Normal life will not resume by May

[LemonadeFromLemons]

The article below is brilliant at explaining what the vaccine will and will not do. Unfortunately, it also makes clear that it is going to be years not months until we are able to go back to normal. I would strongly encourage every person to read it to get the clear facts in an easy format:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-b6360f40-84f9-469b-b6a3-a4568e161c4f

@Jourdain11

It’s not just the “vulnerable” who have been ravaged by this illness. It’s health and social care staff, teachers, shop workers. Lots of young, fit and healthy people have had long Covid and have been unable to get back to work.

I take a bit of an issue with some of the statements here.

1. "The vulnerable" have to be careful of infections and illnesses in normal times. The big scare about Covid has given rise to a lot of disproportionate fear and anxiety in many clinically vulnerable people. In reality, the steps they take to protect themselves in usual times would probably have been sufficient in many, if not most cases.

1. "It’s not just the 'vulnerable' who have been ravaged by this illness. It’s health and social care staff, teachers, shop workers."

Just so that you are aware, many of "the vulnerable" work and you will find them in all these professions!! They're not all sat at home being a drain on society.

1. "Lots of young, fit people have Long Covid": this seems to be thrown around as a new means of making people feel personally threatened in order to scare them into submission. I'm not denying that post viral Covis syndrome exists, but I feel that there needs to be some robust research around this. Which symptoms can be used to make a diagnosis? What proportion of people is it affecting? Is there a way to mitigate against it in the early stages? Is the incidence of post-viral symptoms/complications higher in Covid than in other viral illnesses?

Thanks. I put the “vulnerable” in quotations like that mainly due to the MM attitude that you rightly point out that the vulnerable are all elderly or don’t work. You can check out my previous posts if you like, I’m 36 with complex autoimmune conditions and severe neutropenia and have to shield most winters. I’ve been shielding since before the lockdown March and been told due to previous pneumonia causing scarring and a heart condition that I’m unlikely to survive ventilation. I’m also a lecturer, I contribute to society and pay my taxes so whilst I do appreciate you sticking up for people like me, you really don’t need to take issue with me particularly. I’ve been told my usual steps that I took in previous pandemics and most winters would not have been enough to protect me from Covid this year. Yes, my long Covid comment is anecdotal. Having a chronic illness means I’m on a number of forums, support groups etc and there’s been an influx of newbies with long Covid looking for support plus colleagues of mine and family offline. But I don’t have data, sorry.

@Loveyourideas

Hey *@IcedPurple*, no reason to be so aggressive. We are also ‘real’ people, even if we think differently than you.

We have lived across countries and have had so many knocks in our lives! But as many others, we are used to getting up and dusting ourselves and being grateful for what we have.

Being grateful does not equal being privileged (although I agree it can come across that way)

Can you perhaps appreciate that not everybody is in the same situation as you?

Not everybody felt their lives before this were 'all about consuming'. Not everybody needed a pandemic to make them concerned about animal welfare and human impact on the environment. Not everybody has had the luxury and luck to have had lots of reflection time from this.

If a pandemic was really what your life needed, then I'm glad you have been able to find those benefits from it. But can you not even think a little bit about how other people's experience might differ from yours? And how there's more to that than your 'resilience'?

@NameChange84 sorry, I didn't realise your situation and I misinterpreted your comments - I'm not a native English speaker, although I've been here for 15 years now, so I shouldn't have any excuse! But sometimes I miss some of the subtleties - and I'm too lazy to check people's posting history, lol.

I just assumed you were subscribed to the "vulnerable as a separate class" school of thought, and that was wrong of me.

I have also had neutropenia/pancytopenia for most of this year, although it's due to AML and subsequent chemo in my case. So you 100% have my sympathies in dealing with this challenge!

@IcedPurple

I think the social distancing in shops and restaurants should continue. Controversial I know, but actually it’s been more blissful not having people in my face all the time!

Not too 'blissful' or businesses who can't afford to run at half capacity long-term.

I guess if you find it 'blissful' to be distanced from your fellow humans you could always pay extra for the seats around you?

Get where you are coming from and respect that, but I think there is no happy medium.

I think people’s tolerances are lower now, more people worrying about health stuff and close proximity. Being indoors has brought a lot more introverts speaking out/becoming introverted.

I say this as someone who loved going out, as a household went out to eat once a week. Cinema trips etc. Not so much shopping as I used to as I was getting fed up with so many people being rude.

P.S. I didn't mean to sound aggressively sceptical with my Long Covid comments; I am just cautious of using this as a factual basis for restrictive measures, as there is a lack of data and evidence and research, and I'm also wary about the categorisation of an illness which has been christened by a pressure group, so to speak. But I'm a cynic, I guess!

[quote LemonadeFromLemons]The article below is brilliant at explaining what the vaccine will and will not do. Unfortunately, it also makes clear that it is going to be years not months until we are able to go back to normal. I would strongly encourage every person to read it to get the clear facts in an easy format:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-b6360f40-84f9-469b-b6a3-a4568e161c4f[/quote]
The article explains why Covid won't be eliminated. It won't be.

