To those saying just shield the elderly...

[Lifeaintalwaysempty]

And the youngest person to die in the last 24 hours, with NO underlying health conditions, was 26. It may be predominantly the elderly who are dying, but everyone else can get extremely sick. And when they fill up the hospitals, important treatments and surgeries get cancelled.
This will not go away if we just make the elderly shield and the rest of us go about our business. It is and will, affect all of us

It’s going to be really interesting to see how this plays out when it’s the people who have been vaccinated who think it is unfair that they have to abide by the restrictions to protect the unvaccinated. (Since we don’t currently know if the vaccine prevents transmission).

@Bumpitybumper

My point was that the argument for shielding is that the rest of us will be fine if we get Covid. Evidently not if 25% hospital admissions are under 55s. That’s with the current restrictions. Open up society to those under 55s and that number will only increase, and the strain on the NHS and impact on other treatments and surgeries would continue But the whole reason we have restrictions is to avoid the NHS being overwhelmed. In a theoretical world where all the over 55s have been shielding then hospital admissions for covid would only be at 25% of current levels. Is this enough to threaten NHS capacity? If not, then there is an argument that actually restrictions could be loosened further to the point where the NHS being overwhelmed was a real possibility. This could potentially mean schools staying open, people seeing family, businesses being able to open etc, all very meaningful and valuable easements.

We aren't trying to eradicate covid and the fact that some younger people need medical assistance regarding covid doesn't mean that they are enough to overwhelm the NHS and therefore a reason to shutdown society.

And if under 55s already account for 25% of admissions whilst under a lockdown, when so many are not working, not commuting, not socialising, not holidaying, not on the school run etc etc etc how many more will need to be hospitalised when there is no lockdown or no restrictions, because we all ‘need to get on with life’? Its not as simple as shield the old everyone else, as you were. It’s not as simple as, elderly die, everyone else will be ok. The restrictions not only reduce the numbers of elderly dying of covid they also reduce the numbers of under 55s from ending up in hospital.

@TheDailyCarbunkle that's awful. I think true Covid deaths are much lower. However I do believe that that the predictions about those that will die because of the lockdowns (200,000) is sadly correct...no country ever improved its populations health by making itself poorer.

@Lifeaintalwaysempty
And if under 55s already account for 25% of admissions whilst under a lockdown, when so many are not working, not commuting, not socialising, not holidaying, not on the school run etc etc etc how many more will need to be hospitalised when there is no lockdown or no restrictions, because we all ‘need to get on with life’?
Its not as simple as shield the old everyone else, as you were. It’s not as simple as, elderly die, everyone else will be ok.
The restrictions not only reduce the numbers of elderly dying of covid they also reduce the numbers of under 55s from ending up in hospital
Current stats aren't necessarily reflective of lockdown though but more the festive period when people were generally mixing and obviously festive bubbles etc. The coming weeks will show the impact of lockdown where I would hope and expect for hospitalisations and deaths to drop in all age groups. This is obviously greatly needed BUT would it be so needed if over 55s were asked to shield? Certainly not to the same extent and I think would could reasonably argue that the NHS may well have coped with fewer restrictions for much longer, possibly until the vaccination process had been successful. Note, I am not saying NO restrictions but certainly fewer.

the reason covid will be on death certificates if within 28 days - is because it can make blood "sticky" and in severely affected causing vascular, neurological or organ problems. It can cause vascular changes to the lining of the lungs (Covid lung visible on imaging).

No conspiracies, it's just the shorthand of "flu" has been used to describe it and leads people to perceive it differently than the disease it actually becomes in those that are most severely affected and why it is much more traumatising for staff to deal with.

As others have pointed out, not everyone with covid is in hospital because of covid. It's routine to test for covid when someone gets admitted for anything else. This will be especially true of the under 55s. They aren't all in hospital because of covid, any age.

@lljkk these statistics are covid admissions- those diagnosed with covid abs subsequently admitted to hospital as a result. It does not include people admitted for other reasons!

