aibu to think people have forgotten what lockdown was for / that life is not 100 per cent safe

[icantthinkofanamehelp]

It has come to a point /coming to a point soon where we now have to learn to live with covid thanks to fab vaccination programme.
All this talk of schools not being ' safe '
They absolutely are safe for the majority of children/teachers.
Cars are not ' safe ' but a lot of people get them in them every day .

We can not carry on like this forever .
We have to live.
Our children need to go back to school.
We need to have a running economy for our kids future.

Lockdown was to stop the NHS totally collapsing. Not for people to ' stay safe ' and not to stop people getting this infection all together

Couldn't agree more OP. Schools have never been 'safe' from illness. Over the years my kids have caught the following from school:

Chicken Pox
Slapped Cheek
Slapped cheek
Norovirus
Flu
Impetigo
Threadworms
A million coughs and colds

Many of those illnesses can kill people who are CEV and yet we don't shut the schools because of them. Lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. Once it is not overwhelmed anymore we need to carry on and covid is just another thing that gets added to the above list

Oops slapped cheek on their twice, although they both had it I guess!

Sigh. None of those illnesses pose risk of exponential growth as they are controlled by existing population immunity (vaccines/prior infection) or simple hygiene measures to control parasites.
Once we open schools with no effective mitigation against transmission, the exponential growth will take off again - the models for the impending next wave range from 30,000 to 150,000 deaths through to summer. Will that overwhelm the NHS? Whether it does or not, it’s still a huge death toll with an even larger overhang of Long Covid. I haven’t seen similar numbers for chicken pox or slapped cheek. That’s why Covid is different.

Completely agreed with you OP!

30,000 to 150,000 deaths through to summer.

Vaccines

I think we need to beware of minimising or trivialising Covid. It’s a warning from nature. We have this tendency to blame, rather than take responsibility. We want to believe we are ‘good’ - and others are to blame. We are always victims, never bullies. We need to address our behaviour, seriously address it. Humans are to blame for the pandemic, me - you, everyone. We consume to a horrific degree, we waste - and this has a direct impact on our natural world. Animals lose their natural ecosystem and are forced to live closely with humans - for example we demand cheap, soy fed chicken. Mass soy production has destroyed rainforests, yet we buy it. We exploit other countries for our own greed.

So - I’m afraid the posters on here who want to get back to normal, who say it’s like flu, who say death is part of life, who say ‘what’s the fuss’ - are wrong. We need to live better - we need a long term solution for our children. Yes - it’s been awful for them - but if we continue in this way - they will have a far bleaker future than the months of missed education they’ve had due to Covid.

Great thread! I finally don’t feel like such a lone voice

And I say this because I have 2 utterly beautiful children, who are naturally happy and full of life. Yet, I’m compelling with them to conform. You must do this to be civilised. I’m enforcing my adult ways on them all the time - and am I right? If we lived in a tent in a field, living off our immediate environment - they would thrive! And they would not be destroying the world with over consumption.

@Smartiepants79

I agree completely. In 10 years the propaganda from this will be part of school’s history curriculum. For the majority of people the world has been no less safe over the last 12 months than it was before all this began. I fume internally every time anyone starts ranting on about schools not being ‘safe’. If they were safe before then they’re safe now! 😡

Hear hear. And what makes it even more pathetic is that it’s usually perfectly healthy 40 year old teachers complaining they aren’t safe and convinced they are going to die. Or maybe that’s just the 7 I know. 🤷‍♀️

When animals are fed in zoos, if they find their food too easily - they become depressed? So convenience has not only led us to destroy nature, cause pandemics - and compromised our mental health. We diagnose children who freak out when we compel them to conform with a syndrome.

I completely agree.

I’m amazed at the people who walk around with risks that I perceive to be much greater overall eg smoking or obesity who worry hugely about covid. It makes no sense to me

Life is a risk. We must must start to live again

Maybe we - as adult humans- need to seriously address our greed, utter narcissism - and belief that we have far more rights to this planet than a malarial mosquito.

Agree OP. The number of posts on here from those saying 'I won't leave the house/let my kids go to school' because fear of them dying and leaving their children parentless. Or devising selfish reasons as to why they think they deserve a vaccination ahead of statistically more vulnerable people. Any of us could get diagnosed with cancer tomorrow, covid or no covid. It's like they haven't considered the other (bigger) daily risks out there in normal times.

@Silverthorny are you suggesting that people are depressed because food isn’t scarce enough?

