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.

@Flaxmeadow

No rational person would destroy U.K. to save a few thousand over 80-90yr olds (that traditionally secretly die of normal flu anyway but the press don't report it and no one usually cares).

No rational person would allow this highly infectious disease to rip through our population causing half a million deaths in a short space of time. This virus unchecked would have crashed our health, and some other, services within the space of a few weeks.

It's incredible that there are still people saying "but it hasn't killed loads of people" and then in the next breath saying "lockdown doesn't work"

Of course lockdown works to protect the health service, obviously. The reason we have brought an estimated half a million deaths down to 67,000 is precisely because we locked down

I would add to that, it's not just a lockdown that works. It's the small changes to one person or one household's social life, and the number of interactions they engage in, that incrementally add up and cause a significant societal change.

I think about this time last year, and how many people I personally would have been in close contact with in indoor, unventilated environments every week. It's hundreds of people. Libraries, different playgroups every day, going to packed coffee shops, visiting my family in the weekend, having friends round for dinner.... And I'm not alone. Every person who has modified their behaviour, irrespective of lockdown, is contributing to lowering the reproduction rate of the virus.

Schonerlebenis no body has to sacrifice anyone's granny etc

It's up to each person to understand their risk and manage their own behaviour (as it always normally is!)

If vulnerable people are told to self isolate and don't, that's unfortunate but it's their risk to run

Let healthy people under 60 live again.

Absolute craziness

I know of 5 auicides in last year. No COVID deaths. Says it all doesn't it.

The main thing for me is capacity in the health service. I’m not bothered about getting the virus personally, it’s just one of innumerable illnesses and activities that could kill me on a daily basis. However, if demand exceeds the capacity of the NHS to cope, it will get very, very grim indeed.

As soon as we’re comfortable the health service has capacity and can cope with numbers, they should ease up restrictions.

I completely agree with you.

I just can't understand why when people who die of the virus have an average age of 82 (higher than our average life expectancy) and it has a 90% plus survival.

Unfortunately governments got themselves into a endless cycle of lockdowns and are still pushing the mistaken belief that this can be 'controlled' and every life saved. Which is complete nonsense.

We seem to have forgotten that death and disease is part of being human.

The NHS gets 'overwhelmed' every year and has long not been fit for purpose.

I wish politicians had the guts to say that we simply can't save everyone. Shield the vulnerable and the elderly but the rest of us need to carry on.

At this stage we should have the army helping with logistic, supplies and Covid patients treated out of mainstream hospitals. And yes that means some won't make it but you can't destroy 100% of society to save the minority.

During a time of war, leaders made tough decision and accepted that there is no ideal scenario. We need to move from the fairy tale that if we have more lockdowns this will be over. It won't and won't be anything else in term of jobs, economy, mental health and people with conditions like cancer will have died needlessly when we tried to prolong the lives of people in their 90s and 80s...

The push should be about vaccinating as many people as possible, everything else is just pie in the sky thinking...

Thing is @ForestNymph we already do change our behaviour for other medical conditions. We isolate ourselves if we get chicken pox or norovirus or even nits till they’re treated, we ban nuts in spaces where there are known nut allergies, we make spaces for people with disabilities to travel and access toilets, we warn people of flashing lights in case of epilepsy; this is on a larger scale and causes more disruption but these are all things we do with barely thinking about it because it benefits wider society.

If you fundamentally see the sense and agree with any of those examples then I don’t see how you can dismiss the restrictions needed when it’s needed on a wider scale.

The eat out to help out scheme was utter madness. Let’s lockdown for months then encourage everyone back in the pubs mixing.

Why could that money not have gone to making schools safer and to the NHS.

Re not giving a fuck from pp

It goes all ways. People having been behaving in a way to their own detriment for coming up to a year.

Other people want others to make sacrifices for their benefit alone. They said we’d tire. And people have. It’s not a surprise.

@silverfonze

Schonerlebenis no body has to sacrifice anyone's granny etc

It's up to each person to understand their risk and manage their own behaviour (as it always normally is!)

