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

It’s also not a personal insult unlike ‘Thick’ etc, do I think your posts are overblown hysterical nonsense, often do I think you are overblown and hysterical as a person? How would I know, I don’t know you and I am anything other than stupid but equally whatever gets you trotting through your highhorse day.

"It’s not about preserving lives, it’s about preserving the NHS so that god forbid someone’s child has a terrible accident, they’re not turned away from a hospital because there’s no space or told, we’re ever so sorry but we have no ambulances"

I wonder if people writing this realise there is no going back to 'old NHS' so we're preserving a hope, an illusion that things will go back to 'normal', health service included. I expect there will be less procedures available with much longer waiting times. We'll need to pay in more, pay for procedures previously available for free, with some services cut back down or changed permanently. So in a way, we'll end up there with less services regardless - maybe not with the lack of ambulance in short term but the lack of dental care, children's mental health service, drug and alcohol services - for much longer.

@BlowDryRat

My main worry now that the roadmap on the 22nd will be another Christmas. I don't want exact dates of when restrictions will be lifted. A 'plan' like that isn't worth the paper it's written on. What I want is a set of criteria that the government will use to guage when it's safe to lift each restriction, the order in which restrictions will be lifted, and a weekly update on where we are vs the criteria. I also want to know that the entire set of restrictions is being reviewed holistically, not just based on Covid figures.

E.g. the NHS can cope with an infection rate of 100 per 100000. When we get to that rate for a sustainable period of 14 days, we will lift domestic restrictions in this order, with each restriction lifted 4 weeks after the previous one to test the numbers:

• schools return
• rule of 6 household mixing
• hospitality and leisure
• domestic travel for leisure purposes
• international business travel to countries with a 100 per 100000 or lower case rate
• international leisure travel to the same countries
• etc.

If rates increase to 150 cases per 100000, then the next restriction lift will not happen until rates stabilise and we can check that cases aren't resulting in an increase in hospital admissions (as we expect from the vaccine roll out resulting in less severe symptoms). This will take a further 4 weeks. If at that point the NHS is coping then we will proceed with lifting the next restriction.

Social distancing measures and mandatory face coverings as implemented last autumn will remain in place for the rest of the year. This will be reviewed once the vaccine roll-out to all eligible adults is complete.

/mock-up roadmap

That's all I want to see. Not a bunch of promises that I can't trust.

The most sensible post so far.

Hope this gives you all peace of mind:
metro.co.uk/2021/02/12/roadmap-out-of-lockdown-will-be-announced-on-february-22-14070677/?ito=push-notification&ci=76736&si=20905178

Maybe this is our opportunity to teach our children (and ourselves) about resilience and real life. You cannot plan everything in life and sometimes illness, war, viruses etc will happen and we have find ways to deal with whatever life throws at us.

Use this opportunity to learn the art of mindfulness, meditation and living in the moment.

And just to say that 'Old' people are still people. They have families, minds, heart and souls. They enjoy life like you do - they don't have the same life as you, but it doesn't make it less valuable. Isn't it worth giving people an extra year, 5 years, 10 years? Look what Captain Tom achieved in one year - would you have denied him that?

I hope this thread is not an indication of how selfish people are in the wider world. Letting old people die, just so your child can play with his friends in the park and we can catch a break. Where is our humanity? Our compassion for others? our Community spirit?

If anyone has a child who is suffering with their mental health, have you tried speaking with their school? Maybe they can make an exception for them to return early?

I sympathise with everyone who is suffering financial difficulties (as we are), but we are at the final stretch now.

x

I wonder if people writing this realise there is no going back to 'old NHS' so we're preserving a hope, an illusion that things will go back to 'normal', health service included.

This does not appear to have sunk in, no.

@Nikki078

"It’s not about preserving lives, it’s about preserving the NHS so that god forbid someone’s child has a terrible accident, they’re not turned away from a hospital because there’s no space or told, we’re ever so sorry but we have no ambulances"

I wonder if people writing this realise there is no going back to 'old NHS' so we're preserving a hope, an illusion that things will go back to 'normal', health service included. I expect there will be less procedures available with much longer waiting times. We'll need to pay in more, pay for procedures previously available for free, with some services cut back down or changed permanently. So in a way, we'll end up there with less services regardless - maybe not with the lack of ambulance in short term but the lack of dental care, children's mental health service, drug and alcohol services - for much longer.

Very true 😔

Noshowlomo husbands?? :o

@mandes1

GIve over with your mindfulness and resilience

And also your compassion and community spirit

It's always very one sided when people are posting that trite - they are always asking everyone to give up everything for them and whatever is most pertinent in their life

Use this opportunity to learn the art of mindfulness, meditation and living in the moment.

This is just so ridiculously tone deaf.

If only we had thought about sitting quietly and focusing on nothing - yes because we are all so overwhelmed with things to do lately we just need to sit down and do some yoga.

I can't think about much about the NHS that is worth saving

Seems to have been a total disaster throughout all of this

Look what Captain Tom achieved in one year - would you have denied him that? no offence to Captain Tom but would I sacrifice a year + of a child’s education to give a 99 yr old 1 more year? No I fucking wouldn’t!!!

Maybe this is our opportunity to teach our children (and ourselves) about resilience and real life. You cannot plan everything in life and sometimes illness, war, viruses etc will happen and we have find ways to deal with whatever life throws at us

Use this opportunity to learn the art of mindfulness, meditation and living in the moment

I’d like to use this opportunity to say this kind of sanctimonious, unempathetic drivel makes my blood boil. Read the room, ffs.

