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.

@McSilkson - excess deaths isn’t new terminology. It’s been used for decades to quantify deaths in smaller subsets like excess deaths from flu, smoking related deaths, heart disease deaths, poverty related deaths etc. Just because you haven’t come across it till now doesn’t mean it’s covid borne.

You’ll excuse me if I don’t share your morbid approval of a population control through the deaths of others. I accept death is the natural progression and cycle of life but I will not accept the notion that people shouldn’t have the chance at a peaceful death fully supported by everything modern society had to offer nor that they should lose out on the opportunity to avoid it at an early age if we have the means to prevent it.

Advocacy to lower birth rates through education is one thing but there is no ethical superiority in presenting the suffering of other human beings as a positive.

I get that completely and am not in favour of them, but will there be an impact on society if the virus is going out of control? How will the health system cope and schools etc? Will people get treatment for non covid issues? Will people be out spending the same? I’m just saying that by living with it, that might cause huge problems as well.

And this is exactly the sort of hypothetical scenario, one of the endless what-ifs, that is going to be used to batter us into submission indefinitely.

The facts are that the health system is currently non-functional and people are not being treated for other things as we speak.

The real issue is that we have a health service that is not fit for purpose, when it can't even cope with what is, overall, a mild infectious illness. The government should be pouring all effort and resources and money into improving it asap, instead of directing them towards this neo-Puritan regime. Of course, only three years ago, the Tories were cheering the blockage of a proposed pay rise for those they now deem "key workers ", including nurses: www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/watch-moment-tories-cheered-blocking-10707293

Every time I've been to my local library I've been greeted by some kind of "welcome" party comprising never fewer than 3 people ; one to point at the hand sanitiser, one seated at a little desk to hand me a pen and then sanitise it, and one spare doing not much of anything. I'm then directed to an inexplicable one way system around the books (which I do not follow). It's all so very over the top.

Agree. Libraries are behaving particularly stupidly at the moment. Ours has only recently reopened and with reduced hours and only one person in at a time. Before, it was click and collect and masked up teams at the door policing the process.

How is a library more of a hazard than any other shop where people touch things?

But I get it. People want to feel a. that they are doing something and b. that someone else is “doing something”. Even if none of makes any sense and is the most ludicrous overreaction ever to have possessed a population.

@Flaxmeadow

Agree and yes it's a new virus but the biggest threat is to vital services. If the numbers get out of control, there won't be an NHS for anyone. That's the whole point of locking down.

Try to contain the virus and when that fails, as it did in March and is doing now, a stricter lockdown to mitigate that. Limit the damage. There are people who caught it today who will die in November, that can't be stopped now. Just hope it doesn't collapse the hospitals for too many.

Some people on MN think it's all a big joke, repeating the same inanities over an over again, as they've done from the start. Until someone they know dies I suppose but then who know what goes on in their tiny brains

There are people getting in their car right now who will die in a crash tonight. People sitting at home reading your words who will have a heart attack in about an hour and not make it. Sobering but true.

@McSilkson

Out of interest do you imagine you'll be one of the people taking a hit for the team when you say this?

Good thing, too. Can you imagine a world in which no one ever died of anything?

Arguably, disease is not only inevitable, but necessary; it is one of the chief natural checks on population. It has functioned quite well that way among humans for millennia, and continues to function so among other animal species (in addition to all the new manmade pressures on them). A deeply unpopular way of looking at it, but nonetheless true.

Indeed, the partial success of attempts to cure all disease and indefinitely prolong human life, which are the legacy of the last century or so, are largely responsible for the human overpopulation and resulting environmental destruction that threatens not only humankind, but all life on Earth. Ironic, really. These things will come round in circles.

The notion of "excess" deaths in a world of nearly 8 billion humans is baffling to me... One of the many pieces of Covid-era terminology that make no sense to me.

[quote underneaththeash]@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.[/quote]
I'm not saying nothing should be done.

I'm saying the priorities... Which in my eyes was fully functional actually "world beating" track and trace and proper financial (immediate) support needs to be available so people will isolate.

There are people getting in their car right now who will die in a crash tonight. People sitting at home reading your words who will have a heart attack in about an hour and not make it. Sobering but true

Yes and conversely people in those exact same situations will be attended by medical professionals with a chance at survival; and if they don’t at least comfort and pain relief.

The concern is that they won’t have access to that if the NHS is truly overwhelmed, it isn’t about entirely avoiding death it’s about avoiding unnecessary suffering.

Some people will have strokes and die but for a significant proportion of people the speed at which they receive treatment is vital because they will almost certainly survive but the level of damage can be minimised with prompt medical attention.

I’m not a believer in life at any cost and accept and advocate for good deaths. I have said before, if covid killed quickly and was a short illness we would be in a very different set of circumstances but as it is we find ourselves in a situation where it’s apparent that healthcare cannot cope with the projected numbers even at a small percentage. At that point, when the ambulances have calls stacked up and when there is no space left in the hospitals, that suddenly everyones immediate mortality forecast changes and covid becomes the least of most individuals problems.

