Do you think people are just desensitised and feel far removed from NHS situation and that’s why they aren’t worried

[CaughtInTheCovid]

I feel like one of the reasons for lack of compliance/taking the rules and covid seriously is that after almost a year of the news basically being a horror film and having hideous statistics about death thrown at us we are just so desensitised to it that it doesn’t affect us. I was watching the news earlier and it had horrific scenes of hospitals, staff in tears just awful. But I felt a sense of detachment, like it was a film or happening in a different country that didn’t affect me. Like when you watch children in need and cry and think how awful it is and donate money and then the next day you just forget about it when you’re back to business. I don’t think I connect that if I were to have a heart attack or get hit by a car and need medical care with the absolute crisis and as we all do think ‘it’ll never happen to me’.

Do you think that’s why people aren’t complying or are pushing the rules to the limits? They just can’t keep up to the level of fear so are desensitised or think it doesn’t affect them? FWIW I have followed all the rules and am currently struggling home schooling and wfh but understand the need for it all.

I think some people are just calm, too. Some people can weigh up and accept risk. They understand that pandemics happen, people die.

They can try to mitigate risk whilst accepting that life has to go on and society needs to function. They don’t become hysterical and post alarmist bollocks on Internet forums to some already anxious women.

Some of the tabloid-style discussion on here is fuelling fear - thread yesterday describing ‘giant emergency morgue in Surrey, stuff of nightmares’ for example. It could equally be described as a temporary mortuary or additional capacity, but that’s not quite hysterical enough for some people on this site.

I do often wonder where we’d be now if there had been no vaccines. The most concerning thing for me is the thought of the NHS turning patients away to die elsewhere, the reality of what that means and the impact on those affected (including the medical staff).

It’s possible to be calm and sensitive, that doesn’t make a person ‘desensitised.’ It just makes them rational and capable of critical thought.

Yes I feel desensitised now to the numbers that are dying ever day, before I was absolutely horrified and so upset to see 1000 people die every day, now I barely notice I am sorry to say. Like everyone else I have reached the point where I can not absorb anymore bad news, I am not surprised by anything anymore. If we were hit by a meteorite I would barely look up.

I guess it must be a self preservation kicking in, we need to be able to continue to cope.

You can see how the Nazis managed to commit the crimes they did now when you see how quickly the human condition adapts to even the most horrific experience.

It is both reassuring and alarming at the same time.

I dont take any attention to mn hyperbole but more to the information that my local hospital and the hospitals that they would normally transfer to, are full.
there is nowhere to go for me, the usual transfers are full.
i did not get that information from mn.
i prefer to get my information direct from the horses mouth.

numbers in my local hospital are 5 times what they were in April, yet in April the numbers were low
that is reality.

I find some days it is overwhelming and other days I just cba to worry. Or I become overly flippant and pour a glass of wine for a Boris Bingo drinking game during the news.

I do worry/stress about small things like what we will have for dinner and why has no one else cleaned the bathroom. Because I can have some impact on that. I don't worry about catching covid, although I do take all the precautions but I don't think my motivation is avoiding covid. I just don't want to pass it on.

I don't think it's possible to remain equally as horrified by the same thing day in day out, for such a long period of time, so yes people get desensitised to it. Thing is though, most people I know also feel they have no choice in what they do now.... people are more worried about keeping their jobs and keeping a roof over their heads and food on the table, because for many who are living within the rules as far as possible, that's the more immediate threat. People have to earn a living, because the impact of not doing is catastrophic for many. The impact of catching COVID is not catastrophic for everyone, so people have to go with what they feel is the least bad of the choices. I don't think everybody is thinking it's not serious or that it only affects others, I think many are thinking that even with that in mind, what choice is there but to keep plodding on and hope we make it out the other side. COVID (and even healthcare generally) can't be every person's biggest and only concern for a year or more.

