I'm mask exempt, my sensory issues mean I struggle to wear one (and before the usual gets trotted out, yes I have tried desensitisation, I still can't last more than a few seconds to minutes before my stimming gets to the point of self harming) and struggle with people wearing them. I find it hard to enough to focus on a single voice when there's background noise, add a mask in to the mix and I don't stand a chance. Plus masks force me to look in people's eyes. Add in those who are deaf or hard of hearing and there must be millions of us for whom masks mean we're even more socially isolated than normal. At what point do our needs actually start to matter?
Those saying when numbers get down to 30/100000, you do realise that is very unlikely to ever happen now, don't you? The plan is no longer to supress actual infections, but allow covid to circulate. Self isolation if you come in to contact with a positive case is going to stop in less than a month and the vast majority of cases in the double vaccinated now are indistinguishable from a common cold, which means fewer people testing, I mean do you really think the country as a whole can afford to test everyone every time they have a sniffle forever. Eventually testing will only be something that's done before you go in to hospital or if you're actually ill. Personally I think the daily reporting of numbers has to stop, the focus on cases has to stop, yes keep.the hospital admissions, for now, although this needs overhauling too, we maybe need to know how many are in hospital because of covid as opposed to those who incidentally test positive when admitted for something else. Same with deaths, as covid becomes endemic, there will be many who die of other things that will.have incidentally tested positive in the previous 28 days. If someone had terminal cancer and was in their last days and caught the flu, would we have said that they died of the flu, or would we.have said cancer same with old age.
And before anyone calls.me heartless, I've lost 2 family members in the last 2 years in these circumstances and you know what, dying relatively quickly of covid would have been a blessing for both of them. My Dad had stomach cancer, his pain and suffering was drawn out over 2 years as the cancer spread and ravaged his body, once it got to his brain he wasn't even him. Thankfully this was pre-covid and he could have his family around him, even though he didn't know who we were.
My grandmother-in-law died of old age, 100 years old, but over the previous 5 years she had gone from being fully independent, to stuck in bed, dependent on someone else for everything including the most intimate care, in constant pain and even worse, covid and lockdown hit and she couldn't see.the only people that made her life worth living (her grandson and great.gransons). Both these people died after months and months of pain and degradation, for both of them a relatively quick death from covid (or the flu, or a common cold) would have been a blessing, but if either had died 28 days after a positive covid test they would be included in the numbers that died "from covid"
Sorry this has turned in to a rant, and is probably better as a separate thread, but I struggle with talking about things like this irl, I don't do emotions.