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.

So 12 million people will have to make their own arrangements and take their chances.

This is a global problem. Even if one country does eradicate it, they can't lock themselves away forever, they will have contact with people that do at some point. It will be global whack-a-mole. Boris and his team have been woeful, wishy washy, misleading and dithery, but the reality is nobody knows how to handle this. There have been strange things like the Eat Out scheme, dodgy timing, suspect stats, cock ups - does not fill you with confidence. But at some point we need to say enough.

The vulnerable will have to do a personal risk assessment on how they want to live, either as normal and take their chances or shielded. The rest of us will have to crack on and take our chances too. All sorts of illnesses are not being treated or caught, people's mental health is taking a dive as fast as the economy. Prospects are bleak, particularly with BREXIT on the horizon.

I think the wish for a police state are worrying. I think they are two words bandied around without any thought for their meaning.

I think we are all going to get it anyway

It will take about a year for everyone to get the vaccine. With lockdowns we can hope that total deaths in the coming year won't be much more than in the past year. So that means 80% of people who would have died will survive. 80% surviving means 80% of the population not getting it. So what you think is wrong.

The death rate is lower than 1% as well especially among the younger population

The wooliness of this statement shows you aren't really thinking. I assume you don't mean to imply some deaths are irrelevant, so the death rate amongst the younger population is irrelevant. If you have a better and hugely different statistic than mine for the death rate of the whole population, please post a link.

There was a post on another thread, in which a woman said that she and her family (husband, kids 9 and 12, none of them clinically vulnerable) hadn’t left the house since March! It’s scary what insanity has gripped the nation.

Totally with you, OP

Agree. People are insane and it feels like for the last four years, since Brexit and Trump and everything else, that we're living in a parallel universe. I can only think that a time traveller has corrupted the timeline, because none of this makes sense.

Starting to agree. It’s a fear frenzy.

@Derelictwreck I haven't seen the analysis of how many lives we think we have saved versus what we have spent? I don't think it has been produced. I think some MPs were asking for the impact analysis of the tiers but didn't get one.

Actually we do this analysis all the time for cancer drugs. Personally I think that there are a lot of things we could do for far less expense and loss to civil liberties that would save more lives than our anti covid measures.

• Fund and resource the health service properly
• Ban smoking
• Stop polluting vehicles

There are probably other things too, related to obesity and sugar consumption.

Most sensible post I have ever read about Covid and the madness we are in. I whole heartedly agree with every word. Thank you for being able to put into words exactly how I feel about the whole fiasco.

I totally agree OP. It's been utter madness at such an expense to our economy and education of our children.

I disagree with you, and contrary to someone who said your POV won't be popular on here, I'm sure you're going to find loads of people who agree with you and think we should just let it run rampant etc.

I do completely agree, however, that we should have thrown everything at health and education to bolster it while we had a bit of respite and not idiot schemes like Eat Out To Help Out.

All those saying they want to live in a police state - I can guarantee one thing: they have never actually lived in a police state (although there are several that you'd probably be welcome to move to).

The thing with police states is that you don't get to choose which of their policies they clamp down hard on. They might happen to align with your own chosen strictness on responses to COVID, but when they start to tell you that you aren't allowed to have any more children, or that the population is dipping, so you are required to have a child and stay at home to look after them; or that there is a need for more refuse collectors, so you are required to move from your job as a solicitor and take a big pay cut to become a bin (wo)man; or that your political views are the wrong ones so you need to denounce them or otherwise be sent to prison for re-education.

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety"

The PP upthread who cited this quote was bang on - it's terrifying how many people there are out there queuing up to tell Big Brother just how much they love him.

@Derelictwreck there has been no cost benefit analysis shared with the public, whilst the Grover has paid lip service to the effect on the economy no studies have been commissioned.

The NHS is built on a cost benefit system. Every single drug and treatment is assessed by NICE, many many drugs and treatments are turned down each year because they are too expensive.

The government have just lost their head with COVID. Boris is scared silly that he will be accused of having blood on his hands like Tony Blair was. How many cancer deaths could be saved if we had spent the billions which have been spent on COVID on cancer reasearch and treatment I wonder.

I simply don't believe that people have not left their house since March. Unless they are bedbound or clinically insane, they must have.

