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.

Agree 100%

I agree with you OP

Agreed. The genie is out of the botltle and we can't live in and out of lockdown with no end in sight. Or maybe that's the plan now , either way my DC mental health suffered so much when schools were last closed and to go through that again would be awful.

The part that seems the most mad is even now there are vaccines (which is amazing really) we are being told that no, it’s not enough to keep us safe. Yes, it will take some more time to get those vaccinated that need the protection the most but once that is done the rest of us should have the freedom to resume our normal lives and those that wish to hide at home forever (despite not being vulnerable) will be free to do so.

Don’t forget that efficacy of the flu vaccine varies wildly from year to year.

@Bagamoyo1

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.

Wow.... Imagine what damage that is doing to the mental health of the children....teaching them to be fearful of something that since healthy they will barely notice they have

What you are advocating is the Swedish model (going for herd immunity). They are now, basically, fucked. I'll forgive you your ignorance if you read this www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/20/as-covid-death-toll-soars-ever-higher-sweden-wonders-who-to-blame then return to the thread and apologise for spreading a false narrative.

@FitterHappierMoreProductive not true, this most susceptible to death from Covid are the same people are the most susceptible to death from flu. They are both respiratory viruses. Flu does not generally kill the young and fit and nor does Covid. You can only die once and the majority of this dying from Covid are dying from Covid instead of from something else, this is why there is not a huge spike in total deaths, if there had not been a lockdown there wouldn’t have been one group dying from Covid and still the normal group dying from flu as your post is suggesting.

This new strain puts it in a different light. It becomes more difficult to use current tools. So look at whether to keep them before attempting it. We can spiral ourselves into tighter lock downs but the damage mounts and becomes more extreme.

That's a very good point, OP, about the NHS refusing to fund expensive drugs and procedures that might only extend somebody's life by a very short time. Don't forget that any death within four weeks of a positive test is assigned as a COVID death - even if you fall off a cliff or get hit by a lorry three weeks after testing positive - or, as will have been the case for far more people, you were already very elderly and/or ill and close to death, and COVID took you over the edge in the same way that any bad cold/flu/UTI/minor bump might have done.

It's a bit like the cancer statistics, where we're told that one in two of us will get cancer in our lifetimes, but what they don't make clear is that many of those people will be very, very old before they do. We all have to eventually die of something and, in many cases, it's actually a testament to advances in healthcare that people will survive other illnesses and conditions, which in earlier times would have killed them, to live long enough so that they die of cancer instead, maybe 20 years later.

@Bagamoyo1

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.

I don't think you can seriously claim that insanity has "gripped the nation" because of an anecdote about one family going over the top.

OP I am so relieved to see this post

I wish MN had a way of marking favourite conversations so you knew where was safe territory. The hysteria is astonishing.

And who is going to pay for this? I live in a big block of flats and a few people are already in arrears because their jobs went.

Scuba dive, l think l said l wanted to get on top of track and testing like the Far East. I think they’ve done a great job of it, and that is the way forward. But they need access to data that is prohibited in this country. But if it could be allowed for 6 months then l think we could go some way to get on top of it.

I think waiting for ever for a vaccine is soul destroying.

@Bagamoyo1

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.

No word of a lie, I know a family exactly like this. Primary aged children and not one member of that family has left the house since the end of February. Everything that is delivered to the house is put into a separate room to quarantine for 3 days before they are allowed to use it. I dread to think of the mental health implications on the children.

@scubadive and @PlumsAreNotTheOnlyFruit

I agree that coverage has been poor, though to be fair the part I quoted was asking IF the analysis had been done, not if it had been shared.

I can tell you it is being done and actually, there is a world of difference between 'is the analysis being done' and 'have the government commissioned it'. Civil Servants, academics and researchers up and down the country have been doing this work since before the first lockdown. See the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the major research funders at UKRI, Nuffield Foundation, Wellcome Trust, the learned societies and National Academies. Most of whom have specialist funds set up before March to fund academics to do their own research.

There is also work taking place inside departments. DHSC have been working on QALYS (quality of life assessments) all the way though weighing up economic costings, not the mention their analysis on PPE and treatments. Plus all the other central departments and bodies like SAGE. It's been a very busy year.

There is also work commissioned by the government, some of which is out - see the AMS work 'The Winter Report' - and more to come, but much of which isn't publicly known about/picked up in the media until it is published. And it takes time to do! But before it gets published it is constantly being fed into government to help inform decisions. Whether or not they listen is on them.

There are currently 90,000 (ish) nursing students who need to complete a certain number of hours placement to qualify.

Due to the 1st lockdown, many placements for the 1st and 2nd year students were cancelled and they did the academic work online, being advised they would do extra placements in this school year instead.

Many departments have now decided that having extra people around increases the transmission risks so they won't take the student nurses on placement.

This means they will be delayed from qualifying and we can't get them into the NHS to increase capacity.

