692 students are not ill with Covid 19 at Northumbria University.

[Treesofwood]

78 have symptoms. We must lock them all in their rooms.

Seriously, if someone's life is ruined by having to spend 2 weeks indoors, with everything provided for them, then I'm really lost for words.

Where is our resilience, our strength of mind, our determination to get through. If human beings cannot cope with a few weeks indoors out of 70-80 years of a lifetime, then I despair.

LemonTT
I am not sure what you mean? If its worth doing to save lives, then surely it's worth doing to save all lives? (flu or covid) Or is there a trade off? So it is worth it to save 50000 lives but not 20000? Who decides? And on what basis?
Putting people who are not ill under house arrest is a big deal. It's a massive thing to do. It is for the greater good. Its saving lives etc etc. Where does it stop?

Tootsey I don't think it's the two weeks that will ruin lives, it's the destruction of entire industries, lack of future jobs, curtailment of freedom with no end in sight.

@Treesofwood

If its worth doing to save lives, then surely it's worth doing to save all lives? (flu or covid)

I can't speak for what type of selfish person you might be, but if I knew I had any type of contagious disease, I'd automatically do whatever I could to avoid transmitting it to others. Would you not?

Dumplingsandstew
I presume you have been tested every year to see if your cold might have actually been flu? I expect you also wore a mask in the winter to protect others from your potential respiratory disease that was mild for you but dangerous for others?
You probably also stayed home if you had been exposed to someone with flu in case you passed it on?
Prior to this year the societal attitude was take a paracetamol (or calpol) and carry on.
If someone is clearly ill that is one thing. If we are testing people who are not ill that is something else.

Once again, this thread is about asymptomatic carriers. People who although they have been diagnosed with the infection, have no adverse symptoms.

Yes if I know I have flu, I stay away from others. And yes, actually, if I have a cold, I do many things to try to prevent passing it on to others.

If we are testing people who are not ill that is something else.

Thats not what this thread was about, is it?

Trees, what are you arguing? Because some of your posts seem to contradict each other.

Are you arguing that people with no symptoms and no Covid test should be able to move freely, even if they've been in close contact with someone who has tested positive? Because as I understand it, that's why students are being told to self isolate.

My son is self isolating because someone he spent time with has tested positive. That means he may be infectious, so he's staying away from us and everyone else just in case. Seems sensible to me, not draconian or an infringement of his liberty.

@picklemewalnuts

I don't even think Tree knows what they are arguing about/for, just blindly following someone randomer spouting conspiracy shit on Facebook.

Sometimes it’s really hard to tell if posters are very very dense or just sociopaths.

Ok so what's you point?

What are you talking about? They are ill. They've tested positive for a disease. Just because they don't feel ill, doesn't mean they don't have it.

I think you're confusing what being ill means. It means infected and therefore capable of being infectious.

My point is that for all the virtue signalling, doing this to save lives propaganda, it's not really about that. We could test uni students every year at Fresher flu time and find 700 of them are asymptomatic for flu. Ergo they could infect others so should be locked up. But we don't, because despite many posting saying all the sacrifices we are making is worth it if it even saves one life, and that they are not selfish etc etc there is a limit, or a number of deaths that are worth saving, or we would do this every year. Infact, as illustrated above many people think that would be ridiculous. And they maybe right. Or, it's actually all about something else, not tin hat, save the children crazy, but other people's agendas, or view. Or opportunity to make themselves very rich.
I think it is selfish to expect people to give up their livelihoods, homes and ability to feed their children when they are not actually at any more risk of dying of the illness than they are of dying in a car accident. Especially when this comes from those who happily sat at home expecting students and other workers to run around picking and delivering their shopping, putting themselves at risk of having to self isolate and lose their income.

Bitheby Can we be well and ill at the same time?

@Treesofwood

Bitheby Can we be well and ill at the same time?

Of course its possible to have an illness, yet feel well at the same time. What planet do you live on?

Maybe we should start campaigning to ban screening for certain types of cancer - breast, ovarian, cervical, prostate...
After all, we shouldn't be testing people who are asymptomatic, should we?

STI testing for women in early pregnancy? Only if they have symptoms.

Hearing screening for newborn babies? Nah, why do you want to do that?

In fact, why not stop the 20 week anomaly scan? You should only be looking for illness or condition if there's signs of one!! Let's force women to wait until birth, then if a baby shows signs of illness then we can check!

Dumplingsandstew You are right to question routine screening. Again it's a balance, with some people receiving unnecessary treatment at great cost to save some peoples lives. Another balancing act.
www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/4/07-048744/en/
A bit more about it, the part on prostate screening highly relevant. Also look at why they moved the age for starting cervical screening to 25.

I absolutely refused STI screening when I was pregnant. In America they squirt antibiotics into neonates eyes as they believe every woman to be potentially infected with an STI that causes blindness in newborns. (American ones only obv)

The scan at 20 weeks allows you to see the baby to see if there maybe issues. Again, women can and do refuse this, as well as further invasive tests following from this. I would also ask you to consider scan date at 20 weeks and where it may lead.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3338047/
Review of a good book on the subject of screening of you are interested.

So you want some screening but not all?

How about nits? Should people stop routinely checking their kids hair for nits, instead just having a look when they have physical evidence of an infestation?

They are interesting articles, thanks

Dumplingsandstew Routine screening for nits in school was stopped in the 80s. I expect only a small percentage of parents actually regularly screen their children for nits. Maybe you are one of them. Seriously read the book, you might find it interesting.

Just as an aside, how are all these students getting tests if they are asymptomatic?

Flu kills approx 17000 per annum in the u.k with a vaccine

If we had carried on at the peak it would be 365000 per annum .

Plus the results of the blood clots the virus can lay down in each organ in the body can cause long term illness .

There is no comparison .

Plus of course we are in the middle of a worldwide learning process that has only been in existence for six to seven months.

I suggest the OP goes and volunteers in a covid ward . ASAP.

Also it’s not all about saving the lives of people with covid ? The government made that quite clear , that is impossible . It was originally to make sure the NHS was not overwhelmed with cases .

Now I do have a problem with the NHS departments being slow to get back to normal in some areas but that is a different matter .

All illnesses are not the same . Some are highly infectious , some are not .

@bitheby

What are you talking about? They are ill. They've tested positive for a disease. Just because they don't feel ill, doesn't mean they don't have it.

I think you're confusing what being ill means. It means infected and therefore capable of being infectious.

But there are lots of pathogens that can cause horrible illness, including death or long-term disability, in some people that loads of people are carrying all the time, eg staphlococcus, streptococcus, Helicobacter pylori, MRSA, to name a few.

We don't test healthy people for those and call them ill and isolate them if they are positive. We don't say they have a disease although another person with the same pathogen may well become ill or die.

Even with Covid it's increasingly looking eg as if most people with it hardly spread it, if at all, while a few spread widely. We should watch the Japanese who track backwards, trying to find the superspreader who is making people ill, rather than forwards looking for contacts who may never get Covid, of a case.

And the carriers of other pathogens can very much pass them to other people who become ill.