To all those all think let's just let everyone get it...

[Patchworkpatty]

I am increasingly frustrated by this mindset. It assumes that you will either get Covid (akin to a cough and a temperature) which will last a few days... Or die if you are 'vulnerable' (huge argument to what that means) and that it's better just to get the vulnerable to shield whilst the rest let it sweep across the population .

Can I please ask you to listen to 'Long Covid' on BBC Radio 4 at 11:30. Presented by the Scientist Adam Rutherford.

He was healthy 42 year old. Struck down on the 17th of March.
He has spent the last months investigating the after effects of this so called 'mild illness' on the younger population , looking at the affect on blood clotting, kidneys, chronic breathlessness and debilitating fatigue amongst other issues . ? A phenomenon known as 'Long Covid' .

... and then tell me if you feel quite so laid back about getting this ?

Flu spreads and kills in the winter . But not at anything like the rate of Covid. Because the vaccine keeps it to manageable levels.. we don't have flu vaccinations in the summer because it doesn't spread as easily ... this is 'the flu' x 3 plus no vaccine.

Tell that to the over 50,000 more people than usual who died in 2018 from flu.
If flu doesnt spread easily why is it killing 5 times the number of people more than covid is over the last couple of summer months?

To prevent the collapse of the health service, and also other emergency services
The curve was flattened months ago. Hospitals have been told to ignore anyone who needed them unless its covid related since then. GPs arent seeing anyone unless absolutely necessary. I know people having assessments over the phone that are impossible, Drs should assess the whole patient not just a couple of symptoms they cant even see. Its medicine 101.
People are dying at home from lack of care, Doctors have predicted tens of thousands will die in the next year because their life saving treatment was cancelled, they werent diagnosed in time, they were too scared to go to hosital because eveyone was screaming at them not to 'overwhelm the NHS with their problem' while A & E units stood empty.
I know nurses who have sat on their backsides for months, worrying about thier patients who arent allowed back for treatments and checkups.

I know people who have relatives who have illnesses which are now terminal due to lack of care.

There were 10,000 excess deaths due to neglect in their own homes in people suffering from dementia in April, due to lack of carers going in and making sure they were eating, drinking and taking their meds, not dying from lonliness and confusion. How many do you think there will have been by now?

What exactly does the NHS need saving from?

Willow, without the proper context those figures don't mean much, so the 50000 flu deaths that you mention is that in the UK or worldwide or something else?

Flaxmeadow
You do know that the numbers of cases means that just now we arent even in an epidemic in the UK?
Its just a normal virus doing what viruses do.

^Ah. So the collapse of hospitality and the Arts don't matter. I'm not just talking about actors and musicians: I'm talking about front of house staff, lighting technicians, box office salespeople and all the other people who are employed in the arts sector...^

In comparison to health services, no they don't matter one jot. Sorry

Disgusting comment.
Everyone matters.
And who do you think is going to be paying for this wonderful NHS if nobody is actually working come next year? The bloody fairies?

@Heffalooomia

Willow, without the proper context those figures don't mean much, so the 50000 flu deaths that you mention is that in the UK or worldwide or something else?

No just in the UK Excess deaths in UK from flu in 2018 were 50,000. Its pretty simple.

The curve was flattened months ago.

Incase you hadn't noticed, the curve is going back up again

I'm looking forward to suggestions about how we plug the gigantic gap in tax revenues caused by hospitality and the arts being chucked under the bus - largely advocated by people who have no interest in either, so think no-one else should either.

It's not a curve though. The Death Twins predicted a curve a couple of weeks ago with their 50,000 infections a day by mid October prediction which wasn't a prediction.

It's more linear than a curve.

Respiratory viruses increase in the autumn.

Covid infection rates have started to decrease according to the news over the last couple of days.

And I'm not surprised at the poster who hadn't realised that there were 50,000 excess deaths over the winter of 2017-18 in the UK. That is a well known fact. The flu vaccine was not very effective that year.

If you actually care about vulnerable people, you would never support the focus of society on trying to eliminate a disease through removing or decreasing public services to the extent people can't be diagnosed and treated for life threatening conditions, scaring people to the extent they stay away from health services, are left in abusive situations without a way out, have ongoing restrictions that damage health, cause a recession leading to loss of income and opportunities, leave young people unable to leave accommodation even to purchase food and leave people who are dying without visitors. If you choose to treat your friends and family as disease spreaders only fit to be kept 2 metres away, behind masks that is up to you. Enforcing this dystopia on everyone else is a political choice but you know who'll take the blame? The people who enforced and encourages this seeing the pattern of Covid was the same as a seasonal flu. In fact flu is killing far more people than Covid right now despite all the masks and restrictions. They are endemic and now all we can do is be sensible, wash hands, keep a bit of distance, reopen public services fully and pull together to get the economy going.

