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.

Holly “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.“

You can’t answer that without tin foil accusations.

I was reading a book by a doctor about five years ago, I think he wrote it roughly around the time I read it.

He specifically talked about the harms done by modelling and said something jokingly like “you better hope modellers never get taken seriously in medicine”.

Alreadytaken, it’s the impact on NHS staff that is bothering me. They are just expected to pick up the slack. They must be at rock bottom.

And if too many of them get infected/isolate then there will be less people to administer the vacine. And so the circular chaos continues.

@scubadive

No, my point was that people aren’t dying of flu this year, because the measures to prevent covid’s spread prevent the spread of flu.

But your point seems to be it’s only the old and vulnerable who die from Covid, so that’s fine right? Something else would have got them anyway? 🤦🏻‍♀️

It is the half arsed position that has us where we are. We are closing everything down but you are free to exercise, we are out of lockdown but eat out to help out (or bring the curve up), “clap for the NHS” should have been “Don’t go out and mix with other people for the NHS”, curve peaking up but let’s have a 5 days break so we can meet and spread it throughout the country, students not using labs for their studies should have been taught 100% online but nope, so many nightingale hospitals but no medical staff to run them and that goes before we count all the millions handed by the government to companies that couldn’t deliver (mostly to friends of people in power).

The NHS is crumbling but it has been for a long time, getting a GP appointment at my surgery was all based in luck and could take up to a month, nowadays I only get a recording saying all appointments are gone ring tomorrow even if I called on the minute they open... and it has been going on for 3 weeks!

@PlumsAreNotTheOnlyFruit

You are spot on. The country has gone mad and over the next few days, the madness is going t increase.

I’m so glad to see one of these threads because I feel like all I see is the covid police on every other thread announcing that everyone is “selfish” & “you would understand if you had lost your gran/auntie/brothers goldfish to covid”.

The truth of the matter is that it is a virus that we are going to have to live with, the same way we live with the flu & norovirus every year. We don’t want to overwhelm the NHS? The NHS is overwhelmed every winter, to the state that people are dying in corridors on trolleys (I work for them & have unfortunately seen the worst of some winters).

Don’t they say that the first sign of madness is to do the same thing over & over again & expect different results? This is what I think of lockdowns. People are losing their livelihoods & their mental health is struggling to save the few.

And why do people think Peru have such a high death rate with a strict lockdown?

I think we’ve prolonged the agony here which is also dreadful.

We never took it seriously enough at the beginning and we’re still paying a heavy price for that initial lunacy/arrogance/stupidity.

I agree with you and it makes no sense when Boris says “we have to beat the virus”. We bloody can’t, it’s a virus, it spreads. I’m done with all this madness.

@scubadive

Sorry, I didn’t read your post properly. But I still disagree- people don’t die from flu in the summer months - they are not just people who’d have died from flu if it weren’t for Covid.

Agree with you OP!

If we are apparently "saving the NHS now", how will we save it over the next 5-10 years with a fucked economy with millions more having to survive on benefits at the cost of the state because they lost their jobs and businesses that paid tax in. Plus the costs of catching up on disrupted education.

We were just getting over a decade of austerity. Now we are plunged back in with a poorer foundation than we had in 2008. Children and young adults will be paying a terrible toll for this that will damage their foundations for life.

Where will we be in 4 years when a cohort of current babies start school with disadvantages from lost social opportinities and delayed access to time sensitive support start school. Some infants will have a worse life-long prognosis because of 2020 than a similar child born a year or two ago.

Oh my god if I see one more "Long Covid is real!" post I'm going to scream.

Its post viral fatigue! That has existed FOREVER. A portion of people with PVS will go on to get CFS/ME. This can happen after ANY virus. A cold could do it

Calling it Long Covid is to spread fear and make people think its a new thing. It isn't. At all.

If we don’t control the amount of people who catch it, then the hospitals will fill up. Then we’d be in a situation where people are treated in hospital car parks. Then we’d get to the point where no one can be treated at all because there won’t be enough staff. And this would include non-covid medical needs.
Yes, it would be great to expand the healthcare capacity but that isn’t possible all that quickly.
I want peace of mind that if someone in my family needed hospital treatment, not necessarily covid related, there would be space.

I couldn’t agree more OP.

It’s absolutely crackers that we’ve lost all sense of reality and perspective.

