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?

it’s just sad people do not question things.

You'll be invited for health screening in your lifetime. Do you question that or accept that the NHS knows what it's doing?

It's more sad that people question everything and come up with conspiracy theories and don't take steps which will protect their health and quality of life.

Maybe we are exceptional but both my husband's Crohns and diabetes care have continued. Face to face did stop but telephone consults carried on as did blood tests and medication changes. My Mother's heart scan was postponed but rescheduled and took place in July. My Dad has been in and out of hospital and had MRI scan and other tests. My friend's daughter was sadly diagnosed with bone cancer during lockdown and had her operation within 2 weeks. She then began chemo and has been having regular appointments. My Gp has a new system where all appointment requests are triaged and then either an appointment booked or other advice. I completed the form on Sunday, was telephoned on Monday and had a face to face appointment at 5.30 the same day. I was sent to another surgery but I was just glad to see a dr.

I feel for anyone who has had treatment stopped but it has not been my experience.

@Rapphue Your understanding is flawed. They're are countless medics stating that the aftermath of the Covid19 on the human body is not yet fully understood. You may survive this virus, but it is unknown what the long term damage in organs is currently. There is much concern about this. So, in this model, we are trying to, not only help our Health Service keep running, but to save anyone picking this horrid virus up if there is any possibility of avoiding it. If you don't know the actual mechanics of how you die from Covid19, let me say only it is like death by drowning but over a much longer period than drowning. You would not wish this on your worst enemy! I mean that sincerely. It is utterly awful death. It isn't yet clear if infection with the COVID-19 virus makes a person immune to future infection. Ideally, you want immunity so, if this is not certainty, we need a vaccine as the ideal approach to achieving herd immunity.
This is about us all listening, heading the advice, acting on the advice and keeping everyone safe do there are no empty chairs around any Christmas table or family gathering in years to come because of Covid19.

@Rapphue

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

But that’s true of all sorts of diseases including ones we routinely vaccinate against. By that logic we could save a lot of time and resources and stop vaccination programmes.

🐑 Baa.

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

Disingenuous.

For someone who claims to be educated and well-read, you apparently haven't managed to look into what has been going on all over the world right to this day in regard to this pandemic, at any point in this last year.

I would think that would be a better starting point than all these 'thought provoking' questions that every dumbdumb on MN thinks are so original and will utterly slay the sleeping populace; and for someone allegedly so naive and just so curious as to post what you've originally posted, you've got all the usual standard dopey ripostes up your sleeves. Utterly disingenuous.

53000 excess deaths in England alone this year but okay I will bite.

Hospitals are busy! I know I work in one. Both with outpatients and inpatients. In fact we filled our in patient beds this month and had to admit elsewhere (rare for us) and that is without a huge number of covid patients. We are working very hard with the backlog and yes resources have to be prioritised and there are areas that haven’t been opened up fully but this is to allow more rapid work up of more time sensitive disease.

We can’t go back to April/May covid admissions including ITU admissions and run normal theatre lists and hospital wards etc. we have a winter beds crisis every year and this year won’t be any different. I do have some faith that everything in the NHS won’t be shut down again (use of the temporary hospitals for outpatient work etc) but a lot of our patients are old and frail and immunocompromised so how do we get them in and out of hospital safely when covid is rampant? Do you think we should just see patients without social distancing and precautions?

You are educated so I presume you have an understanding of exponential growth. We need to keep growth under control before it is unmanageable- it might already be in some areas -I for one would rather we tried than just gave up.

I am curious as to what areas you sister works in that she isn’t busy now!

Mildly stealthy conspiracy theorist who knows exactly what they believe. And whose aim is to insult the 'sheeple' into 'waking up' and believing it too, by telling them they don't have an open mind, don't question anything and seem incapable of thinking for themselves. The interesting thing about these 'critical thinker' types with 'a mind of their own' is they always follow the same script, just slightly tweaked here and there, so are very easy to recognise.

@MyShinyWhiteTeeth

“1 in 200 people who get it die” is not an accurate way of putting it at all and is the kind of thing that contributes to the scaremongering.

It is absolutely not the case that if 200 healthy people catch the virus, 1 of them will die at random at all. The death rate for healthy individuals under 75 is much, much lower than 0.5%.

There are of course people at higher risk. But we have a very good idea who these individuals are.

This is a new virus and at the point of lockdown it was not known what the death or hospitalisation rate was. It still isn’t. The death and hospitalisation rate is based on 6 months of restrictions.

Things have opened up because the economy is in the toilet. Pubs = income for the economy. However, spread is still happening so we have these arbitrary restrictions that make no sense when taken by themselves. I can see 5 friends but I can’t see my dad, step-mum and siblings with my husband. However, seeing my dad doesn’t generate an income for the country. So there is a balance between trying to keep money coming in while putting restrictions in place. Closing pubs at 10pm means they are less likely to go on a pub crawl, increasing contact points and in theory cuts down the amount someone can drink.

