Do we need a reality check about covid?

[TheSilence]

I’m so quiet about this in real life, and bite my tongue but I’m so sick of hearing certain things and it’s making me despair of the human race.

I am no scientist, nor do I especially understand research/data or statistics.

But in a nutshell, I am sick of people minimising this virus. I’ve seen and heard it for 7 months now and am most frustrated by these kinds of comments:

“It’s just flu but they’ve renamed it”
“Flu has a higher death rate”
“For 99% of people it’s just like having the common cold”
“All nurses ever do is film tik Tok videos”
“Long covid doesn’t exist”
“Masks cause severe neurological damage”!

This is just a few because I don’t want to rant too much, I haven’t even covered the vast amount of conspiracy theories I’ve read.

From my understanding, all of those statements I’ve said are wrong, but I’m aware that my understanding is wrong.
I know some people might be reading this thinking I’ve got it back to front and that people are over estimating this virus, but that hasn’t been my experience at all.

Bottom line is, the single most important thing about covid that makes it a severe threat is that it’s brand new. The people who understand these things barely understand this. When going into a battle or war, knowing and understanding your enemy gives you a huge advantage. It’s the same with this, and tbh I can’t get my head around the statements people make with such certainty, such as “I KNOW for a fact if I or my family get it we’ll definitely be fine” or “Long covid is DEFINITELY the same as any post viral syndrome”. How can these people be so ridiculously sure when scientists aren’t?

I hate the arrogance and huge egos of people in this country and other western countries.

And yes I’m struggling with severe mental health issues that I can’t get proper help for because of covid. As I know I sound very ranty and possibly angry.

I’m just saying - please take this seriously.

The problem is that it CAN be a very serious disease as we can see in the hospitalization and death figures, but equally in MOST cases it is a very mild disease. I have had it myself (tested positive caught it from a colleague at school) it hasn't even left me with a fibromyalgia flare up (which is surprising a cold can knock me back for weeks).

So if you only know people who have had mild cases or you are lucky enough to still know nobody who has had it then you are more likely to believe what you have personally experienced or witnessed than what you have seen in the media.

I know about 40 people who have had it now, including one who is ECV and all have been well within a week with a little lingering tiredness for a few.

I am NOT daft enough to think this means it is over hyped and it is mild for everyone. Myself, my friends and colleagues have just been lucky.

However if I was someone who already doubted the government or was easily influenced by Facebook misinformation I can see how based on my personal experiences of Covid it would be easy to write it off as just another flu.

I guess it depends who you mix with. No one I know has said any of those things, at least not in my hearing. My friends and I (mostly middle class women, aged 48-70ish) and our families are taking it seriously and sticking to all the rules even when they are bat shit crazy.

I don't know... So many people have tested positive. And out of that number it seems, a small minority develop "long covid" or end up in hospital. It's all relative.
On the other hand, there are far more people who are in the process of losing their job, with a far higher percentage ending up unemployed for the foreseeable. The impact will be a huge pressure on the welfare state and social housing.
And then there are people who have other life threatening illnesses. Their treatments are delayed, or they face treatment alone.
Then there is the mental health aspect, loneliness, fear, social anxiety, children's development through luck of social interaction ... We don't even know what long term impact the virus has there. Sadly, we may never know as it will be brushed aside, or diagnosed as something else.

FWIW, I think some of the minimisation (which, I agree with you, is mostly wrong) is a response to the (many) equally shrill voices on the opposite side of the scale - the ones who would love to see us all in panic and terror. People in general aren't great at nuance, especially in the generally extremely polarised public discourse we have come to have across lots of issues.

Covid is not flu. (Albeit 'just' flu infuriates me because flu can be pretty awful and it can cause permanent damage, including to young people). It's novel and is hitting people with no immune response or who in many cases mount an exaggerated immune response (as will happen when confronted with a noval virus) which appears to cause at least some of the more serious problems. It is entirely sensible to be cautious, whatever your age, and short, sharp shutdowns, with adequate support for the people affected, work.

all Bluntness100@ there was a specialist talking the other day a study has compared Covid and flu finding it not only more serious but far more deadly according to him there is no comparison between the 2.