But the restrictions are about protecting hospitals from exceeding capacity for ICU beds etc. Once the vulnerable are vaccinated we will see a phased return to normal by May. Covid zero is not the strategy here.

Once the vulnerable are vaccinated we will see a phased return to normal

This bit I agree with.

by May
this it is speculation at best, wishful thinking at worst.

Things will be a bit better by May.

But things won't be 'normal' by then, especially if your 'normal' means music festivals; international travel; hospitals and dentists working at normal capacity through their normal patients; schools and universities looking exactly as they did pre-March last year etc.

It's not even like the pandemic's been universally better for introverts! I used to cherish my commuting time as quiet space in my own head to recharge between work and family. Not much of that in lockdown, WFH on constant Teams/Skype/Zoom/phone calls with kids at home and all of us living on top of each other.

@Jourdain11

3. "Lots of young, fit people have Long Covid": this seems to be thrown around as a new means of making people feel personally threatened in order to scare them into submission. I'm not denying that post viral Covis syndrome exists, but I feel that there needs to be some robust research around this. Which symptoms can be used to make a diagnosis? What proportion of people is it affecting? Is there a way to mitigate against it in the early stages? Is the incidence of post-viral symptoms/complications higher in Covid than in other viral illnesses?

I would love to know the answers to all the questions too - but kind of from the other side, as Ds is affected by long covid. (He has no underlying health conditions, is a fit and slim 11 year old, so I do get a bit twitchy when people insist that covid cant affect children - I rather it didn’t but we weren’t that lucky!)

There was a long list of symptoms his consultant used to diagnose long covid - I will list them if anyone is interested but it is a bit long and boring. They did ask very specific questions about particular symptoms and side effects, so I assume they were working off a list or set of assumptions. They don’t currently have much in the way of answers, depressingly. He’s getting flare ups every week now (was about once every 3 weeks when schools were closed, so overdoing things seems to trigger the flare ups, but obviously he can’t only do 3 day weeks at school!)

Interesting q about ways to mitigate. We were left to get on with it at home, but I do wonder if some of the treatments available now would have lessened the after effects he is now feeling, if he’d been able to have them.

I would hope that people don’t take me talking about ds’s experience as scaremongering. It’s a bit more scary for me and him than it is for them

And I would hope that the only reason he’s still being affected is because his initial illness was quite severe. I would hope that for children who’ve caught it asymptomatically it would be really rare for them to have ongoing symptoms. Obviously I’m not a doctor, but that’s what I would hope anyway!

Sorry for the long post - absolutely agree that much more research needs to be done into long covid, both to help people differing from it, and hopefully reassure others about their likelihood of (not!) getting it.

@GoldenOmber, many of the things mentioned in ‘going back to normal’ were about consuming -outings, pubs, restaurants, travel (I don’t mean you, but in general). And in many ways, I too miss my fav restaurants and coffee shops and the theatre, especially when it is cold and dark and we are looking for some comfort. Of course these create employment, but also an environmental cost and waste. And perhaps another pandemic down the road if we think our needs/wants are more important than fairly sharing resources.

I worry about the restrictions from the perspective of a potential police state, eroding of fundamental freedoms. And obviously long to see family! But I also appreciate that this period has given an opportunity to evaluate what matters. People are of course entitled to go back to normal. As I am in not wanting to go back to the old normal. No reason to berate me, I’m not calling anyone else out for their feelings

*suffering not differing. That whole post was an autocorrect nightmare!

[quote Jourdain11]@NameChange84 sorry, I didn't realise your situation and I misinterpreted your comments - I'm not a native English speaker, although I've been here for 15 years now, so I shouldn't have any excuse! But sometimes I miss some of the subtleties - and I'm too lazy to check people's posting history, lol.

I just assumed you were subscribed to the "vulnerable as a separate class" school of thought, and that was wrong of me.

I have also had neutropenia/pancytopenia for most of this year, although it's due to AML and subsequent chemo in my case. So you 100% have my sympathies in dealing with this challenge![/quote]
No problem. Hope all goes well with the remainder of your treatment. Neutropenia is a ball ache! I hope yours improves as the chemo comes to an end. I didn’t develop it until my early teens but it’s been a long couple of decades basically living in fear of what you could catch and becoming stupidly ill from common colds etc. I had to give up school teaching and move into lecturing because of it even though I loved working with little ones. Low white cell count is not the worst part of my illness by a long stretch but it is among the most frustrating and poorly understood by the majority of the public. I also look disgustingly healthy 80% of the time which means I tend to hear to my face of how some people really feel about vulnerable members of society (I’ve had survival of the fittest bandied around) or I get laughed at when I wear a mask on a walk or outside on the way to an appointment etc by people who just assume I’m paranoid. Anyway, all part of life and moaning doesn’t help!

I’m on the same page, being anti “vulnerable is a separate class” and just putting “vulnerable” in quotation marks wasn’t very clear of me. Most of my family are not native speakers of English so I should have learned to be clearer but I’m lazy on here too .