It's a lose lose situation.

I just want to run away from this madness. But there’s nowhere left to run to. And even if there was we’re locked on our little island now. All doors are shut.

@Collaborate

What you are advocating is the Swedish model (going for herd immunity). They are now, basically, fucked. I'll forgive you your ignorance if you read this www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/20/as-covid-death-toll-soars-ever-higher-sweden-wonders-who-to-blame then return to the thread and apologise for spreading a false narrative.

Sweden aren’t fucked and this article doesn’t say that at all.

“Fucked” is when you’ve screwed your economy beyond recognition, I don’t think they’ve done that.

I agree that people should be able to go about their business ONLY IF they agree not to go to hospital if they catch it.

Exceptions: medical staff, care home staff, school staff, grocery worker staff, police, firefighters, etc ... essentially essential workers who everyone wants to do their job so they can do theirs, and continue to live their lives as if nothing has changed.

It has. And people aren't taking it seriously enough. They want to keep socialising, eating out, shopping as a hobby, go to bars/pubs/clubs ... AND go the hospital if they get sick with it. I don't think you can have it both ways.

if you really believe this bullshit and are not russian bots spreading disinformation then you must have had your heads buried in the sand all year.

1. Countries that control the virus have less economic damage.

1. Long covid is real and allowing the virus to run riot means a lot of people with life altering disability as well as more deaths.

1. Unless you inject them with something to put them out of their misery your plan would result in tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people dying with no medical care. This will include many of the cancer sufferers you claim to be concerned about.

1. Many nurses are already talking of leaving, in parts of the world health care staff have gone on strike. Apart from those who died there will be staff who no longer want to work in a health system that requires them to watch tens or hundreds of thousands die in misery.

1. No country has been able to protect the vulnerable, we are trying to do that with vaccinations.

1. The government has made a total shambles of dealing with this. As you are so concerned about businesses you probably voted for them. Pity more people didnt vote to fund the NHS properly or for a government that would have bought PPE.

Totally agree, OP!

Of course, I agree with the need of wearing masks, social distancing, and generally taking care of yourself & others. But so many jobs have been lost, so many industries are down the drain, not to mention education! It's ridiculous

Totally agree with you OP.

I've just checked and the average age of all deaths in the UK is 78 and the average age of Covid deaths is 80.

See table 1 data here

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/adhocs/12676averageageofdeathmeanofpersonsfromallcausesandthoseinvolvingcovid19bysexdeathsregisteredfromweekending13marchuptoweekending4december2020englandandwales

I can't find the data for the UK , but in Ireland 93 percent of those deaths had an underlying health condition, some multiple conditions. So we're not talking about healthy 80 year olds either.

www.irishtimes.com/news/health/over-93-of-people-who-died-with-covid-19-had-underlying-condition-cso-1.4402354

Someone above mentioned that if lockdowns hadn't happened, 1 percent of the UK population would die.

1. no lockdowns does not mean throw the elderly to the wolves. Spending a fraction of the billions wasted already could have been spent protecting the elderly, so that they could stay at home safely or else that care homes were supported with lots of staff, tested every day, care home bubbles formed etc.

2. what do you think will happen when
   this ends and all these elderly sick people who have been artificially shielded for months are allowed face the real world? They will die. In vast quantities, the second any common bug or virus gets them. That's what happens in life. Sick old people die. It's sad, but unfortunately it's a part of life.

Also, all this talk of overwhelmed hospitals, why did no Government care about this every previous Winter?

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/02/nhs-hospitals-told-to-take-unprecedented-measures-amid-winter-crisis

Here's an article from Jan 2018, referring to the overcrowding crisis due to flu and Winter demands.

'Amid growing evidence of chaos as the NHS’s winter crisis bites, hospitals are being forced to create makeshift wards for patients, growing numbers are declaring a black alert – an official admission that they cannot cope – and patients are waiting as long as 12 hours for A&E care.'

Why did we not lockdown when the hospitals were at 95 percent capacity in previous years? Would love anyone's thoughts on this as it baffles me.

@Ocsetldil

We should have a police state and then we might respect the rules of lockdown. Everyone in isolation should wear tags which are applied and then released by the police. People arriving at airports should be tested properly and isolated properly. Wuhan is back to normal. Our half arsed liberalism has ruined this country.

Read the threads about people breaking lockdown on this site. Is it alright to have a party on the street and let the children play together? No it friggin isn’t.

I think you want to live in North Korea with some of your views.

@Derelictwreck but if all this great analysis is being done why is this not filtering into government policy. The government are not taking a balanced rational approach to Covid and the MSM and opposition parties (do we have any opposition parties anymore?) are not scrutinising their actions. Their policies are not working and yet all tgat is called for is more of the same and more extreme.

You only have to read some of the threads on here to see people have lost their collective heads

Spreading fear

OP, I agree with every word you say.