know many of the long term effects yet.

While there isn't a vaccine yet, and no guarantee of one, the best approach is probably prevention. That means avoiding other people, not in our household as best as we can, as much as we can. I feel very sorry for people at college and in their 20s, as this impacts on social life with friends and potential partners. However, young people might also have many more years of potential consequences of infection with which to live, and I wouldn't wish that on them either.

Wearing masks is very likely to help reduce infections, so I think we should adopt masks especially when we are with other people not in our household. There is a scientific rationale for that.

The positive side of this is that pandemics tend to die out after a couple of years, even very infectious ones. This happened even before there was a scientific understanding of how they worked. So even if there are some temporary restrictions on society, I think we need to get as many people through the next couple of years as possible . By then, if not before, either it will have died out naturally or we will have worked out how to change things for the better. Possibly a bit of both.

Johnson is on his way out ( Please God) Somebody or some bodies who can string 2 words together may help out. Lets hope so.

crunchy If I was to have a view on a policy then generally I would keep everyone WFH as much as possible, I wouldn’t limit pub closures or other establishments closing, as people either drink earlier or party elsewhere afterwards, I would NOT be stopping standard diagnostics appointments unless and until hospitals were filling up with corona patients to the point they couldn’t cope (this has never ever happened) and I would leave school children to get on with their lives and operate normally in school. if the virus is caught then the family - the adults - isolate and stop the spread there. Children should not face isolation within schools.

herecomes agree with long convid and we don’t know the issues there. How far do we take that though?

@Happyotamus

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)

This is not correct, my (now ex) partner was running a covid ICU for a while during the pandemic and it, plus the expanded ICU area was full. This is London.

Look at what happened to Central Middlesex and the Royal Free hospital.

Royal London Hospital prepared two additional floors of ICU beds AND Barts (the same trust) led the Nightingale (which thankfully was not used to capacity, or near it during the first wave).

This. Look for the BBC “Hospital” documentary on catch up and watch it, then talk to your SIL again. The Royal Free has so many patients in ventilators that it’s oxygen supply system was unable to cope and they had to build a new supply tank as an emergency.

Out of interest, is your SIL also saying, an an intensive care doctor, that she doesn’t agree with any of the restrictions that have been out in place? Or is she just giving you info about how the wards (that SHE has personally experienced) have been so far, and you are drawing your own conclusions from that? It seems to me that when you have a relative who is at the centre of all this it is her to whom you should be asking all these questions, not Mumsnet.

Eurgh, typos:

“The Royal Free had so many patients on ventilators that its oxygen...”

cheetas my SIL thinks standard appointments should never have been cancelled or postponed. She agrees with current restrictions.

Another revelation may also be that doctors don’t know everything, either. I’m not saying there are firm answers, it’s just sad people do not question things.

hospitals were filling up with corona patients to the point they couldn’t cope (this has never ever happened)

The BBC did not make it up. Watch the programme.

@Rapphue

dame of course I would defer to the scientists. Rest assured that their impact is far more limited than the government would have you believe, though.

If it was purely driven by scientists then the policies would look very different.

Why would we ‘rest assured’, do you have inside knowledge?

The scientists would possibly have different priorities. Whitty and Valance have quite clearly stated they are not economists, communications experts or politicians. The government have to balance public health and the economy.

We’ve been told clearly from the start that the effects of the pandemic will be indirect as well as direct. Deaths from COVID, deaths from other causes due to an overwhelmed health service, deaths from long term economic impact.

The best way to stop the virus would be for everyone to stay in for a month, everyone already infected would either recover or die and that would be it. Unfortunately we need to eat and our essential services need to keep running and the sick/elderly cared for, so instead we have to have restrictions to keep it manageable.

The most difficult thing to understand is why you don’t understand. And there is no hidden cashless society agenda.

I think it has now been accepted that it was a mistake to shut down cancer treatment as they did as well, and that evidence suggests that most cancer patients are not as vulnerable to Covid as was previously thought and are far more likely to die of their cancer than from Covid. Many people have already died prematurely from cancer, and that is now only going to continue. Obviously hindsight is a wonderful thing, and they didn't know the effects of Covid on cancer patients, but from here on in it needs to be sorted out. Covid is not the only thing that needs attention at the moment.

The chance of dying from Covid is less than 1%, the chance of dying from Stage 4 metastatic cancer is almost 100%. Covid is not the worst illness out there.

My DM wasn't admitted to ICU before she died in April my Dsis asked why the nurse sadly she should be but there's no room.

@Rapphue

herecomes agree with long convid and we don’t know the issues there. How far do we take that though?

I think we take it seriously and try to avoid people getting infected.

I'm really concerned about the situation in schools. There is no social distancing and I don't think we should be exposing all our young people to covid like this.