I don’t agree. It is being over exaggerated, real as it is. Covid cases are increasing in this second wave compared to the first. But that’s obvious seeing as how we didn’t have all the testing in the first wave. I’m not denying the severity of it but the vast majority of people will not be affected.

I also think the pandemic has revealed a lot of structural problems in UK society. An over-dependence on expensive offices and sandwich shops. The point someone made above that people who fear for their jobs won't isolate - where you have people on zero-hours contracts who can be dismissed for virtually any reason, you are not going to achieve the kind of compliance with public health measures you need. And above all the minimisation followed by an abrupt U-turn into fearmongering performed by this government, which seems to stem from an inability at the top to face serious situations calmly and take responsible, clearly communicated decisions in the interests of all. Bluster and 'optics' rule.

You are right OP but I think people need to minimise it to reassure themselves. Not talking about people who make thoughtless jokes or spread conspiracy theories but I understand others wanting to focus on the ‘positives’ if you can call them that.

I fully agree OP. The hard reality is exactly the point this is a new virus. Who knows what implications it may have over time on those who have had it. I expect many of those on the fence about it will have an awakening before Christmas.

Something feels off about the whole thing and I can’t put my finger on it.

It has really shown up those people who form an opinion and then go looking for facts to back it up. Unfortunately they are well fed with lies and distortions made by egotists and grandstanders on main stream and social media. The use of glib catch phrases like “the cure could be worse than the disease” is entirely meaningless. We don’t have much by way of cures and the disease is everywhere. Prevention was always the better solution.

The virus has humbled us because we can’t buy or blag our way out of it. All the simple popular options fall flat on their faces. We are left with the need to deal with complexity as confusing as that is. We need to accept compromise as galling as that is for business, the left and the right.

It is a new and serious illness. We should be ensuring the safety of the vulnerable and complying with advice: hands, space, face. There should be separate COVID hospitals, ie, "Nightingale".

However the majority should be going about their usual business whilst avoiding large indoor events. The risks to the majority are very small. 46,000 deaths is an infinitesimal proportion of 66 million (although 0 deaths from this would have been better by far). Realistically and with very few exceptions most people have died with Covid rather than from Covid and had a limited life left. Not trying to minimise the very few who were well when they co ntracted covid.

The economy however is totally devastated and I really hope that I will not hear complaints about job losses, house losses, poor quality of life, etc, from anyone on here who has been insistent that we shoukd more or less lock ourselves up until a vaccine is found.

Covid is real

And the reality is that the overwhelming vast majority of people who catch Covid suffer none or only mild symptoms. And even if you are among the most vulnerable groups you are still way more likely to survive than not.

Its not long covid that is the real issue its the lasting cardio vascular impact, the strokes you are more likely to have had and have more in the futre and the care impact of that never mind life quality, the lasting lung damage that is signifiantly worse than damage caused by say TB

We all need to buck up our ideas, be safer, even now improve handwashing after touching things, stop flippin touching faces and noses even ears when out and about, stop hoiking and spitting which I am still seeing happen, cover faces when coughing and sneexing (Sneezing might not be a symptom but you culd still have covid as well as what is causing you to sneeze!), keep the fuck away from people you don't know, don't dawdle and chat whilst out shopping - or if you must chat out fucking side in the car park where the rest of us can get on and not have to hang abut for you to shift your arse. I am fed up of people with hardly a gcse to the name in science thinking they know best if I am honest

Of course it's real and dangerous but so are lots of other things and being concerned about the damage this is doing to our way of life is not being anti-science. I think it's very naive to believe that if we all just 'did as we were told' cv could be stopped in its tracks.

People are also very very weary of it, myself included, and are entitled to a whinge. It doesn't mean they're not dutifully wearing their masks and sanitising their hands and dancing round each other in Tesco.

@OpheliasCrayon in the last week 6,500 people were admitted to hospital with COVID symptoms and that's with the restrictions were have at the moment. If we didn't have the restrictions, there would be many more people with the virus
What would you do instead?

• not admit anyone with COVID and let them potentially die at home?
• let the NHS become basically a COVID treatment centre and cancel other treatments/screenings.

