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.

@Belladonna12

Don't they? My firstborn was mixing from a few weeks old! As soon as she was able to she and other babies were swapping snot and eating dirt together. I was under the impression that acquired immunity was a pretty mainstream scientific theory, and the hygiene hypothesis is one quite mainstream theory behind the rise in childhood allergies?

Just because your firstborn was mixing it doesn't mean they all were! Mine didn't mix with other babies. They started mixing with toddlers at nursery at about two. They are young adults now with no allergies and perfectly healthy immune systems.

Yes but they must have mixed with other adults, family members?

I mean anecdotally my DD is the same - super bouncy immune system, brushes stuff off, no allergies.

But acquired immunity is a pretty mainstream theory no?

@flaxmeadow

www.pri.org/stories/2020-11-12/italys-coronavirus-response-was-role-model-europe-what-went-wrong

Pictures like that are shown to terrify people. Italy have imposed a v strict lockdown, with mandated masks and curfews and economies shut down. Why has it not worked if lockdowns are so brilliant?

Italy also have a v elderly population. They live in inter-generational households. There are different factors at play for each country.

17days because death rates (no matter that the vast majority of people sadly dying with Covid as the ultimate cause of their death were likely to have died in the next few years anyway) will be a mark by the governments name forever. The world is in competition to have the lowest death rates/ best for track/ trace/ vaccinations. The hit to the economy will play out longer term. Covid will go down in history with this government. That’s what they care about.

All that money given to his mates for track and trace should have been shoved to the NHS instead. Maybe then we wouldn’t have a problem and have a better health service for it?

@hollyangel

The WHO don't say lockdowns should never be used. They say they should be a last resort and nations should get their track and trace, quarantine systems in order, and their population compliant with social distancing etc. When that doesn't happen then lockdowns might be the only way to suppress the growth of the virus. Which is what has happened in the UK and many other countries

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/02/covid-lockdowns-are-cost-of-self-isolation-failures-says-who-expert

Pictures like that are shown to terrify people. Italy have imposed a v strict lockdown, with mandated masks and curfews and economies shut down. Why has it not worked if lockdowns are so brilliant?

Italy also have a v elderly population. They live in inter-generational households. There are different factors at play for each country.

If you could answer my question please

If that could happen under lockdown, what would have happened without a lockdown?

@Flaxmeadow

This was a Naples hospital last month. A traffic jam near a hospital where extremely sick people were being given oxygen in cars. Inside the hospital the dying were on floors unattended to in corridors. A man is found dead in a toilet

This happened in a European country with one of the best healthcare systems in the world. It happened under lockdown measures.

If this can happen under lockdown measures. What do people think would happen WITHOUT lockdown measures?

Without lockdowns and restrictions the situation would be far far worse.

Where did that first picture come from as it looks to be a test site in Turin (where Nichelino is)

Why haven't the gov spent the billions they've thrown at everything BUT the health service, on the NHS? ... How about they spend a few billions on undoing the decades of under-funding (by all governments) and dismantling the top-heavy management?

For the same reason that they failed to stockpile PPE for future pandemics in line with WHO advice - because there are always vested interests who want the funds spent on them instead

The same applies to improved funding of frontline services in future; it won't happen because they'd rather focus on the latest exciting headline-grabber, even if it doesn't help (see Nightingale hospitals, etc, etc)

The issue is that the government are damned if they do and damned if they don't, either way the media are going to blame them and not the people who continue to ignore the rules etc.
The first lockdown was too long, project fear was too effective so now we're all screwed because everyone is terrified that they'll catch it and be fine but pass it onto someone else. Personally I think lockdown should be based on peoples risk so that the economy at least keeps going slightly.

@chickenqueen

think they would if they saw more friends and relatives become very sick with it - one of my flatmates (a 28 year old) was incredibly ill with it and is still not recovered 6 weeks later. My partners Mum was hospitalised. Seeing the virus first hand has scared me, so stands to logic if more people had more first hand experience of it, they would be scared.

The anecdotal evidence seems to fluctuate on here between 'I know lots of people who were v ill/died from it' to ' I know know one who died and anyone who had it was fine?'

I know a handful of people who had it and none who were ill with it and none who died. I always envisaged a pandemic as one that would kill indiscriminately, man/woman and child. Not just some of the elderly and ill.

Flaxmeadow

If that could happen under lockdown, what would have happened without a lockdown

Probably less deaths

I feel like the government incompetence is to demonstrate the NHS isn't fit for purpose so they'll privatise what's left of it under the excuse that it couldn't cope with covid, all while people stand on their doorsteps waving 'save the NHS' flags.

I am far from a lockdown fan. I think the government has been incredibly and criminally lax in their handling of the whole thing and their failure to get systems in place which might mean lockdowns were not needed. And in the case of the first wave, their failure to lock down sooner when it was clear things were getting out of control.

