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 ?

yes, I do.

Smellbellina. I hope everything is ok now!
Anecdotally, I have heard from friends in healthcare (and my own experience) that urgent care isn’t a problem. The only issue with that was that people were too scared to go and seek treatment. However, ongoing treatments have been disrupted massively.

It’s going to be hard to fund the NHS is nobody has a job to pay taxes.

I'm not fearful about getting long covid, because I've already had covid and am fine now. At the same time, as others have said, I wasn't naive about the possibility of viral infections leading to long-term effects.

I've had (horrifically painful) shingles twice in the last decade and have an irritating scar on my nose (bright white) from chickenpox as a child. So it would be better if I'd not had chickenpox, but I'm very glad that my parents didn't ban me from birthday parties, the playground slide etc, all to reduce the risk of 'long chickenpox'.

We are animals, we're born, eat, sleep, get viruses, bacterial infections, worms (current experience with toddler!), etc, and eventually we die. This seems, in 2020, to have come as a grim, shocking realisation to a lot of people.

In between, we can, if we choose, experience happiness, love, beauty, and try to find some sort of meaning in the pattern of the days. Obsessively worrying about getting a virus that is likely to be much like other viruses you've already had is a waste of time.

As for the vulnerable: it's not about casually inflicting suffering and death on them, it's about the fact that they're already suffering and, in many cases, living very diminished lives. Half of people in a care home die within 18 months of arriving. It's not a tragedy if someone in a care home dies of covid, other than in the (massive, unforgivable!) sense that we're born, have our run at things, and die. Or, to put it another way, there's a linguistic problem with using the phrase 'saving someone's life' (a phrase that suggests heroism, leaping into the river to rescue a struggling child, rushing into the burning building etc) if we mean 'prolonging by a few months, maybe a year or two, the life of someone with a terminal condition'. (Old age being the finally terminal condition.)

There are, of course, younger people with suppressed immune systems and other forms of vulnerability who benefit much more strongly from lockdown. But very few people run the risk of having their lives dramatically cut short by Covid. It's not heart disease. It's not breast cancer. (A potentially much larger number of people run the risk of having their lives dramatically shortened by covid if these, more lethal, conditions fail to be screened and treated.)

Also, anyone who has the energy to make a radio programme about anything is not exactly 'struck down'.

Oh bore off

@Kitcat122

If you get long covid your ability to work will be hindered for months. Your mental health could well suffer as you are not the person you were. At a time when it's almost impossible to get a doctor appointment face to face. You don't know the long term health implications of your post viral issues. I know its only a small percentage but if you are young fit and healthy this can still happen. Out of my family of 6. 3 had long term breathing difficulties. 2 very fit healthy adults and a super fit teen.

Due to lockdowns and restrictions a lot of people's ability to work will be hindered for months as well. Not everyone can work from home.

That's what I wonder too - it seems that a lot of people are only becoming aware of how vulnerable they really are for the first time. It also strikes me as odd that people think it's fine to stay away from family members for months on end because they'll see them eventually. Are they not aware that people die all the time of other things? That even if their loved one is 'saved' from covid, they could still die of a heart attack, or a stroke, or an accident? How many people will stay apart from older people for months only for those people to die of other causes having missed out on family interaction and normality in their last weeks and months?

Quite. All the people happy to wait for years to be able to hug Granny....she might not last that long, we tend to die of something eventually.

@hopsalong completely agree. I didn't agree to fuck over years of my life to "save" everyone from a virus.

@hopsalong

I'm not fearful about getting long covid, because I've already had covid and am fine now. At the same time, as others have said, I wasn't naive about the possibility of viral infections leading to long-term effects.

I've had (horrifically painful) shingles twice in the last decade and have an irritating scar on my nose (bright white) from chickenpox as a child. So it would be better if I'd not had chickenpox, but I'm very glad that my parents didn't ban me from birthday parties, the playground slide etc, all to reduce the risk of 'long chickenpox'.

We are animals, we're born, eat, sleep, get viruses, bacterial infections, worms (current experience with toddler!), etc, and eventually we die. This seems, in 2020, to have come as a grim, shocking realisation to a lot of people.

In between, we can, if we choose, experience happiness, love, beauty, and try to find some sort of meaning in the pattern of the days. Obsessively worrying about getting a virus that is likely to be much like other viruses you've already had is a waste of time.

