How long will people agree to make these sacrifices for?

[DappledOliveGroves]

Inspired by another thread here.

Let's assume the vaccines don't do what they should - either because the virus mutates so rapidly or because our government can't manage to adhere to Pfizer's protocol and a lone dose does nothing to protect people.

Then what?

For all those champing at the bit for curfews, harsher lockdowns, further restrictions on civil liberties - I'm genuinely curious - how long are you willing to maintain this status quo?

Would you be happy to still be in this lockdown in a year? Two years? Five years? Even if the lockdowns are eased and clamped down again, would you be willing to accept rolling lockdowns as a fact of life with no end in sight? At what point would those wanting tougher restrictions decide they can't live like this anymore?

DappledOliveGroves Written by someone who hasn’t lived through a war and all that it brings,

I'm another with one DC who has now spent nearly a third of her life in lockdown, likely having a lockdown 3rd birthday as well as having had 2nd birthday right at beginning of lockdown, and a baby born in second lockdown (found out I was pregnant just before first lockdown). I'm really worried about the impact of such limited socialisation on both of them - I used to take DC1 to shops and cafes as a very small baby just to people watch and she was fascinated. Two month old DC2 obviously doesn't go anywhere and even when things open up everyone will wear masks so limited facial expressions to see, although I had read this wasn't a concern for children in countries where women traditionally wear coverings for example as long as they have an engaged caregiver at home.

On the other hand I understand why the restrictions are necessary to avoid a situation where there is no NHS to access and all the knock on implications for everyone. My DC1 requires a major operation that is being delayed due to pressures on the NHS and of course we worry hugely about that too. It's at a specialist children's hospital and isn't being delayed because of lockdown but because the pressures on the hospital from the increase in cases, staff isolating etc directly from Covid have meant less surgeries can happen.

I don't know what the answer is.

Pneumonia used to be called 'old man's friend'

Not any more - in the actual words of my late, 96 year old FIL's doctor, "It's treatable now so we have to treat it"

Admittedly this may have been influenced by the family's insistence that something had got to be done, but we seem to have reached a position where some can't accept that anyone will die, and that's just not sustainable

See also the cries of "but it wouldn't have killed them!!" any time comorbitities among younger folk are mentioned. It's perfectly true that some wouldn't prove fatal any time soon, but sadly plenty would - only apparently that's not acceptable either

[quote DappledOliveGroves]@StealthPolarBear are you honestly telling me that if we're in this position in five years' time you will still stick by the rules? No gatherings, no weddings, no family Christmas, no meals out, no parties?

If so, then you're certainly far more altruistic than me.
[/quote]
Ah I see your mistake/s. It's not altruism for the most part. Those who are keeping up know that. Perhaps we could demonstrate what we're trying to avoid by cutting you off from your water/electricity supply, medical services and all food. ( you get that someone has to put it IN the shops right? There are no food pixies)

"I don't care that the NHS is shot to shit" wow! that puts you firmly with the small group of people who completely missed the point and think this is about doing the NHS a favour. There can't be too many incapable of understanding the daily explanations so that group is probably down to a hard core now of the permanently bewildered.

And you know you're not doing us a favour by obeying rules to prevent infection any more than it's a magnanimous favour that you stop at red lights and drink/drive. Feel free to rebel against those too and see how that works out for you.

Having been in isolation on a cancer ward, if I was elderly and unlikely to survive COVID I would much rather die at home with friends and family rather than alone in hospital with overstretched nurses and the odd FaceTime call...

I think we should be able to have this discussion. Hospital is an awful place to die at the moment. Palliative care centres (like hospices) are a good idea if you’re unlikely to survive. Visitors welcome. No pressure on hospitals.

They don't die at home! They never die at home when it comes to it. Unless they are in a care home poor sods. Neither would you let your parents. Ffs dying is really difficult. They don't just drift off They struggle and beg. And we eventually call an ambulance and they are taken away, transmitting to any number in their wake. And filling a bed. Your dad/mum doesn't get to choose to risk assess that they don't mind catching it and want to die at home. That never happens.

I know you didn’t say it @Madhairday but you are agreeing with someone who argues like a kid.

And even if they do die at home, where are the palliative care teams going to come from. Does it matter if they get ill. Not that they exist anyway but let's pretend they do. Or do we really want these old people dying hideous unmedicated deaths at home?

@GetOffYourHighHorse

'Lockdown isn't the problem. Get it into your fat head. Coronavirus is the problem'

It's tedious isn't it. Bright sparks thinking there's an alternative as if no one had considered that and no, there isn't. What with it been a highly transmissible infectious disease and all.

It's shit. Who can possible think living without seeing people and doing fun things is anything but shit. It's necessary sadly, so grit your teeth and get on with it. I would suggest getting the virus or a family member getting it and potentially requiring hospital treatment is far worse than not been able to go to the cinema or the pub.

There are exemptions for end of life care, there are support bubbles , supermarkets are open. We really aren't in solitary confinement.

Please refer to your own username, ffs.

@Delatron

Thank god there are still some people with common sense. I'm beginning to feel like either I've gone mad or everyone else has.

People were up in arms when it came out that res care patients with Covid were not taken to hospital and were left to die in the care homes. Why though?! Why are we desperately trying to save people aged over 80/90 years old? I'm not heartless but I am pragmatic. The NHS does not have endless resources, it is struggling to cope. Perhaps there does need to be some sort of cut off points re treatment?

