417 dead

[Standandwait]

417 people under 40 have died of CV in hospital in England from when the pandemic began to Jan 16, according to the NHS. Another 4,081 under 60 have died.

This is out of 60,921 total deaths NHS England recorded; by comparison, gov.uk counts 89,261 deaths total in England to Jan. 17, but they don’t break it down by age group. The quickest glance at deaths in care homes suggests those basically explain the difference in the two totals. I assume it's possible to come up with comparable figures for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, too -- I just happen to live in England and got tired.

Lord knows, I'm not looking to "kill granny." I have a lot of dearly beloved family over 80, and am closer than not to 60. I also have a disabled child, which means I know not only him but many other very vulnerable families. I have followed lockdown rules quite faithfully, myself.

But I really, really am beginning to have grave reservations about locking down again and again. If you feel otherwise, please talk me around.

You know whats starting to happen now. adult icu's have already expanded Past their normal capacity. staff are being brought from other areas to work on adult ICU's so thats untrained staff looking after icu patients. occupational therapists/ odps/clinic nurses non of who are icu trained are looking after these patients, many icus that were usually 20 beds are now 60 beds. Adults are now being sent to childrens ICU's and starting to fillt heir available beds.

Lockdown is shit and the damage it will do is harsh. but we have no other options. The frail old grannys dont even get into ICU, they are fillied with loads of people under 60. they are a blunt tool and they do work. We are starting to see a fall in daily cases but unfortunately we wont see a failin admissions for another 2 or 3 weeks and deaths will fall after that.
What else do you suggest we do?

If you didn't read the comment I was replying to then you probably don't get the context.

The PP was trying to argue that people always use the example of how we're locking down to save old grannies because nobody cares about old women, so it's easier to make the point that it's a bad decision.

I'm saying that men are more disposable than women. Not disposable per se, but more disposable.

It's always been 'women and children first' when there are limited lifeboats and society cares much less about violence against men - watch the social experiments where people laugh at girlfriends being violent to their boyfriends but then intervene when the situation is reversed.

Was replying to the below.

What a nonsensical thing to say. Of course people love their grandads. And of course men aren’t disposable. What do you mean by disposable anyway? Are you saying that men aren’t valuable to society bcs that’s pretty misandrist if so.

I know most of the nurses doing the frontline work are women but there’s lots of male doctors and nurses who are working their socks off.

I heard yesterday that there is a COVID patient being admitted to hospital every 30 seconds. The hospitals are bursting at the seams, and the staff must be under a huge amount of stress. The virus is putting strain on ICU beds which are expected to be full imminently. Patients in areas such as London are having to be rushed to hospitals elsewhere in the UK. Now imagine if someone had a car accident or gets sepsis or has a heart attack, takes a bad fall, gets knocked down by a car - their chance of dying is much much greater because of the strain the NHS is under. These lockdowns are intended to reduce the strain. If we weren’t under lockdown now the situation in the hospitals would be unimaginable. This is why lockdowns are needed. It’s tough but things could be so much worse.

And all the people saying this is just another flu are thickos. The only way out of this will be vaccination.

A few years ago, when I worked in ICU, I rounded the corner of a bay to see a pair of dirty work boots sticking out from under some drapes. A man had come into hospital so sick that they had no choice but to treat him in ICU before they could undress him. It was literally 'do or die'.

If ICU is full, and by that, I don't mean 'nominally full', ie "we have no capacity for staffing an extra bed", but "we have already expanded into the next ward and recovery, and our nurses are working on a 1:4 ratio instead of 1:1", that patient will die. Or, another patient may die while attention is shifted on to that patient.

Heart attacks and strokes caused by clots have a strict time limit for treatment. If the ambulance can't even get to the patient in a reasonable time, then can't get into the ambulance bay, let alone into the hospital, that time will be gone.

It isn't directly the Covid patients that they're worried about. It's the everyone else who might die or live with lifelong disability as a result of the NHS being overwhelmed.

Surely then the argument should be vaccinate the younger population first since they are the ones putting pressure on the NHS

@princessandthedragon and what if there isnt a vaccination or it doesnt work long term? They are still testing whether it lasts longer than 6 months. Thats what worries me. All our eggs in one basket. We are told stay at home until there is a vaccine. We dont know there will be one or it will work. I'm not doing this for the rest of my life

It's always been 'women and children first' when there are limited lifeboats and society cares much less about violence against men - watch the social experiments where people laugh at girlfriends being violent to their boyfriends but then intervene when the situation is reversed.

Yes it always shocks me when people laugh about assaults on men in pranks. However I’d say that it’s more that people believe men can take care of themselves, not that men aren’t valuable. Although laughing at any assault makes me wince.

And also, laughing at women being beaten, is a bit close to the bone because domestic violence against women is a real issue in many societies.

About the “women and children” thing, it should make you feel better that this actually is a bit of a myth that started with the Titanic. Someone did a study of all the civilian ship disasters from the 19th and early 20th centuries and found that the w and c children policy only applied to half the titanic and another incident but that such a policy wasn’t standard. As such men were more likely to survive in civilian incidents.

