Is it now impossible to avoid?

[MrsKDB]

My feeling is that the cat is completely out of the bag now and we are all getting covid, with symptoms or without, at some point. I’ve expressed this to colleagues / friends who have agreed but a few have looked very shocked at the idea and seem to think ‘being careful’ means they won’t ever catch covid.

What do you think? An inevitability or possible to avoid for your entire life?

We have it now. Son just started at secondary school in year 7 where there are loads of cases. He can only have caught it there. Two days later I have it too.

Maybe it’s inevitable that it will circulate and spread but to what degree is up to the powers that be.

If the government had vaccinated secondary school children in the summer holidays we wouldn’t be seeing the headline that 1 in 20 children at secondary school had covid last week.

They will say that it’s not too bad for the majority that age group but they all have people in their life - parents, siblings, grandparents, carers and the general community to pass it on to.

I’m vaccinated and I’ve felt awful. I would not want my also vaccinated parents in their late 70s to get what I had.

Why aren’t we more outraged with this government?

It seems to be rife in my area, it's ripping through the schools like nobody's business. We've not been anywhere, apart from kids going to school (secondary), DS tested positive first, nearly half his year group out with it apparently, DD was next, so me and DH tested as well, both positive. Nearly everyone I know has got it or had it recently, it's definitely on the rise.

Once they said they were getting rid of masks in schools, I knew it was going to spread like wildfire.

The data coming in from the States shows that schools without mask mandates are far more likely to have an outbreak, which fuels community spread, which then feeds back into the schools.

DD in year 7, just started Secondary school, brought it home from school and has ended isolation today, DH then caught it and then finally me. It is going through the Secondary school like wildfire here in South Yorkshire.

I'm not sure that's true. I think you're most infectious the day prior to symptoms.

@MamaSass

We have it now. Son just started at secondary school in year 7 where there are loads of cases. He can only have caught it there. Two days later I have it too.

Maybe it’s inevitable that it will circulate and spread but to what degree is up to the powers that be.

If the government had vaccinated secondary school children in the summer holidays we wouldn’t be seeing the headline that 1 in 20 children at secondary school had covid last week.

They will say that it’s not too bad for the majority that age group but they all have people in their life - parents, siblings, grandparents, carers and the general community to pass it on to.

I’m vaccinated and I’ve felt awful. I would not want my also vaccinated parents in their late 70s to get what I had.

Why aren’t we more outraged with this government?

I agree with you. I'm 48 and Covid was no walk in the park. Not the simple 'cold' you see so often dismissed on here. My son was symptomatic too and in bed for a few days.

My poor mother, 75 had to test, but fortunately, I think we became contagious after we saw her. I'm not sure how her body would have coped with Covid.

Not only did they not vaccinate in the summer, but now loads of kids have caught it who won't be eligible for Covid vaccinations in school this month.
If they remain unvaccinated and time/immunity from Covid wanes, then my year 11 risks getting it again. Smack bang in his GCSEs.

@Invasionofthegutsnatchers

Clinically vulnerable people have my sympathy. Staying in forever is no life.

In my experience, they visit hospitals and have regular interactions with health staff and maybe carers. So even the "staying in forever" isnt really true or even possible in most cases.

@SpringRainbow

I resigned myself back in 2020 that we would inevitably catch Covid.

However, here we are late 2021 and we still haven’t ever had a positive result (yet).

I do look at us and wonder how on earth it’s possible we have gone this long without catching Covid. We must have had it without realising.

We have been as careful as we can be, but with two school age children and my DH who is a key worker, I just don’t understand how it’s possible for us to ‘avoid it’.

I read somewhere last year, that 5 out of 6 people do not catch covid.

I have tried googling that since, and cant find where I previously read it.

"I read somewhere last year, that 5 out of 6 people do not catch covid."

Sounds like rubbish. I work in a school. 5 out of 6 adults caught it. 1 out of 6 not catching it might even be an overestimate.

