As the majority of DC, teachers and parents of school age DC won't need hospitalisation

[Lucyandbet]

Why are so many people on MN so gleeful at the prospect of them shutting again? Aren't we focusing on the wrong age group to impose weeks/months more isolation and crappiness on? Why does everyone seem so happy at the prospect of shut schools?

@Nousernamesleftatall

NHS Tayside. Population 420,000

Deaths ‘with’ Covid positive test = 486
Deaths solely from Covid = 21
Age range of majority 80+

Yanbu. This hysteria has to stop.

South Africa and Kent strains may change these figures entirely. Too early yet to tell, more data is needed which takes time. There is no justification for putting younger people at more risk with a strain that's known to cause more severe disease and hospitalisations of children until we have the full facts and mitigation measures in place. Shutting schools for a short time would give SAGE chance to analyse the new variants.

Everyone needs to stop relying on old assumptions. The virus has changed, and we need time to plan how our response should change.

AAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH

@DBML

I have to have phone consultations with my physio. They’ve never even physically assessed me. Asked me a bunch of questions over the phone and then sent me a pictorial plan of exercises to do. 4 months on, I’m still in agony and in 2 months will have another phone conversation. Now that is a job you can’t do without seeing people...but is currently being done without seeing people.

Following covid I've had a massive flare up of my arthritis. Some days I can't walk, others I'm hobbling painfully to be able to get round school. One day my knees are swollen huge, others they are stuff and barely bend.

I'm supposed to be down for physio. 2-3 months ago the referral went in. I'm not yet allocated an appointment and when I am I've been told it will be a phone consultation, not in person.

Abraxan that sounds painful

And yet I haven’t seen any threads demanding physiotherapists get back to work nearly a year on?

@Mumof3andlovingit

There is no evidence of asymptomatic spread. Asymptomatic means healthy ie not sick.

Research:
American Medical Journal
jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2774102

Nature
idp.nature.com/authorize?response_type=cookie&client_id=grover&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41467-020-19802-w

Respiratory Magazine
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0954611120301669

Also Fauci, Beda M. Stadler, the WHO, and studies from May and Nov 20, all say so.

Nhs tayside covers a massive area much is which is low density living. Scotland also has, on the whole lower case numbers and the NHS has not been so stretched here. However NHS tayside and Fife are now filling up and suffering so these numbers may soon be different.

[quote Nerdygirl]@Nousernamesleftatall it’s interesting how no-one else is responding to those figures but I will. Teesside is not alone , there are a few of these now circulating based on freedom of information requests but they seem to be ignored . Is that because there is doubt in their integrity or something else ?[/quote]
Well it’s quite blurry.
I do wonder what “dying of covid” means. It’s a virus. It might cause a heart attack, a stroke, kidney and multiple organ failure. That doesn’t mean that these deaths aren’t due to covid. It’s not Ebola. A covid death doesn’t mean you burst open with billions of viruses coming out of you. As a result of the stress your body is in you can die of other things (eg heart attack as mentioned above). It’s doesn’t mean that covid didn’t cause the death.
Let’s be honest, these people dying within 28 days of a test aren’t all coincidentally being killed in a car crash etc.
That’s why no-one has responded to the figures as we understand that the majority of those people did die due to covid.

@ragged

There are enough threads about school open/closed issues already. I don't think there's anything different to say.

If the world was like MN,
Remain would have won in a landslide.
Tories would have no hope of being in power anywhere.
Babies would never get ears pierced.
All children would be "above average" academically.
Smacking your child would attract a prison sentence.
Everyone would be extremely fit by cleaning their home 16 hours/day.
Except the ones who remain stubbornly obese by eating > 600 kcal/day.

I'm just grateful MN is so unlike the rest of world, tbh.

Brilliant

I do wonder what “dying of covid” means.

I agree that this isn't as straight forward as it seems.
Covid for me meant a dangerously high and uncontrolled blood pressure. I was rushed to a and e due to the very real risk of stroke or heart attack.

Had the worst happened would I have died of a heart attack/stroke or would I have died of covid?

Before covid I'd not had any issues with my blood pressure, my reason for being clinically vulnerable had nothing to do with blood pressure issues and not something I would be realistically expecting to die early from.

That’s why no-one has responded to the figures as we understand that the majority of those people did die due to covid.

So the NHS got it wrong and they don’t know how to classify deaths?

Look at all year mortality rates for U.K, USA, Italy. All normal compared to the last five years.

I am genuinely sorry you went through that as it sounds very scary but you don’t know that Covid caused your high blood pressure. I know that people with high blood pressure are more at risk but cannot find any evidence of Covid causing high blood pressure.

