Am I missing something?

[BPCoveredInSpots]

I try to keep on top of what’s going on.
Most days I check the figures - local and national. I attempt to keep up with government statements, guidelines and u-turns. I ignore hyperbolic media sources that love the dramatic doom and gloom aspect of Covid.

My take is that whilst Covid isn’t a serious threat in terms of deaths, it has a high hospitalisation rate and as such is a big risk to life as we know it right now. This seems obvious.
We’re also finding more out about long Covid (around 1 in 10).

However I am seeing more and more people, intelligent people whose opinions I respect in other matters, having very different takes on the whole situation, with things like

1. The numbers are being made up.
2. Hospitals are not overcrowded, this is political spin.
3. Death certificates are being filled in with Covid to inflate the figures.
4. The government is using a mild illness to sneak in more and more control measures - make us blindly comply and lose our freedom.
5. The great barrington declaration.
6. Only the vulnerable should shield, everyone else should be allowed to get on with it.

I don’t believe these things.
I think there’s been plenty of government incompetence, lack of action followed by panic and last minute decisions.

I’m not a dr or a scientist, but I do feel I know enough to refute all the above points.

My biggest question though is why?
Am I missing information?
Is there truth in these? For what end? Any evidence of it (apart from manipulated statistics that feature heavily in the Covid denier narrative).

We don't know the stats for long Covid, though. I didn't end up in hospital and nor did a lot of other long Covid sufferers. (You can read their stories on the long Covid thread.)

I'm not saying that you should be kept awake at night worrying for goodness sake. But it is a reason to follow the guidelines. Statistically you probably won't get long Covid or end up in hospital. But other people you meet might end up seriously ill.

I was just saying that minimising the risk doesn't help, because it leads to people not following the rules and the virus continuing to spread.

I'm following the rules for the benefit of those who are vulnerable and to make sure our health service isn't overwhelmed. But if someone said "here's the trade off: you can have your normal life back but you've got a 1 in 1000 chance of getting long covid" then I'd take the risk. Realistically, given the speed of the vaccine roll out, that's the decision many of us younger people are going to be making over the next 12 months.

In all fairness, I'd probably be the same as you in your shoes. Long Covid wouldn't have been on my radar. Sadly for me, I didn't have the option, as I caught Covid at the very start of the pandemic and ended up with long Covid.

I have no idea what the stats are, my knowledge is anecdotal, from my own experience and from what others have shared.

Today 12:28 carlaCox

The answe that there’s not enough staff to work in the nightingales doesn’t add up - why on earth build them in that case?

Bread and circuses. Great optics.

• My take is that whilst Covid isn’t a serious threat in terms of deaths, it has a high hospitalisation rate and as such is a big risk to life as we know it right now. This seems obvious. We’re also finding more out about long Covid (around 1 in 10).*

Covid is the sixth biggest killer in the U.K. and the third in the USA. So far.

A quarter of covid hospital admissions are under 55 at the moment Patrick Vallance said earlier on Peston.

The 100,000 covid deaths milestone was reached today. (Or next week if you're ignoring anyone who takes more than 28 days to die.)

But none of that matters if people are determined to minimise and deny the facts.

I don't trust any data other than ONS deaths. Nobody can die twice.

Even then, you need to take into account population growth & ageing.

Hospital admissions are manipulated by permitting/cancelling routine admissions (which happens almost every year, to varying degrees) so they're not indicative of much.

I think the pandemic impact is pretty clear on this graph (although potentially exacerbated by turfing a lot of elderly out into care homes without testing and from limiting access to routine care)

@ChristmasSexyTime

I've been in and out of hospital all year with a serious condition. The hospital has been empty every time. Usually just me and one other patient in the waiting room. Nobody in the corridors, nobody in the wards. Just nurses and doctors chatting. I'm not blaming them, but at least in my part of the country, this is a true observation so it must be the same in other areas.

I have to deal with journalists for work and one told me that case numbers were being inflated. Don't know if I believe him or not though. He told me a few things that sounded urban legend-y.

For the record, I'm a mask wearing, shielding person so I'm following the rules and see covid as a threat. So I'm not trying to discount the severity of what's happening.

Would you expect the general public to have free access to the COVID wards? Do you think that perhaps the part of the hospital with the COVID patients may be secured to prevent visitors to the other parts of the hospital wandering in? Just a thought.