We were rightly shocked and appalled at positive residents being sent back into care homes, but that’s indicative of the choices that will have to be made if the worst predictions materialise. Remember the push for GP’s to discuss DNR’s with their identified life limited and elderly patients? This is not a path we should willingly choose without acknowledgement of precisely what we’re advocating.

@ OpheliasCrayon how?

There are people getting in their car right now who will die in a crash tonight. People sitting at home reading your words who will have a heart attack in about an hour and not make it. Sobering but true.

Hmm. Statically they probably won't be. That implies that one person per minute dies in a car crash in the UK. They don't.

the notion of excess deaths in a world of 8 billion humans is baffling to me
Because you think it's only The Others who are at risk from Covid? The poor, the disabled, the elderly, people living in deprived urban areas, black and Asian people?

Morals aside, it might come as a rude shock but Long Covid is a risk to everyone (not just the groups at higher risk of dying).
Develop it and you too will become one of The Vulnerable.

Wrt the idea that many people should just 'live with it' - it being the high risk of dying painfully. We urgently need to introduce legal assisted suicide.

It's much better to take a painless drug and that you never wake up from than dying from Covid. Now more than ever people should be allowed that choice.

@Cornettoninja
Agree completely.
It's not the death so much as the manner of dying that's the issue.

That, and Long Covid. So far linked to heart, lung, and kidney damage, triggering type 1 diabetes, blood clotting issues. Often in patients who had initially mild non hospitalised cases.

Who knows what other hidden damage might be discovered several years later.

Completely agree.

I think people find it hard to take it seriously when the guidance is bonkers. You can’t catch covid in school but can at a play date after school. Children don’t spread covid out of schools but can outside school so must be included in the rule of six outside of school.

People read the rules that don’t make sense and it turns the whole thing into a joke.

And Boris lies. People remember the bus. Even Boris’ supporters don’t trust him.

But I completely agree with you.

Excess deaths is a standard measure used to count more deaths over the tiling five year average. It just normally doesn’t make the news.

Like the winter of 2017/18 when there were 50,000 excess deaths due to a bad flu season.

Excess deaths is a way of seeing if there is something unusual going on. It measures the degree of unusual and how fast its happening. It helps us identify something that might not necessarily be otherwise immediately obvious to us quicker.

@RedToothBrush

Excess deaths is a way of seeing if there is something unusual going on. It measures the degree of unusual and how fast its happening. It helps us identify something that might not necessarily be otherwise immediately obvious to us quicker.

Exactly.

And there were a shed load of “excess deaths” in the winter of 17/18, but that wasn’t all over the news.

Likewise hospital beds. Yes they are filling up. It’s autumn/winter. How to the figures compare to 2017 so we can have a reality check?

[quote Cornettoninja]@McSilkson - excess deaths isn’t new terminology. It’s been used for decades to quantify deaths in smaller subsets like excess deaths from flu, smoking related deaths, heart disease deaths, poverty related deaths etc. Just because you haven’t come across it till now doesn’t mean it’s covid borne.

You’ll excuse me if I don’t share your morbid approval of a population control through the deaths of others. I accept death is the natural progression and cycle of life but I will not accept the notion that people shouldn’t have the chance at a peaceful death fully supported by everything modern society had to offer nor that they should lose out on the opportunity to avoid it at an early age if we have the means to prevent it.

Advocacy to lower birth rates through education is one thing but there is no ethical superiority in presenting the suffering of other human beings as a positive.[/quote]
I'm sure it isn't strictly new. Perhaps "neo" would be a better descriptor, as I feel that term captures the ideological underpinning of talking about death in this way. I'm fairly sure people weren't counting "excess" deaths in the 18th century; they were probably just "deaths".

I mean, if you take away all the subsets of "excess" deaths you listed, how many causes of death are left? What qualifies as a non-excess death these days? What are people allowed to die from?

I think that question is at the heart of all of this. Viruses, coronaviruses, are nothing new. This is a spiritual and philosophical crisis more than anything else.

I will not accept the notion that people shouldn’t have the chance at a peaceful death fully supported by everything modern society had to offer nor that they should lose out on the opportunity to avoid it at an early age if we have the means to prevent it.

I completely agree with that. In fact, a corollary of the modern denial of death is that people are often kept alive in very unpeaceful conditions and against their wishes. The suffering this causes is immense.

But seeing as the average Covid-related death (because exact cause usually can't be pinpointed) is 82 - greater than the UK average life expectancy - people dying at an "early age" isn't really an issue here.

The natural and near-universal cycle of life is that living things get old and then they die.

[quote BlueBlancmange]@McSilkson

Out of interest do you imagine you'll be one of the people taking a hit for the team when you say this?

Good thing, too. Can you imagine a world in which no one ever died of anything?

Arguably, disease is not only inevitable, but necessary; it is one of the chief natural checks on population. It has functioned quite well that way among humans for millennia, and continues to function so among other animal species (in addition to all the new manmade pressures on them). A deeply unpopular way of looking at it, but nonetheless true.

