We cannot cancel life, to preserve every life

[Slytherin]

I actually find myself agreeing with a Tory for once...we’ve given up so much and the goalposts keep moving, yes it’s an unpredictable situation, but it’s also unsustainable long term. The idea that this summer will be possibly worse than last summer makes zero sense, when we have a vaccine roll out that far exceeds any other nation (except Israel) currently.
First it was let’s get the elderly and vulnerable vaccinated, then it was let’s get the over 50s vaccinated, now we’ve got members of SAGE suggesting restrictions have to continue until everyone, including children are vaccinated and beyond, because of the possibility of new variants. Professor John Edmunds said some would have to stay “forever” last night on Peston.

We must at some point live with an element of risk. I’m in no way suggesting we lift lockdown yet, but suggesting that things won’t have much improved by the summer, is, in my opinion encroaching into dangerous territory.

The government were over promising before, now they’re under promising. There’s got to be a middle ground, people’s mental health cannot sustain this level of pessimism and not having a single thing to look forward to. Everything gets dangled like a carrot, then taken away at the last minute. It’s beyond cruel.

Then it’s the mixed messages, Matt Hancock telling us he’s going on a summer holiday to Cornwall and he’s all booked up and Grant Shapps then telling nobody to even consider booking a holiday abroad or domestically this summer.

Yes, I support restrictions to save lives and support the NHS, but I don’t support the way the government are handling this once again. And I don’t support these restrictions indefinitely, especially when the majority of the at risk groups have been vaccinated.

www.channel4.com/news/we-cannot-cancel-life-to-preserve-every-life-tory-mp-sir-charles-walker-on-lockdown?fbclid=IwAR2RnQNKwJoQ4FSBxT9oTbwbFOCTWcIU9wD9WdYkTEA2sVlJ1posWZAfmsU

The unpalatable truth is that there has to be an acceptable number of deaths and that is the number that will sadly still occur but not breach the NHSs ability to cope. No one wants to publicly say this but people will always die of it

I completely agree. We need something to look forward too. Recently ive been worried that ds18m might be autistic like his brother. I shared my concerns and was basically told that theres nothing they can do just now. Everything i go outside i see a new for sale sign on a shop that used to be booming.

If you lose your career, just get another one.
If you have no food just buy some.

Indeed! It seems some people are channelling Marie Antoinette!

you have power, water, sewerage, internet, police, fire service, rubbish collection, food in supermarkets and NHS to some degree.

if too many get ill, even temporarily, then all those things fall apart.

yes, it's shit. The idea is to stop it getting apocalyptic.

you have power, water, sewerage, internet, police, fire service, rubbish collection, food in supermarkets and NHS to some degree

People keep repeating this over and over on this thread as though it is some sort of clever 'gotcha'. In what country in the world has the above happened?

@murbblurb

you have power, water, sewerage, internet, police, fire service, rubbish collection, food in supermarkets and NHS to some degree.

if too many get ill, even temporarily, then all those things fall apart.

yes, it's shit. The idea is to stop it getting apocalyptic.

Say it louder for the people in the back!

People are allowed to question and debate if what’s happening is best. Or are you suggesting we all follow blindly without discussing or talking about this? Maybe you want to gag everyone and for every person in the UK, like a robot to follow everything a small group of white rich extremely privileged men say at every turn? Maybe you trust those men 100% but many don’t, thank god

Quit4me your angry and hyperbolic response is exactly why I don't want to engage with some posters on this thread.

And what about those who have lost jobs?
they might have power, fuel, internet and food but they also might not have the bloody money to pay for it

PontefractFake Thank you so much for your kind words - they are much appreciated.

@bellver888 I lost my job because of Covid. But a lot of people on here are under the assumption that when you lose your job you sit there until you can’t pay your bills. Most people with their head screwed on will go out and find a new one even if it fills the gap temporarily.

I prefer to follow the advice of scientists rather than the advice of gobshite journalists and others on social media.

Which is fine, but a) scientists don’t set public policy on everything when they’re specialists in one area (“hey you know about protein folding, what school years need to go back first?”), and b) this is a big messy problem where there is no simple answer that ‘the scientists’ all agree on.