@Flaxmeadow

The curve was flattened months ago.

Incase you hadn't noticed, the curve is going back up again

Cases not deaths. The more people we test the more cases we find that's pretty easy to understand. Cases don't = certain death. Plus the test is so unreliable up to 1/3 of them could be false anyway. Thousands of people self isolating for nothing losing money, possibly thier jobs and then what?

To address the thread title, what do you think we should do?

1. Close the entire country down to try to prevent anyone getting it?
2. Do a sort of jumble of partial restrictions and closures to try to keep the the numbers lowish?
3. Force people by law to behave in certain ways to try to keep the numbers down?
4. Encourage people to behave in certain ways to try to keep the numbers down, accepting that some will comply more than others?
5. Let everyone make their own assessment of the best way to proceed, bearing in mind that many, if not most, have loved ones who are vulnerable in various ways to consider?
6. Something else?

And what is an acceptable number of people to get Covid? Do we have groups we can allow to risk it and groups we can't? Shall we use the law to force the latter to avoid risk whether they want to or not? Whose view of what's acceptable in terms of both Covid and the rest of life should prevail?

Cases not deaths.
The more people we test the more cases we find that's pretty easy to understand.

No, as was said by Whitty? recently, the amount of testing is nothing to do with the calculated risk. The risk is calculated by % of those tested being positive not by the overall numbers

Cases don't = certain death.

We know this

Plus the test is so unreliable up to 1/3 of them could be false anyway. Thousands of people self isolating for nothing losing money, possibly thier jobs and then what

Lockdown ends, sheilded not in shielding anymore, cases and deaths spiral, collapse of the NHS. Then what?

Surely the NHS ought to be able to treat ill people?

That's what we pay taxes for.

Lockdown should be a last resort. The reasons we had one in the spring is because people were baying for one (because that's what other countries were doing), and because the government suddenly lost its nerve when they realised that their gross neglect of the NHS over the last decade was about to be starkly exposed.

It certainly wasn't to protect the vulnerable.

It's a curious state of affairs when a population willingly neglects its own health in order to "protect the NHS".

How do you think the NHS should get back to normal? What would work? Do you remember how crowded waiting rooms would be before Covid, how do we make this safe for the general population?

Genuine questions, I'm as frustrated as the next person both as a patient and as a GP. We have had to change the way we work hugely. We're now telephone triaging everyone and bringing in the ones who need examination. In the past we had walk in clinics, if you came in between 9am-11am you would definitely be seen that day. On Mondays, there was standing room only people were packed in like sardines. 10 minute slot per person. By the time you've put the PPE on and cleaned the surfaces (and allowed the surfaces you've just cleaned to dry) there's not an awful lot of that 10 minutes left...at least we've got the PPE now though, not like earlier in the Pandemic when it really was impossible to safely get people in. Flu clinic is a nightmare, we used to allocate 1 minute per person to get through them. We're having to space out the appointment slots a lot now, I don't see how we'll have enough hours in the day.

I personally have a really low threshold of bringing in elderly patients who ring me. I know they can't manage video calls and it can be difficult to get a feel of things on the phone. If I start bringing in everyone else as well, how will I keep these elderly patients safe in my tiny waiting room?

In comparison to health services, no they don't matter one jot. Sorry

My husband has lost his livelihood. He's not a "poncy arty" person either, whatever the fuck that means. He's an engineer.
This is why I don't care any more. I cannot find it in me to give any thought to those that have so little care for me and my life.
Unless you're actually an anti-lockdown plant who is trying to enrage and goad people into rule-breaking? Becasue it's working.

I'm not advocating that we should just stop and get back to normal. I never have been.

Clearly this is a very nasty virus for some.

But this accepted narrative that we are "saving the NHS" is such a crock of shit. Why should people have to ignore their non Covid possibly life threatening illnesses to save the health system which is supposed to help them?

Proper management and funding would be a start.

I'm struggling so much with theatres being closed and no shows on the horizon (I'm an actor) that I'm seriously worried about my mental health. Comments like yours really don't help at the moment

I'm probably about to lose my job (retail) because of covid/lockdoen. My mental health has suffered in the past. Just got to get on with it

I made a hypothetical choice between saving "the arts" or saving the NHS. I chose the NHS

Not sure what the big, pardon the pun, drama, is

Not sure what the big, pardon the pun, drama, is

It might have been the apparent callousness with which you said it. Though I'm sure you'll just say everyone else just got you wrong.

And the binary black and white thinking of having to "choose" between the most deserving - the arts or the NHS

Which is bollocks.