I think the “women and children” thing has caught on in the media because it sounds heroic but also in war reporting you will hear “xx women and children” died to show the civilian casualties as that group is far less likely to be soldiers involved in actual fighting. But yes, I always questioned it as a child. It’s as if only that group mattered.

@princessandthedragon

I heard yesterday that there is a COVID patient being admitted to hospital every 30 seconds. The hospitals are bursting at the seams, and the staff must be under a huge amount of stress. The virus is putting strain on ICU beds which are expected to be full imminently. Patients in areas such as London are having to be rushed to hospitals elsewhere in the UK. Now imagine if someone had a car accident or gets sepsis or has a heart attack, takes a bad fall, gets knocked down by a car - their chance of dying is much much greater because of the strain the NHS is under. These lockdowns are intended to reduce the strain. If we weren’t under lockdown now the situation in the hospitals would be unimaginable. This is why lockdowns are needed. It’s tough but things could be so much worse.

And people need to think about what happens when people are moved to hospitals in other parts of the country. The beds aren’t just sitting around empty in most cases. They had people in them who are discharged to make space for them.

Like my friend’s Dad who was diagnosed with cancer before Christmas which was bit of a shock as very fit and had been cycling for miles. He got unexpectedly discharged on Christmas Eve as the hospital had 50 out of area Covid patients . This meant he didn’t get the scan he needed to determine his treatment plan before discharge. Went to have scan recently but his pain has escalated so much he is unable to lie flat and couldn’t have it so still not treatment plan and I suspect the first plan they get will be a palliative care plan.

Then there’s my friend whose joint operation was cancelled who is in so much pain and can’t sleep and her neighbour’s DS who is young and diagnosed with a brain tumour before Christmas with no idea what is going to happen.

This is with a lockdown, what would things be like without ?

feel the same as you. It's a nasty virus but seldom fatal and mostly in the very old and frail. And lots of other ill people are not getting the treatment they need. So their condition might become fatal because of this
But they're not getting treatment because resources have to go to people with covid, who need treatment but may not die (most likely from the younger group). If there was no lockdown there would be more cases and then even less resources for people with non covid probs.

So you've made a good argument for lockdown.

[quote IndiaMay]@princessandthedragon and what if there isnt a vaccination or it doesnt work long term? They are still testing whether it lasts longer than 6 months. Thats what worries me. All our eggs in one basket. We are told stay at home until there is a vaccine. We dont know there will be one or it will work. I'm not doing this for the rest of my life[/quote]
I assume you know there are already 2 vaccines being administered?

@FoolsAssassin

I’d like to thank you OP for starting this thread. Just occasionally I let the constant stream of anti lockdown stuff my Brother persists in sending despite asking him not to, start to cause a few doubts.

However this thread has totally banished these small doubts and have reaffirmed the severe gravity of the situation and reinforced quite clearly why we are doing what we are doing, so thank you for helping me clarify my thoughts. DH has just read it too and feels the same so that’s 2 of us you have helped convince lockdown is necessary and it it’s only just past 8am. Keep up the good work.

@lavenderlou

But presumably many people under 40 or under 60 have been saved by hospital treatment, which is what lockdowns ensure is still available.

Yep this.

Plus we have no idea still the number of people with long covid complications.

That's 417 deaths WITH the restrictions, lockdowns, hygiene precautions, etc.. It could have been double, trebled, quadruple, that if things were "normal" and we'd ignored Covid. What number of "young" deaths is acceptable to the OP?

How about if something else had caused 417 young deaths in a year? What if it were some kind of unsafe workplace, or a faulty type of car, or a building design fault or a health related foul up such as a dodgy vaccine? There'd be an outcry for change, prosecutions,, etc.

@Standandwait

Plus, if we hadn't locked down, the £400 billion the government committed in 2020 alone to shore up bankrupt workers and businesses could have gone to the NHS instead -- which would have tripled its budget from about £200b now. That's without going into the longterm costs of educational interruptions etc for the younger people who will presumably be paying all that back in tax.

Three points.

The economy is not remotely like a household budget. There is no good reason why money couldn’t be thrown at the problem now.

However, throwing money at the problem now is far too late. Nurses and ICU specialists can’t be trained in a month, or even in a year.

You appear not to understand what ad hominem means. You’re not being criticised for who you are. You’re being criticised for your facile ideas.

Everyone else has explained in what way the ideas you’ve expressed are really very stupid.

[quote IndiaMay]@princessandthedragon and what if there isnt a vaccination or it doesnt work long term? They are still testing whether it lasts longer than 6 months. Thats what worries me. All our eggs in one basket. We are told stay at home until there is a vaccine. We dont know there will be one or it will work. I'm not doing this for the rest of my life[/quote]
Ifs, and pots and pans.

Even working for six months is actually fine. It ended up as a revolving vaccine program. We now know it would be possible to vaccinate the priority list and at a push the whole country in six months.

That won't happen though as vaccines will be improved and twecked. New scientific developments will happen all the time. Plus chances are the virus will be less dangerous in a few years.