Totally on the rise suddenlythis last two weeks I know Five or six families it’s affecting as well as ourselves. Being double jabbed I think mitigated the worst but it’s been a miserable week with some crappy symptoms . Not as bad as flu for us or bed bound but more sofa bound . Youngest has now had it twice testing positive on pcrs two years in a row . He rarely goes anywhere beyond school , swimming lesson , his tiny village school and a two or three friends in reciprocal play dates and only this year it was more like a typical childhood illness . Last year we couldn’t believe it when his pcr came back positive ( school was jittery at his tiny cough and insisted he went for a test a precaution ) . This year I was testing him religiously as his brother turned positive . Delta spreads easily and they are bringing it home - simples . Last year not so much. Unfortunately it’s a novel virus with an asymptomatic infectious phase with a higher frequency of devastating health consequences for some & the unlucky than we were previously used to in the modern western world .

I know I am tempting fate by saying this, but I don't know why I haven't had it so far, two children in different, large, educational settings, I work in healthcare and have been in close contact with people who are positive and still not a sniff of it in this household. Another family member works in healthcare in the absolute thick of it when it comes to risk, also not had it, just about every other person they work with has had it.
I put it down to being vaccinated, luck, being careful, and the possibility of coming into contact with something similar over the years, there isn't a excretion the human body can produce that I haven't inhaled or had close contact with over the last 20 years.

We are all going to get it. Luckily more treatment available now.

I am resigned to catching it. I teach in a secondary school and it is currently quite frightening. I was walking around the building during one of my PPA periods the other day and all I could hear from the classrooms was coughing. Kids are being sent home in a constant stream for PCR tests. Over half of my Year 11 class are out, either because they have tested positive or are symptomatic and awaiting PCR results. I have all the windows open and try to keep at least 2 metres distance, but this is impossible in the corridors and on the staircases, which are packed with unmasked teenagers. I have been 'pinged' as a close contact, and really it could be any one of about 150 kids I have been with in a crowded classroom. Awaiting PCR results. Even if it's negative this time, I would expect to get a hefty dose of Covid before mid-November.

Since schools went back after summer I've felt it was inevitable - I teach and have two school aged children, and have been certain one of us would bring it home. I really hadn't felt like that until the start of the autumn term. Last week I had a sense of impending doom...sure enough we've all got it this week.

I know some posters have mentioned that they were worried about no masks in schools but I'm in Scotland where secondary schools kids are still in masks all day and it's not making a difference - half of my son's class are currently absent due to covid!

My DD(19) intends at the moment to stay at home forever. But she's been housebound for 6 years, caught Covid from DS via school last year and has been bedbound for 18 months of that. Sure it's no life, especially for a teenager. But while others feel they have a greater right to a normal life and seem incapable of making any adjustments to make it safer for the CEV to do the same, she will just stay at home. And tbh it's no different to how she'd been living anyway.

Meanwhile we all wear n95 masks if we go indoors anywhere. DH still wears his for teaching and DS wears his in class. And we don't go to cinemas, theatres, restaurants. Again, sure it's shit, and we don't have an exit plan for that. But we don't think catching Covid is inevitable and are still prepared to do what we can to protect her. And in the whole scheme of things, with the perspective we have, we can live without the frivolities if it means we're not risking further harm to DD.

@TheDailyCarbunkle

It genuinely amazes me that some people believe it is in any way possible to avoid covid forever. That is just mad - how would it be possible? To some extent I blame the stupid information spread about 'staying safe' but at the same time I would expect people to have some ounce of sense and realise a highly infectious disease that is literally everywhere is pretty much impossible to avoid. Even being 'very careful' is a bit pointless - all it takes is one exposure - at the dentist, at the hairdresser, in a friend's house. Exposure doesn't mean you'll catch it or get ill if you do catch it - there's every chance that people who are still worried about getting it have already had a lot of exposure and just fought it off with no issues.

I feel sorry for CEV people, not because they're CEV but because they've been made to believe they have to do whatever they can to avoid an infection that may have very negative consequences or no consequences at all. It's a terrible burden to put on someone. I also note that many CEV people never worried at all about the many infection that kill millions of people every year and now are suddenly fixated on one single infection. If you're 'CEV' to covid surely you're 'CEV' to many other things that were always around? What did CEV people do in 2019 and earlier?

