Are the young being made effectively to lower their life span?

[SRYnegative]

i have, like many, had several changes of heart regarding covid. At the moment though, like many here, I worry that the young are being impacted more in their day-to-day lives than older people.

For what it's worth I'm 55 and rarely leave the house due to disability (chronic fatigue/fibro. overlap). I used to be a professional, and have 4 children, 14-23. So, of course, I have seen their lives affected badly e.g. school and 6th form closure, exam issues, university courses on-line etc.

I was already mulling this over with regard to the general theme of a couple of other threads. So, some would say that youngsters lives are being ruined as a lot of the rules impact them in particular (socialising being important to this group, wanting to meet a partner and so on) vs the alternative view that long covid is huge, millions will die, hospitals will be overburdened etc.

Putting all that to one side though, it occurred to me, thinking as many mothers do about their kids' best options, the following.

1. This virus is not going away. Only one virus has ever been eradicated by man (smallpox).

1. As a corona virus, immunity is likely to last 6 m to a year. However, this relates to your resistance to catching it, not to your ability to mount a successful immune response once you have caught it again. So you may well catch it again in 6m, but will likely mount a second successful immune response. This is what happens with the common cold as we have all experienced. Covid is a more severe illness in these days since we have not seen it before. People on remote islands who have never mixed with modern man have had a similar response to the current common cold viruses, which we fight successfully year after year.

So, eventually the virus will be the 4th common cold (not my idea btw).

1. What are we going to do, hide away forever? As a 55 year old, would I not be better off taking my chances now when the probabilities are more in my favour than as a 65 year old? Let's face it, we are all going to catch it in the end unless we self isolate and insist on very vigilant visitors - which I fully support btw for those who choose or need to, and I will fulfil my obligations on this, I have an elderly friend, a dad in a care home and a child with a severe vasculitic disease - I am very careful with the infirm and elderly.

1. Which brings me to the young. If I had a baby now, after it was a certain age and had a mature immune system, I think I would stop protecting the child from Covid (unless obviously if the child had a respiratory illness or such like). Because, as the virus is not going away, we need to start our complex, lifelong gaining of immunity to this new common cold. For example, a student hides away for the next 5 years, does all their classes online, then what? Ten, twenty, thirty, forty years of social distancing in work and in social life? And then, when they are 60 they might finally catch it and, like the remote islander, react badly and die?

Meanwhile, all the 60 year olds with us now, have lived to a ripe old age of 90.

Where is the sense in this?

25% is a lot smaller than 75%.

My grandparents were sent to war or asked to worry about being bomb fodder due to meglamaniacs & diplomacy failures of the politicians their parents' & grandparents' generations put into power. Now some of today's oldies who dodged bombs as children are being threatened by C19. I dunno, I hate what's happening to youth of today but arguably many of the oldies of today were asked to make bigger sacrifices due to bigger human failings when they were young. Maybe it's the fate of youth everywhere always to be bottom priority, whether fair or not.

But you said we keep catching the cold virus. It’s not the same, it’s different ones.

Classic bullshit!

@yeOldeTrout

25% is a lot smaller than 75%.

My grandparents were sent to war or asked to worry about being bomb fodder due to meglamaniacs & diplomacy failures of the politicians their parents' & grandparents' generations put into power. Now some of today's oldies who dodged bombs as children are being threatened by C19. I dunno, I hate what's happening to youth of today but arguably many of the oldies of today were asked to make bigger sacrifices due to bigger human failings when they were young. Maybe it's the fate of youth everywhere always to be bottom priority, whether fair or not.

@yeOldeTrout I don't think all of the war comparisons are that helpful. As you rightly pointed out, the war was caused entirely by human failings, coronavirus is just that, a virus, no one could have stopped the virus, ok governments could definitely have responded differently but the two things are just so different.

I also don't like the suggestion that maybe young people are just always at the bottom of the pile. Is that how things should continue then? It feels too much like a race to the bottom to me, to continually accept the status quo or that just because previous generations have suffered in different ways or continue in this way. The aim should be for things to improve, shouldn't it?

My concern is that the outlook for younger people today over the course of their lives is looking bleaker than it did for my grandparents generation (who would be in their 90s, one over 100 and who fought in the war). It was precisely because of the war that people demanded change, better public services and more social mobility etc in the aftermath of WW2, and things actually improved. It feels like we have been on a downwards slope for a long time now and that isn't right or fair for young people.

If there is no cure for Covid and antibodies only last 6-12 months either we wait for a vaccine that might never come or we let people get on with their lives. Spread it about the population and wither you survive or don’t. Then in a relatively short period of time either people will be in their window of immunity or isolating.

I think there are going to be a certain number of deaths if we do it this way and more over time if we keep locking down and extending the amount of time it takes.

