What if it never goes away?

[julietmanchester]

I'm just having massive anxiety tonight- it's doom and gloom. It appears covid keeps flaring, once reopening begins anywhere.

Most days, I feel I can handle anything. Really, as we have no choice. But there are sadly days like today when things become difficult to manage due to the virus being rampant, again.

I also have a hard time staying home and did so during lockdown, cannot imagine feeling so alone again.

How do you keep yourself from feeling alone and afraid of the future?

I'm sorry that you are feeling like this op. It's miserable isn't it? There have been a couple of threads on here that were specifically positive/good news only but I haven't seen them for a bit.

But the general conclusion seems to be that pandemics do end. They have done many times in the past. Or the viruses become just another one we have circulating that we can deal with due to more people having antibodies to deal with it better.

Scientists are all the time throughout history developing ways to deal with illnesses our parents and grandparents's generations routinely dies of, and now no longer do. The good thing about the current situation is that it's a worldwide issue that is having a huge (probably unprecedented) amount of time, money, effort and joined up thinking on it. So much more is known now, so many more treatments available and being tested and developed.

So many more preventative measures too. And I think we are close to, not just one, but many vaccines that will be rolled out in the near future to make left measurably back to the old normal in the nearish future.

So am hopeful. And so are many others.

So many great scientists are working on a vaccine. Then they’ll work on another for next year if it mutates. It will get better. It had to. I hope! It’s currently hoped for a vaccine in spring. (Patrick Vallance said and possibly although not definitely earlier).

The virus isn’t going away. A vaccine won’t eradicate it. I have no idea what governments think is going to happen but surely we can’t live like this forever? We just need to live with the virus really.

It isn't going away but it will just become another circulating virus. The reason it's ripping through the population is because we've never seen it before. Some of the other coronaviruses no doubt kill the vulnerable. A vaccine will help & people probably won't get it a second time so badly. We need to worry more about how to deal with future pandemics, because more will follow on, for sure.

We live with so many contagious diseases and we manage. TB, measles, chicken pox, small pox, malaria, polio. Some still kill many, some we haven’t seen active for years, some we are still fighting. It is highly unlikely to “go away” but we will learn how to treat, avoid and manage outbreaks. It will take time but we have done it before. Be brave and keep going. Help others to do the same.

The flu is around, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, lots of things are around and we live with them but no I do not think this will go on forever and no it does not mean people do not need to do what they should it just means catastrophising does not make it go away

@Itisbetter , but smallpox has gone away!

Historical perspective is really helpful. Humanity has survived nastier and more virulent plagues without the advantages we have of science and medicine to help us understand how it spreads and treat its victims and hopefully one day vaccinate.
Plague popped up in Elizabethan London repeatedly, the playhouses were shut, people suffered... and then it passed and things got back to normal.
It’s no fun and my heart goes out to the people suffering extreme loneliness, destruction of businesses, loss of loved ones and long covid symptoms, but humanity as a whole will emerge from this.

Treatment of diseases improve all the time.

Take Scarlet Fever. Going back 50-75 years, it was quite terrifying. Lots of children died from it. It was highly infectious.
My DDs got it last year. They were back at school a couple of days later- after 24hrs of antibiotics. It was more of a curiosity than a fear.

Hopefully one day we will have a treatment for viruses like we do bacterial diseases. Then there's vaccines- many illnesses have been decimated by vaccines.

And you can't catch diabetes, heart disease or cancer. I can alter my behaviour so I don't develop them, and I do.
Covid is still very much contagious and we don't know what the long term effects are.

@Footle yes and most of those examples aren’t significant shapers of lives in the UK.

The virus isn't going away, it's here to stay. Just like all the other diseases which are part of our life.....and we don't get doom and gloom because of them.

At the moment we have to protect populations but treatments will get better, the virus will be better understood, vaccines may (or may not) alleviate symptoms even if not protect entirely. It just takes time.

A population (or the world) can't remain on high alert forever, eventually things WILL get back to normal. We will learn to live with it. Once the panic and fear lessen, we can look more sensibly at how to deal with it....it may be very catching but the majority of people won't die.

If the virus infects a lot of the population its transmission will slow down as more and more people will have had it. In addition, the human race will start to develop a recognition of the virus; not herd immunity as such but a better tolerance (similar to hundreds of years ago when explorers brought the common cold to new populations, it decimated them at first but then they built up tolerance even though colds are still caught and passed on....)

We won't be in the current state forever, honestly.

"cancer, diabetes, heart disease, lots of things are around"

not quite as contagious though are they? Bizarre statement

The virus is here to stay it doesn't help thst it's on the news daily.. all day. No wonder people are so anxious!!

The longer we live with a particular virus the more able we are to keep it manageable (apart from the common cold, we have only got better at treating symptoms). People were terrified in the early days of HIV/AIDS, it was a death sentence in the first decade or so. But now, while it's still serious, it's manageable. We understand the transmission better so there's almost no chance of accidental infection (eg blood transfusion), and the people who do have it can use medication to live a normal lifespan.