Shielding the vulnerable can't work as they tend to be the ones who need hospital treatment, they also live and are cared for by people who wouldn't be shielding.

There is no option for doing anything apart from what we're doing at the moment. That's why every other first world nation is doing/has done. Even Sweden has started to place restrictions on some of their cities.

No-one likes it, but it has to be done.

People might take it more seriously if the government and the media were not CONSTANTLY exaggerating some catastrophe or other. Over the years, the media and/or the government told us there would be Armageddon from:

• The millennium bug.
• Our mobile phones killing us.
• Weapons of mass destruction, necessitating war.
• Paedophiles around every corner.
• Immigrants around every corner.
• Terrorists around every corner.

People are weary of the constant tide of scaremongering, and made to be fearful and angry over their morning cornflakes. For many people, Covid was "just more press hysteria" at first. After this diet, we just don't know what is true and what isn't. If Covid is as dangerous as it is made out to be, too bad that the government and the media have wasted the little credibility they once had by crying wolf about so many things.

Some people probably don't take climate change seriously for the same reason. I remember Tony Blair trying to make us use our cars less (while he was chauffeur-driven everywhere), to give him a reason to price motorists off the road. People remember these ways the media and the government manipulate them, and they resist in the only way they can: by not taking them seriously. So, some people are resisting this "crisis" by not taking it seriously.

@TheSilence where specifically are you seeing all that sort of stuff said?

Personally I can't say I've seen a huge amount of people say stuff like that. Not denying it gets said, but I don't feel it's the majority.

Even my very laid back and usually blasé dh was on about this back in December saying we should close the borders.

Most people I know are taking it very seriously indeed and following all government advice. I haven't seen my parents since March because they are vulnerable. I know healthy people who are still afraid to go shopping.

I do think the tide is turning and people are starting to feel that restrictions need to be proportionate because Covid isn't the only thing that matters.

People don’t really have any choice but to take it seriously when the government have changed people’s lives brutally recognition and destroyed their capacity to earn a living. Who is your post aimed at exactly?

*beyond recognition

@Pixxie7 Spanish flu was way more deadly than covid. The reason flu is less bad is because of people being resistant to it via immunity and vaccines.

If we’d always had covid and flu was the new thing the situation would be the same.

I think yabu OP. People can say what they like and normal people with opinions right or wrong make little difference to me.

The thing that annoys me is the so-called top experts and top scientists constantly stirring up shit by criticising everything the government does.

This is a nasty illness but unfortunately whatever Boris does from now there will be dire consequences. Yes track and trace hasn’t been great but the increase right now is across the whole of Europe, even Germany are fast losing control currently although their rates are among the lowest in Europe still.

I know it's serious. I know I could catch it, I know it might make me ill, I know I might die. I also know that there are thousands of other risks in my life which could do exactly the same thing. I also know that life is short and spending it locked up is depressing. I know that losing my job, or my home is a bigger risk to me personally than covid. Same goes for my other half. Same goes for my child. I appreciate it's not the same for everyone, but then everyone else doesn't put me first, and everyone else won't pay my mortgage for me.

I felt quite "in it together" and charitable at the start of this and funnily enough I don't anymore. I still know it's serious, but so is depression, so is everything else left untreated, so is loneliness and isolation.

I don't like the whole "covid is the only thing that matters" attitude.

Completely agree with you. You should have left the YANBU button as I think it would have been the huge majority. Bad information spreads like a virus too, making people confident that because they saw it in some newspaper to heard it from someone, that means it’s true.

Some people I know I’ve massively distanced myself from, as they are anti mask etc. It’s at critical times that people reveal a lot.

Yanbu.
It's a brand new virus. I'm happy to sit tight while science figures out what the virus does to people. I think we'll have a much better picture by next summer.

I have a friend who has Long Covid. She's a shadow of her former self and very unwell. It's heartbreaking to see. I'm taking this seriously, but I've noticed that friends and family who rigorously followed rules in the early days aren't bothering now. The attitude, although not openly said, seems to be that you can't catch it from family and friends, only strangers. It's madness.