Thread 2 - how long will people make these sacrifices

[DappledOliveGroves]

First thread is full.

If anyone has the willpower to continue arguing, please carry on!

I know what you mean, and I think everyone has their own cut off point.
Generally its when discomfort from the sacrifice outweighs the feel good factor from doing 'the right thing'.

The comments about people in their 90s dying / having a vaccine are interesting. Elderly people die. I used to be a nurse and I lost count of the number of times relatives would scream at me that I had murdered their 90 year old mother and she was in the prime of her life.

As a society, we cannot accept death, it seems like we all have to live forever. Jennifer Worth wrote a very interesting book “In the Midst of life.”

www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html

Apparently I have a 1 in 1106 of dying in the next year according to my age and sex (not from Covid). Death is ever present and tomorrow is not promised.

Yeah, user maybe that’s it. Some things are easier to put to the back of your mind. And maybe some people are reaching the limit of feeling like it’s worth the sacrifice. It’s so very easy to have a kind of moral high ground because you’re staying at home and following the rules. And forget about all the other violence that your actions cause every day.

www.unicef.org/media/media_21423.html

Every day, 6,000 children die of water-related diseases.

Every year, nearly 11 million children die before reaching their fifth birthday, most from preventable causes.

Why aren’t we helping them? Our inaction as developed countries are killing children.

Fast fashion also kills:
www.panaprium.com/blogs/i/fashion-kills

I didn't like the long commute on the grotty trains, I didn't like missing dinner and bed with my kids. I need this lockdown to end now. I need to socialise, I need to do hobbies and get out of my house and much more importantly, my kids need their lives back before their mental health is irrevocably damaged.

My point being, lockdown has a lot of upsides to me on the face of it, and I am still desperate for it to end.

I agree with the idea of sacrifice and doing the right thing. We can see coronavirus because it's in front of us every day. It's on every news channel 24/7, it's on every social media feed, it's on the radio, in our newspapers, in our shops, and the responsibility for the virus spreading has 100% been put on us. Our focus on it is guilt based. There are many awful things in this world that we are also responsible for, but it's easier to ignore them, and easier to forgive others for ignoring them. Many people care about coronavirus, and see themselves as sacrificing for others, but in reality they wouldnt sacrifice for others in the thousands of other rubbish situations around the world, but that isnt in their faces. Also, those other rubbish things dont affect you directly. The difference with coronavirus is the fear of it affecting you or the people you love. Its not a selfless act to follow rules. People dont do it to save the strangers. They do it so their loved ones can access the NHS if they need it, or their parents wont get infected and die. Following rules is a selfish act (which is more human nature than a bad thing) but some people are starting to see the other affects of following the rules and are deciding the damage to them or their family that following the rules had inflicted is too much to ignore. Suddenly the focus is turning. At the end of the day though, everyone is selfish, even if they dont recognise it. That's just human nature.

I've pointed out that health and social care is already rationed by cost and age. Some seem not to understand or believe that. Yet it's not part of the public debate on Covid
Curious

It is indeed curious - as is the lack of discussion around much of the NHS remaining resolutely shut even over the summer, when cases were on the floor

I honestly do get the derision about obvious conspiracy theories - the "covid's a hoax" and "chips in the vaccines" are especially ridiculous - but it worries me when even rational questioning's lumped in with the rest and the usual tired insults are flung

Could it be that actually, many understand the points being made but simply don't agree?

I used to be a nurse and I lost count of the number of times relatives would scream at me that I had murdered their 90 year old mother and she was in the prime of her life

I'm so sorry that happened to you, WalrusWife - and of course others - and am ashamed to say a (fortunately distant) family member did the same
Another relative was unconscious and dying after his third stroke, and still she insisted he should be force fed and that the staff were murderers for refusing ... and this over someone she'd never been close to

Your point about people being unable to accept mortality was so very, very accurate

I said I wasn't playing misery top trumps with you @Someonetookmyname

But you'll continue to misinterpret everything I say to take the most possible offence so I quit. Enjoy.

I want to check in here - seems I have found my people.

I went to the playground this morning and spoke to 2 other adults. It was the highlight of my month. I was on a high. I havent had a conversation with another adult bar DH in 3 weeks.

I told my mother who told me off for taking a risk with my DD. She told me I have to 'keep going' at home on my own every day and I am 'torturing myself' by worrying about locking DD away from the world when I can do 'nothing about it'.

The world has gone mad. Life isnt worth living like this.

@WalrusWife

The comments about people in their 90s dying / having a vaccine are interesting. Elderly people die. I used to be a nurse and I lost count of the number of times relatives would scream at me that I had murdered their 90 year old mother and she was in the prime of her life.

