To think we have gone collectively insane in our response to covid

[PlumsAreNotTheOnlyFruit]

This is something I have thought for a while. I feel like we are in the grip of insanity when it comes to our response to covid.

We seem to be prepared to destroy our economy, get into massive debt, surrender our freedom and mess up our children's education over covid.

It's a virus which can and will spread, and now seems more virulent than ever. Unless you have a total eradication policy, which is impossible for the UK to implement now anyway, then only mitigation is possible.

All of Europe whatever their policies have been now have many cases. Why do we have to suffer covid AND watch our businesses go under with a potential decade of economic misery.

How many lives have been saved by our policies? Has anyone even done an analysis? We reject cancer drugs because we say they are too expensive for the number of years of life saved. We allow polluting diesel vehicles to drive in urban areas despite the 40,000 who die each year from the effects of air pollution. Why is covid different?

I am cross that we haven't thrown everything at expanding health care capacity since March and instead have spent our money paying people not to work after closing things down.

Right now I feel that the virus will continue to spread whatever we do and that that our focus should be on shielding the most vulnerable until they can be vaccinated. I realise that isn't likely to be 100% effective but neither are our present policies.

Just came back to this and there are tons of you STILL advocating herd immunity

Erm, what do you think the vaccine is for? I'll give you a clue: the first word starts with H, the second with I...

@hollyangel

Because Flu season is December to March...

We have a few cases in my trust of influenza. Not as high as normal for December no.
But it hasn't vanished.

@Vintagevixen

The fatality rate is around 1%, if everyone in the UK caught it then that would be c. 680k deaths.

I realise I'm using a crude measure but whichever way you look at it there would be hundreds of thousands of corpses.

Arguing over whether it's 400,000 or 600,000 is a bit of a moot point since we don't actually run the UK.

The point of the post is....how would we deal with hundreds of thousands of corpses?

You started your post complaining about the Tory Govt - I pointed out that it's not the Tories in power in all the other countries doing the same

Not really. I started my post with a statement that the tory gov is primarily concerned with the national economy. Which is true. It's also true of most (all?) other governments.

I agree with your unpopular opinion, even the WHO say that lockdowns aren’t the go to option because of longer term damage.

But there was a thread on here questioning “freedom passports” and everyone said done be stupid people won’t be stopped from going to work/school. Yet the government are investing in “an exploratory app” that will do just that. No one invests in something like that just for interest, a total loss of civil liberties is coming down the track like a train.

I used to totally trust in authority until I became subject to it now I’m sceptical as all hell!

@TheClaws I've noticed that whenever anyone points out how elderly/ill the vast majorities of Covid deaths are, no one ever deals with that and the subject of Long Covid immediately rears its head.

I thought lockdowns were necessary to stop deaths? We're now saying they're necessary to stop post viral syndrome/fatigue? Where do we draw the line?

Also, as someone has pointed out.

We can expect another 600,000 deaths.

How do we deal with that many corpses?

We wouldn't be able to if we hadn't locked down. People would be dying at home alone unchecked, even dying in the street near hospitals that would be full to capacity, unable to take anymore patients. We saw a tiny glimpse of that kind of chaos in a Naples hospitals last month.

Also how would the NHS cope, not just with the dying but with the many more sick as well and how would we staff the NHS with so many off work sick in a such a short space of time.

[quote turnthebiglightoff]@callmeAngelGabriel I'm mainly going by threads on here; people saying they've not taken their kids out since the first lockdown, seeing kids aged 3-4 out and about in masks, seeing my local playground empty day after day. It does and is happening. My kid is quite often playing by himself in the park as there's no one else around. There was a little respite in the summer but since the last lockdown, I reckon lots of kids are being kept at home much, much more than they are used to being. [/quote]
It's also a lot colder in winter which maybe explains the playgrounds being quieter than in the during spring or summer.

[quote hollyangel]@vintagevixen

I read that before, about the increases in heart attacks about a month after the flu.

Do you think it's likely that Covid could just be a new strain of our flu? [/quote]
I do think so - but I am not a virologist etc, just a plain old ITU nurse! So I have read a lot of studies on this (peer and non-peer reviewed) and that's my thoughts, but obviously as I said I'm not an expert.

I also remember the Flu season in the millennium year, plus there was a really bad one about 3 years ago. I was still working FT then (work PT now) and blimey people were dropping like flies - patients and staff. Lots of complications too.

And no I'm not a bot (as someone upthread thinks a lot of us are!)

@Requinblanc

I completely agree with you.

I just can't understand why when people who die of the virus have an average age of 82 (higher than our average life expectancy) and it has a 90% plus survival.

Unfortunately governments got themselves into a endless cycle of lockdowns and are still pushing the mistaken belief that this can be 'controlled' and every life saved. Which is complete nonsense.

We seem to have forgotten that death and disease is part of being human.

The NHS gets 'overwhelmed' every year and has long not been fit for purpose.

I wish politicians had the guts to say that we simply can't save everyone. Shield the vulnerable and the elderly but the rest of us need to carry on.

At this stage we should have the army helping with logistic, supplies and Covid patients treated out of mainstream hospitals. And yes that means some won't make it but you can't destroy 100% of society to save the minority.

During a time of war, leaders made tough decision and accepted that there is no ideal scenario. We need to move from the fairy tale that if we have more lockdowns this will be over. It won't and won't be anything else in term of jobs, economy, mental health and people with conditions like cancer will have died needlessly when we tried to prolong the lives of people in their 90s and 80s...