People are starting to question just how much life, prosperity and wellbeing they are required to sacrifice to "save the NHS". It should not have come to this. Nor should it be a case of people virtue signalling online that they are perfectly prepared to give up these things if it means saving the NHS/saving a few lives. It's such a simplistic way of looking at it.

I think people have largely forgotten that people are born, they live, they get old, they get frail/ill, and then they die. And no, I haven't lost anyone to Covid. But I did lose my dad to Alzheimer's. Well, it was flu and pneumonia he picked up in his care home that eventually finished him off.

Countries that have taken effective measures to contain Covid don't have to choose between healthcare and shops or theatres. They realised the way to a normal functioning healthy economy was dealing with a problem (that doesn't just go away if you wish it away).

Australia, New Zealand, much of Asia.
Shops, restaurants, pubs, theatres, gyms, schools. All open. Hospitals operating normally too.

We could still belatedly do something to contain the spread. Short-term pain, long-term gain. Unfortunately I suspect we won't. Instead we'll continue as we have done for the past nine months....Complaining and lack of foresight and lots of 'we can't do this, we can't do that, yes but, no but...'.Fast forward three months and things have only got worse. Shame.

Hester Lots and lots of people (millions in fact) get ill. And don't die...not for many years at least.

Some people are born with underlying conditions, some develop one in childhood, others when they're a little older. All ages. Most live regular everyday lives with largely normal life expectancies.

Some teach your children or treat you in hospital or serve you in shops, bars, and restaurants. Some drive your bus or train or taxi. Some become politicians - (prime minister even).

@HesterShaw1

I'm not advocating that we should just stop and get back to normal. I never have been.

Clearly this is a very nasty virus for some.

But this accepted narrative that we are "saving the NHS" is such a crock of shit. Why should people have to ignore their non Covid possibly life threatening illnesses to save the health system which is supposed to help them?

Proper management and funding would be a start.

They're not being asked to ignore non-covid illnesses to save the NHS. That's not what's going on at all. What we're doing to try to protect the NHS from collapse due to lots of covid hospitalisations is all the various measures in the community to get and keep infection rates low and avoid the virus spreading. This is also what we need to do to get the entertainment industry going again. Theatres closing has had awful consequences for people I know. It's a terrible situation, but the only way they're going to be able to reopen is if we can get and keep infection rates so low that it becomes very unlikely there will ever be an infected audience member to spread it to everyone else, and if there is then test and trace can then deal with any resulting infections efficiently. So long as infection levels are high and people behave like arses not bothering to be careful, things like theatres will cause such bad infection-spread problems that they're going to be simply too risky to have open.

On the other hand, non-covid treatment being stopped (which has happened to me personally) is not due to lockdown measures, but rather because of healthcare settings not being able to deal with lots of covid and non-covid things at once, and also because simply being out and about getting treatment when covid rates were high was too dangerous for lots of patients at the peak. I'm not at all saying that's all been perfectly managed, but it's fundamentally a problem caused by the virus itself, not lockdowns. A big part of the problem now is that everything is slower - operating theatres have to be left empty and deep cleaned between operations in ways they didn't have to before. This is due to the virus not lockdowns. Surgery is many times more dangerous than normal, if the patient has covid, and no amount of deciding to change how we lock things down or not will change that fact. And full waiting rooms, like entertainment venues, are too risky to have while virus rates are high in the community. So, non-covid treatment is going to be at risk until we can get and keep infection rates really really low, there's a vaccine or NHS resources increase massively.

The common factor here is the need to keep infection levels low, as if they're high then all sorts of things can't work properly. I understand why people who are suffering feel really angry and want to give up on trying to be careful, almost as a kind of revenge, I really do. But people who decide to stop being careful to somehow punish the world are cutting off their nose to spite their face. No one, but no one, wins if infection rates are allowed to get too high.

Thank God for some of the more reasonable posts following Flaxmeadow's comment last night.

I have paid tax, sometimes at marginal rate, for 30 years. Some of this money has been used by the government to fund the NHS.

I will be paying no tax this year, as I haven't earned anything since lockdown began, and there is no prospect at all of me earning again before April 2021.

This will be replicated by (at the very least) the hundreds of thousands of people who work in industries which have been completely torpedoed by the response to Covid.

Who's going to pay for the NHS then?

Agree @ChodeOfChodeBall
We need to save the economy by taking action to contain Covid. Around 40% of our workforce is vulnerable to Covid. And of couse even if they're not hospitalised, people can't work when they're off sick - potentially for months.

We all know that the countries who've taken effective containment measures have better functioning healthier economies than us.

I'm quite interested in the long term effects of Covid - it will be a while before we get the data on this. I haven't seen that link but will take a look, thanks for posting.
I'm definitely not laid back about this. It's a huge worry and the message just isn't getting through to a lot of people.