I'm done

[nomore33]

I cannot do this anymore. I work in an industry that has been completely destroyed by Covid and me, DH and our young DC are now facing an extremely difficult future financially. I have no option really but to retrain, which could take years - and I don't know where to start or whether there will even be any jobs at the end of it.

We've lost almost everything we've worked so hard for (including our home, which is now on the market) for a virus with a death rate of 1%. It's beyond soul destroying and I'm so tired and sad. I feel completely beaten down by life and like me and my family don't matter - it's all about Covid now. Honestly, what is the point?

It is awful, and sadly there are many people who seem to think that as it is "saving lives" it is OK for people to lose their jobs, become homeless. The sacrifices taken by others to protect the few are rarely viewed as what they are. And I agree, there are people making a lot of money out of the situation. But then people have always made money at the cost of others do this is not really a surprise.

Fgs1 So you’re willing to sacrifice people older than life expectancy?

Yes. If the alternative is millions of people losing everything and having their lives ruined.

I mean, what's the exchange rate? How many people should suffer like the OP to save one life?

A grim calculation, sure, but one that has been done and I can't help but think they've got the answer wrong. And they haven't shown their working...

I also think in years to come it will be looked on as greatest over reaction of all time but I do think social media fuelled the hysteria . Govt propaganda helped
The destruction of vast sectors and education, move of NHS to a covid nhs only
Its utterly ridiculous
For a virus

So 300 people lose their jobs and home to prolong one person's life by 2 years. Or maybe 1 person loses their job to prolong 25 people's lives by 15 years. Where's the line?

The problem is that the costs of lockdown, while immense, are not as tangible and immediate as dying from Covid.

We were never able to have a proper conversation about the costs of lockdown and whether they were justified, because it was silenced by ‘people will die’.

And as people were dying, quickly, even the most anti lockdown politicians couldn’t take on that debate.

I think we will deeply regret not trying to understand the long term costs of lockdown properly, before adopting it as policy. There was no real attempt to do that.

We know what the original thoughts emanating from within 10 Downing St were. The hints were dropped very publically.

Then, when the Lombardy video did the rounds, the Gov collectively thought ‘major vote loser’.

The problem for the Gov was even though getting a lot of 80+ off the state pension & NHS waiting lists could have been very attractive from a fiscal point of view, older people also tend to vote Conservative too.

If this was 1918 all over again, with no SM & 24 hour news channels, I’m totally convinced the Gov would have just stuck to their guns & let it rip.

@Delatron

It’s not a 1% death rate in children *@OakSnows* That rate is for all ages and very much weighted towards the over 80s don’t pretend you don’t know that. It doesn’t take much of an understanding of statistics to work it out....so your class analogy is simply not true.

We know the stats on healthy children dying from this...

It’s so shit OP. Sorry you’re having such a hard time. The affects of these prolonged lockdowns will be felt over many, many years. Even lifetimes.

Interesting to look back in a few years and work out whether our response was proportionate.

I

I know it’s not a 1% death rate in children. It was to all the posters saying “it’s only a 1% death rate”. Well actually the U.K. is hovering between 2&3%, but not all cases are recorded which will lower it, and not all death are recorded which will bring it back up.

I was trying to explain what 100 people look like as most people seem in think only 1 in 100 people dying is ok.

Think about your wedding, you had 100 people and you struggled to cut friends and family from that list, one of those people.

A child has 4 grandparents, so in a class of 25, one child will lose a grandparent who might otherwise have loved for another 10-20 years.

This is what 1 in 100 looks like, but if everyone gets it. Those saying they need to restart cancer treatment just don’t understand. This is the death rate with a lock down, left to spread and run through EVERYONE then people will be being left to die alone at home and in tents in the car parks.
If this happened and you had a heart attack or in a car accident, then the ambulance just wouldn’t come.
That is what lockdown stopped.

It’s so utterly shit, but it was lockdown that caused it, it was the pandemic and lockdown saved it from being even more of a catastrophe.

Cancer patients weren’t being treated as all the staff were going to those dying in front of them unable to breathe. Staff didn’t want to risk bringing cancer patients into hospitals to get them infected.

So an effective lockdown and LESS covid patients means more cancer treatments can start. Staff numbers and bes are finite.

Anyway, this is the OPs thread and I didn’t want to reply and derail it.

OP, it is truely shit that covid has done this to you. We all bought into the have 3-6months of mortgage payments as back up and you’ll always be grand. We aren’t. So many have lost so much, you can scream and shout all you want.

Apparently OP can't scream and shout without @OakSnows constantly popping in to remind us of the emotional COVID zealotry that has ruined OP.

Absolutely this has been a huge overreaction. The government have indirectly and 'successfully' destroyed the lives of so many people and all for a virus that for most of us will recover fine if we get it. It's insane.

Anyway, I wish you and your family all the best. I know it depends on your location but there are always care and support work vacancies going, at least in cities and towns. Not as many as there used to be but they're there. My sister is a carer, she had to wait ages for her DBS and references to come through, so worth applying asap if this is something you want to do. Good luck and take care.

Oaksnows, thank you for explaining what 1 percent means. It's helpful to picture, especially when I consider than since the year 2000 between 1.2% and 0.9% of the entire popation dies every single year.

