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.

No country in the world has achieved 500k deaths, even countries that have let it run and that have much larger populations than us.

Covid has clearly been around for a lot longer than we thought. uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-science/coronavirus-traces-found-in-march-2019-sewage-sample-spanish-study-shows-idUKKBN23X2HQ

So why no excess deaths/overrun hospitals/bodies piling up in all that time? Why do the excess deaths in the UK coincide with lockdowns? Perhaps because lockdowns harm more lives than they save.

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

No. It. Wouldn't.

Oh ? How not?

Many countries the excess deaths have not yet been counted

@midgebabe

Oh ? How not?

Many countries the excess deaths have not yet been counted

You're clutching at straws now. As a scientist you should know about evidence based thinking.

Another troll?

I mean, we're literally rolling a vaccine out right now so letting it rip through the population seems a silly policy to adopt at this point.

No one is talking of letting it rip, even those who have doubts about our current restrictions.

[quote LivinLaVidaLoki]@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.[/quote]
You misunderstand me. I mean the restrictions aren’t here because of the deaths but because of the sheer number of people who would need hospital treatment.
This then leads to more deaths when hospitals are overwhelmed.
That’s what I don’t understand that people don’t understand

Also in many cultures, South American countries as an example, death is something not to be afraid of. They accept it and celebrate it amongst their elderly folk.

This is actual horseshit.

@outofthemoon
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.

You're banging on about something totally different. Measles has a vaccine - as you stated.
Why would the world need to be disrupted to any extent when there is a vaccine????

Let's be fair, the fact that many countries are happily buying guns instead of vaccines is none of my concern. Will it affect me? No. Can I do anything about it: no.

Yes, it's a shame, but has nothing to to with the covid situation whatsoever.

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

I agree. Currently nearly 20,000 covid positive people in hospital beds, more than 1300 on ventilators in England. These figures represent approximately 11% of acute bed capacity (total acute bed capacity approx 170,000 which includes mental health and maternity) and 32% of our intensive care capacity, assuming all ventilated patients are in ICU. These are the figures we have WITH restrictions. 2,110,314 cases nationally, to date, according to today's figures and 68,307 deaths means 3.2% (hope I've done the maths correctly) of people who tested positive have died. This time last week our case numbers, by date reported, were 18,450 and today 36,804.

How many elective procedures have been cancelled to make capacity for C19 patients? If we simply shielded the vulnerable and everyone else went back to normal what would happen to C19 admission rates and where would you look after those patients if not in current facilities. Creating physical facilities is all very well but who will staff it?

I understand the points being made in this thread but what are the alternative solutions. I don't think I could support any proposal which left people dying alone at home and if we don't attempt to control infection rates how will we avoid that happening to people who need hospitalisation for covid and non covid care.

@vickyp0llard

No country in the world has achieved 500k deaths, even countries that have let it run and that have much larger populations than us.

Covid has clearly been around for a lot longer than we thought. uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-science/coronavirus-traces-found-in-march-2019-sewage-sample-spanish-study-shows-idUKKBN23X2HQ

So why no excess deaths/overrun hospitals/bodies piling up in all that time? Why do the excess deaths in the UK coincide with lockdowns? Perhaps because lockdowns harm more lives than they save.

That’s one positive pcr test from one sample. Could quite easily be contamination in the lab.

@BeanToCup

I mean, we're literally rolling a vaccine out right now so letting it rip through the population seems a silly policy to adopt at this point.

I don't think we are rolling out a vaccine that will stop it ripping. As I understand it, it will make it a much less deadly disease for those people for whom it would have been deadly.

Otherwise, it will still, as you put it, rip.

(And mutate, while ripping, because it's a virus and that's what they do.)

The bit I find insane is not vaccinating all our key health care staff first.

The whole point about Covid is that it risks running the health service to the ground because of health service staff isolating and treating Covid patients at the expense of other patients with diseases just as serious or even more serious.

I am even happy to sacrifice my children’s education temporarily. The stay home mantra I see as trying to avoid things like additional road traffic accidents. A&E just can’t cope with additional Christmas drunks right now so I am happy to stay home.

Well you go and compare the excess deaths in Brazil between March and June and their reported covid deaths for the same time period and then call me a troll. And then try and get more recent data.