[quote barbites]@TheDailyCarbunkle that's awful. I think true Covid deaths are much lower. However I do believe that that the predictions about those that will die because of the lockdowns (200,000) is sadly correct...no country ever improved its populations health by making itself poorer.[/quote]
When we look at excess deaths, they broadly correlate with the number of covid deaths. Not exactly, but they are close, and certainly not ‘much lower’.

Elective surgery has been cancelled in hospitals near me, so although that may have been true earlier in December, it isn't true now. Covid wards are expanding at hospitals. Don't know what it's like in North of England but that's what is happening around here and why some covid patients are being moved to hospitals outside the area as we're full of covid patients.

To be honest I think people who say ‘shield the elderly’ have no idea how things work in the most deprived areas.

I teach in the London borough with the highest rates, 1 in 16 are infected. Our families live on top of each other in multigenerational households. Parents often on zero hour contracts and can not afford any childcare options aside from grandparents or other elderly relatives.

It’s really not that simple.

Statistically few young people with no underlying health conditions. You can’t use one headline example. Young people occasionally die of the flu. Young people occasionally die of meningitis. We don’t shut down society because of it. And don’t say we have vaccines for those. I tried to get the meningitis acwy vaccine privately after hearing that a number of healthy people were dying of it and was refused as I was statistically unlikely to get it.

It’s going to be really interesting to see how this plays out when it’s the people who have been vaccinated who think it is unfair that they have to abide by the restrictions to protect the unvaccinated. (Since we don’t currently know if the vaccine prevents transmission).

Why would there have to be restrictions? People who don’t consider themselves vulnerable have been constantly shouting for the elderly/vulnerable to shield while everyone else just gets on with it - so once the elderly/vulnerable are shielded (by vaccination) then the others will have their chance to “just get on with it”.

@HarryLimeFoxtrot

It’s going to be really interesting to see how this plays out when it’s the people who have been vaccinated who think it is unfair that they have to abide by the restrictions to protect the unvaccinated. (Since we don’t currently know if the vaccine prevents transmission).

Indeed. Especially when the people yet to receive the vaccine are under 50, lots in their 20s and 30s who have an incredibly small chance of being seriously unwell or dying of coronavirus, have had to put their lives on hold to protect the chronically underfunded NHS and the age groups most likely to die. Low risk, but making sacrifices for others, and then seeing the vaccinated older age groups free from restrictions that the younger would have to continue to abide by? Can't see that playing out well if that happens.

I think true Covid deaths are much lower.

Simply not true, the deaths data is regularly published on the ONS website, this figure is higher than the 'within 28 days' statistics and on between 88 and 90% of death certificates (varies between different updates) it is listed as the leading cause of death (on the remainder it is listed as a contributory cause).

But at population level it doesn't "affect us all" any more than any other illnesses "affect us all" equally.
And no, that is not to say that the 400 people under 60 with no underlying conditions who have died don't matter; it's to say that we have always looked at cost/benefit analyses in relation to pharmacological treatment and yet we are not doing so for this, unprecedented non-pharmacological 'treatment' - that's what the NICE guidelines on quality-of-life years are for.
Life is literally given a price tag. You may not like that and find it shocking but it is inevitable in a society where resources are not endless and indeed in a society where resources are shared out on the basis not only of money but ethics (as an eg, the Charlie Gard case).
So there has to be a line drawn at some point and that point is not some fixed number but does need to be discussed and that is why some people raise the issue of shielding some while society opens up.
There are all sorts of things we could be doing to save lives of our 69 million population, but we don't because we as a society don't think they are worth it. Every time we drive a non-electric car, we are causing pollution, which, according to scientific consensus over a far longer time than that around Covid, kills - something like 8 million world wide per year. Yet we haven't banned car driving outright and in fact the Adoo Kissi Debrah case was given surprisingly little coverage given we are all currently so concerned about respiratory health.
Unpalateable perhaps but we do all have to die, and of all sorts of different things.