Please, please people take this seriously

[ConcernedAuntie]

To all those covid deniers and mask refusers out there.

I have just had a phone call from my cousin and I am totally shaken. Her husband has died from Covid this morning. He was 48, a big strong bear of a man and has done manual outside work all his working life. He tested positive last Friday. I can't believe it. The only places he has been indoors is home and he collected a prescription for his MIL the previous Monday. He had two children 12 and 14. The whole family is devastated.

This is not the flu.

Concerning to hear of someone else passing away very quickly. A friend of DH lost his sister yesterday. Only in her fifties, no health conditions. Lost sense of smell on Saturday but otherwise completely fine. Had two coughing fits on Monday where she fainted so went into hospital. She passed away yesterday. I am in utter disbelief.

Sorry for your loss OP

I’m so sorry for your loss, he sounds lovely. This is such a fucking Russian roulette of a disease isn’t it

I’m so sorry OP.

I don’t see anything wrong with you saying to be careful and take this seriously. A lot of people aren’t taking this seriously and think it will never happen to them. The fact your BIL was careful and did take it seriously and still became ill and died goes to show how easily this thing spreads.

@Ranald

There's a lot of people who have died with Covid which is not the same as dying of Covid. I think it's important to bear this in mind.

Sorry for your loss OP.

Can you not see how offensive it is to post this idiocy on a thread where the OP has lost a relative?

You are wrong. The ONS stats show clearly that almost 100,000 people have died of Covid. With covid on their death certificate as the main/underlying cause.

This with/of crap has to stop. I know it's in the wording of the way daily deaths are reported, but the information is out there for all to see about those who have died of Covid.

OP I'm so sorry for your loss, and I'm so sorry that some are trying to make this thread a place to spread their minimising and denial.

[quote Run1000km2021]@ConcernedAuntie sorry for your loss.

I don’t think these alarmist posts help though. By “big strong bear of a man” presumably you mean he is quite overweight? It would be very unusual for a healthy under 50 to die of COVID[/quote]
So a poster comes on here and says she has lost a relative, and your response is 'oh he must have been overweight so deserved it '?

I just can't even.

@Ranald

There's a lot of people who have died with Covid which is not the same as dying of Covid. I think it's important to bear this in mind.

Sorry for your loss OP.

Define "a lot" - is it 50%, 25% or 75%.

What is your source for claiming this as fact??

One of my friends posted today about a mum from her child's school who was fine last week, took ill over the weekend and died on Monday from Covid.

Don't know if it was the new variant or not but something seems to have changed if people are getting it and dying so quickly now :(

This lady didn't have any underlying health conditions either. So I agree with the OP - there are still too many people being too blasé about it and not appreciating how risky their behaviour is.

I’m very sorry for your loss @ConcernedAuntie, it’s very cruel.

Re: people speculating that this new variant has changed. It hasn’t, covid is known to affect the blood (thickens it specifically) and causes organ failure fairly rapidly if not caught in time. There’s also evidence that lots of people are falling ill and suffering happy hypoxia i.e they’re unaware that they’re oxygen levels are dangerously low.

This has been observed and circulated since the beginning of the pandemic, we’re seeing more cases now because more people have caught the infection. Small statistics have a larger impact when observed in real life.

Contact tracing studies done elsewhere have been able to identify close to 100% of the sources of transmission and they have all been extended close contact. There hasn't been any measurable amount of walking past someone on the street or in a supermarket who is infected and getting sick.

Much as this might once have been true and perhaps still is elsewhere, I think it's been superseded by the emergence of the new UK variant. At the time it was first identified, there were a lot of virologists saying that because of its increased virulence, levels of contact that had previously been safe were no longer safe. Instead of contact only becoming a risk if it was closer than two metres for longer than 15 minutes, it started being said that even fleeting contact was enough for transmission to take place (which is not to say that extended contact isn't even riskier, obviously). I haven't kept up with their final conclusions, if any, but it does seem clear that what was once safe isn't necessarily any longer, in the UK at least. What's also clear from the recent deaths and hospital admissions is that the risk to younger people (say, in their 30s and 40s) has increased, and looking at anecdotal evidence (afaik there's no formal analysis available yet) if that age group is ill enough to die then it seems to happen fast.

OP is completely justified in offering her family member's example as a warning to us all and in no way deserves the unkindness this thread has offered her in return.