I just cannot see a solution. There is no win either way. But at least with some containment society can keep functioning at some level and so we must keep containing. It's crap and I hate it as much as anyone.

@ImPrincessAurora

I’m at the stage where I agree.

I’ve just been to visit a friend. They won’t come to the door because they are afraid of the virus. They won’t leave the house to shop. They wfh. They are almost completely isolated. They have no underlying risk factors.

We had a conversation with her leaning through an upstairs window.

The entire time I was worried someone might report me because we are in a tier 4 area and they may deem it ‘unnecessary travel’ as I was in my car.

Awful.

Reading this just made me feel suddenly so sad. What has happened to our society? :(

I think the same @Vintagevixen. I think people without babies during this time misunderstand when we say 'not mixing'. We dont mean nursery. Babies born this year literally see nobody. You have nobody coming to visit when the baby is born, you dont go see friends or your parents, you dont take them to the shops or out for a coffee, they arent held by their aunt or kissed by their cousins. Nothing. They literally arent touched by another human bar you and your partner for their entire lives. That cant be good for them. Humans are designed to interact. They learn from seeing people and places, and their bodies learn from the germs they are exposed to in the general world, and they do most of their learning in the first 3 years. But these babies have no access to the general world. No matter what way you look at it, that's wrong.

@17days

The question to OP and those who agree with her is simple: If letting the virus do its thing with no restriction is significantly better for the economy, then why is the government—who are advised by expert epidemiologists, economists, etc. rather than social media commenters—choosing lockdowns and other containment measures instead? Sheer benevolence? You think they care about the deaths of a few hundred thousand people more than they care about the economy?

This. So much this.

@Iknewyouwerewaitingforme

Flaxmeadow this is scaremongering without revealing the much bigger more complicated picture. Below from this article - www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/coronavirus-clinics-in-naples-italy-on-the-brink-of-collapse/a-55703503 “Naples and its region is paying dearly for the government's budget cuts many doctors say. Several hospitals have been privatized while public clinics have downsized their medical staff and physicians. They were overworked even before the pandemic hit.”

The first pictures a test site in turin anyway, not a traffic jam for medical assistance in Naples.

Icebear99 totally agree lockdown should be based on people’s risk/ levels of vulnerability.

InterfectoremVulpes

news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-people-with-suspected-covid-19-receive-oxygen-in-cars-after-italian-hospital-overwhelmed-12128992

@MummaBear4321

I think the same *@Vintagevixen*. I think people without babies during this time misunderstand when we say 'not mixing'. We dont mean nursery. Babies born this year literally see nobody. You have nobody coming to visit when the baby is born, you dont go see friends or your parents, you dont take them to the shops or out for a coffee, they arent held by their aunt or kissed by their cousins. Nothing. They literally arent touched by another human bar you and your partner for their entire lives. That cant be good for them. Humans are designed to interact. They learn from seeing people and places, and their bodies learn from the germs they are exposed to in the general world, and they do most of their learning in the first 3 years. But these babies have no access to the general world. No matter what way you look at it, that's wrong.

Yes very sad isn't it.

I am so glad I no longer have young children during all this mess - I remember how a Monday coffee at a baby group used to save my sanity when on my knees with exhaustion. My mum used to come up once a week, cook me dinner, hold my DD so I could get a nap and the thought of that kept me going throughout the week.

I have every sympathy for anyone who has had a new baby this year.

@flaxmeadow The media have a lot to answer for.

I was v ill with in December 2019. I am a v healthy 30 year old. Advice was to stay home and rest, not to go to the GP with suspected flu. By day 4 I finally had to go to the emergency out of hours as I had struggled through 4 nights where I coughed /had chest pain and struggled to catch my breath. The doctor diagnosed me with flu(without a swab) and also a chest
Infection for which he gave me steroids for. I was ill for the entire month of December, but the steroids definitely helped.

Now, had i been that ill in the hype and hysteria of Covid in March 2020 , not being able to breath in the night and coughing, there is a strong likelihood I would've thought I needed hospital treatment. I may even have called an ambulance. Amplify that out to millions of people across the world, older than me/sicker than me all feeling like they needed hospital treatment and
I could totally see how a health system could be artificially overwhelmed with patients who don't need a hospital.

Totally agree OP. It's absolutely crazy!

OP, I haven't rtft but I found this interesting and reassuring to know we have done it this way before and lived to tell the stories.
www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/how-cities-flattened-curve-1918-spanish-flu-pandemic-coronavirus/

Probably less deaths

You seriously think that without lockdown there would have been less covid deaths?

@17days I don't believe in doing nothing. But I don't believe we should be asking businesses to close. I think it is costing us a lot for very little benefit. I am in favour of masks ( not sure how well they work but they don't seem very harmful) and social distancing in shops and other indoor spaces.

I don't know why so many governments have gone down this route. As from the title of my OP it seems to me to be a sort of collective insanity. I think they will write about it and study it in the future.