The push should be about vaccinating as many people as possible, everything else is just pie in the sky thinking...

Do you have this saved somewhere so you can just cut and paste when an ignorant essay is required? I'm sure I've read this before.

I agree with 0% of it BTW as I'm still human.

There isn't a lot of logic being applied to the decision-making, that's for sure.

Agreed!

If we took this approach within weeks we would have scenes of people dying with no dignity in hospital corridors.

People of all ages (including children) dying from perfectly treatable illnesses and accidents because there aren't any beds or enough staff to treat them.

Would everyone in favour be okay with this?

When we start to get scenes on the news of parents who've lost their children because their accident that would have just been a 'close call' have died in the corridor waiting for any available medical staff?

Corpses being found days later at home because an ambulance was called but never arrived

Would you just shrug your shoulders and say 'well, that was the best decision'?

What if it was your child that died after an accident because the hospital was swamped and no staff were available?

Would you really think the Govt had made the right call?

I find that hard to believe...

@hollyangel never was to stop deaths. It was to reduce deaths. Which it has.
And it isn't just fatigue as you know.

They draw the line with the NHS not being overwhelmed and the death rates not being so high.
We are at the point where I work where we are only just seeing the damage that is being done due to post viral complications.
I'm sure we will hear more about it when they know more

@queenofknives

The other covid thread on here that allowed people to share their concerns was shut down, OP. MN didn't think it was a useful conversation, apparently. Personally I thought it was very useful to see just how many people have had enough of this insane hysteria.

Yes I noticed that too. That other covid thread was very interesting to know I'm not the only one feed up with the hysteria, far from it... shame on MN for deleting it.

I agree, everybodysang. Thank goodness for the sanity of posters like @Flaxmeadow and @Cornettoninja and @alreadytaken.

There are well over 70,000 excess deaths this year already. Hardly 'no more deaths than usual.'

I'm so baffled by the continued refusal to understand exponential growth and how top virologists, epidemiologists and scientists are all working around the clock to try and come up with solutions and inform government, but then someone on Mumsnet comes on and says they're all wrong because only a few 80 year olds are dying so why should we lose our liberty.

Baffling.

[quote umpteennamechanges]@Vintagevixen

The fatality rate is around 1%, if everyone in the UK caught it then that would be c. 680k deaths.

I realise I'm using a crude measure but whichever way you look at it there would be hundreds of thousands of corpses.

Arguing over whether it's 400,000 or 600,000 is a bit of a moot point since we don't actually run the UK.

The point of the post is....how would we deal with hundreds of thousands of corpses?[/quote]
Fatality (IFR not the CFR) rate is not 1%, it's 0.4-0.6% rising with age and declining with youth. I think the under 20's have something like a 0.01% fatality rate.

You can't just "round up" to 1% - in working stats out you have to be very accurate.

Also this assumes that everyone in the country is susceptible - lots of buzz about cross immunity from old coronaviruses, plus the fact that it spreads less amount children means you can take nearly 10 million children out of the numbers.

I repeat - not even Neil Ferguson went above 500 000!!

@Graciebobcat

There isn't a lot of logic being applied to the decision-making, that's for sure.

Nor the armchair commentary either.

Vintagevixen

2018 flu season I remember it well but it was nothing like this.
They believe that year flu attributed to 22k deaths.

The media have a lot to answer for. There was an article on R4 last week stating how one person who'd had Covid had impaired kidney function, eyesight, digit amputations. Not a single mention of those who experience these treatments/results every day, as a consequence of sepsis, meningitis, diabetes ...

My concern is the future that faced by our youth as a consequence of these reactions.

@Indiana50

The media have a lot to answer for. There was an article on R4 last week stating how one person who'd had Covid had impaired kidney function, eyesight, digit amputations. Not a single mention of those who experience these treatments/results every day, as a consequence of sepsis, meningitis, diabetes ...

My concern is the future that faced by our youth as a consequence of these reactions.

The people who consume scare tactic click bait media have a lot to answer for too

Apparently it was moved from AIBU because people reported it as being commentary rather than an AIBU. They won't move it back. I would have to start another thread.

The lockdown is not to prevent death or long COVID

The lockdown and other restrictions are to prevent the social and economic disasters that would occur if the virus ran wild through the population

One such "disaster" would be the collapse of the nhs, although we could argue that we have failed to fully protect the nhs as many procedures and tests are again being. Postponed

Another such "disaster" would be disrupted supply chains. Again we haven't quite managed that one either given the problems with supplies from Europe

But imagine those kind of problems on a much bigger scale. Add in the number of workers dead, off sick with long COVID or on compassionate leave with relatives to bury whose economic contributions will be curtailed.

We can't stop living our lives because a minority becomes sick.

A minority of a big number is still a big number. If your kid got sick due to one of many other illnesses, what type of response from hospitals do you want? What kind of staff do you want saving your child's life?

I am in an area top 5 for rates, you would not want your child to need care at our local hospital right now. Consider your lucky situation if it allows you sleep peacefully, but that doesn't stop large amounts of people needing hospital care right now. Many are grateful they have a life left to live thanks to the care/interventions they receive there.

How do people even think they could live normally during this crisis?

OP, I completely agree, and it's good to hear the sanity and common sense on this thread.