Yes I think you're right.
In March I felt sick with fear and wasn't sleeping. But that level of anxiety is unsustainable without throwing you into a mental health crisis. So I think I, and a lot of other people, started tuning the news out and ignoring it as a coping mechanism. So now whenever I see things like that I work hard to tune it out because the alternative is total meltdown.
I do stick to the rules and haven't actually left the house in days but I'd imagine the rule breakers have employed this strategy more successfully than me!

I’m calm.
Contrary to some posters here I think people can read the data (even the uneducated working classes they so despise).
They know their relative personal risk.
They can also see where they fall on the vaccination priority list. Probably below a packet of peanuts.
They also know they have no power whatsoever to change certain aspects of their lives - going to work, taking kids to school, using public transport, caring for relatives, exercising their dogs.

@CountessFrog

I think some people are just calm, too. Some people can weigh up and accept risk. They understand that pandemics happen, people die.

They can try to mitigate risk whilst accepting that life has to go on and society needs to function. They don’t become hysterical and post alarmist bollocks on Internet forums to some already anxious women.

Some of the tabloid-style discussion on here is fuelling fear - thread yesterday describing ‘giant emergency morgue in Surrey, stuff of nightmares’ for example. It could equally be described as a temporary mortuary or additional capacity, but that’s not quite hysterical enough for some people on this site.

I do often wonder where we’d be now if there had been no vaccines. The most concerning thing for me is the thought of the NHS turning patients away to die elsewhere, the reality of what that means and the impact on those affected (including the medical staff).

It’s possible to be calm and sensitive, that doesn’t make a person ‘desensitised.’ It just makes them rational and capable of critical thought.

@CountessFrog that’s interesting and actually perhaps my response is calm rational thought rather than heartless not caring. I do care because I follow the guidance as it makes sense and I can see the repercussions if I don’t (even if mainly for other rather than myself). I would prefer to think this is my approach rather than just not caring which isn’t true as the individual stories still break my heart.

And yes a lot of the hyperbole is from people in the public I have lots of friends redeployed to ICU (mainly nurses) and they are very pro vaccine, encouraging people to stay home but are ultimately sensible rational people.

@HelloMissus

I’m calm. Contrary to some posters here I think people can read the data (even the uneducated working classes they so despise). They know their relative personal risk. They can also see where they fall on the vaccination priority list. Probably below a packet of peanuts. They also know they have no power whatsoever to change certain aspects of their lives - going to work, taking kids to school, using public transport, caring for relatives, exercising their dogs.

This is probably a more personalised slant on what I think I was trying to articulate. It is possible to understand how bad things are in hospitals, yet have more pressing concerns at a personal/family level. It's not that people don't understand or don't care, it's that it isn't the only thing people have to worry about.

The government have been forced to scare people to compliance. BBC1 in the last two days has been like a public information film.

I understand this, but I don’t know how they will talk people down.

I think people are desensitised, particularly in lower risk areas like the SW where I live. All we've heard for a year now is apocalyptic predictions and messages, after a while you tune them out for self-preservation. I think the way humans are made, self-preservation will usually, if not always, top altruism. After the initial rush of adrenaline in March, we can't keep up the 'fight or flight' response for long. It's a classic boy who cried wolf scenario.

I only personally know 3 people who've even had a positive test. 1 89yo distant relative with dementia who died in a care home. 1 ICU nurse who was hospitalised and now has long COVID. 1 friend who had it mildly. Out of all the people I know, that isn't a lot and the 'doom doom doom' message from the government jars with that. I understand it's serious from the point of view of hospitals coping, but the personal risk is low for most people and the apocalypse language has gone too far.

bath I think the same applies in high risk areas.
We all know multiple people who have had it and surprise surprise they’ve all recovered (some of em didn’t even get ill).
Of course none of us know if we’ll be the unlucky one who gets very ill or dies, but we don’t know that every time we get into a car.

@Totallydefeated thank you.

