At what point...

[Whatever9999]

Will the mass testing stop? And the minute detail of every case, hospitalisation and death being reported?

We don't have this for any other illness and once vaccinations have been rolled out the government are going to actually want us to get back to normal. But for a large percentage of people there will be no normality while the media is shouting about numbers.

I read so much on here about how testing criteria should be widened, or how every school child should be tested. We don't do this with, say, the flu (yeah I know its not the flu). We might have heard rumblings in the media during a particularly bad year, but certainly not the frenzy there is now.

I'm sorry but I just can't see the mass testing continuing once even the first cohort have been vaccinated and certainly not to the point where (as some suggest) we have a test because we have cold symptoms.

I think it'll end up much as with mrsa, you only really get tested when you go in to hospital. But I'm not sure how such a massive shift is going to be able to happen with the way the media is reporting.

I agree. Getting out of this hysteria will be difficult.

The government and media have done a great job of whipping everyone into a frenzy and making them terrified of this virus. They had to, so that people would follow the rules. At some point they are going to have to back track and say "the vulnerable are vaccinated, the healthy working population need to get back to normal." But it's going to be difficult to persuade some people after they have spent a year telling us how deadly it is, how nobody is safe, even healthy young people could die from it or get long covid etc.

Total agree too. My fear is it won't go back to normal for a long time as people didn't really realise just how many die in a normal day and even with vaccinations, people will still die of Covid. Zero deaths per day is unlikely to happen regularly. At what point will it stop being reported to stop terrifying people 😔.

Totally agree.

If we heard on the news the daily death toll from road accidents. Would we be so quick to get in our cars?

I'm not saying it's the same, I understand what's happening as a result of this new virus.

But surely at some point, once we've had the vaccine rollout, we will have to accept some risk in order to live, and I worry that people won't accept this.

Ive been wondering that. The testing centres obviously aren’t sustainable forever, but it’s hard to imagine Johnson standing up at a press conference and saying “we’re closing the test centres”.
Similar to isolating if you have symptoms, if they stop testing you can’t ask people to isolate if they have symptoms because everyone, plus their household, will have to isolate for 10 days. I’m all for, where possible, people not going into work or school with a bug, but without testing families would be constantly isolating for 10 days over a child’s temp that lasts an afternoon. At some point that will have to stop as well.

I think a large percentage of people will be ok and want to be able to get back to work and their fears and worries are for other, more vulnerable people, not just themselves. People want to be able to see their older relatives again without worrying their kids will transmit the virus when they see them.

I think once it is under control and isn't overwhelming the NHS and killing hundreds of people a day then the media will stop reporting that it is. None of it is made up. If they didn't tell people, even more people wouldn't give a shit and fewer people would do their best to follow the rules put in place to prevent virus transmission.

@Wontdothisagain

Totally agree.

If we heard on the news the daily death toll from road accidents. Would we be so quick to get in our cars?

I'm not saying it's the same, I understand what's happening as a result of this new virus.

But surely at some point, once we've had the vaccine rollout, we will have to accept some risk in order to live, and I worry that people won't accept this.

We will have to accept some risk. I think that time will come when the risk has significantly reduced and stabilised. It can't be once this first round of vaccines has been done. It isn't the elderly who have just been vaccinated that have been causing transmission rates to soar. Even before they were vaccinated it wasn't them.

Yes it annoys me when I see people panicking about covid on here if they're overweight, smokers etc. There are 450 cancer deaths every day in UK, with obesity and smoking amongst the biggest risks and yet people don't seem to have the same hysteria about cancer.

I think we have to get a way past over 1000 deaths a day, the rollout of the vaccination programme and some idea of how the new strains will impact on the spread of infection. We are at an absolute crisis point, so it will be a while, and I don't think it's hysteria.

@Wontdothisagain - there are less than 2000 road deaths in an average year?! Tragic though it is.

The difference between other deaths or hospitalizations and those which are Covid related is that they are not contagious.

Me changing my behavior will not affect my neighbours' risks of cancer, diabetes, RTAs but they will impact their risk of Covid.