COVID is known to cause heart problems so blood pressure problems isn’t beyond the limits.

Well I’ve seen the excess death figures. I’ll review the mortality rate in 2021. However, to my mind it’s not about the deaths anyway. It’s the hospitalisation rate and the sheer numbers of people who could need hospital care (which is much higher than the death rate). If you run out of room in the hospitals the mortality rate goes up.

@Nousernamesleftatall

I am genuinely sorry you went through that as it sounds very scary but you don’t know that Covid caused your high blood pressure. I know that people with high blood pressure are more at risk but cannot find any evidence of Covid causing high blood pressure.

Maybe it was just pure coincidence.

My blood pressure, which is checked every three months due to medication, has never been high let alone dangerously. It wasn't high less than 3 weeks before when it was checked as part of my routine checks.

The doctors at the hospital point towards covid as the cause. It was not the first time they'd dealt with high blood pressure linked with covid. Research from the states also seems to be looking at this too, based on some of the follow up appointments I've had with the hospital doctors and GP since.

But yes, I'm sure it was just coincidence that I suddenly developed high blood pressure for the first time ever in the 14-20 days before also catching covid.

@PandemicPavolova

Wow, they are treating people in ambulances now, sky news! Romford greater London... 8 thousand calls a day, usually get 5 thousand calls a day.

That's all sorts of patients not just covid patients.

They've been calling ambalance staff from south to Romford to support.

With cases rising in those areas they are being drafted from it scares me what happens in a few weeks.

@BelleSausage

So you’d rather close everything else and all retail and hospitality staff to lose their jobs?

Schools or everything else is the choice. Choose.

Everything else. Why should children lose out when their parents are at the Trafford Centre buying apparently needed Boxing Day bargains, going on holiday (see the threads here) still etc etc.

So you’re a healthcare professional who works 1 to 1 and is more than likely doing a majority of telephone appoints telling another profession as a whole that as only a few of them are likely to suffer, they should just get on with it? Will you be volunteering for in-school testing? Or just expecting teachers to manage that? Have you considered that even if only a few of us die, we have families and children who need us? That so,e of us are single parents and so getting ill, even for a short time, can have a corresponding impact on our families? That some of us have elderly parents reliant on our care? That we have partners with cancer or children with disabilities? From your ivory tower of telephone calls, why is something as...physical as physiotherapy, practised in an environment with one person at a time with PPE and windows that open, suitable for non contact but teaching, which can be done via zoom or other package not suitable for non contact? If you profess to care about people, why do only people who are healthy by covid standards matter to you?

@TheDrsDocMartens

COVID is known to cause heart problems so blood pressure problems isn’t beyond the limits.

Exactly. And it is being linked based on my follow ups.

But hey, maybe someone on MN may be able to tell me what caused my blood pressure to become so high and uncontrolled seeing as they don't believe it could be covid.

?? Retail and travel are jobs, food on the table to many families. Anyway, we've tried that and it didn't work against the new strain. Something is going to have to be done as the ambulances are stacking up in Essex now.

@Abraxan mine is normally high and not well controlled. This worries me about Covid,

What about the kids whos parents are a carer for elderly etc its a knock on effect and eventually leads in to the community
Its not like every school child has wfh parents only

My local town packed today with parents and kids and groups of teens.

because some people are completely paranoid...

[quote TheDrsDocMartens]@Abraxan mine is normally high and not well controlled. This worries me about Covid,[/quote]
I can understand that as I'm now concerned about catching it again in the future.

Fingers crossed that you manage to avoid it.
Hopefully those of us who are vulnerable will be vaccinated sooner rather than later.

[quote Nousernamesleftatall]@Mumof3andlovingit

There is no evidence of asymptomatic spread. Asymptomatic means healthy ie not sick.

Research:
American Medical Journal
jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2774102

Nature
idp.nature.com/authorize?response_type=cookie&client_id=grover&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41467-020-19802-w

Respiratory Magazine
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0954611120301669

Also Fauci, Beda M. Stadler, the WHO, and studies from May and Nov 20, all say so.[/quote]
Asymptomatic means to have little to no symptoms of a disease. The viral load is believed to be the same for asymptomatic cases as it is for symptomatic.
There is now evidence that asymptomatic individuals most likely do transmit the virus just as much.
Here:
www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03141-3

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1240708

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.uchealth.org/today/the-truth-about-asymptomatic-spread-of-covid-19/%3famp

Also we now have a mutated strain that is known to transmit much easier so therefore new research needs to be done.