@OnlyFoolsnMothers

Look what Captain Tom achieved in one year - would you have denied him that? no offence to Captain Tom but would I sacrifice a year + of a child’s education to give a 99 yr old 1 more year? No I fucking wouldn’t!!!

What a dreadful thing to say.

Education is easily caught up on death is irreversible. Many children are keeping up very well to talk about a lost year is hyperbole.

No going back to old NHS
Doesn't that mean we need a new NHS, one which is properly funded and staffed and has the capacity to cope with the medical needs of the country?
The government will have to stop their covert agenda to gut/defund it, if they don't the UK will become a dysfunctional country....(well even more than it is already) and the people at the top won't be able to hold on to the kudos that they think they deserve

Jaysus @mandes1, I wish my relative that committed suicide could have just know they could have meditated their way out of the crushing void, lazy non resilient.

'wonder if people writing this realise there is no going back to 'old NHS' so we're preserving a hope, an illusion that things will go back to 'normal', health service included. I expect there will be less procedures available with much longer waiting times. We'll need to pay in more, pay for procedures previously available for free, with some services cut back down or changed permanently'

Oh fgs the nhs will still be there. 'Preserving a hope, an illusion', I'm filling up. Jesus. 'Pay for procecures' where on earth do you get this from?

We havent been 'preserving' anything, they've been trying to keep a lid on the demand as we're in a pandemic. You do know that, right?

I think what we're living through is a failure of government policy in the early stages of the pandemic, which we're now all paying for and their isn't a clear route forward. It's very obvious that the correct thing to have done at the start, was to shut down our boarders, and speedily implement a highly effective track, trace and isolate programme. We didn't act decisively at the start, and we've been paying for it ever since, but the government are just floundering now. What we need, and what other countries who have been successful have managed, is to ensure that virus levels are very low in the population, so that any outbreaks are quicky spotted, and that isolation is adhered to. We don't have the policies and support in place to ensure that isolation is adhered to. For a long time the vaccine has been the great hope of our government, but we know that a virus circulating at high levels in our population, and imports from overseas, threaten the vaccine programme. We're left with the prospect that distancing and lockdown measures will be repeatedly brought in, as vaccine resistant strains emerge. New strains would not be such a threat if we had an effective test, trace and isolate programme, and if the virus was at low enough levels to keep on top of. But that's not the situation we're in, and the government don't seem to have a strategy for getting us there. We're all sick of this, lives have been destroyed by the lockdowns/the Tier system, but demanding a premature end to restrictions at this point won't help. When people, and some politicians, demand we just learn to live with it, don't attempt to suppress the virus, get back to normal because we can't live like this forever, that's just what they're arguing for. THIS is just what living with the virus at hight levels in our population looks like, and it will be still be the case to a certain degree after the completion of the vaccination programme, due to the inevitability of strains which mean the vaccines are less effective. We do need to suppress it properly, using all tools at our disposal, otherwise we'll be living like this for a long while longer. We could be living like Taiwan at the moment, but we're not, because if poor management at the start. Giving up and making even more poor decisions is not the answer. What we should be demanding from our government is an effective strategy, based on what has been shown to work elsewhere and the scientific data that is available, even if that means making unpopular decisions. All this pandering to sentiment (We can't cancel Christmas/stop foreign holidays! Let's all Eat out to Help Out! Back to the Office!) etc is what has got us into this mess.

Don’t do it @Nikki078 😄

[quote Carrotcakeforbreakfast]@TheKeatingFive
We have a small percentage of rtc patients on ITU. 85% of our ITU patients are there due to covid.
Which is an improvement as 3 weeks ago it was 95%.[/quote]
Our local hospitals are 50-50 at the moment. COVID patients have been slowly decreasing over the last couple of weeks.

'Maybe this is our opportunity to teach our children (and ourselves) about resilience and real life. You cannot plan everything in life and sometimes illness, war, viruses etc will happen and we have find ways to deal with whatever life throws at us'

Well said.

What I want is a set of criteria that the government will use to guage when it's safe to lift each restriction, the order in which restrictions will be lifted, and a weekly update on where we are vs the criteria. I also want to know that the entire set of restrictions is being reviewed holistically, not just based on Covid figures.

Agree with this 100%^

Maybe this is our opportunity to teach our children (and ourselves) about resilience and real life. You cannot plan everything in life and sometimes illness, war, viruses etc will happen and we have find ways to deal with whatever life throws at us.

@hamstersarse do you get/pay for private healthcare?

Resilience, unprescedented, WWII, the NHS . . . pass a bucket.

@rawalpindithelabrador

Resilience, unprescedented, WWII, the NHS . . . pass a bucket.

Don’t forget Anne Frank

'What I want is a set of criteria that the government will use to guage when it's safe to lift each restriction, the order in which restrictions will be lifted, and a weekly update on where we are vs the criteria. I also want to know that the entire set of restrictions is being reviewed holistically, not just based on Covid figures.'

Well I'd guess it will involve erm, infection rates and hospitalisation numbers. So as they come down and stay down so restrictions will be slowly lifted. They do hold fairly regular press conferences at 5pm on the news channels you know.

What a dreadful thing to say.

Education is easily caught up on death is irreversible. Many children are keeping up very well to talk about a lost year is hyperbole.

@Radio4Rocks He was 99-100. It is not dreadful, and no-one killed him anyway.

You seem very confident that children are 'keeping up well' - that is, despite the multiple reports and facts that they are not? Why do you still deny that many many many children will not recover well from this?

@mamaatthegym I do have private healthcare yes. And I hope the NHS is dismantled because it is unfit for purpose. Literally.