The reporting of information tells us how well or otherwise we are doing. I find the information on vaccines heartening, the information on numbers relating to transmission is still worrying.

As the numbers start to drop it will become less 'news'. Until then I am happy to still get the information.

I would hope that once the vaccination programme is complete (and presumably the hospitals are no longer overrun) it will stop. I certainly hope so.

@Wontdothisagain

Totally agree.

If we heard on the news the daily death toll from road accidents. Would we be so quick to get in our cars?

I'm not saying it's the same, I understand what's happening as a result of this new virus.

But surely at some point, once we've had the vaccine rollout, we will have to accept some risk in order to live, and I worry that people won't accept this.

For that analogy to be relevant you’d have to imagine the RTA rate was 100x higher, seatbelts and speed limits were in development and controversial, ditto MOT’s and traffic lights and the government were simultaneously inventing them, rolling them out and telling us about them.

Whilst I think it’s important we able to access the stats I’m not sure trotting out the daily and cumulative deaths at the end of every news bulletin, like a grim version of the football results, is very helpful or nuanced.

Did anyone see the part where I said it's NOT the same? Also where I said that I understand what is happening as a result of this being a new virus?

I'm talking about when we get to a point where vaccines have been rolled out. Will people ever accept that there will be some risk.

But they do track numbers of 'reportable' diseases and if there was a huge increase in cases of another 'reportable' diseases it would be on the news. Similarly they track deaths by lots of different causes and these are reported upon when they are considered news worthy.

We really need individuals to start taking responsibility for driving a reduction in case numbers.

Setting aside people who do interact with others (childcare/workplace/etc) - track and trace is obviously quite important here.

But those of us who work from home and can take advantage of home delivery services - if we feel ill or have a symptom, we need to ask ourselves what is the actual benefit of getting a test unless we needed medical attention - as if we actually had symptoms of covid but a negative test we wouldn't be going out anyway because we wouldn't want to risk passing on whichever other virus we had.

If we can rely on tactics like lockdown and vaccination to reduce the deaths and we all take responsibility for driving down case numbers then we can hopefully get to a point where only testing for severe cases becomes the norm.

OP

If it stops, it's unlikely to be in my lifetime.

They don't want to return to a world where you can just be Jane Bloggs and walk into a pub and pay in cash.

I think once deaths are back down into single figures the cases numbers will be irrelevant.. Who will care when they are saying we have 400 cases and death... It will be pointless

They will have a big problem on their hands getting the fear to stop.

We are now at a point where young healthy people are claiming they should be vaccinated before they return to work and before the elderly who this virus is by far the most risky for.

I mean yes young people do die and yes long covid is a thing but you can get post viral issues from any virus, get hospitalised and die from literally any virus.

We have now gone from 'lets stay home flatten the curve and protect the nhs' to 'no one must ever catch covid and no one and is safe unless they are shut in their house wiping down post and shopping'

The government don't want you home because they care about your welfare, they just dont want all the hospital beds taken up.

Once the vulnerable are vaccinated things should return to normal.

We even had a daily death count in the summer in Scotland when the number was 0 most days.

@Scottishgirl85

Yes it annoys me when I see people panicking about covid on here if they're overweight, smokers etc. There are 450 cancer deaths every day in UK, with obesity and smoking amongst the biggest risks and yet people don't seem to have the same hysteria about cancer.

Yes I’ve always thought that too.

I agree. Having whipped us all up into a terrified frenzy (the fear messaging has been just about the only effective part of their pandemic response) the government now has a hell of a lot of rowing back to do.

Too "We are now at a point where young healthy people are claiming they should be vaccinated before they return to work and before the elderly who this virus is by far the most risky for."

But the government don't care if they return to work and many will have no work to go back to.

There are 450 cancer deaths every day in UK

Wow. I knew it had to be high. I know so many people dead or dying of it sadly.

@FlyMyPrettiesFly

Whilst I think it’s important we able to access the stats I’m not sure trotting out the daily and cumulative deaths at the end of every news bulletin, like a grim version of the football results, is very helpful or nuanced.

This I completely agree with.