Will this ever end? Dark thoughts today

[Lissy23]

I’ve just read an article stating that this South African variant may be able to be caught again, by people who have already had and recovered from the virus...so where does that leave us if true? And that it also may evade vaccination.

I was feeling more optimistic the last few days with the excellent and efficient vaccine roll out and the infections coming down...however I’m now having some very dark thoughts, my DP and I are in a long distance relationship, I haven’t seen him since December due to our individual living and work situations meaning we cannot form a bubble. I’m missing him desperately and we were going to see each other end of March (he has provisionally booked an air b&b to stay in near to where I live) I have no idea if that’ll go ahead now, if lockdown is still in place and travel restrictions still an issue. I also haven’t seen my parents in 7 months and counting, due to the distance between us (200 miles) and the fact my parents are frightened of catching it, despite not having any co-morbidities or anything, but convinced they’ll end up on a ventilator if they catch it.

I have a 2 year old and it’s very difficult being stuck in the majority of the day with him. I miss playgroups.

I’m starting to feel like there’s no point in going on...there will be new variants coming up all the time surely? How will we ever get out of this mess? Lockdown will never end and there will always need to be a trade off between schools returning and other things opening.
I just really miss going to the cinema on a whim, popping into a cafe to escape the rain to read my book and have a coffee & piece of cake...playgroups, soft play, seeing people in person opposed to on a screen

Don’t know how to go on much longer...if it wasn’t for my DS.

It's February, and the weather is crap. But it will end, and it will end faster if we keep on vaccinating people, and everyone takes the routine precautions to evade the virus. Cases are already falling, and vaccines inevitably mutate: the flu does so every year, and this year there are so few cases of flu thanks to masks and handwashing that it's almost non-existent. And I read someone a few days ago that someone who had COVID in March was re-tested last week and still had viable antibodies, which is getting on for 10 months protection.

@Dontforgetyourbrolly people are entitled to their feelings, better to provide empathy and understanding to those feelings than try to argue them with logic.

@jerriblank

Can I ask why borders aren't closed? It's probably been done to death, but I just don't understand it. It could cut down infection rates by a lot, and it just makes sense.

Yes it has. Do a search and you'll find lots of reasons why you can't simply 'close the borders' in a country like Britain. Would be better than derailing the thread to discuss something which has already been discussed a million times already.

@NefretForth

Some of us are totally unbothered by the risk of catching the virus but are finding lockdown unbearable, but the Government isn't interested in that perspective.

Everything you have said today I agree with, it is as if I have written it!

By this time next month things could start to look a lot better:
amp.ft.com/content/42a98c9e-fa47-4792-8beb-4504503c7910?segmentID=450fd1d0-6951-b346-2341-9ae7a556a95c&__twitter_impression=true

@IcedPurple calm down, was only asking.

I would like to know what the governments plan B is if the virus evades the vaccine😟

I would like to know this too.

I suggest all the money that has gone to furlough, eat out to help out and all the impact of lockdown should be redirected towards the health service. So that if next winter cases go up again then we can cope. We all need to think long term now. What’s the strategy?

Agree with this also. I would really like some clarity on long term strategy.

@HensTeef

I would like to know what the governments plan B is if the virus evades the vaccine😟

I would like to know this too.

I suggest all the money that has gone to furlough, eat out to help out and all the impact of lockdown should be redirected towards the health service. So that if next winter cases go up again then we can cope. We all need to think long term now. What’s the strategy?

Agree with this also. I would really like some clarity on long term strategy.

Yes, long term strategy would help. If once everyone is vaccinated, we just deal with it, fine. I can live with that. If it's a case of repeated lockdown, in and out of self isolation, school bubbles being burst for the foreseeable then I don't know how ill cope quite honestly.

@usernotfound0000 I think the problem is it does affect a larger percentage of the population than we think. We have done such a good job of keeping people alive for longer so we have quite a large amount of old people, and many people have underlying conditions, and an even bigger percentage of the population is obese, that it is hospitalising more people than the NHS can handle, even if it's not killing them. It's small in the scale of the entire population, but not in the scale of NHS capacity. TBH I am keeping a low profile so the NHS can vaguely function if my DDs get sick from something else. I am not doing it to save strangers. Once the NHS becomes functioning again I will be seeing my friends. If we were to sit in to save every stranger, we may sit in forever.

Never mind Plan B, I'd like to see Plan A. What are the criteria for getting us back to normality? Some combination of

[quote TwirpingBird]@usernotfound0000 I think the problem is it does affect a larger percentage of the population than we think. We have done such a good job of keeping people alive for longer so we have quite a large amount of old people, and many people have underlying conditions, and an even bigger percentage of the population is obese, that it is hospitalising more people than the NHS can handle, even if it's not killing them. It's small in the scale of the entire population, but not in the scale of NHS capacity. TBH I am keeping a low profile so the NHS can vaguely function if my DDs get sick from something else. I am not doing it to save strangers. Once the NHS becomes functioning again I will be seeing my friends. If we were to sit in to save every stranger, we may sit in forever. [/quote]
I absolutely get that the current lockdown is due to lack of NHS capacity, and similar to you, we have followed rules as god forbid we end up needing treatment for something and there I no capacity. I just don't see how this can continue indefinitely.