If vulnerable people are told to self isolate and don't, that's unfortunate but it's their risk to run

Let healthy people under 60 live again.

Absolute craziness

I know of 5 auicides in last year. No COVID deaths. Says it all doesn't it.

8% hospitalisation rate for people in their 50s. Lancet study.

You think the healthcare system can easily cope with that if the spread was unmitigated?

Covid is bad and I don't want anyone to get it.

But I don't think we should be on fucking house arrest either, banning people from hugging their mum, or stopping people seeing their loved ones at christmas.

There has to be some kind of balance here - we have lived with such safety, comfort and lack of risk that now we are faced with a genuine risk, we are reacting with panic and hysteria. No one is saying that covid is not a risk, but a lot of people are saying, let us take the risk - we would rather be able to live life in a free and prosperous country than to shut everything down and destroy an entire generation's prospects so that some already comfortable and prosperous people can feel safe.

Fuck being safe; the price of safety is too high.

I agree with OP completely. We've entered some sort of national hysterical collective madness - not helped by the media who have, since the beginning, focused almost exclusively on feelings and emotions over hard facts.

We seem to have lost sight of the fact that, sad as it is, old people are going to die of something at some point - it's the one guarantee in life.

This is a virus that is only lethal to a tiny, tiny percentage of the population, and yet all of us are made to feel fearful.

"You can't put a price on saving lives" - they say. Well you can and we do - is the truth. We never have and never will, save lives at ANY COST. But that's what we seem to be doing now.

Utterly, utterly fruitcake bonkers. And deeply depressing.

Am I going crazy? I thought I set this up in AIBU with voting but mumsnet hq says it has always been in the coronavirus topic?

Did anyone else see it in AIBU? They say it is better suited to the coronavirus topic. But it was supposed to be a debate about the wider issues....

@bunbunbunny
Thanks for that article about the tiny amount of flu circulating in the UK. I was looking for that info.

@carrotcakeforbreakfast

You say

We aren't fully into flu season yet
Also

I can't believe this takes explaining but flu transmission will of course be down due to the measures taken to stop the spread of covid.

Could you explain why Covid is circulating then if the flu isn't?

I never said post viral was just a covid thing
I said that I've never seen a virus create so many post viral complications for SO many people as this one.

Anyone can be vulnerable.
Generally speaking the ones in ITU were never that "vulnerable"
The ones who had life limiting comorbidities or those who are very old. Where intensive intervention would be futile and morally wrong don't tend to go to ITU.

If it was a simple as protecting the vulnerable I would be more likely to agree. Covid doesn't discriminate.
The things I have seen since March have made me question my career path and when I can jump ship and not leave my colleagues in the shit. I will.
I have never, ever seen so many harrowing cases.

Over 650 healthcare professionals have died in 8 months and NO before we get the " well you signed up to this" no we fucking didn't.

@Cornettoninja

Thing is *@ForestNymph* we already do change our behaviour for other medical conditions. We isolate ourselves if we get chicken pox or norovirus or even nits till they’re treated, we ban nuts in spaces where there are known nut allergies, we make spaces for people with disabilities to travel and access toilets, we warn people of flashing lights in case of epilepsy; this is on a larger scale and causes more disruption but these are all things we do with barely thinking about it because it benefits wider society.

If you fundamentally see the sense and agree with any of those examples then I don’t see how you can dismiss the restrictions needed when it’s needed on a wider scale.

Because its a cost benefit analysis. Does it harm someone to stay in for a week to stop someone else getting chicken pox, no. Does it harm people to lock everyone down for months on end, trashing the economy, increasing MH problems, ruining lives to save some old folks who would likely be carried off by something anyway? I know that sounds harsh but the average death age is 83.

I don't also agree with the nuts issue (put the allergy kids on a separate nut free table and leave everyone else alone) but the others don't cause harm so they're fine.

@PlumsAreNotTheOnlyFruit

Am I going crazy? I thought I set this up in AIBU with voting but mumsnet hq says it has always been in the coronavirus topic?