As for the vulnerable: it's not about casually inflicting suffering and death on them, it's about the fact that they're already suffering and, in many cases, living very diminished lives. Half of people in a care home die within 18 months of arriving. It's not a tragedy if someone in a care home dies of covid, other than in the (massive, unforgivable!) sense that we're born, have our run at things, and die. Or, to put it another way, there's a linguistic problem with using the phrase 'saving someone's life' (a phrase that suggests heroism, leaping into the river to rescue a struggling child, rushing into the burning building etc) if we mean 'prolonging by a few months, maybe a year or two, the life of someone with a terminal condition'. (Old age being the finally terminal condition.)

There are, of course, younger people with suppressed immune systems and other forms of vulnerability who benefit much more strongly from lockdown. But very few people run the risk of having their lives dramatically cut short by Covid. It's not heart disease. It's not breast cancer. (A potentially much larger number of people run the risk of having their lives dramatically shortened by covid if these, more lethal, conditions fail to be screened and treated.)

Actually covid does take more years of life expectancy, including ones with good quality of life, than your post implies, according to the actuarial analysis.

Since Covid is a new virus and easily caught, the numbers who will get it are very large, less so if we have a vaccine soon. But that means even a small fatality rate or small rate of long term effects will effect many people. It also means that while so many are ill at once, other things that threaten health both directly and through economic/social conditions will be a huge problem.

I'd love to know what all these 'let's just get Covid and get on with it' people do for their job.
Could some of you say what you do? I'm a freelancer whose income was hit by lockdown. I can't afford to be ill, self-isolating and have fatigue from potential long Covid. I haven't been sheltering in my home or cowering. Why should I indulge your delusion that going back to normal is even possible?

I’m not of that specific opinion DianaT1969, but neither my husband nor I could easily afford long term illnesses and we have had insurance for a long time to reflect that. This is a privilege because we can afford that, and it doesn’t cover every eventuality - but it’s not something we’ve never considered before. I’m on maternity leave and I have a baby and a toddler - you may consider it low risk for me to have long term effects of Covid but I don’t - it would be awful to be unable to care for my children. However, Covid isn’t the only thing that could cause that situation to arise.

@DianaT1969

I'd love to know what all these 'let's just get Covid and get on with it' people do for their job. Could some of you say what you do? I'm a freelancer whose income was hit by lockdown. I can't afford to be ill, self-isolating and have fatigue from potential long Covid. I haven't been sheltering in my home or cowering. Why should I indulge your delusion that going back to normal is even possible?

But then you can't afford to have any long term chronic illness and I would have thought that you would have had income protection insurances as well as private health insurance so you get back on your feet quickly or have insurance to cover illnesses and accidents.

It's isn't just covid you need to worry about. You need to think about everything else that can affect your health and therefore your income.

The thing about lockdown and self isolation affecting people who don’t have the protection of full sick pay - that is on the government. That was their chosen response to the pandemic and they chose not to support people fully at the same time. It isn’t caused by Covid, it is caused by the response to Covid

@DianaT1969 - maybe you should put your question to the people who have already lost their jobs or will be unemployed by end of October?
The fear of a possible long term illness does diminish somewhat when you can't pay your bills anymore.
And let's face it, there are many more life threatening illness out there. In that sense Covid is far from unique. There comes a point, where we just have to get on with life in order to survive.

As for the vulnerable: it's not about casually inflicting suffering and death on them, it's about the fact that they're already suffering and, in many cases, living very diminished lives. Half of people in a care home die within 18 months of arriving. It's not a tragedy if someone in a care home dies of covid, other than in the (massive, unforgivable!) sense that we're born, have our run at things, and die. Or, to put it another way, there's a linguistic problem with using the phrase 'saving someone's life' (a phrase that suggests heroism, leaping into the river to rescue a struggling child, rushing into the burning building etc) if we mean 'prolonging by a few months, maybe a year or two, the life of someone with a terminal condition'. (Old age being the finally terminal condition.)

What an incredibly heartless paragraph of word salad, hopsalong. Simply because someone is living in a care home - yes, care home - shouldn't mean their life is written off. Are you aware that there i a significant population of young people in care homes? Are their lives lesser too? What age is your cut-off point for non-relevance? As for your phrase "diminished lives," could you define that more precisely? What is a diminished life?

@Patchworkpatty do work? If so is your job at risk? Do you have children and the added worry of schools shutting.... getting your child dressed for school, giving them breakfast and the phone rings. School rings to say your child has to isolate due to a positive case of Covid in his bubble?

There’s more to it than what you have stated in your OP.