I’m not one of the ‘fuck it, scrap all restrictions tomorrow’ people. I don’t think many are. But it feels like you can’t discuss lifting lockdown at all ever on here without people bewailing how selfish and stupid and people just can’t grasp it is. Like the only two options are “end restrictions now” and “go along with lockdown indefinitely until The Science tells us it’s safe, based on criteria it is selfish and stupid for us to discuss.”

The government and media messaging around ending lockdown is currently both vague and gloomy, and this is spectacularly unhelpful, both for the mental health of the nation and for people’s willingness to stick with restrictions in the short term and get vaccinated.

@pinkearedcow

People are allowed to question and debate if what’s happening is best. Or are you suggesting we all follow blindly without discussing or talking about this? Maybe you want to gag everyone and for every person in the UK, like a robot to follow everything a small group of white rich extremely privileged men say at every turn? Maybe you trust those men 100% but many don’t, thank god

Quit4me your angry and hyperbolic response is exactly why I don't want to engage with some posters on this thread.

People are angry, and have every right to be. The anger is only going to build, the longer lockdown lasts. An extremely angry majority can cause huge problems for the UK so this needs to be discussed. Closing your eyes and blocking your ears singing la la la not listening to you because others are angry, and throwing the newly over used phrase hyperbolic around isn’t going to make this better

It was always supposed to be a balancing act.

The scales have tipped way too far now.

It was always supposed to be about 'flattening the curve' - which means that there was an acceptance that people may die just not all at once

This has now been forgotten and for me, there is absolutely no excuse to not be opening everything up after the 3 week vaccination period for the Top 4 groups.

@StealthPolarBear

I get why were doing it now and for the next X months. I don't get why once most of the elderly and vulnerable have received a fantastic vaccine (these are the people who make up the majority of hospitalisations) why we'd need to continue. If somehow the vaccines donor work as expected, I don't agree with indefinate lockdown for years.

Because the goal posts have moved. Now there is the expectation that everyone has to have the vaccine which is madness.

We’ve gone from ‘save the NHS’ to ‘save everyone’ despite the average age of covid death is 85 and an overall population fatality rate of 1%.

There are 166,000 cancer deaths every year - just for balance.

[quote mamaatthegym]@bellver888 I lost my job because of Covid. But a lot of people on here are under the assumption that when you lose your job you sit there until you can’t pay your bills. Most people with their head screwed on will go out and find a new one even if it fills the gap temporarily.[/quote]
If they can find a new one..

We're only doing this now because the government hasn't treated lockdown seriously enough before and for some reason it just won't clamp down enough to get rid of it altogether. Look at the Melbourne thread for a comparison of what happens if you do get on top of it. If they are all now vaccinated in the next year then they have beaten it without so many people dying.

If we let it run loose we'll end up with endless variants and people will continue to be fine. Vaccination should be enough, and enough people should be vaccinated by the late spring/early summer. If that doesn't work, eg because not enough people will get vaccinated, then there are more questions to be asked. But the vaccine should be the end

Exactly.

Apologies if this has been covered already, but I haven’t read all 29 pages. I agree with you in theory, I work in the NHS, patient facing, the problem is that if our hospitals are overrun with Covid patients then we have limited resources for everyone else. I’ve seen young patients die because they were refused treatment as there were no ITU beds available. These are patients that had an extremely high chance of survival and recovery if they were given the opportunity to have life saving surgery, except our hospital had no ITU beds (which these patients needed post surgery) so they couldn’t be treated. One of my patients was waiting 10 months for a heart lung transplant, a suitable donor was finally found, however, there were no beds available, they died three days later.

It’s not just all about Covid. We will end up in a situation (we are already in some cases) where we are having to ration care and younger patients with and without Covid will die when they could have been saved. Our ITUs are not full of 80+ year olds on ventilators, they’re full of 40-70 year olds with risk factors like diabetes and obesity, but most were living quite productive happy lives beforehand. My colleague’s husband died last week from Covid, he was in his 60s and his only risk factor was type 2 diabetes, this is the problem the NHS has. We have been underfunded and run into the ground for the past 10 years now and the virus is the straw that broke the camel’s back.

So yes I agree that we can’t continue this way forever, and I don’t know what the answer is, but I just wanted to say it’s not about sacrificing the young for the old, there are young people dying from Covid and from the effects of Covid on the NHS every day. I wouldn’t like to be in the position at 30 years old of needing life saving emergency surgery and being refused because there’s no beds, that’s the current reality of the situation.

