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.

I see this thread has continued with yet more bluster and demands and no concrete suggestions for alternatives in pandemic management.... shocking.

Fact is we can all point out massive failings and suffering but as yet no viable solution outside of what we’re currently doing has been found.

The Barrington Declaration is probably the closet we’ve come to representing an alternative and it’s full of holes and unworkable theories. Might as well all just wish really hard at 9pm on Christmas Eve.

@Wishing14

Just because people are questioning the rules and the wider future impact they may have on lives for generations does not mean they are breaking them, or meeting their mates indoors to ‘stick it to the man’.

I'm talking to/about those who are doing that though.

A quote from vickyp0llard earlier in the thread:

I completely agree, it's mad and I haven't been following any rules since about May.

vickyp0llard

Yes, exactly that. And these insanely overprivileged 1st world views of life are a shame on us all.

I love my kids more than anything in the world. Like every other parent on here, I would give my last penny to save their health, mental and physical. And I believe so would the parents of those 140,000.

This is totally out of perspective now. I don't want my 87 year old mum to die. I don't want Frankly321 s family to suffer. I would choose a world with no suffering. But what we have spent to save our skins, including those 315 lost with no underlying causes would have save 10s of 1000s in other countries.

I know there are lots of people questioning things but still taking the precautions. Questioning is good.

Wasn't it discovered that a lot of people were dying at home due to heart attacks, strokes etc because they were too afraid to go to hospital? It had been painted that you would either get covid and die or that it was so overwhelmed you weren't welcome, so people just weren't going. It's why Powys kept coming onto the briefings to reiterate the "NHS is still open for business"

Yes, that is what researchers have suggested is a key reason for the excess deaths during the Covid pandemic from cardiovascular disease, @LivinLaVidaLoki

"everyone should stay home unless you're a keyworker"
Translation "I wanna stay home, you keep putting yourself at risk so that my decision to stay home doesn't inconvenience me in any way"

I agree, imagine if the money the world has spent on Covid (vaccine, but also everything else) had been spent on cancer research. For example.

no concrete suggestions for alternatives in pandemic management.... shocking.

My suggestion? Get back to normal. Accept there although there might be slightly more deaths, this is overall a mild disease. There is no evidence for the "we saved 500,000 deaths" - that was based on modelling from a scientist who has a history of over-predicting every pandemic by a scale of thousands. He assumed a high IFR and also no pre-existing immunity, which we now know may not be the case, as exposure to previous coronaviruses may offer immunity to Covid. Also no evidence that hospitals would be overrun; this has happened in very few countries, not even in the ones that did barely any lockdown. Full hospitals are a reality every year in the UK.

Several countries, like Spain, have found samples of Covid in sewer water dating back to early 2019 - suggesting the virus had been around and circulating a long time before the whistle was blown in Wuhan, yet no-one noticed anything. Wuhan was definitely not ground 0, they just sounded the alarm. If there was no media hype, it would have been put down to a bad pneumonia year.

We have gone insane but not I. The way you think.

It would all be over really quite quickly if everyone had stuck to the bloody rules.

I had to drive through our local town (tier 3 area) on the way to get a COVID test. It was heaving. Barely anyone was wearing a mask. People weren’t social distancing and were out in groups of four or five. There were whole families out having a browse around the shops.

This is why we are in such a mess. The stupid halfway house rules lead people to make their own assessments and get it stupidly wrong.

We didn’t lockdown fully or for long enough in the first place. Then we piled everyone back into schools and pubs and declared them ‘COVID SECURE’.

It’s a horrible combination of extreme bloody mindedness and incompetence.

I agree, imagine if the money the world has spent on Covid (vaccine, but also everything else) had been spent on cancer research. For example.

Or vaccines/antibiotics for totally treatable diseases that kill millions of children abroad. Hell, with all this money we could have saved or improved so many more lives worldwide - instead we've spent it on ruining most people's lives to save a few, and even that is speculation, as every country regardless of policy has ended up with a very similar per-capita death rate.

@TempsPerdu

We know that there are around 315 people under 60 with no health conditions who have died of COVID. That is 315 people leaving behind DC and partners. These people are collateral damage in the far-right prioritisation of the economy over lives. If the government had implemented a strict lockdown all year where no-one leaves home unless a key worker (enforced by the army and £5000 fines), 315 healthy parents and grandparents would have survived

So let me get this right... we lock down nigh on 67 million mostly healthy people for the best part of a year in order to save 315 lives?
I’m assuming you’re a troll as the alternative - that some people genuinely think this way - is just utterly terrifying.

Were they only worth saving if they were parents/grandparents? Kind of harsh, to imply that childless peoples' lives are worth less, hmm...

It's pretty clear from the data we have now that the 500000 deaths figure would be an underestimate

Nationally, we haven't infected a10% proportion of the population yet are at around 80000 excess deaths ...

And once you get to that level of excess deaths in a short space of time so much else gets fucked up

Which you clearly can't understand

It's not locking down to save the people who have died, it's to save the people who would have died.