Totally with you OP. We have lost our collective minds.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

All those saying they want to live in a police state - I can guarantee one thing: they have never actually lived in a police state (although there are several that you'd probably be welcome to move to).

The thing with police states is that you don't get to choose which of their policies they clamp down hard on. They might happen to align with your own chosen strictness on responses to COVID, but when they start to tell you that you aren't allowed to have any more children, or that the population is dipping, so you are required to have a child and stay at home to look after them; or that there is a need for more refuse collectors, so you are required to move from your job as a solicitor and take a big pay cut to become a bin (wo)man; or that your political views are the wrong ones so you need to denounce them or otherwise be sent to prison for re-education.

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety"

The PP upthread who cited this quote was bang on - it's terrifying how many people there are out there queuing up to tell Big Brother just how much they love him.

100%. Its alarming.

Don’t forget of course, no one’s taking about flu this year because all the things that prevent Covid spreading, prevent flu spreading. And spread of all contagious diseases will be down. That’s why we don’t have a huge spike in death rates - because we’ve taken action. It wouldn’t be the case if we’d let it run rampant from the start.

I don't agree with you OP. If we had a competent government who had responded in time, the economic and social impact could have been significantly less, as well as fewer cases and deaths.

yetanothernamitynamchange That's a really good post. Last week the number of deaths in Germany was greater than across the UK. Countries that have had different policies to the governments in the UK are still struggling. Wales has had stricter policies than England but still has a huge number of cases and there are huge pressures on hospitals in Wales. It's easy to say 'protect the vulnerable and carry on' but the data on long covid show you should never assume you will be ok if you are not clinically vulnerable.

Lots of things have not been handled well in England - especially track and trace. However, the roll out for the vaccine is going well so far. The analogy with cancer saving drugs doesn't work for me. We can estimate the costs of cancer accurately and the number of new cases each year is fairly stable. For coronavirus, the costs very wildly, from those who recover at home after a few days to those who need intensive care. The real failing for me is in public information and the measures we can take to mitigate transmission. I saw a tweet last week from someone dismissing the advice about ventilation that got lots of likes. That is where we need to put our efforts.

I remember, right at the start, the message being: For most, it will be like a mild cold.
I appreciate that there has been deaths and complications for many.
However, that can be caused by the flu every single year.

We need to save the nhs. If we let the virus run wild the nhs will be overwhelmed and hospitals will be unable to treat people with and without Covid

Even when we didn’t have people with Covid in the hospitals it was still virtually impossible to get treatment.
The NHS hasn’t treated our family members for years. (And not for want of trying)

We have ended up going private. It has wiped out any savings we had but we are alive and I am not in agonising pain.
My diagnosis was I needed a new knee, but wouldn’t get one till I was 60 so I would have to put up with the pain for the next 20 years.

No amount of protesting that there was nothing wrong with my knees helped. Eventually after walking (shuffling) around for 7 years I went private and within 15 minutes of a consultation got diagnosed with a slipped disc.

How can the NHS doctors and consultants get it so wrong.
Probably because they think they are God and don’t listen

If you look at the ONS data for causes of death March to June, the peak of our Covid deaths, Covid was the 3rd on the list for cause of death, after 1) dementia/Alzheimer’s 2) heart disease.

What has the government spent on fighting dementia and Alzheimer’s and yet nobody talk about it. I havnt noticed a campaign for keeping our heart healthy, what to do to avoid heart disease. Does the BBC give us a daily news bulletin in solemn voices of the daily dementia deaths or heart disease deaths, no not a mention, just a complete obsession with Covid while all other health conditions are ignored.

Why, why I’d nobody questioning any of this, is it just because we are all used to heart disease and it isn’t new and newsworthy where as Covid is new. I wonder who is pulling the strings here the govt or the media. The MSM media talked of nothing else but Brexit for 2 years until Covid came along, suddenly Brexit has barely mentioned and the whole news bulletins are all about Covid. Will they talk about Covid until their next obsession at which point will the government finally change policy?

Just read on another thread shut a school that has had only 2 cases since September since that's how it spreads....the fact that those 2 cases never spread is irrelevant to the hysterical shut everything brigade.
Some would be happy to stay at home forever in fear. Some appear to.love the misery.