Hospital appointments were cancelled to avoid overwhelming the NHS. Which was a sensible thing given that A&E can very easily be overrun and it’s usual for appointments to overrun. Given that if someone is in hospital for treatment, they are likely to be more susceptible to the virus and requiring hospitalisation. Keeping these people out of hospital if we can help it, is sensible but again it’s a balancing act between what is the biggest risk to them. By the way, both my grandparents have had routine appointments cancelled, which include for their heart and COPD, but attending hospital appointments also poses the biggest risk to them.

The whole thing is a balancing act.

As for no other illness has been treated this way, the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, people were told to do much the same restrictions we are now. The hospitality, travel and entertainment sectors weren’t anywhere near as big as they are now.

It just goes to show we all have different interpretations of what constitutes intelligence and good education. Wildly different interpretations.

Good luck providing hospital treatment for Covid or anything else like cancer or mental illness when the hospital beds are full and hospital staff off sick. No measures to contain the spread of an infectious virus and what do you think happens?

Sod the economy too. I mean long-term as opposed to next week. Around 40% of the workforce is one of The Vulnerable to Covid. Although really everyone is vulnerable thanks to the risk of Long Covid. No idea how you think the economy runs normally when significant numbers are unable to work for six months or longer.

Meanwhile, sheep, unlike many humans, are definitely intelligent.
www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170418-sheep-are-not-stupid-and-they-are-not-helpless-either#:~:text=Reality%3A%20Sheep%20are%20actually%20surprisingly,destructive%20creatures%20on%20the%20planet.&text=Intelligent.

I don’t feel that you are looking for a discussion at all.
I only want to say that as a specialist cancer nurse, I was redeployed to work in ICU when it became too dangerous for my patients to come into hospital. Our ICU expanded our ventilated bed capacity 3 times early on, and it was the saddest, longest, nightmare to keep going, for myself, and all my colleagues. We weren’t sitting around doing dances to upload onto the internet.

I’m back in my normal role now, and we have cleared our our backlog. We have normal service at my hospital. Not without a lot of blood, sweat and tears, and all the things that we had to do to keep our families safe during such a difficult time. Everyone did everything they could, and we’re exhausted now, before winter even starts.

It makes me sad and frustrated that SOME people just won’t help the NHS to help them. The government may have made a lot of mistakes, but, quite frankly, I wouldn’t want to do their job right now.

As for your comments on a cashless society, I’ve used cash throughout this, and it’s never been refused.

I still believe, probably naively, that we should try and help and support one another, and keep an open mind... yes, question, yes, research, no nodding dogs. But divisiveness is not helpful at the moment.

@Pringlemonster

My friend was having treatment for bowel cancer The hospital stopped her treatment with the lockdown She died last week It’s a disgrace

Sorry to hear about your friend. The absolutely agonising dilemma for oncology patients has been the potential risks of continuing treatments whilst Covid was rife.

A patient whose immune system is depleted by chemotherapy stands almost zero chance of surviving covid, and society HAS to carry some level of responsibility for the refusal to adhere to social distancing guidelines, mask wearing etc in order to protect people in that situation.
This is WHY we need to keep Covid numbers down, to keep covid OUT of hospitals so that already sick patients can carry on with treatments which may cure their disease or palliate their symptoms.

@KnightsofColumbusThatHurt

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.

Source please?

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

You lost me here.... Covid’s not Ebola, and it’s not especially dangerous to young people, but it’s not influenza (the most deadly readily transmissible disease, for the U.K. at least) - it’s a key 10x aa deadly.

@MyShinyWhiteTeeth

1 in every 200 people that get it are dying.

0.5% die.

So if this went through our society all at once, most people

• wouldn't die themselves
• but might well have people in their social circle who died and
• would be coping with living in a society in which up to 340,000 people had died in a short space of time (depending on how completely it went through society).

This is an apocalyptic situation in which society would struggle to function.

As someone who is extremely clinically vulnerable, I would worry about my kids being left without a mum, this would have a terrible effect on them in all sorts of ways. My son asked me what my risk of dying would be - even if you said 5 % , well I'd probably survive, but is that a risk, he or I would want to take?

And in addition there is the effect and cost of potentially 20% of the infected population needing to be hospitalised . So we are talking of millions of extremely unwell people here. Our hospitals could not have coped with that, even overflow into Nightingale ones.

At this point, if these people can't be admitted, the mortality may rise to 3-4%. So, again if we consider the population of the UK, we could could be looking at deaths in 7 figures. This is letting the virus "rip" naturally.