But it doesn't matter what evidence exists, you don't want to see , so you want

@FOJN

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

I agree. Currently nearly 20,000 covid positive people in hospital beds, more than 1300 on ventilators in England. These figures represent approximately 11% of acute bed capacity (total acute bed capacity approx 170,000 which includes mental health and maternity) and 32% of our intensive care capacity, assuming all ventilated patients are in ICU. These are the figures we have WITH restrictions. 2,110,314 cases nationally, to date, according to today's figures and 68,307 deaths means 3.2% (hope I've done the maths correctly) of people who tested positive have died. This time last week our case numbers, by date reported, were 18,450 and today 36,804.

How many elective procedures have been cancelled to make capacity for C19 patients? If we simply shielded the vulnerable and everyone else went back to normal what would happen to C19 admission rates and where would you look after those patients if not in current facilities. Creating physical facilities is all very well but who will staff it?

I understand the points being made in this thread but what are the alternative solutions. I don't think I could support any proposal which left people dying alone at home and if we don't attempt to control infection rates how will we avoid that happening to people who need hospitalisation for covid and non covid care.

Something like 23% of those caught Covid after admission for other procedures/treatments though.

So not all coming into hospital because of Covid.

The bit I find insane is not vaccinating all our key health care staff first.

It is insane although I do know quite a lot of NHS staff who were vaccinated last week.

Figures for lots of countries are iffy. Brazil, definitely. Also Russia - they've got doctors jumping out of windows there: ofc they're not telling the truth.

@FOJN
2,110,314 cases nationally, to date, according to today's figures and 68,307 deaths means 3.2% (hope I've done the maths correctly) of people who tested positive have died.

But the percentage quoted doesn't really mean anything considering that early on you only got tested if you needed hospital care.
One of the biggest fuck ups was not testing early on.

@Vintagevixen apparently its almost 33% in some areas now. Nosocomial infection is a big issue.

@midgebabe

Well you go and compare the excess deaths in Brazil between March and June and their reported covid deaths for the same time period and then call me a troll. And then try and get more recent data.

But it doesn't matter what evidence exists, you don't want to see , so you want

So a study of excess deaths in Brazil published on 21 October 2020 state excess deaths in Brazil of just over 118,000 above the expected mortality rate.

Undoubtedly Brazil is underreporting and many of these deaths are Covid related.

However that still doesn't make 500,000 and Brazil has a much larger population than us!

I would respectfully suggest you also don't want to see some things!

It’s total madness and utter lunacy how it’s being dealt with now. When they say tier 4 might not work?..tier 4 is everything shut! How the fuck can there be any more restrictions other than “everything shut”?

How come it’s growing now, DESPITE 9 months of restrictions, in what seems like a worse way than in early March when we did fuck all?!

And how is any of this “saving the NHS” going to work when no one has a job to pay taxes towards it any more? What a fucking shambles. It strikes me the NHS is fucked either way, if not by Covid then by the fact there’s no tax revenue to pay for it.

How come it’s growing now, DESPITE 9 months of restrictions, in what seems like a worse way than in early March when we did fuck all?!

As pps have said, because our testing and tracing isn't up to scratch and hasn't been throughout. We have no clue how many people caught it in March so we don't know what the numbers are re infections compared to deaths. Even now we aren't testing contacts, just people with one or more of three symptoms when it's already widely known that there are at least eight other symptoms and also there is asymptomatic transmission. So basically we don't know who's got it and who hasn't. So we can't control the spread. Countries who test like fuck and have done throughout have it largely under control now and because the testing infrastructure is already there can quickly move to squash any surges.

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

Why are people coming out with this bollocks?

There was much higher compliance with the first lockdown than anticipated. Is it over? Doesn’t look like it to me.

@MadameBlobby

It’s total madness and utter lunacy how it’s being dealt with now. When they say tier 4 might not work?..tier 4 is everything shut! How the fuck can there be any more restrictions other than “everything shut”?

How come it’s growing now, DESPITE 9 months of restrictions, in what seems like a worse way than in early March when we did fuck all?!

And how is any of this “saving the NHS” going to work when no one has a job to pay taxes towards it any more? What a fucking shambles. It strikes me the NHS is fucked either way, if not by Covid then by the fact there’s no tax revenue to pay for it.

We do need a robust economy to pay for the NHS. It's so worrying. Not sure what to make of it all really.

It's good to see others feel the same way. The world has gone crazy and if you disagree, you're a killer.