I think, in addition to anger (and that's not all the time- most of the time it's just numb acceptance), I've always felt slightly astonished that some people seem to be behaving like getting ill and dying is a new thing.

Do those people feel the same fear of other kinds of deaths, I wonder? Do they feel equally worried about, say, a heart attack, or flu, or road accidents?

We, as a society, have become used to the idea that when we get sick, we pop to the doctor's for a prescription of antibiotics, and hey presto a few days later, or at most a week or two, we're all better. If that doesn't work, there are further steps that can be taken.

Modern medicine is a wonderful thing. It has enabled us to preserve life, continue life, long after the natural way might have ended it. But it has also instilled a slight sense of infallibility- that no matter what illnesses might come our way, that we can still defeat death. My mother was actually a splendid example of this- quadruple heart bypass, kidney removal, various joints replaced: even the stroke, which would probably have killed her outright had she not already been in hospital.

Pandemics are part of our life cycle. They always have been, and they always will be.

Yes I agree.

I've just noticed that someone upthread posted some .ICU clips

I think of the issues is how you face reality and. I think I'm clinically vulnerable but dont know or care

My cousin is ECV and got the "stay at home, never breathe or you'll die and don't you dare put pressure on the NHS" letter.

But we've both been that patient in icu. You'll live or you'll die, it makes you want to live normally even more, not less!

He's also horrified at people thinking lockdown is a means of infection control.

I'm terrified of the rubble that will be the economy. He is trying not to think about it.

I was prepared for a pandemic. But nothing could have prepared me for this.

@CountessFrog

The government have been forced to scare people to compliance. BBC1 in the last two days has been like a public information film.

I understand this, but I don’t know how they will talk people down.

But why do you understand it? Why do you think any of this is necessary?

It's not just since March.

The media constantly runs a narrative of doom and gloom, and is always hysterical about something or other; this has been happening for years and years. If they're not telling us "your mobile phone is killing you", it's "paedophiles are working in your child's school", or "terrorists are around every corner". And Tony Blair told us, with complete and utter conviction, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and called his illegal war on this basis.

So, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between the usual press hysteria, and a genuine crisis. As for figures... figures can be manipulated, and while I'm not denying the virus exists, I'm sure there's a lot we are NOT being told with these figures.

@CountessFrog Yes, the government might have to "talk people down", having deliberately scared them shitless. We saw Saint Boris's clumsy attempts to do so last summer, with "eat out to help out", "back to work", etc. This summer it will probably be "spend spend spend", and later he'll be saying desperately "pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease go out and spend"; he won't understand that millions of people will be hanging on to their money, because he's made them unemployed.

Acorn

Because people are absolutely stupid. They need the government to spell things out. On the telly.

I think, in addition to anger (and that's not all the time- most of the time it's just numb acceptance), I've always felt slightly astonished that some people seem to be behaving like getting ill and dying is a new thing.

Do those people feel the same fear of other kinds of deaths, I wonder? Do they feel equally worried about, say, a heart attack, or flu, or road accidents?

During my 20s 2 friends died in their sleep with no apparent cause, 2 acquaintances died of sepsis after suffering from meningitis, a colleague lost their fingers and legs to the same. I do think it changes your outlook on life/death, I've sadly always been well aware that fit and healthy young people can die from seemingly innocuous things.

@CountessFrog

Acorn

Because people are absolutely stupid. They need the government to spell things out. On the telly.

Stupid enough to believe that lockdown is a legitimate form of infection control?

It is not necessary to have a lockdown for a virus with a higher death rate than this.

Do you think the government scaring the heck out of people has helped in any way? Do you think people won't die as a result of poverty, other illnesses going undetected?

People are absolutely stupid if they think they can "beat" a virus.
Vallance himself said if you beat it down, it will come back stronger. There are so many measures that could have been taken, i'm not going to list them yet again.

But people want to live before they die, understandably. They aren't getting desensitised. They are getting more realistic.