As a society, we cannot accept death, it seems like we all have to live forever. Jennifer Worth wrote a very interesting book “In the Midst of life.”

www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html

Apparently I have a 1 in 1106 of dying in the next year according to my age and sex (not from Covid). Death is ever present and tomorrow is not promised.

Totally agree !

Well. If we all thought in WW2 "I'm soo fed up with the blackout and not seeing my friends" then we'd have been in a mess

If people didn't keep harping on about WW2, we wouldn't have Brexit and we'd probably have a more effective government. I still think we'd have had a high death rate because of long term damage to the NHS and the fact that far too many people have avoidable obesity and related conditions, but having an effective government could have helped a lot.

Does anyone think there's a high proportion of people in society today, who are mildly agoraphobic or socially anxious and are actually quite happy with the situation

Yes I'm one of them, not agoraphobic, but I don't like social occasions unless they are family events, so don't care that there aren't any. My household has benefited financially as we are not wasting money on commuting.

But right from the beginning I couldn't understand the clamour for lockdown and house arrest.

By the way we were told not to wear masks at the beginning because there weren't any for public use, they needed them for healthcare professionals. Not because they weren't effective.

@SwanShaped

I guess what I’m trying to figure out, is at what point away from us does compassion stop? So, do I not buy a mobile phone because it may have minerals in it linked with child labour? So I stop driving a car due to the 40k premature deaths a year from pollution? What about clothes being made by people in unsafe conditions or cotton pickers exposed to dangerous pesticides? All our actions have an impact on the lives of others, it’s just most of those actions are far away (from the UK) so easier to ignore. I’m not quite sure what exactly I mean but it’s a thought that’s trying to take shape.

Well quite. You only have to look at the posts on here about SUVs and how people justify having them, getting to schools 45 minutes early to get a parking place to collect their kids for what would be a 10 minute walk, and leave their engine running the whole time polluting the atmosphere.

But they'll be the first to moan about me going out for exercise twice in one day.

@WalrusWife those are sobering statistics. Thank you for sharing them. @DappledOliveGroves made comments along similar lines earlier.

@Puzzledandpissedoff, I genuinely don't know if the public understands that treatment rationing goes on now on the basis of age, health and cost to the public purse and that there are methodologies for doing so in the way thought most objective.

But if they do, I can't square up there being very little protest about what already goes on versus the "at all cost" sentiments about Covid.

I genuinely don't know if the public understands that treatment rationing goes on now on the basis of age, health and cost to the public purse and that there are methodologies for doing so in the way thought most objective. But if they do, I can't square up there being very little protest about what already goes on versus the "at all cost" sentiments about Covid

Maybe it's like the difference between the number dying on the roads and a massive transport crash?
One incident might not be very newsworthy, but add them all together - especially with SM and 24/7 rolling news involved - and there's an outcry

[quote Pootle40]@Dowser I'm really sorry to hear that about your dad. It must have been very traumatic.

I think we have become obsessed with keeping people alive. I watched my own mum in a care home for years....zero quality of life. In some ways I prayed for her to pass and not continue with that existence, she couldn't move or speak and had dementia.[/quote]
Thank you..yes it was
More so watching him in a vegetative coma for 8 weeks as he began to slip gradually away
It was torture of the extreme kind
Mum went the same way as yours and yes when she started to get unresponsive I used to sit beside her bed and say, dad come and get her.

@Wherediditgo

I want to check in here - seems I have found my people.

Welcome 😁

Old people in care homes at the end of their lives dying is not tragic - the uk has gone mad

Does anyone know what I did wrong to get my post deleted.
I wasn’t nasty to anyone.
Honest.

@Fembot123

Yes, I think she/ he got fed up of trying to control everyone and went off to self flagellate.

Seems like we are not alone

Meet the Flokkers

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9179081/Walkers-flock-parks-London-police-patrol-enforce-Covid-rules.html

@Puzzledandpissedoff

Could be, you've a good point.

Certainly nowhere near the regular media attention for the 78,000 + deaths per annum in the UK that the NHS directly attributes to smoking. Am sure the figures for alcohol misuse, unhealthy diets and so on are also massive but, using your analogy, those are the background stats, not the big pile up.

redsquirrelfan I’ve been thinking a lot about the girl in London who died from asthma. And is the first person to have air pollution listed as a sauce of death. It’s a very very sad story and her mum has been amazing about campaigning to get air pollution recognised. It’s just not acceptable for that to be happening. And yet it is. It just makes me question suddenly why people care so much about covid deaths and not other types. And I wonder if it’s because the people in power might be affected. Whereas most people making decisions aren’t living 25m from a busy road and suffering the effects of air pollution.