And as a species, we’re pretty special - I’m not saying we should go about wanton destruction of the planet, but we are the most complex and intelligent life in the known universe, and this is so rare that the chances of our existence ever overlapping with another species who also develop technology able to communicate with us is astronomically small. We gulf between us and the most intelligent animals is immense.

@HermioneWeasley I’m suggesting that we have over processed food very readily available, and worldwide - other nations e.g West Africa have a far healthier diet. I’m suggesting that developed countries not only contribute (perhaps more indirectly) to the destruction of nature, yet blame the countries that we demand/buy goods from. I’m suggesting that the more developed counties in the world have higher rates of depression.

Also interesting that many lesser developed countries have had a far better response/been less impacted by Covid.

Well said @Twattergy (and fab name! )
The collective hysteria and lack of understanding of relative risk is so depressing. And reckless of the gvt to have whipped up the fear rather than explaining the relative risks snd trusting adults to make sensible and proportionate adaptations. And mow they have given into the irrational and absurd clamour for ‘masks on schools’ simply as a sop to the superstitious.

Démonstration of this madness is s poll on our local paper online showing 32% of responders would continue till wear s mask when not required.

[quote TheReluctantPhoenix]@icantthinkofanamehelp,

The hospitalisation figure of 20,000 is significant. Firstly, if this rotates weekly (maybe it is more like 10 daily) it implies 1mio people in hospital with COVID, or 1.5% of the entire population, over 1 year. It is clearly a matter of perspective whether this is small. Personally, it seems quite large to me, and we are certainly not used to illnesses with this hospitalisation rate.

In addition, we have a finite hospital capacity. If it is exceeded, we are in trouble. We are too close to it still at the moment. ICU care should be 1 to 1. I suspect, although not at the worst, we are not back to that yet on average.

I do think that vaccines should massively decrease hospitalisations. If this is the case, we should open up. However, like all theories, we have to see it actually happen to be comfortable that it is as was foreseen.

We are right to be opening up but we are also right to be doing it in stages and cautiously.[/quote]
These are people in hospital who have had a positive Covid test with x number of days. They are not all in hospital being treated for Covid. Number is 16,000 now btw. It has halved in about a month.

Part of the problem is that we are a nation who doesn’t respect rules, restrictions. More compliant nations like South Korea are densely populated, but have managed the Covid situation well because they work together as a nation.

@Pootle40,

You are splitting hairs here. Hospitals are still pretty full and this is due to COVID. We have had no influenza (to speak of this year).

We should start to open up, get children back to school etc. However, there is still very little play in the system, so we need to open up cautiously, in stages.

I think we have got this unlocking right. It is a shame about the fiasco of the December unlocking. We could be so much further on the way to normality by now.

We are also a pretty unhealthy nation. I think we’ve all got used to the nhs being there to fix anything we throw at our bodies. Collectively we need to take better care of our health from exercise and healthy eating to skin spf protection and washing hands.

I think people would have to be pretty dim, and not have followed the news at all to have missed all the statements, from right at the start (Boris channelling Lord Farquad) through this the most recent weeks - with Whitty/Vallance stating that once pressure is off NHS and transmission is generally low (achievable, if vaccine roll out continues to go well, and people don't get ahead of the step by step relaxation)

No one (except a few rightwingers and even then only when posturing and some wind up merchants or strawman creators) really thinks that the end game has ever been anything other than to get this to be a disease with an acceptable cost (hospitalisations and deaths)

Staying with masks seems a sensible step for those who wish to keep their germs to themselves. They will be making public spaces safer for everyone else, and I think that sort of community-mindedness should be applauded, not derided.

For the vaccine isn't 100%, and in future years people will still catch it, or flu, or some other winter bug, and some will become seriously ill. Comtininug to act as if you are the infectious one (eg with masks) if done by as many as the 32% cited above, is a really heartening step and shows how many people are grasping how much daily independent hygiene choices make on public health.

@SexTrainGlue I totally agree, and I think it’s truly upsetting that people would be derided for taking a protective measure. I don’t see hysteria. I see some people quietly getting on with it and doing their best. I see others who are completely self serving, blaming others, minimising and seeing themselves purely as victims.

I think most people acknowledge theres a problem that we collectively need to overcome together so we can lead a life as opposed to just existing. Most people are complying with restrictions and following advice to SD , wear masks and hand hygiene.
Theres a few that flat out refused to see theres an issue and believe all the conspiracy theories out and there and feel that the government/world leaders want to control us. Then theres the opposite end of the scale that have taken the phrase "stay safe " and absolutely ran to the hills with it and can no longer see any rational sense or perspective anymore.