Covid is just another new thing that's scary because it's new, however it can be vaccinated for so there is light at the end of the tunnel. Also they are getting better at treating it, and in first world countries the death rate has become much lower. Most of these flu type viruses mutate all the time, and often mutate to something milder or less transmissible and burn themselves out. The Spanish Flu only lasted for 18 months- 2 years and then disappeared, and it was much more severe than the current pandemic.

We just need to live with the virus really. Sounds so easy. Except for those people with a high probability of not living with it.

OP, if you are under 45, your risk of dying if you get Covid is 0.9%. If you are 65 to 74 it is still only 3%. For the over 80’s it is 11%, but in all age groups men are more likely to die than women.
I think you need to put the risk into context - you do many more dangerous things in your life, without a second thought.
Also, the death risk from confirmed Covid infection has dropped by 61% in the elderly since March, due to more effective treatment. Viruses evolve to become less lethal with time - they need victims alive to transmit them successfully.
All pandemics eventually cease, either due to herd immunity or because the virus becomes mild and manageable like the common cold viruses.

Try not to let your natural anxiety overwhelm you. We will get through this. Focus on ways to make the coming winter endurable if we have to impose more lockdowns. Look at activities you can do at home, maximise internet and phone contact with friends and family, learn something new, volunteer locally, etc. By next summer we should be through the worst. Chin up.

@Itisbetter

We live with so many contagious diseases and we manage. TB, measles, chicken pox, small pox, malaria, polio. Some still kill many, some we haven’t seen active for years, some we are still fighting. It is highly unlikely to “go away” but we will learn how to treat, avoid and manage outbreaks. It will take time but we have done it before. Be brave and keep going. Help others to do the same.

Smallpox has been eradicated worldwide.

@MereDintofPandiculation

We just need to live with the virus really. Sounds so easy. Except for those people with a high probability of not living with it.

Yes obviously it’s very hard for those who are high risk, but the reality is we won’t eradicate it. All we are doing is waiting for a vaccine or treatment that will reduce the risk of catching it or dying from it but there will always be a risk. Same as flu, there is a flu vaccine but large numbers due from it every year. The difference is they are usually manageable numbers catching and dying of flu, and this is where we will get to with coronovirus once we have a vaccine for it.

Thank you @Topseyt that’s why I tucked it in among the examples. Some of which exist only in labs now (eg smallpox) and some of which still kill huge numbers of people (eg malaria). OP was looking for reassurance for the future so a variety of different stages of “living with it” seemed a good way of doing that.

‘if you are under 45, your risk of dying if you get Covid is 0.9%. If you are 65 to 74 it is still only 3%. For the over 80’s it is 11%’

Odds of survival are actually more favorable than those stats. Not every suspected case has been tested for & there are lots of asymptomatic cases.

I think we need to stop the rampant paranoia and fear...yes this is a contagious virus and it kills some people but the numbers show that the majority recover.

This is not the bubonic plague and we need to live with this and stop the hysteria...

It seems like somehow people have forgotten that we live in a world where disease, precarity and hardship are part of the daily life of millions of people and that in the UK thousands of people die everyday of other conditions.

People are also dying or suffering because we have messed up the access to treatment for conditions like cancer and heart disease...

I do think like the balance has tipped too far towards drastic measure without looking at the wider impact on society and people's mental health.

There might be a vaccine soon or there might not be for several years. But all you can do is take sensible precautions but continue to live your life.

It's worth remembering that whilst the press headlines scream of second wave and a million worldwide deaths, those make up 4% of everyone who has caught covid.
There is also the argument that there are far more tests being carried out now than back in March to May. It makes up 2.5% of those having a test testing positive.
We are also not given recovered figures which I have thought was a huge mistake. We are not given figures for those who died with Covid as the only consequence. That's actually quite small.
You do need to disregard the press. They are, to coin a phrase, taking advantage of a bad situation to shift copies. The more sensational the scaremongering, the better.
We will eventually have to live with it. I'm sure of it. And it's very telling that many of the positive cases are tier 2, which is people only having a test prior to a hospital stay, so many are asymptomatic and that at this stage is why it is spreading. There are non government scientists and medical professionals who have said they are watching the virus now and it appears to have mutated to a more contagious but less deadly version.
I am personally hoping for the vaccine as I would like my wedding to happen next year, but I think we will reach a stage come April (hence Boris and his 6 more months comments) where if there isn't a vaccine looking likely where it will be more a choice between going back to semi normal or continuing the restrictions, at which point I think Sunak will have to warn of the huge ramifications of that.

Didn't Patrick Vallance in the briefing last week say that the virus has already genetically changed? He mentioned it's no less dangerous but perhaps the virus will weaken over the time.

Hey OP, I understand how you feel. It's shit right now and there's no sugar coating it.

It will definitely get better for all the reasons PP have said. I get through it by being as prepared as I can for the worst and hoping I'm over reacting. It takes away the uncertainty for me.

Generally taking care of myself helps, eat well, exercise, fresh air. Also doing small little things, like I'm currently plotting a Halloween movie night, ordered pic n mix and popcorn online and got some gingerbread biscuit mix to bake, stupid things but they give me something to look forward to.

It won't be like this forever, hang on in there.