The only people I know banging in about going back into lockdown and relishing the idea are either supported entirely by benefits or by a husband in a job that they've been doing quite happily from the spare room since march.

@DianaT1969

I'd love to know what all these 'let's just get Covid and get on with it' people do for their job. Could some of you say what you do? I'm a freelancer whose income was hit by lockdown. I can't afford to be ill, self-isolating and have fatigue from potential long Covid. I haven't been sheltering in my home or cowering. Why should I indulge your delusion that going back to normal is even possible?

What do you do when you get other illnesses then? You could get anything an be unwell and unable to work for months. Can you afford to have no/little income for another 6 months now because of lockdown?

I'd love to know what all these 'let's just get Covid and get on with it' people do for their job.

I work in the travel industry which may well go bust. You realise you could become ill of anything tomorrow, or have a car crash that leaves you with life-changing injuries? Why is it only Covid you are concerned about affecting your ability to work?

I Know one fit, healthy 29 yo female with long covid. She's been seriously unwell for over 6 months, can't breathe well most days, can't climb any stair ever.

@TheClaws it's not the case that a significant proportion of the non-elderly population is in care homes. 0.1% of people in England between 0 and 65 are in care homes (according to government data published this month). And the vast majority of elderly people aren't in care homes either. 3.5% of the over-65 population (rising to 7% of over 75s)

As for heartlessness... Have you watched someone die over many years of complex illness, suffering intensely? How was that?

For the last five years of his life (beginning in his early 60s) my father was in severe pain, immobile, had recurrent frightening bleeding incidents needing hospitalisation, was often incontinent, unable to eat any of the food he liked, and subject to various neurological problems that gave him night terrors, reduced his ability to communicate, and meant he could no longer read. He knew that he would never recover most of these functions. When he was finally told that the hospital were moving him on to a palliative track he seemed to feel nothing but relief. The day before he died he said that he'd felt he had to keep on going for the rest of the family, because not to fight would have been letting us down. But the last five years of his life were utter shit. He would have seen 'diminished' as a slack euphemism, not heartlessness! And if you'd dared to suggest that his life wasn't diminished, that he wasn't suffering intensely every day, and deeply humiliated by his loss of abilities, he'd have wanted (but been unable) to smack you.

My grandmother wouldn't have smacked you, because she wouldn't have had a clue what you were on about. She didn't know any of us for the last few years of her life which were spent, at a much older age, wetting herself, starting vacantly into space, often frightened and fearful, uncertain of the basic coordinates of reality. The tragedy wasn't that she died, it was that she ended up in a care home despite reiterating throughout her 70s that she wanted us to 'put her to sleep' before 'putting me in one of those. My DM never got over the guilt. She's dead too now, of cancer. Her life wasn't diminished by loss of function, humiliation, and years of physical pain. I found her death, despite its suddenness and the pain at the end, much more tolerable than the other two. I know that I wouldn't have the courage or tolerance to live as my father did and can only hope that if diagnosed with a similar disease (maybe a genetic component) that I will be carried off by something else more quickly.

These stories aren't unusual. Look at the demographic data on the care home population. What percentage have dementia? Are you saying that a life with dementia isn't diminished?

hopsalong It would be more useful to look at the ages of the care home population - ie. who is actually residing. You may be surprised.

As for your other question, yes I have - my mother. She was in a care home herself at a young age and suffered early onset dementia. Her life wasn't "diminished," as you so charmingly put it, but it just like other diseases do, the dementia had symptoms. It wasn't her fault.

Once we placing value on certain lives like this, it's a slippery slope. I brought up the younger residents for a reason. Do you consider their lives diminished? Expendable? Where is the line drawn?

@hopsalong

Realism doesn’t go down too well I’m afraid, people generally want to defer their mortality forever.

The average age of someone dying in the UK of coronavirus is 82.

The average life expectancy at birth of someone born 82 years ago was 63.

However, Dementia cases & care home populations were comparatively minimal back then. I think nature is trying (again) to tell us something here, whether it happens to be palatable to us or not.

However, Dementia cases & care home populations were comparatively minimal back then. I think nature is trying (again) to tell us something here, whether it happens to be palatable to us or not.

MummyPop The virus is only picking off the weak - as you are. It isn't sentient. As the human beings in the equation, we should do our best to protect the most vulnerable in our society. That's what society is.

@theclaws

That’s your idea of society, not everybody agrees (hence students having to be locked up etc) & this virus only needs a small percentage of human beings, certainly not the majority, to disagree with that view of society to ensure it’s continued spread.