Italy and other European countries have managed the return to school in a much safer way.

And if the teachers get covid (and 20% end up in hospital or worse) then it is hard to see how schools will stay open. There are also vulnerable children, families and teachers in there.

They do know a lot more than the general public about how disease is transmitted and treated though, and that is pretty much the core of every issue here and if most of the questions you asked in your OP (“is the virus a vampire? Why so cash dangerous? Etc). It’s interesting that you clarify that she does agree with the restrictions

And I know that cancer isn't contagious, and so is different, but it definitely has not stopped because there is a pandemic. Cancer patients have just as much right to access treatment as Covid patients.

The chance of dying from Covid is less than 1%, the chance of dying from Stage 4 metastatic cancer is almost 100%. Covid is not the worst illness out there
You cannot compare a viral infection to cancer. Of course there are worse illnesses to die from.

I think the truth is that the NHS was already inadequate before Covid - it could barely cope with a normal bad flu season and cancer rates were already very poor compared to other countries in a similar GDP bracket. Now we are facing flu, huge waiting lists from other illnesses as well as Covid. It is obviously a disaster waiting to happen and there are too many health care sector vacancies due to Brexit as well. If I were the government I would mobilise all the spare Nightingales to treat most Covid positive patients who have risk factors early. Then I would fully utilise the entire private sector to catch up on waiting lists too - the trouble is negotiating appropriate fees but they have done it in the past. I would let the rest of the economy carry on but with a warning to most healthy young people to try and avoid risky behaviour as in all likelihood there won’t be much medical care this winter. You need to keep all the drunks etc out of A&E and RTAs down as well as minimise flu transmission. I really do think they if every citizen takes some extra responsibilities and precautions it could make a difference. But it we are all honest with ourselves we should be scared that there might just not be much help available this winter and that is quite a frightening thought so best to try to stay as healthy as possible and not engage in any risky behaviour.

But given I know it’s true and my SIL is an expert in her field, it is both sad and frustrating that the general public are so brainwashed by the media.

Could you be the brainwashed one? Since there are literally hundreds of thousands of specialists across the globe that think that restrictions are a good idea? Have you read the NHS thread on here with so many nurses and doctors telling us how awful it is?

But I don’t understand why we are having restrictions imposed for a virus that is no worse than other illnesses

Because in at least one respect it is worse than other illnesses. The number of otherwise healthy young people who end up with long-lasting damage and chronic symptoms seems very much higher than with other, similar illnesses.

twitter.com/mattbromley80/status/1309838400279674882

This sort of thing is going to cost society very dear, both in terms of treatment needed and in terms of loss to the economy from these people being unable to work.

COVID19 is currently a virus for which we have no effective treatments and no effective protection. It isn't like other diseases, I do wish people would stop trotting out the trope about it being like flu. We have a flu vaccine which does give protection. I haven't had flu for 10 years since I had the flu jab every October for 10 years.

Lockdown 1 was very hard for many people but if the U.K. government had taken no action they would have been rightly accused of being negligent in their duties to the population. People may well hate this government and spit bile and hatred at them, but they have been tracking their actions and decisions with what the scientists are telling them. It's an ongoing evolving and developing picture. They are trying to balance the economic time bomb with health, we will be trillions of £££ in deficit. But the government didn't create the virus and are learning like we all are. T+T is a basket case, but Nighingale Hospitals were a great success, they were established in record time and are ready for use - hopefully not!

The 10pm pub closing decision seems illogical to many but if people didn't get pissed out of their head in a shorter amount of time, and behaved in a less irresponsible way (a) the 10 pm close would limit drinking / eating hours and enable an orderly exit if only people could be bothered, and hopefully not so drunk, whilst still enabling periods of social interaction which is important to keep people positive and connected to others and (b) it continues to keep people in work. The fact people want to exercise their hoooooooman rights, want want want to be normal again (riiight) and behave like tossers a lot of the time, isn't the government's fault. The selfish spoil it for the majority of law abiding citizens who do take things seriously and sacrificed a lot in Lockdown 1. No particular age group at fault, just people being people! People need to take ownership for their actions not blame the government as the default position, it's ridiculous.

@Rapphue

antihop the cashless society is something they want to implement indefinitely. Does that not concern you in the slightest or are you happy for these things to be slipped into our laws behind Coronavirus panic?

Who is "they"??? @Rapphue

1 in every 200 people that get it are dying.

0.5% die.

@OhTheRoses

I am minded to agree with the op. Schools and uni's should have gone back in early June allowing a little more spread over the summer months and a little more immunity to build up in the younger and less vulnerable populations.

Sorry to burst your bubble but it wouldn't have worked. In the Netherlands the kids did go back to school in june and we're still having a second wave now.