As you say, there are cancer drugs but are deemed to expensive so an otherwise healthy 25 year old would be left untreated because they can’t justify spending that much, as it doesn’t benefit enough people.

@scubadive How do you know how much is getting through? Without knowing what the analysis is? Or without knowing what would be happening without it?

Even where we do know what it is - for example the economic costs do not justify the lives saved on a cost benefit analysis - that alone doesn't make policy. We know that most people in society don't like using QALYs and wouldn't support decisions being made that way.

The government being the body of civil servants and the systems and mechanisms are doing a hell of a lot of work.

The government being the cabinet and elected officials are doing what they thing is the right balance between appetising and correct (whether we agree or not). You have to remember that a politician's primary job is to be re-elected.

@ForestNymph 👌

@Kokosrieksts

I agree with you and it makes no sense when Boris says “we have to beat the virus”. We bloody can’t, it’s a virus, it spreads. I’m done with all this madness.

This. The only way to get the numbers down is harsh March style lockdown (although I'm not convinced the reduction is numbers wasnt partly due to seasonality...). We can't stay locked down forever and as soon as people mix it spreads again. The amount of people shouting for more lockdowns terrifies me!

I agree but most other countries have done something similar and we are where we are. Ever since March I have been against all mandatory CV19 measures on civil liberties grounds. I would rather there were a greater risk of death including my own death.

Maybe some of the money government found down the back of the sofa to fund the never ending furlough scheme could be utilised to fund the return of the mobile cancer screening units we used to see. GP practises are still limiting face to face appointments so plenty of car parks around to set up in.

@MillieVanilla

Prepare to be flamed OP but I agree with you

Everything that has been done was done half arsed hence we are in the position we are now in.

Lockdown just kicked the can down the road. I'm not advocating herd immunity as that would cause disaster deaths wise. But there is no simple answer at this point
Frankly, this new strain sounds to me like an excuse for Boris to cover up how bad Brexit is going to be. We already have carnage at Dover and beyond.
Whilst scientists have said there "might" be a strain that's easier to catch, they said the virus is doing what every virus does and mutating. It's already mutated a huge number of times. And the mutation isn't more deadly than the old one. Scientists not linked to Boris and co have been asking for full and Frank figures and been denied.
It's smoke and mirrors at this stage. Pubs being closed when they're responsible for the lowest numbers of infections says it all. Schools remain open despite being responsible for most transmission. Then hospitals where lots of people are catching it due to a lack of forward thinking on decent cleaning standards from agency staff who slop a dirty mop round.

Pubs being closed when they're responsible for the lowest numbers of infections says it all. Schools remain open despite being responsible for most transmission

Really? You cant see a reason for keeping schools open while pubs are closed?

You're dead right,I said this to my partner the other day. But it's not just the UK that's gone crazy,it seems like it's the whole world. For a virus. When will it stop being headline news? When will we realise this is never going to go away and we have to live with it and accept it? I've been pretty positive throughout this whole thing as I know a vaccine is coming but I'm genuinely now worried that it will be the Government and the public that will be the cause of the undoing of life as we know it. Even after a mass vaccination programme,I fear people will still want to socially distance,wear face masks etc for a virus that kills a small amount of the population on an already overpopulated planet (pretty sure I'll be called a eugenicist for that comment but hey Jo!)

So,there's a new variant, that we know NEXT to nothing about. But we and many other countries are going to panic and do what we and they'vedone over the weekend EVERY FUCKING TIME IS CHANGES???? Pure insanity

What the hell was the point of the Nightingale hospitals? They would have known they couldn't staff them! The national debt is eye watering.

OP I couldn't agree more. I'm in London in tier 4 and know 15 people personally who have tested positive for this new variant, aged between 11 and 50. Some fit and healthy, some not so much. All had very mild symptoms (slight headache, slight cough) for a few days then fully recovered.

The virus has mutated to a more contagious yet WEAKER version, which is what viruses do.

Meanwhile we have lost civil liberties, the economy, education, the arts. History books will think we all went totally mad.

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

What? So you wanted to train up doctors and nurses in a few months? Because that’s what we need. Equipment and space is the easy bit but no good without the expertise to use them.

I don’t think any of your points are entirely without merit but that statement alone tells me that you don’t know what you’re actually talking about and have no idea about the actual real life application and logistics of the things you’re demanding.