So much for 'This too shall pass'....

[ssd]

How many times have I read that on mn?

Except its not passing, is it

Of course it will pass, just not as quickly as some predicted. All the great pandemics have taken some time.

The flu of 1918 was H1N1 and we’ve had several significant variants since then but life eventually gets back. The same thing will happen with this but we have to be realistic about timescales.

please link please

"But if I have to see one more of those wanky ink drawings with the stupid fucking horse and meaningless word salad, I’ll scream."

^ This... haven't a clue what it's referring to!

Viruses mutate. That’s what they do. This is what you would expect.

@MerylStropp

please link please

"But if I have to see one more of those wanky ink drawings with the stupid fucking horse and meaningless word salad, I’ll scream."

^ This... haven't a clue what it's referring to!

Several people have linked the drawings in this thread

I have only come here to say how much the horse, the mole and that irritating boy annoy me.

Whispers...Winnie the pooh can get lost as well.

@ssd

How many times have I read that on mn?

Except its not passing, is it

Errr... yes it is? The UK is vaccinating more and more people every day, no new variant has been found to negate the vaccine.

Lifeinaonsie I agree we are where we are but we don’t have a functioning test trace and isolate system. Even if people get tested (which many avoid) and the limping testing system gets a quick enough result only 20% isolate. That, together with the government acting too little too late is why we missed the opportunity to hold this down after the summer and ended up with high case and death rates, hospitals under pressure and in this extreme lockdown. A family member just happens to be involved with an effective testing initiative but that has had to be funded by Cancer Research U.K.

If that one person gets off a boat is quarantined and/ or everyone they have contact with goes into isolation then you can act on clusters as they do throughout the world. There is so much room for improvement.

At the moment we are a Petrie dish for the development of vaccine resistant mutants, opening up without decent test trace and isolate processes in place is just going to risk ending up back to December.

It isn’t as if it has to be that difficult. We have experienced scientists and public health official left with their hands tied behind their back just desperate to implement effective processes whilst the government still pisses money up the wall on unsafe and ineffective testing labs that nobody wants to work in and trace operations that they try to operate like call centres.

Chin up! Even the Black Death passed eventually.

@Streamingbannersofdawn

I have only come here to say how much the horse, the mole and that irritating boy annoy me.

Whispers...Winnie the pooh can get lost as well.

I agree, when I was happy in general but feeling down, these drawings were cheering. Now I am depressed and angry, they make me feel worse and angrier. Not everyone is surrounded by lovely friendly supportive people and not everything will be OK in the end.

I think part of the problem is that this does divide inate personality traits the half empty/half full.

The SA variant for example and vaccines. The fact they are still effective but less so gets read either in the positive light of its ok they are still effective (and it can go down to 50% and still do its job so lots of wiggle room) or you can see it in a negative light

And sometimes in this it can get hard to continually make sure you spin the news positively rather than negatively.

@TangoWhiskyAlphaTango

Nobody bats an eye at the 40k plus deaths a year from seasonal flu, I see no petitions for that.....Every year we have winter pressures due to flu, A&E bursting at the seams.

Links please? Because according to the PHE website deaths from flu every year are about 6-7K, not 40K+ Happy to be proved wrong by figures from a reputable source.

link - it's on page 54 - HTH (from a microbiologist)

MrsWindass You have noticed that we are one of the worst countries in the world. If we didn’t cook the variant we certainly let it run. There is a U.K. variant, a South African variant and a Brazilians variant. No Australian, New Zealand, South Korean, Hong Kong, Taiwanese variants as of yet and an infinitesimal chance of there being when they have so few cases.....

Sorry - it did go up to 22K in 2016-17 (a really bad flu year)

Even that puts pressure on our hospitals, we've been at breaking point every winter for years, and yes we have jumped up and down about it but to no avail. That's why so many times that number is so frightening.

I've had enough of people saying that it's like flu though.

But, as others have said, it will pass.

It's a pain at the fucking arse at the moment and I know I'm not alone when I say that I'm really struggling at the moment, but this shit time will pass.

I get my first Oxford vaccine tomorrow (ECV) and that's giving me some hope. We have to have hope.

Epidemiologist here.