Stop worrying about stuff that is unlikely. You will end up a doom monger.

Another argument as well as the very good points on not overwhelming the NHS and the issue of long Covid, is the problem of viral load. The reason why younger medical staff died of it before proper PPE was that they were exposed to a much higher amount of virus, so even their younger, healthy immune system was overwhelmed. If we all mixed normally then we would have more younger people dying.

My husband works in an international company and they have had multiple deaths of staff in Mexico who are well under 60 - 40s and early 50s - with no underlying health conditions because it is so rife there. And that's just in his company.

@Standandwait - re your earlier comments, there is no point comparing overall death rates in the US and the UK, as they are completely different countries in a huge number of different ways, so why you accept that logic with Sweden but not the US I’m not sure ; and suddenly funding the NHS better instead of locking down does not magically produce the missing specialist staff and facilities required - they needed to be there from the start and even then, not locking down would still have created more demand for healthcare than available supply. So there is no point saying we shouldn’t have locked down, we should instead have got ourselves a time machine to go back and change the position we were in when covid 19 came on the scene. So actually, yes you are saying we should kill granny and overwhelm the NHS.

Lockdown is needed. The original poster is a prat or wind up merchant.

The end.

Wait until you spend 2 weeks wondering if your parents will survive the night, just 2 months after covid kill your granny.

I took the fist lockdown seriously the first time, this time also but I know fully understand why it is necessary. My parents met with just one person for 5 months, the person had covid but no symptoms.

@KarmaNoMore

Wait until you spend 2 weeks wondering if your parents will survive the night, just 2 months after covid kill your granny.

I took the fist lockdown seriously the first time, this time also but I know fully understand why it is necessary. My parents met with just one person for 5 months, the person had covid but no symptoms.

This is sad, but it’s just part of the normal Course of life experiences that we all go through.

Grandparents, and parents die.

Shutting down the country isn’t going to prevent this admittedly sad part of a normal life.

@Witchend

Not this again.

Okay. You have an accident. You fall from the loft and break your back and hit your head causing severe concussion while doing DIY. In normal times your dp phones 999 and they send an ambulance/air ambulance and you get a hospital bed.

If the NHS is overwhelmed, then you're told that there is no ambulance.
Ever phoned 999 and got through to a message "we are experiencing especially high levels of calls right now, and there is no operator to take your call. Please hang up and call again" and then the line goes dead?
I have. I had that at work. It took 3 times to get through with someone unconscious on the floor with suspected stroke. It is absolutely terrifying and you feel totally helpless. In our case we got through on the third time and then we were told we were high priority- only three hour wait.
We got the person to hospital in the car when they regained consciousness.
With a broken back and head injury you can't do that; potentially deadly if you try and move them.

And maybe there's no bed when you get there. And the consultant/surgeon you would normally have had is off isolating, so they've not got any one who can really deal with you.
And maybe you catch covid in hospital. You're now weak and vulnerable, so you may end up as one of those "doesn't really count" statistics.

Or are you suggesting the doctors look at people and say "you know, this person counts as vulnerable, they've had pretty bad asthma for twenty years, we can't afford the bed for them when we know we'll have someone who has a better chance of survival.
Do you know what's on the list for people with "underlying conditions"? There's certainly several you wouldn't expect to effect chance of survival-like mental health issues.
Maybe they look at your injuries and think "this person will need an ICU bed and we haven't got one" and have to make the decision they won't do the lifesaving operation because there are too many other people needing help with a better chance of survival than you.

That is what you are looking at if the NHS is overwhelmed.

You're not locking down just to stop the elderly dying from covid. You are locking down to enable people to get their cancer diagnosis, their heart operation, their kidney dialysis, their transplant they've been waiting for for three years... and your dc to be able to get urgent treatment when they present with symptoms of meningitis etc.
People will die and be left with life changing conditions because they will not have been able to access what they need. That is the reality of the NHS being overwhelmed.

I would have thought that after around ten months people would have been able to work this out for themselves rather than needing it spelt out.

No, you’re absolutely right, doctors should never have to make decisions like that, and it’s a travesty that they have been forced to.

It is the patients themselves who should have made these end of life decisions before they even reached this point.

@RomeoLikedCapuletGirls

but I don’t think mere illness in a small minority of people is a valid enough reason to remove the civil liberties

My cousin had COVID at the beginning of the pandemic and still has problems with her breathing.

Illness is a normal part of life.

I’m sorry she is still ill, but ruining the lives of the whole of the country is a disproportionate response.

Lockdown to prevent civil collapse I can just about get on board with, but lockdown to prevent people just being unwell? No.

My chest is burning right now because I picked up a bag of cat litter. I can't play chasing with my kids, I'm now in bed at 9 and up at 7 (I'm a writer and used to get up at 3 to write a few times a week). This is from covid in August that I wasn't hospitalized from. I know 3 others in the same boat, all fit and healthy, now not. And while you're not looking to kill granny, you certainly seem to be in the 'but they're elderly' camp. Two elderly ladies I have known died last year who may or may not be alive now if not for covid. Yabu. I can't believe people are still trying to find justifications against covid measures