Also no evidence that hospitals would be overrun; this has happened in very few countries, not even in the ones that did barely any lockdown. Full hospitals are a reality every year in the UK

You think wards full of people all admitted for the same thing is normal? (Currently four wards in the hospital I work in)

OP I agree with you, and every other sensible person this thread.
Same here!
I am finding done of these posts truly terrifyingly lacking in any sense of proportion.
And completely agree @BrokenBaskets about malaria and other parasitical diseases that kill far more and younger people and the west doesn’t even notice.

Also I don't understand this blame game, implying that anyone who gets it deserved to have got it cos they're obviously breaking the rules. Except if you get it, then it's because someone else has broke the rules.

But....if its all down to the rules, then how are people in hospital getting it?
Current information states that up to 33% of people in hospital with covid got it in the hospital (depending where you are).
Now I'm guessing they are socially distancing, wearing masks and not having illegal raves in there, so whose fault is it that they got it?

@EmmanuelleMakro

OP I agree with you 100% -shame there is no voting function on here!

I put it on AIBU with voting but MNHQ moved it here and wouldn't move it back again when I asked them to.

It’s not about the deaths! I’m sorry but I just don’t get why people don’t get it.

I agree. I see mad things all the time. People who claim to be scared but will do riskier things when it suits them and then behave very strangely.
Not allowing 10 year olds to go on scooters in lockdown 1 to reduce chance if needing a&e (child is overweight)
Having hairdresser do hair in house, children however not been within 2 metres of grandparents since March
Another thread wanting newspapers to be non essential because its an excuse to go shopping.
I'm just so done with it all. I feel like none of the sacrifices make any sodding differences we are just ruining the economy and messing up our futures for mainly 90 year olds dying. I know that sounds harsh but I'd take 90 right now!

@JS87

It’s not about the deaths! I’m sorry but I just don’t get why people don’t get it.

I can understand how some people struggle to get it given that the daily death count was a staple of tea time television for so long and that its still published like headline news every day.

@JS87 and particularly with hancock and Sturgeon shouting about 1 death being 1 death too many.

We've been gaslighted and emotionally blackmailed into a situation that no one knows how to get us out of anymore.

@BrokenBaskets

It's interesting the hysteria around a virus that kills wealthy westerners including large numbers of white people.

Other diseases which kill poor people in developing countries such as malaria don't "shut the world". Malaria killed over 400,000 people in 2019.

Covid has obviously killed more in one year although cumulatively malaria's total will be far larger as it has been around so long.

But then malaria kills children in large numbers and there is less money to be made from saving poor black children.

Thankfully a vaccine for this disease looks likely and is starting phase 3 trials.

Makes you think.

Ok, let's start at the top.

1. Malaria has prevention methods. Eg. tablets. - Covid:no
2. You can cure malaria - Covid: no
3. The theory that you are advocating is pure bs. Covid kills regardless of color, and mostly doesn't give a shit about wealth. Actually the wealthy are least likely to die as they can self isolate on their islands.
4. "less money to be made from saving poor black children" if it was only about this then there would be no worldwide polio/chickenpox/etc vaccination programs.

No, the world is not about a huge conspiracy to kill poor black children. That is just bollocks in this form.

@midgebabe

It's pretty clear from the data we have now that the 500000 deaths figure would be an underestimate

Nationally, we haven't infected a10% proportion of the population yet are at around 80000 excess deaths ...

And once you get to that level of excess deaths in a short space of time so much else gets fucked up

Which you clearly can't understand

Really? Brazil have pretty much let it run and haven't achieved 500,000 deaths - currently 187,000. Neil Fergusons numbers have been widely debunked anyway, which you should know if you're a scientist.

We have no idea how many have been infected - antibody testing after the fact is not reliable. Many people have likely fought it off with T cell response therefore levels of circulating antibodies are immeasurable. My own bro and his family all had it - he and his wife have antibodies, his teen daughters do not.

We don't really know if 10% have had it, or 30 % or 100%!

Plus if you know anything about the immune system you know anti-bodies fade after time, and the other sections of the immune system keep blueprints to pump out If the same pathogen infects you.

Is that understandable?

@midgebabe

It's pretty clear from the data we have now that the 500000 deaths figure would be an underestimate

Nationally, we haven't infected a10% proportion of the population yet are at around 80000 excess deaths ...

And once you get to that level of excess deaths in a short space of time so much else gets fucked up

Which you clearly can't understand

I do understand, I think.

So if whole population infected, 10 times as many deaths?

ie. and according to Frankly321 10 times as many people under 60 with no known pre-existing health conditions.

So not 315, but 3150?

Very sad, but even so I put to you again the 140,000 children who died last year of measles for want of a 50pence vaccine.

@midgebabe

It's pretty clear from the data we have now that the 500000 deaths figure would be an underestimate

Nationally, we haven't infected a10% proportion of the population yet are at around 80000 excess deaths ...

And once you get to that level of excess deaths in a short space of time so much else gets fucked up

Which you clearly can't understand

There’s no way we would have half a million deaths from covid