@wanderings I must say it's hard not to get the impression that it's spin. The Sa variant has been around for a month. And now in the space of a day its the most pressing, scary, dangerous thing. It was always going to make its way in. A study has already suggested existing vaccines will be effective, so should still reduce pressure on healthcare. Which I thought was the point - not perfection. And yet nobody is talking about the actual scary variant, which is the Brazilian one. Ah well, turns out the Russian vaccine is amazingly effective at everything. I've had a Russian BCG jab, and apart from the huge dent in my arm I'm still alive

@usernotfound0000 it cant go on indefinitely. That's the only thing keeping me going at the minute, but if they dont end lockdown by a certain time (when my sister who is an ICU nurse tells me things are back to a vague normal), I will be ending my own personal lockdown. I don't care about shops or restaurants. I will be seeing people and going further than my local playground.

Lockdown isn't a solution, it's a panic move that has catastrophic long term consequences. The fact that we're still using it as a 'measure' is beyond crazy. Saving some people by killing others is not, by any definition, a way to solve a problem. People are just as dead whether they're killed by covid or by lockdown. The really infuriating thing by lockdown is that the vast majority of people have every chance of coming out of covid just fine, but the only people who have any hope of escaping lockdown unscathed are the wealthy. Essentially it doesn't matter whether covid would affect you or not, you're fucked anyway because the measures to 'protect' you are instead screwing you and your children over in every way possible.

Eventually this nonsense will just have to stop. It should have stopped long ago, but that would have involved them admitting that the havoc they've wreaked on people's lives was for nothing and they're never going to do that. At the moment they're doubling down and doubling down, they're locked in the narrative that only covid matters. That will run out of steam eventually and there will be an acceptance that treating the human tendency to catch and transmit viruses as a massive moral failing punishable indefinitely by isolation is absolutely fucking batshit crazy.

The idea of 'staying safe' is by far the most evil one of our time. It is used to justify all sorts of pointless destruction and injustice. It's a psychological contagion. It will run its course. But the damage will last for a very very long time.

Same here! I'm so tired of trying to entertain my 4 and 3 yr old in the garden every day in the cold. None of the neighbours in our street ever say hello or wave as if we will get ill by looking at each other! (Even though they all have kids too) My oldest asks me where his friends are, i work evenings and i feel like I'm never doing enough to educate them at home! The school just send youtube links 🤦‍♀️ Basically yes yes yes to this post!!!

**I should point out i dont want a party with my neighbours 😅 but at least a hello from the other side of the street from a fellow mum would be nice!!

There was a period before covid, there will be a period after covid (meaning when it is properly controlled).

But we don't know how long this middle phase will last.

I've been practicing being hopeful in general, but not focusing on any specific date or event - in case the virus moves the goal posts again.

But I do feel hopeful in general.

Strangely the more pessimistic we are for the next few months, the more chance that brings us of solving the problem.

Johnson's groundless optimism is the thing that makes me least hopeful! I try to zone the plonker out and listen to the true hope - science.

And yet nobody is talking about the actual scary variant, which is the Brazilian one.

Why is the Brazilian variant the scary/scarier one?

@HensTeef

And yet nobody is talking about the actual scary variant, which is the Brazilian one.

Why is the Brazilian variant the scary/scarier one?

Because the area that had 70% infected population, supposedly the 'herd immunity' threshold, got hammered by the new variant.

@Lissy23

Oh and I’m so sick of people saying to me “Think how fortunate you are, think of the positives” and my favourite “Imagine living through a world war, then you’d have something to complain about”

My favourite is 'well we're all in the same boat' 'everybody feels like that right now' I find it belittling and unhelpful. You are in you rights to feel crap and depressed. ❤️

@TheDailyCarbunkle You're so right about the "stay safe" narrative, I think it is almost dangerous. This quote from CS Lewis is especially relevant:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

The government have painted themselves into a corner by vowing to "keep us safe" from Covid, and doing "whatever it takes". Saint Boris's grovel last week in which he took "full responsibility" for the 100,000 dead was, I think, a very bad move, and will make it more difficult for him and his merry men to eventually shift the narrative to "from now on, you will take personal responsibility". They'll have to rely on the goldfish memories of the public.

Thank you for clarifying inquietant.

I think the focus needs to be turned on its head. Given that Covid is here to stay despite vaccinations and it will continue to mutate, we need to face the fact that at some point we will all catch it (possibly numerous times), so, rather than locking the nation away indefinately, we need to actually start investing in the healthare system so that it can function normally with an inevitably higher capacity of admissions from here on in. Its the only way to move forward. In the pursuit of keeping hospital admissions down we have become so afraid of ever potentially catching covid and are now stuck in that mindset (yes, I know its anyones guess as to who will be badly affected and who will breeze through it without so much as a sniffle but treatments are getting better and there are still far far more people sho survive than die).

@pennylane83

I think the focus needs to be turned on its head. Given that Covid is here to stay despite vaccinations and it will continue to mutate, we need to face the fact that at some point we will all catch it (possibly numerous times), so, rather than locking the nation away indefinately, we need to actually start investing in the healthare system so that it can function normally with an inevitably higher capacity of admissions from here on in. Its the only way to move forward. In the pursuit of keeping hospital admissions down we have become so afraid of ever potentially catching covid and are now stuck in that mindset (yes, I know its anyones guess as to who will be badly affected and who will breeze through it without so much as a sniffle but treatments are getting better and there are still far far more people sho survive than die).

This isn't really a great option as it is a whole system disease which will cost a fortune to treat if left to run rampant through the population.

Covid is much more complicated than flu.

sorry should have added - because if cases swirl around the risk is vaccine escape.