It will eventually be ok. The new variants are frustrating as they make things harder, and will slow down how quickly we can get things under control.

Lockdown measures need to be in place alongside vaccination to get case numbers down. Once numbers are down, the risk of new emerging variants also goes down (as the genetic material of coronavirus only mutate whilst replicating in a human/animal host).

The government isn’t responsible for every variant. They aren’t responsible for the Brazil or South African strain so we would still have those.

Some countries started enforced quarantining of all who passed their borders at a very early stage. South Korea, for instance.

I HATE that fucking saying!

@SquishySquirmy

It will pass. Not quickly or smoothly but it will. Maybe a bit more lockdown-hokey-cokey for a while (in, out, shake it all about!) and no dramatic "it's all over!" day of celebration. Things will slowly get better, things will return to normal. The effects of the pandemic and lockdown will linger, but they will eventually become memory and the memory will eventually become history. The wound will stop hurting, heal and become just another scar.

It will pass.

I really like this post. The scaremongering and doomsday posts get up my nose, as does the faux-science being spouted by people who really do not know what they're talking about.

It's posts like SquishySquirmy's that have an impact, because what's said is true. Proven time and time again, and there's comfort in that.

Zero Covid isn’t feasible. And I wish people would stop comparing us to Australia/NZ.

Perth is currently in lockdown again (they hadn’t had a case in months). Security guard at a quarantine hotel tested positive, so lockdown started on a Friday night. Their problem is that he was mixing widely in the days leading up to testing positive - he had a second job as a courier so was in many different areas whilst contagious.

Our vaccine programme is going really well, we will come out of lockdown gradually, there will be tweaks to things for quite a while, but it will pass.

@MacDuffsMuff

But, as others have said, it will pass.

It's a pain at the fucking arse at the moment and I know I'm not alone when I say that I'm really struggling at the moment, but this shit time will pass.

I get my first Oxford vaccine tomorrow (ECV) and that's giving me some hope. We have to have hope.

I too would have hope if I had a chance of getting the vaccine in the next few weeks.

Despite critical care units having plenty of people in their late 40s, the government has decided that only over-50s can be vaccinated in normal circumstances. I do have several risk factors, but none high enough (I only need to eat a few more cakes and my BMI would reach the required 40 - so that's a good public health motivation to lose weight -not).

So my DC will likely be back at school and there will be several new variants about, and I won't have been vaccinated.

It is very depressing, very worrying, and it doesn't make me feel better when I am told to wait my turn, when actually I might not ever have a turn.

If you look at other deadly viruses in history they have all passed eventually (other than flu). It does feel never ending at the moment, maybe we need to be a bit more patient? Hopefully things will improve with the vaccine even if it doesn’t eliminate the virus.

@Emilyontmoor

MrsWindass You have noticed that we are one of the worst countries in the world. If we didn’t cook the variant we certainly let it run. There is a U.K. variant, a South African variant and a Brazilians variant. No Australian, New Zealand, South Korean, Hong Kong, Taiwanese variants as of yet and an infinitesimal chance of there being when they have so few cases.....

And with regards to this, I take the figures with a healthy pinch of salt.

Yes, our numbers are bad. But I think each country has a different way of recording and publishing figures. I think our figures are probably over-egged (recorded as WITH not necessarily FROM covid). And I suspect other countries’ figures are likely downplayed somewhat. The truer picture will hopefully become more apparent over the next few years (via data on annual deaths per country, taking into account the vaccine programme etc).

Plus, re the variants, there probably ARE a number in various different countries. It’s just that the UK is shit-hot with genome research - which is a good thing and will hopefully other countries will become better funded and implemented in the future.

@corythatwas

The government isn’t responsible for every variant. They aren’t responsible for the Brazil or South African strain so we would still have those.

Some countries started enforced quarantining of all who passed their borders at a very early stage. South Korea, for instance.

And was that practical here? I do think casual travel should have been halted early on, but huge numbers of people go back and forth bringing food etc so we can't just bolt the doors.

Also saying we should do what South Korea does is a problem since there are many here who think even asking someone to socially distance is a traumatic and unforgivable removal of their human rights.

The government haven't handled this perfectly at every step (who has) but look at what they had to work with.