Come January, after the Christmas mingle, the schools will be a covid soup and iIll be a sitting duck with no immune system. So I'm just saying less mingling will help the NHS

So where is the willingness of strip club goers to help the NHS. Why do misogynists and perverts get a free pass. IT STINKS that people are being made to feel guilty for wanting to see family members while this is going on. @BeakyWinder I hand no idea but im not surprised. Hypocritical bastards.

But I also appreciate that this period has given an opportunity to evaluate what matters.

For YOU. Not for everyone. It has given YOU an opportunity to appreciate what matters. Many of the people who are getting increasingly frustrated with you are trying to explain that not everybody has had that opportunity, and not everybody needed that opportunity in the first place.

If you think that going to a pub with friends is an exercise in meaningless consumerism rather than social connection then crack on you, but leave the possibility open that you may be missing something about the perspective of other people.

Bore off OP

Will not be reading your article that is a load of bollocks

@cantkeepawayforever

Once the vulnerable are vaccinated we will see a phased return to normal

This bit I agree with.

by May
this it is speculation at best, wishful thinking at worst.

Things will be a bit better by May.

But things won't be 'normal' by then, especially if your 'normal' means music festivals; international travel; hospitals and dentists working at normal capacity through their normal patients; schools and universities looking exactly as they did pre-March last year etc.

I did say phased return. It won't happen overnight, it'll take time for things to gradually return to normal.

[quote Bajalaluna]@picsinred such a disgustingly selfish attitude. What about those vunerable shop workers, who have no choice but to serve you when you're "done" with wearing a mask? Putting them at risk because you don't want to mask up for half an hour is such a selfish attitude. I work 12 hour shifts in a supermarket, wearing masks, which rub the backs of my ears raw and irritate my skin no end. I'll be putting my mask back on in an hour to go back to work, despite my ears still being tremendously sore from my 12 hour shift yesterday. I have severe asthma so could pull the exempt card, but I mask up, to protect my colleagues, customers and myself. Have a little damn respect for others around you. Refusing to wear a mask for the hour at most you'll be in the supermarket when the staff around you spend more time wearing them than not it just pathetic. [/quote]
I agree with @PicsInRed and more people should be like them! #FuckYourMasks

Will not be reading your article that is a load of bollocks

Well, the fact remains that every time someone has said 'it will be over by X' (September, most recently) it has been hopelessly over-optimistic and swiftly proved wrong.

So tbh 'it is really quite likely that things won't be entirely normal by May' seems much more credible than 'things will be back to normal by May'.

At the moment, we don't have sufficient approved and effective vaccines to vaccinate everyone who needs to be vaccinated. Even if Oxford is approved, it isn't all that effective, so take-up will have to be very high indeed to combat lower effectiveness. It is not clear that vaccination reduces transmission, or how long immunity lasts.

'Full normality', including international travel etc, in 4-5 months seems less likely than the alternative, however much people WANT the 'it will be over soon' rhetoric to be true.

I agree with @PicsInRed and more people should be like them! #FuckYourMasks

Ah, one of those. Just because you don't like them, everyone else has to be at greater risk? Still a really nice attitude....

“If you think that going to a pub with friends is an exercise in meaningless consumerism rather than social connection”

Yes, for me it is. And I understand it is not for you.

And I understand that not everyone wants to or needs to reflect. I appreciated this opportunity. That’s all I’ve said. I’m not defensive about my choices. And no one else needs to be either. But there is no point getting ‘frustrated’ with alternative views or calling others ‘smug’ and ‘unreal’

@Loveyourideas

I think a ‘new’ normal is quite a good thing. Covid and the lockdown have made me evaluate what really matters. It is like the noise has been stripped and I hope that once the pandemic subsided we still reevaluate how we want to live as a society. Especially in relation to other living beings and our environment

Jesus Christ

But I also appreciate that this period has given an opportunity to evaluate what matters.

What matters to me is being able to travel and see interesting places and meet interesting people.

What matters to me is being able to have a few drinks in the pub with friends.

What matters to me is being able to have a swim in my local pool.

What matters to me is seeing the small businesses near me thrive.

What matters to me is being able to interact with work colleagues in a humane way, not via wretched Zoom calls.

I knew all this before, but the last several months have made it even more clear.

And perhaps another pandemic down the road if we think our needs/wants are more important than fairly sharing resources.

Since you've had lots of time to 'reflect', can you tell us what concrete steps you yourself have taken to ensure that resouces are shared more fairly?

I think people’s tolerances are lower now, more people worrying about health stuff and close proximity. Being indoors has brought a lot more introverts speaking out/becoming introverted.

I don't think so. I think there is a huge desire to get back to normal. Look at all the threads about cafes and shops being 'rammed'. Some may be more cautious but if and when they see people getting back to normal with few ill effects, how long will they remain so?

God, people who think that I’m staying at home for any other reason that “there’s a pandemic” - this is such a failure to understand how so so many people operate. The moment I possibly can, I’m back out there with my friends, living life to the absolute full and enjoying every golden minute. Yeah, you’ve had a fab time being introverted and watching your cabbages grow. Wonderful for you. Carry on forever for all I care. I’m going to hoover up every bit of fun I can.