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Original poster

If this doesn’t make you think twice about breaking COVID rules....

281 replies

Strawberrycreamsundae · 31/12/2020 11:35

Then nothing will......🤬😡
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55479018

OP posts:
Thread gallery
5
TheGreatWave · 31/12/2020 12:48

@singingstones

Well, here we have a professor of medicine, specialist in intensive care, telling us what the situation is like at his hospital in London to try and get people to understand the consequences of breaking the rules.

MN response: "seems a bit like rhetoric to me" / "I don't think I believe the claim" / "scaremongering" / "hyperbolic"

Amazing - who would you lot believe?

Those who are schreeching at everyone about the rules, either correctly or made up will love this, those blatantly breaking the rules won't care. This leaves the rest who are trying to muddle through the best they can, being told they have blood on their hands because they are having to go to work, provide support, use additional childcare options just gets people's backs up.

So no, it won't make me think twice, if I was in a situation where that would happen it would be because the benefits outweighed the risks e.g having a neighbour in the house to support DH when MIL was unwell.

bellagogosdead · 31/12/2020 12:50

He was understandably emotional and I will take what he says with that in mind. Throughout this whole thing one of the worst aspects has been the demosisation of people doing perfectly normal natural things.

SquirmOfEels · 31/12/2020 12:51

I was wondering if the comments about the new variant are the result of lag. Yes, we have seen cases rocketing, and hospital admissions up. But it then takes a further week or more for ICU to be indicated

Witchend · 31/12/2020 12:51

@MolyHolyGuacamole

I got a notification from NHS track&trace to isolate due to contact I'd had. Doing the maths that was a Saturday when the only place I'd been was to a shopping centre to pick up groceries and a plunger.

Fortunately I tested and was negative, but could easily have been a positive. I was following all of the rules, going out for essential items (still Tier 2 at this point btw), wearing a mask, and distancing. I live alone btw, so that is the only social contact I'd had.

Not everyone getting the virus is 'breaking the rules', in fact I'd hazard a guess that most aren't.

But maybe you were a negative because you were following the rules, wearing a mask, keeping 2m distance in that supermarket as much as possible.

Or you would have been a positive if the other person hadn't been wearing a mask.

We don't know.

HappyNewYear2021 · 31/12/2020 12:53

@DownWhichOfLate

And yet schools are open.
They have been shut since 17th December here....? Secondaries not opening again apart from vulnerable children or critical worker children until the 18th Jan.....
Polkadotties · 31/12/2020 12:55

Anyone who has ever had a cold, virus, flu, cough etc and has gone outside has blood on their hands. Those germs could have been spread to an elderly person and killed them.

Scaredshitlessagain · 31/12/2020 12:56

I'm pissed off with this doctor. He said the following.

"It is making me actually very angry now that people are laying the blame on the virus, and it is not the virus, it is people, people are not washing their hands, they are not wearing their masks,"

For fucks sake. IT IS THE VIRUS. IT'S WHAT THEY DO. He is supposed to know about scienceConfused. I can't stand the fact the people are being blamed for spreading the virus. We have had to live an isolated existence for nearly a year and yet people like him have no empathy.

Desperado40 · 31/12/2020 12:57

I have only seen one person not wearing mask since the requirement was introduced. I think it’s very poor judgement to blame the ordinary folk, perhaps take a closer look at the incompetent government instead!

trappedsincesundaymorn · 31/12/2020 13:00

The oncology team that treated my mum at the beginning of March weren't wearing masks back then. Mum died of covid 3 weeks after her last visit there....so if this doctor is suggesting that those not wearing masks are responsible for covid deaths, he may like to explain that to those who treated Mum's cancer, I'm sure they'd be thrilled to hear it.

stoneysongs · 31/12/2020 13:00

I do believe what he's saying about hospitals being full, but I do not believe that those not wearing masks have blood on their hands!

Seems fair enough to me. He explained how one asymptomatic person passing it to four or five people would start a chain infecting hundreds of thousands of people. Some of those will die. Not wearing a mask makes those initial infections and therefore the whole chain more likely to happen. Not that controversial imo. If you break the rules, whether that's not wearing a mask, mixing with others when you shouldn't etc you make it more likely that the virus will spread and that people will die. I'm sure expressing it as having blood on their hands is shocking for some people to hear but it makes sense.