I believe any 85 year old with covid would prioritise the treatment of child or younger person if it came down to it and they were asked.

@WalrusWife

Would people accept this for the next 5 years? 10 years? Forever?

How will the NHS be funded when nobody has a job to pay tax?

The truth is that no one is proposing that lock-downs go on forever. That just gets suggested by people who want their own way and they WANT IT NOW.
Their wants and needs are too important to follow rules. It's the same mindset that you get when someone is speeding "but I was late so I had to drive dangerously"

@Fembot123

I know you didn’t say it *@Madhairday* but you are agreeing with someone who argues like a kid.

Is that aimed at me?

@LastTrainEast please do explain as I genuinely do not follow.

Why would there be no water, food etc? One third of Covid patients are asymptomatic - they would presumably still go out to work and supply chains would still run.

Spanish flu had a mortality rate of around 10% and cities were overwhelmed - but even then everything didn't come to a grinding halt, even when bodies were stacking up and carts going house to house to collect the dead.

I'll do one more year. Then I'm done. I'll have gone from being 24 at the beginning to almost 27. I'm not willing to spend my entire youth like this.

Until the autumn. Max end of the year. After that no.
We've done everything by the book, but I'm fed up now.

@Sirius99

Honeyhoops, that’s a big call and what let them die in the streets or gasping for last breath on their living room floor

Why randomly on the living room floor?

Terrifying we gave away our civil liberties just like that.
Also there were huge anti lockdown protests in Amsterdam last week. Media blackout
Why?
UK is now a police state where going to someone's house for a brew is illegal, to go into next county is illegal, no out for meals or to theatres or to pubs
How did the government do it? By peddling fear

@DarcyJack

People can and do die at home, or in hospices. My mum did, my uncle did, both terminal illnesses. Covid is different as people have been advised to go to hospital if they are struggling to breath, and obviously the majority should.

Perhaps for the very frail elderly, or those with not long left due to a terminal illness that guidance should be changed? I don't know the answers I just don't see how admitting 90+ year olds or people at end of life to hospital for treatment is helpful to anyone.

I believe any 85 year old with covid would prioritise the treatment of child or younger person if it came down to it and they were asked.

This may well be true, but you're missing the point that it's not 85 year olds taking up all the ICU beds. Their outcomes are too poor so they are not escalated to that treatment. The majority of patients in ICU are aged between 40 and 70.

@Beaniecats

Terrifying we gave away our civil liberties just like that. Also there were huge anti lockdown protests in Amsterdam last week. Media blackout Why? UK is now a police state where going to someone's house for a brew is illegal, to go into next county is illegal, no out for meals or to theatres or to pubs How did the government do it? By peddling fear

I believe there were major protests in Italy, too, looking at things posted on Twitter and TikTok and again, it isn't being reported. Why?

I think people will start to meet up, for a coffee, have a meal and a glass of wine soon.
I will. I'm not prepared to carry on not doing that, for another year. I've already stopped doing it for a year. And I won't continue to not do it for that much longer.

@GetOffYourHighHorse obviously I did that. But she has just turned 2. Reasoning isnt really her strong point. She has been locked away essentially. Other humans are now something she doesnt encounter regularly. She hasn't seen her only cousin in 5 months. My family live in Ireland. My aunts have met her once. She doesnt know her family.

My worry is what effect will this have on her when she is 5 and going to school, or 12 and navigating teenage years, or starting work at 18? Before lockdown she was at nursery, seeing family, seeing my friends kids, travelling on planes to ireland, waving to people at the shops. She was learning how to function in society. It's all gone. I cant recreate that by myself, with a baby, in 4 walls. Are we creating a generation of kids who are socially anxious? If so, the impact will be phenomenal.

As soon as my parents are (fully) vaccinated I’m seeing them as normal.

@DappledOliveGroves it is being reported - quick Google shows BBC, Mail, Sky News, Guardian, Times have all covered Italian protests.

Stop saying the media is hiding things when you don't actually read online newspapers and just depend on TV news. There are limited time slots.

What’s ridiculous to me is that the longer these restrictions go on for the more tragedies there are happening everywhere and in particular to the elderly and vulnerable who we are supposed to be living these half lives for to protect. Putting aside of course the huge economic and mental health problems building by the day, just 2 examples from within my own family;

1. 89 year old DGM admitted to hospital in November for a burst gall bladder. No visitors allowed, her DC and relatives told that she was unlikely to survive any surgery and would only survive 3 days with the ailment untreated. So what is the result? An 89 year old lady who has been on her own since March anyway now lying in a hospital bed alone and frightened and facing the end of her life without even the chance for her children to be with her. Thankfully my DF demanded she be discharged so they could be with her at her home and after they got her eating again, following near starvation in the hospital, she made a miraculous recovery and lives on. This time now insisting that her DC continue to visit her at home and she’ll take her chances with covid.

1. Another elderly relative desperately worried that she will never see her recently diagnosed ill brother alive again. They live far apart and usually she would be straight on a train. But of course she can’t and so now because of covid restrictions and not because of actual covid, they both face loneliness and sadness and the very real possibility that one of the last of that generation will be lost without being able to see their family.

Humans are ‘herd’ and society reliant creatures and these continued restrictions, which dictate that everyone must miss out on seeing their loved ones at times of elation and distress, are barbaric.