Indeed, the partial success of attempts to cure all disease and indefinitely prolong human life, which are the legacy of the last century or so, are largely responsible for the human overpopulation and resulting environmental destruction that threatens not only humankind, but all life on Earth. Ironic, really. These things will come round in circles.

The notion of "excess" deaths in a world of nearly 8 billion humans is baffling to me... One of the many pieces of Covid-era terminology that make no sense to me.[/quote]
SheepandCow:
Because you think it's only The Others who are at risk from Covid? The poor, the disabled, the elderly, people living in deprived urban areas, black and Asian people?

For what it's worth, which isn't much, I fall into several of those categories. That's not the point. It's about attitudes to death.

I am not afraid of death; I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, reading about it and trying to come to terms with it. We all should. A fundamental part of being human is learning how to die.

I already know how I want to die one day. My resolution is the same in my happiest moments and my worst ones. Perhaps my greatest wish is that we should all be given the chance to choose the "best" death, in the manner, time and place of our choosing.

I think the problem is is that it is not just death, but an often horrible and terrifying death. It also happens, according to the MN narrative, only to people who are 'old' and therefore 'should' just die, as if that would magically make life go back to normal. The denialism is so strong on this.

@McSilkson you raise an interesting point. In the absence of a voluntary euthanasia programme if we allow levels of infection to take their natural course we would be actively ensuring an uncomfortable, lonely death for many people who would have otherwise had support. That’s just not acceptable even if you otherwise accept inevitability of death. Does this leave us at a point it would be more humane to offer a voluntary euthanasia programme to those most at risk? That’s an uncomfortable, and imho, horrifying point to reach when the alternative is to adjust our lives to keep infection levels low. I support euthanasia in life limiting circumstances but I’m not in favour of using it as a preventative measure.

Death is only one factor to consider with Covid. At the risk of repeating myself, the situation would be easier on our infrastructure if it killed quickly. Acceptance of death doesn’t mean that the most pressing problems covid presents are resolved. The period of illness still puts immense pressure on our health system from middle aged patients upwards. Taking the most vulnerable and aged out of the equation to let the virus spread unabated would still leave the country in a situation where healthcare would be overwhelmed and mortality from other, usually preventable causes, would rise.

The attitude, although not openly said, seems to be that you can't catch it from family and friends, only strangers. It's madness.
I don't think anyone believes you can't catch it from family and friends, but it's a risk benefit analysis. The benefit of seeing my family, for me, outweighs the risks of contracting the virus.
There is no benefit of rubbing up close top strangers in Tesco, so it doesn't outweigh the risk so I don't do it.

And there were a shed load of “excess deaths” in the winter of 17/18, but that wasn’t all over the news.

Actually it was in the news

Likewise hospital beds. Yes they are filling up. It’s autumn/winter. How to the figures compare to 2017 so we can have a reality check?

But the lockdown in March prevented far more deaths in a very short space of time, and so prevented the services from collapsing. This is the whole point of the lockdown.

What some seem to refuse to contemplate is, if we hadn't locked down then excess deaths would have been in the region of 250,000 and this would have happened very quickly. It would have been far far worse then the situation now. On top of that there would have been many more who would have required medical assistance, either in hospital/a care home or by there GP. There would also have been many health care providers, care home workers, social workers, police, supermarket staff etc who would have been poorly or isolating at home in a short space of time

The lockdowns are not to prevent deaths as such, they are to prevent a lot of people dying, or becoming poorly, all at the same time and that happening in a short space of time. The lockdowns are to keep services operating for everyone, not just those with covid

(excess deaths is also a term used by historians. During the plague or the Corn Laws for example)

The number of deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 9 October 2020 (Week 41) was 9,954

Of the deaths registered in Week 41, 438 mentioned "novel coronavirus (COVID-19)", accounting for 4.4% of all deaths in England and Wales

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending9october2020

Like the winter of 2017/18 when there were 50,000 excess deaths due to a bad flu season.

It was 26,000 flu deaths in the winter of 20017/18 in England and Wales and so for the whole of the UK it would have been under 30,000 (going by the much smaller populations of Scot and NI)

What do you think the numbers would have been now for covid if we hadn't locked down in March?

It's not just about death. Long Covid is a concern despite some wishing to deny it. The cash strapped NHS isn't setting up Long Covid treatment clinics for nothing.

Here's just one (of many) articles about it. This one focuses on the potential heart damage. That's just one possible issue. Long Covid has also been linked to lung or kidney damage, blood clotting problems, and the triggering of type 1 diabetes.

Note (for the 'Its only the elderly and disabled' brigade) the article linked says:
Cardiologists are finding that problems aren’t related to age or severity of infection

amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/04/long-covid-the-evidence-of-lingering-heart-damage

Long Covid may or not be ‘a thing’ but either way it’s not the problem ‘now’. It’s only a problem if they’re taking up hospital beds. Deaths is the best measure of the pandemic and currently, according to the most recent ONS figures the number of deaths is 1.5% above the five year average