Locking down might keep the daily death rate lower but it means we will never be rid of this virus and more will die over the years.

@Oliversmumsarmy - have you had Covid?

Probably

When I was a child you stayed at home with your mum till you were 5, if you'd suggested to my mother that she should be taking me to baby groups she'd have been mystified as they didn't exist. I did learn to talk and socialise as did pretty well everyone else.

I have vivid memories of the Cuban missile crisis, being sent home at lunch and the nuns who taught us telling us that nuclear war could start that afternoon, got home and granny was there with mum, she obviously didn't want to be alone if the nuclear war started (she'd already lived through 2 world wars.) It was very frightening.

I remember kids with polio, signs everywhere about not spitting because of TB. I remember when there would be huge queues for small pox vaccine when there was an outbreak (happened more than once.)

My father died when I was still at school as there weren't enough kidney machines. My mother was left to bring up 3 kids.

I remember paying 16% on my mortgage.

I survived, I've always counted my blessing when I think of my father coming to England as a teenager, he'd scraped his ferry fare together and arrived in Liverpool literally penniless. He found a Catholic priest who took him to a pub where he got a bed to sleep in and food to eat in exchange for collecting glasses and moving barrels and stocking bottles until he was old enough to join up. My husband's father died just after the war from injuries he got in France, my husband was a baby and has no memory of him.

Stuff happens and then we move on. Babies, toddlers, school children and students will do the same as people have always done and adapt.

The longer you avoid catching it, the more the medical community learns about the virus. The medicine, knowledge, support and advice available will keep increasing. The longer you put off catching it the greater your chances will be. And if we get a good vaccination program going you may never catch it at all.

I have sent all 4 of my children back to school in the hope that this virus is more like chickenpox, ie catch it young and get some sort of immunity (albeit with a risk of shingles later on). Catching chickenpox as an adult is much worse. But I cannot say that I am not nervous about the whole situation - there is always the chance that there could be long term consequences for any of my children if they do catch this virus so I hope very much that they don’t! However, having risk assessed I am not nervous enough to homeschool but I am nervous enough to have cut back other activities/trips/restaurants etc. Most of my friends feel the same. We are essentially “back to normal” in skeleton format. Plus we are trying to reassure our children that things are indeed normal albeit with new procedures when deep down we know this not to be the case at all. I am of course more worried about my mother catching this virus but she is of the brigade that life is only worth living to its fullest extent so my sphere of influence in that regard is limited. I fully agree that today’s young adults have pulled the shortest straw of all. However, I do think government is trying to include them in their policies hence the emphasis on keeping schools open and allowing universities to go back. 16-21 were undoubtedly the best years of my life and I think that is quite common. So missing out on life to the full for 2 out of those 4 years would have been detrimental, no doubt.

I have sent my kids back to school fingers crossed.

They may end up being home schooled for a bit if figures get worse.

I am fully happy to try and help with book clubs from home if the school would like (I would just love to run a gothic literature book club if I get half a chance, which is what they are doing right now, lucky things).

I think they will remember the banana bread and winning the on line baking competition and reading lots of books and it will be ok.

I also think this will last up to maybe another 18 months, but usually these things move on and it will be ok. I hope and pray that the economic side of things will cause as little suffering as possible.

Kids lived through cholera epidemics etc in the past and those who survived got on with their lives. Thank God the death toll is fairly low for kids.

@SRYnegative

OP, what is your assessment of the situation if a vaccine is found in 6 months to 1 year?

This is rather unlikely, as reading papers from the Common Cold Research Institute makes clear. Covid is a corona virus.

Is this what Sarah Gilbert and all the other scientists currently working on vaccines believe I wonder. Do they know they are just involved in a colossal waste of time?

Thanks ancientgran! Hopefully by the time I’m your age I will have forgotten what it was like giving birth under Covid restrictions and my resulting PND will have had no lasting effect

Is this what Sarah Gilbert and all the other scientists currently working on vaccines believe I wonder. Do they know they are just involved in a colossal waste of time?

It isn't a waste of time, but the evidence is that it will only grant immunity to infection for say one year, so it's not a cure all like some vaccines are. This is just the nature of corona viruses.

Right. Well perhaps, although I'm not quite sure how you are privy to this at this stage. Anyway that's not quite what you said previously though, is it?

*OP, what is your assessment of the situation if a vaccine is found in 6 months to 1 year?

This is rather unlikely, as reading papers from the Common Cold Research Institute makes clear. Covid is a corona virus.*

I also think there is a current trend of pointing to the Babyboomer generation as having had it the easiest, followed by Generation X. However, every generation is different and has its pros and cons. The technological progress that has occurred even during my children's life is astounding. I keep trying to explain to them how much "digital capital" they have and the advantages of it. I am trying to think of the Corona pandemic in positive terms, and be thankful for the fact that we have the internet and could take the measures we have and worked from home etc and kept some level of education going and social contact. We can still internet shop etc. So yes it is hard for the young but they do have their phones and apps to stay in touch with each other and shop etc so it could have been a lot worse.