Could the troll farm that is creating these endless ‘let us go’ threads please go back to moaning about Brexit?

Honestly, what is winding each other up about this endlessly going to achieve. You’re just further depressing everyone. We have no control over the virus or the government response. Talk about something else!

@Slytherin

There is a risk of before even stepping outdoors, of in the kitchen having a gas explosion.
There is a risk of having a number of accidents in the house such as falling tumbling downstairs breaking bones in your body and becoming paralysed too.

There is a risk just stepping outdoors of a tree in high wind falling down and killing you instantly.
There is a risk of being a victim of being mugged/Assaulted sexually or not/ or even murdered.

Also there is a risk of Terrorism anywhere happening particularly in hot spot areas such as big cities like London etc.

There is a risk of being involved in car/train/airplane crash.

There is a risk if freak accident such as a tree or other object outside being struck by lightening and you being struck struck by lightening too.

@LucilleTheVampireBat

you have power, water, sewerage, internet, police, fire service, rubbish collection, food in supermarkets and NHS to some degree

People keep repeating this over and over on this thread as though it is some sort of clever 'gotcha'. In what country in the world has the above happened?

But we don’t WANT it to happen here and, sadly, this country is where one of the significant (more contagious) mutations took place. A ‘sod it all’ attitude probably contributed to it.

@PracticingPerson

Oh please not this again.

We will be locked down until the indicators are better. We will lift the restrictions slowly, more slowly than last year because we fucked it up last year. Probably still not as slowly as we should. If things go our way the unlocking will be smooth. If things don't go our way we will have to lock down again.

What more do people really think can be said? It isn't a conspiracy, a plot, a story, a plan, a hoax. It is just shit and we (humans as a whole) are not in control of when this ends. We may be able to gain control at some point, but right now, we are not in control.

Spot on @PracticingPerson Had the Government listened to SAGE/WHO/BMA from the outset of the Pandemic and taken their current measured, cautious approach, we could be already some way out the other side, Australia & NZ are clear examples of this. They’ve managed by realising they have no control once the virus is in the country so went for Zero Covid strategies like Far East counties. No wonder we’re all so fed up and at the end of our ropes after a year of BS, false promises & flip flopping. I really believe Johnson/Hancock etc are now taking the right approach to ensure this is the last lockdown- finally! But only if they go for Zero Covid & get the Border quarantine right.

I know it’s all been said before but...

A virus isn’t a state of mind. If restrictions are eased, it will spread rapidly. Essential services will become harder and harder to provide, because workers will be off sick en masse.

As I understand it part of the reason why the most elderly were vaccinated first is because the virus spreads so easily in care homes. So even if you think that a very frail 90-something shouldn’t be a priority, vaccinating them protects other residents, staff, staff’s families...

Yes, many viruses can cause post-viral illness, but it’s clear that COVID causes this in quite a few people to quite a severe degree (it hasn’t really been studied yet but I’d imagine the prevalence of severe post-viral illness is higher that with other more “established” viruses).

All very well opening everything up in thrall to the economy and then having loads of workers either off sick isolating with a fresh COVID infection, or off with long covid (everyone thinks it’s psychosomatic/exaggerated until they get it)

Again, the virus is not a state of mind. The rate of infections which require hospitalisation has to be kept at a reasonably manageable level. What if you or a loved one needed cancer treatment, were in a car accident etc and died prematurely as a result of inadequate care because too many staff are off ill isolating or diverted to COVID hot wards?

Why are people still talking about what happened a year ago? Coulda Woulda Shoulda is not helpful at this point. What do we need NOW? The economy shrank by 9% last year. Which 9% would you like to shave off the budget? NHS? Schools? Social Care? Universal Credit? Life is not always the sacred shibboleth at absolutely any cost, even mine, or my parents and they agree with that. Ultimately, though, it isn't the economy OR lives, certainly not at this point. Its the economy FOR lives. Lives have been and will continue to be lost for years as a result of this pandemic, but not through COVID.

I think we generally have an unhealthy attitude to death.

Yes, every death is a tragedy, but it is also an inevitability, and none us are owed tomorrow.

The approach that we're taking just seems to have a completely unrealistic view of this. We should be more open about our own deaths, our own illnesses and how we can both live and die well.

We're fearful of death, quite understandably, but our fear of it is stopping us living while we have life; it is our jailer. And for how many more years to come?