Did anyone else see it in AIBU? They say it is better suited to the coronavirus topic. But it was supposed to be a debate about the wider issues....

It was AIBU as I was surprised 71% said yanbu

Usually people on here want lock downs

Can you do the maths? If spread is unchecked the health service in any country will be overwhelmed. Do we think it's right that sick and dying people will be left untreated because the health service is overwhelmed, and vital services like midwifery and cancer treatments should be severely impacted.

Flu transmission will also be down because more people are getting the jab. I’m in my 40s and got it for the first time this year; the same applies to a number of people I know.

@Requinblanc, it isn’t just about the people who die, although that has proved itself to be a disturbingly large figure; It’s about the number of people who need medical intervention that will absolutely survive as long as they get that.

Heart disease kills an average of 60k people a year in this country; covid deaths have already surpassed that with many more left recovering from a nasty illness. This isn’t instead of, this is as well as.

Another way to look at it though, is that the Tory government only cares about money. Its primary concern is with keeping the rich as rich as possible. So if they are choosing lockdowns, which on the surface appear very damaging to the economy, then you have to assume that their expert economist advisers (who know a lot more about this stuff than me) have told them that lockdowns are actually less damaging to the economy than a total collapse of the healthcare system and all the deaths that would result from it.

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.

Dementia isn’t contagious, nor is heart disease. Do people really not understand the differences between medical conditions? There is nothing that can be done today to prevent someone getting dementia tomorrow. There’s a lot that can be done to prevent them getting COVID tomorrow.

@queenofknives

Covid is bad and I don't want anyone to get it.

But I don't think we should be on fucking house arrest either, banning people from hugging their mum, or stopping people seeing their loved ones at christmas.

There has to be some kind of balance here - we have lived with such safety, comfort and lack of risk that now we are faced with a genuine risk, we are reacting with panic and hysteria. No one is saying that covid is not a risk, but a lot of people are saying, let us take the risk - we would rather be able to live life in a free and prosperous country than to shut everything down and destroy an entire generation's prospects so that some already comfortable and prosperous people can feel safe.

Fuck being safe; the price of safety is too high.

Exactly. If this is the price of safety i don't want it

Never claimed to be an expert on covid. But yes, I am familiar with the fact it is a coronavirus and not a rhinovirus or an influenza variant and I am aware it has vascular complications due to how it operates. I'm aware that the vascular involvement is why the symptoms can be widespread from migraines to strokes to numb toes

Okay. That's a start. The vascular component - making it vastly different to other respiratory viruses- is primarily is one of the key reasons that COVID can lead to 'long Covid'.

@Schonerlebnis

''I've been present at many difficult conversations with relatives over the years and have truthfully never known any say 'my relative is over 75, let's not bother, let someone younger have the bed, it's not economically viable to keep my loved one alive'. From a theoretical point of view, easy to be flippant, real life scenario very different.''

But the NHS make economic decisions about healthcare every day. Drugs they don't buy that save lives but are too expensive and take away money that may save multiple lives via cancer screening for example?

@PlumsAreNotTheOnlyFruit

Am I going crazy? I thought I set this up in AIBU with voting but mumsnet hq says it has always been in the coronavirus topic?

Did anyone else see it in AIBU? They say it is better suited to the coronavirus topic. But it was supposed to be a debate about the wider issues....

It was definitely in AIBU - there was a vote and everything.

Yes flu rates one is interesting - you would normally expect around 200 flu deaths a day in the height of the winter season. Flu deaths have dropped off the charts this year - and it spreads a similar way to Covid, so if Covid is running high its difficult to claim this is due to masks, more SD etc.

I think Covid is just the dominant pathogen this respiratory season, there always has to be one.

AS for long Covid - I would have to dig to find it again, but I read a report that at least 80% of those with heart damage after Covid already had pre existing cardiac problems which could have been worsened by any period of illness.

I myself have lung scarring after a heinous chest infection a few years back - knocked me for six for months and months. It does happen, even pre Covid.