Bear in mind, if this happens in mid winter, there would also be possible cross infection with flu and other respiratory pathogens. This would also increase mortality further.

In these sort of posts someone's friend/family is ALWAYS a "Doctor/Nurse in ICU"

@Ecosse you are wrong I’m afraid. The fatality rate for older people is much higher than 0.5% (which is an average)

Most people in icu are under 60. Older people don’t do well in icu. A third are under 45.

People having treatment delayed due to covid is what worries me the most and is effecting me the most, my dd is waiting for surgery but she needs a small op and some treatment before the main surgery can go ahead, before Covid we were told this could take a year, now it’s delayed and we have not even started the first stages of treatment. I’m also waiting for a referral through my gp, I can’t even get a GP appointment for 3 weeks then it’s just a phone appointment, referral could take a year or more to come through. How many people are waiting to be seen that may have a serious condition such as cancer or heart disease? And all because of a virus that’s only dangerous to a small selection of people?

This country's health service has not yet been overwhelmed, thank the lord, in ways that eg Italy, Spain and New York were earlier this year. I spent four and a half months under severe lockdown in Spain, and I have seen footage of things happening in Madrid hospitals that no brain bleach will ever expunge. Have you not seen footage e.g. of the mass graves in New York earlier this year? The BBC have been very poor in their international coverage, but I do know that was shown here.

We have to navigate a very difficult balancing act between carrying on as much as possible and keeping the economy, education etc going, and not allowing things to go into meltdown. That includes things such as trying to minimise the viral load people take in if they do encounter another infected person, to minimise the severity of any infection.

If you are genuinely interested in this topic there is no shortage of information out there, both here and in the international press.

If Covid were a little more deadly, we would not have any of these arguments. As it is, the amount of deaths it would cause is right on the cusp of what most people consider an amount we could live with. The demographic of those it would kill is also more palatable to a large proportion of people than if it affected younger adults, or god forbid, children.

So, the amount of deaths this would cause if left unchecked is right on the brink of what the general public consider acceptable losses, with some falling on either side.

For me, it's not about the amount of deaths, but the thought of having no health service whatsoever for a period of several months. You can argue all you like about what services have been cancelled, whether they should have been, whether they were cancelled for too long, etc, but I think it's pretty non-controversial outside the most uninformed opinions that if we had not locked down, we would have overrun our health service.

At the same time, I have absolute sympathy for those on the sharp edge of mitigation strategies like lockdowns. As per usual, it's the most vulnerable that suffer, whatever happens.

There are no good solutions here. Either path ends in misery for huge swathes of people. All ways involve great economic harm. All paths have a negative effect on educational outcomes.

That being said, I think we have to make the effort to TRY to save lives and protect as many people as possible. Imagine if we went for the "Let it rip" option, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives and livelihoods, and then, just as the cases were dropping, a vaccine came out. We can't live like this forever, but we could maybe, just about, most of us, manage it for another four or five months.

Then when we come out the other side, we need to rebuild and invest, and never go back to othering those on benefits and disability allowance again. Because now we know it could be any one of us. We need to look after those who have suffered because of this, remember how we need to invest in education and mental health care and the NHS and make sure we vote in people who will take care of the victims of this pandemic, both economic and physical.

(Oh... and since I haven't read the entire thread, just the OPs posts, I'm presuming lots of people have mentioned exponential growth? )

What other illlness has killed nearly 50k people in less than a year?

The death rate for healthy individuals under 75 is much, much lower than 0.5%
So fuck anyone over 75? Can they stop paying tax too?

Around 40% of people under 75 are one of The Vulnerable. A sizeable proportion of the working age population.

It's not just about death. Young and healthy people face gaining Membership of The Others aka The Vulnerable Club. A significant number (around 10%) are estimated to suffer from it.

And, that 0.5% figure is only relevant WITH containment measures. Many under 75s, healthy ones included, have needed hospitalisation.

Unchecked Covid = full up hospitals = no treatment (for anything) = more deaths.

[quote Ecosse]@MyShinyWhiteTeeth

“1 in 200 people who get it die” is not an accurate way of putting it at all and is the kind of thing that contributes to the scaremongering.

It is absolutely not the case that if 200 healthy people catch the virus, 1 of them will die at random at all. The death rate for healthy individuals under 75 is much, much lower than 0.5%.

There are of course people at higher risk. But we have a very good idea who these individuals are.[/quote]
And if

• there are cross infections in winter eg with flu
• and if hospitals are overwhelmed

then we could well be looking at 3-4% deaths.

On the one hand, we do have 2 steroid treatments that can be used in ICU, but on the other hand, we haven't lived through a flu season yet with covid and flu simultaneously.

I think we need to be very cautious.

To add to my comment above, I also think the way many parts of the NHS have closed down is a national scandal and unnecessary, but that's a separate topic.