Iwonder08 · 31/12/2020 13:02

OP, how are you going to carry on with life post covid? Where would you spill out all this preaching judgemental energy?

Castiel07 · 31/12/2020 13:05

What have we learnt in the past 10 months? Why do the government always leave it until the very last minute to do anything.

shamalidacdak · 31/12/2020 13:05

All of you criticizing this man have blood on your hands

DishingOutDone · 31/12/2020 13:05

"Prof Hugh Montgomery told BBC Radio 5 Live hospitals were facing a "tsunami" of Covid cases and he feared it would get worse after New Year's Eve."

Maybe he shouldn't have used the phrase "blood on their hands" but he was trying to get his urgent message across. MN is a place where medical staff can only ever be right, unless they are telling people to curtail their activities in any way whatsoever, and then they are branded hysterical. Hmm

Flyingaway16 · 31/12/2020 13:06

Yet schools are open. I'm gathering with 25 other adults to have a training session on monday, then going to another school to join another 15 different people for 2 hours in same room. We've tier 4.....

Silversun83 · 31/12/2020 13:07

@singingstones

Well, here we have a professor of medicine, specialist in intensive care, telling us what the situation is like at his hospital in London to try and get people to understand the consequences of breaking the rules.

MN response: "seems a bit like rhetoric to me" / "I don't think I believe the claim" / "scaremongering" / "hyperbolic"

Amazing - who would you lot believe?

This.

I've always thought that household indoors mixing has been one of the biggest risk-factors.

MorrisZapp · 31/12/2020 13:07

What a knob, sorry. Is he seriously suggesting that we all followed rules in the summer and virtually eradicated the virus but when it got cold we all stopped washing our hands and wearing masks?

If washing hands and wearing masks literally eradicate the virus why are we spraffing billions on vaccines?

I fully understand the need for rules, and I follow them. But blood on hands is ludicrous hyperbole and a truly vile thing to blame people for their loved ones illness or even death.

HibernatingTill2030 · 31/12/2020 13:07

He's probably not talking about mask exempt people.
I think he's talking about the people who refuse to wear a mask and ignore guidance about keeping distance, etc.
Most people are genuinely doing their best.
People who spout on about their right not to wear a mask (NOT the genuinely mask exempt), or insist on meeting multiple friends, etc- they are definitely contributing to the spread of this. Not the people accidentally catching it despite their best efforts.

herecomesthsun · 31/12/2020 13:07
  1. He is a very good doctor and a very decent man
  1. He is working all hours to save lives
  1. He is suggesting that we take responsibility for following as much mitigation as possible to save lives in this crisis.
  1. He is seeing the aftermath of what happens when people- whole families - die and he is responsible for managing the over-stretched service that supports these people. Dying. Without visitors.

So I would certainly see the government as having a lion share of responsibility for mismanaging this crisis.

I would also suggest that we listen to this - very experienced and well-respected - ICU doctor and take away the part about social distancing, wearing masks and staying home etc.

I wish the government for their part would take heed properly too but we may be on a hiding to nothing there.

Silversun83 · 31/12/2020 13:08

@Kokeshi123

The average age of COVID mortality is a little over 80, so his suggestions that most hospitalizations are people under 58 and that whole families are getting wiped out are getting an eyeroll from me.

Yes, I wear a mask religiously and am not going anywhere for NYE.

Do you honestly believe he is lying?
herecomesthsun · 31/12/2020 13:08

5 he is not a knob

ghoulbag · 31/12/2020 13:08

@shamalidacdak

All of you criticizing this man have blood on your hands
Well, so do you and so does he.
stoneysongs · 31/12/2020 13:09

IT IS THE VIRUS. IT'S WHAT THEY DO. He is supposed to know about science. I can't stand the fact the people are being blamed for spreading the virus.

It is people who are spreading the virus though? We know how it spreads and how to make the spread less likely. But every person with COVID has been infected by someone else, by touching something that has had virus left on it by someone and then touching their own eyes/mouth/nose, or by breathing in droplets which have come out of someone else. If you don't have any contact with someone with COVID, you can't catch it.

StanfordPines · 31/12/2020 13:09

@Flyingaway16

Yet schools are open. I'm gathering with 25 other adults to have a training session on monday, then going to another school to join another 15 different people for 2 hours in same room. We've tier 4.....
But school staff are immune and if you complain you are just a work shy whinger. Everyone knows that children can’t get it so there is nothing to complain about....
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