Re the 1%, there comes a point where over simplification is not helpful. The IFR may or may not be around 1% - and unlikely to be 2 or 3% - but that information needs unpacking because it does not correlate to the 100th person at a wedding dying. It is more likely to happen to be correct that 1 in 25 children could lose a grandparent - after all, we all lose our grandparents eventually and many will lose at least one before reaching adulthood. But that of course depends on the age of the child and the demographic of the grandparent. So in some parts of Glasgow, the average age of death for a man is only 70,whereas in parts of West London the average age of death for a woman is 89. I'm just using those stats because they are uncontroversial and a way of showing how difficult it is on SM to talk about death in a way which is both complex enough to give a true picture and yet simple enough to make sense when there aren't 1000s of words and references available.
I just think it's not helpful, when someone is suffering, to use the 'x number of people will die if we don't all put up with it' argument, which isn't contextualised enough to be meaningful.

@southeastdweller

Absolutely this has been a huge overreaction. The government have indirectly and 'successfully' destroyed the lives of so many people and all for a virus that for most of us will recover fine if we get it. It's insane.

Anyway, I wish you and your family all the best. I know it depends on your location but there are always care and support work vacancies going, at least in cities and towns. Not as many as there used to be but they're there. My sister is a carer, she had to wait ages for her DBS and references to come through, so worth applying asap if this is something you want to do. Good luck and take care.

You are right but I blame their advisers, SAGE, Whitty each and every one

Being ignorant here but 100,000 people have died from Covid. Population 67m. How is the 1% calculated?

@AnniversaryScaresMe

Fgs1 So you’re willing to sacrifice people older than life expectancy?

Yes. If the alternative is millions of people losing everything and having their lives ruined.

I mean, what's the exchange rate? How many people should suffer like the OP to save one life?

A grim calculation, sure, but one that has been done and I can't help but think they've got the answer wrong. And they haven't shown their working...

Yes I agree. We have scarified the young. The people starting out in business. The people who work in the music industry. The night club staff etc etc. Kids education had been disrupted etc etc. People die. The average age of death for men retiring at 65 now was 87. The average age of death with Covid is 83. But how many had a quality of life? My grandparent died of Covid. They were in a home. Bed bound. Incontinent. Dementia. It was a blessing for her to be honest. But her death will be from Covid.

They don’t know if its 1 % or not they can only estimate due to vast numbers of unreported/asymptomatic cases etc. Ring-fenced populations such as the Diamond Princess give 1.8% IFR, but of course the age of cruise ship passengers isn’t fully representative of broader populations.

I think we all know what 1% is. Most people also know the percentages are higher in older people and much lower in younger people.

Therefore it’s wrong and scaremongering to use children in your example @OakSnows

@Coffeeandcocopops

Being ignorant here but 100,000 people have died from Covid. Population 67m. How is the 1% calculated?

That's not quite true, with in many cases, not from

Ok with Covid. Still doesn’t equate to one %. More like 0.1%

Therefore it’s wrong and scaremongering to use children in your example @OakSnows**

Though in fairness, I think everyone can see right through what she’s trying to do.

It’s a CFR or IFR. It’s not based on the total population but cases. So out of total cases how many have died not the total population.

*Fgs1 So you’re willing to sacrifice people older than life expectancy?

Yes. If the alternative is millions of people losing everything and having their lives ruined.

I mean, what's the exchange rate? How many people should suffer like the OP to save one life?

*
I agree that as a society we need to decide what an 'acceptable level of death' is in return for keeping society going. We could try to prevent every single death but that would mean massive restrictions and huge costs to society.

@Delatron

It’s a CFR or IFR. It’s not based on the total population but cases. So out of total cases how many have died not the total population.

I think most people don’t understand that. They read it as 1% of the population have died with Covid. That’s why people say 1 in a hundred. It’s a meaningless statistic. It’s political in order to justify what the poor Op has to go through and three lockdowns. If we actually said 0.15% of the population has died with Covid would we be in lockdown?

Yes I do agree @Coffeeandcocopops and I do think the restrictions are disproportionate. Especially as the average age of death with Covid is 82/83 and all the over 70s have been vaccinated.

The stats do not justify the suffering of the younger generations. They will feel the impact of this for many years.

It's a disgrace, and at this stage seems to be because the government appears to have no intellectual rigour or backbone in the face of moronic scaremongering.

That sentence did raise a smile

Moronic scaremongering, e.g. @OakSnows

I'm so sorry that this has been your experience and the experience of so many others OP.

I had thought there might be support to help people stay in their homes in the case of mass redundancies and financial difficulties. In the same way the furlough system was set up to try to save jobs and income I thought some enterprise might have been thought out to prevent mass selling of homes until some sort of recovery was possible.

I can't help but agree the costs are too high now. And we have a completely unrealistic view of death - we are trying to prevent the unpreventable.

The sooner we as a society get to grips with the fact that none of us are owed tomorrow, that each day is matter of good fortune to us that we have it, and that we will inevitably experience illness and death, and that it is the way we can cope well with these rather than pretend we can avoid them, the better.