@MaxinesTaxi Thanks ancientgran! Hopefully by the time I’m your age I will have forgotten what it was like giving birth under Covid restrictions and my resulting PND will have had no lasting effect Hopefully you will move on, I used to work with a woman who gave birth under the kitchen table during a bombing raid with her mother and her nextdoor neighbour in attendance. Her husband was overseas in the army. I'm sure it was awful at the time but 20 years later she related it as a funny story.

Of course you know PND isn't something special about Covid, lots of women who have had perfect births in ideal conditions have developed PND. I don't think any of the experts can tell you exactly why some women develop it and others don't. I hope you are getting the help you need to recover.

Right. Well perhaps, although I'm not quite sure how you are privy to this at this stage. Anyway that's not quite what you said previously though, is it?

*OP, what is your assessment of the situation if a vaccine is found in 6 months to 1 year?

This is rather unlikely, as reading papers from the Common Cold Research Institute makes clear. Covid is a corona virus.*

The person asking the question clearly meant a vaccine that worked really well for a long period. I still think that's unlikely.e.g.

www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1083-1

Published: 14 September 2020
Seasonal coronavirus protective immunity is short-lasting
Nature Medicine (2020

"We monitored healthy individuals for more than 35 years and determined that reinfection with the same seasonal coronavirus occurred frequently at 12 months after infection"

Sadly ancientgran due to Covid restrictions there is very little help available for women in my circumstances. But neither was there during the war, of course. Women just had to muddle through. It’s only in recent times that maternal mental health has been felt to be important, but Covid restrictions are now paramount. Perhaps it will force us to develop the resilience of women during the war. Or perhaps many women and children will suffer more. We’ll find out in due course.

I'm sorry you aren't getting any help. I do know a senior psychiatric nurse who was doing a study about PND, not sure if he has completed it. I think it was part of his PhD. I know they are trying to develop more understanding of it.

I can remember my aunt having it really badly when I was a child. It is a strange thing, two aunts having babies, one has a healthy baby boy and develops severe PND, the other has a still birth and obviously she is sad but no PND. I remember her coming to visit us a few months later when my younger sibling was born and my mother going into a total panic and asking my dad where she could hide the baby as she was so worried about upsetting my aunt (the one who had the still birth) my father said as they knew we had a new baby and that was why they were visiting he thought hiding the baby would be a bit strange. Of course my mother meant well but hiding the baby would have been odd to say the least.

Of course all reactions are unpredictable really, I read somewhere (on here maybe) the suicide rates in teenagers dropped during lockdown when all the predictions had been that there would be lots of mental health problems in that cohort. I heard a man with anxiety being interviewed and he said how much he enjoyed lockdown, no pressure to socialise, people keeping their distance.

I hope you manage to access some help, Matt Hancock was saying the NHS is open for business so there should be help.

Come on, the wartime generation were separated from their families for years. Sometimes no one knew where they were. Letters were sporadic as was news of death or confinement. When captured people were held for years in appalling conditions. To say nothing of atrocities inflicted on civilians and soviet troops.

At the end of the war, they faced the same economic challenge we will when Covid is over. They (that’s all classes) and their families voted for change and redefined politics.

There’s nothing stopping this generation doing that except themselves.

@echt

Where is the sense in this?

I thought this about your entire OP. It's projection based on nothing.

This I’m afraid

The notion that students doing online learning for a few years will reduce their life span us redic. You're being really dramatic.

I didn't say that, read the OP

Come on, the wartime generation were separated from their families for years. Sometimes no one knew where they were. Letters were sporadic as was news of death or confinement. When captured people were held for years in appalling conditions. To say nothing of atrocities inflicted on civilians and soviet troops. All this is true and I think of my gran who at one point had two teenage sons on active service. I just can't imagine how she got through it let alone them. However I do think Maxine's situation is a bit different as at least women could come together and support each other.

That hasn't been as normal for years, other mothers are possibly working, grandparents might not be local, young mothers probably don't have 2 or 3 or even 4 sisters to share experiences with. I have to say even on the post natal ward I was on in 1970 there were advantages. The food was terrible, the overcrowding was dreadful, the building had been condemned and the new unit was being built. Husbands (even if you weren't married it was considered polite to refer to mums as Mrs and fathers as husband) were only allowed on the ward for 1 hr in the evening but one thing we did have was 23 other mothers (24 of us lined up in an old fashioned Nightingale ward) and our chats were like therapy, we compared stitches, breast feeding, piles anything and everything and I do think it had its plus points.