While I agree with the first part of your post, I have to ask, how many CEV people do you know? We as a family did (and do) use measures to avoid passing things on to my particularly vulnerable sibling. Not masks or hand sanitising, but frequent rearranging of plans because one of us had come down with a cold, for example.

We’re not actually a family who have bought into the possibility of “keeping safe” thing about covid, partly because of our experience with vulnerability to illnesses that for most people are mild colds. There isn’t any blame attached to people catching or passing on viruses for my family, which is the weird and horrible thing about covid times. But we have altered our behaviour for years where my sibling is concerned.

Most people are cautious with a relative who is undergoing chemotherapy for example.

Just because you haven’t heard of it doesn’t mean people weren’t doing it.

being careful

Oh yes, I have a few of those among my friends. They tend to be the type who are a bit prone to seeing COVID as a moral indicator, where "nice/good/clean" people don't get the virus because it chooses only to infect bad dirty people.

"I always wear an N95 mask in shops and when I teach and I don't go to restaurants" was my friend's reason for believing that she can prevent COVID forever through "being careful" (We are outside the UK, by the way).

I pointed out to her that the pair of us were sitting there in her living room, talking at close quarters and not wearing masks! She can't spend the rest of her life never having an unmasked conversation with a friend, surely?

"Oh yes, but I know you! You are sensible and you wash your hands and wear a mask and you don't 'mix!' "

Didn't know what to say in response to that, to be honest! I wear a mask in indoor public places, but that's about it. I go to pools, restaurants, aquariums, public transport, short holidays, I mix with plenty of people....

I mean, I'm happy that my friend believes I'm a nice clean person (and I think she is a nice clean person too, even if she is a bit misguided on how diseases spread). But this is an example of what I am talking about---a tendency to see catching the virus as the mark of being a Bad Person.

Why aren’t we more outraged with this government?

Yes, but what is the government supposed to DO, realistically speaking? They can't make the bloody virus go away. We're stuck with it.

@TheDailyCarbunkle

I feel sorry for CEV people, not because they're CEV but because they've been made to believe they have to do whatever they can to avoid an infection that may have very negative consequences or no consequences at all. It's a terrible burden to put on someone. I also note that many CEV people never worried at all about the many infection that kill millions of people every year and now are suddenly fixated on one single infection. If you're 'CEV' to covid surely you're 'CEV' to many other things that were always around? What did CEV people do in 2019 and earlier?

I suppose you don't know any CEV people, then? How do you know they "never worried at all" about other infections? Such ignorance

COVID may not ever go away completely but pandemics don't last forever. If the pattern follows previous pandemics the numbers will dwindle and dramatically fall, making the chances of catching far less likely - and more akin to being unlucky and catching flu.

I don't subscribe to the notion that we're definitely all going to get it. But equally, my family is still fairly locked down. Both me and DP work from home, and due to non-COVID related reasons, both my DC are now home educated. I have a CEV DM and also a vulnerable stepdad. We did some outdoor things in the summer but don't plan on participating in any indoor activities until cases are significantly lower.

I am naturally more cautious by nature. My DC (both with significant additional needs) don't cope well if I even get a headache, so I'm extremely keen to avoid getting COVID because of the distress it will cause them. I'm chubby, 45 and asthmatic so there's a very good chance I'd get a rough dose of it.

We have had rates steadily decreasing since last winter and now they’re sub-200 in a population the size of London. We haven’t had any lockdowns since the start of the pandemic and we have all had a minimum of 3 jabs, including all teens. Everyone wears masks indoors but apart from that life has carried on as normal.

Yes, it is impossible to eradicate the disease altogether, but my god the U.K. has handled things so unbelievably badly throughout and now it’s basically a breeding ground for new variants - ones that might eventually lead to vaccine resistance. It’s utterly irresponsible of the government to let it circulate at such high levels when most of the rest of the world is getting it under control.

The U.K. was responsible for the Kent variant, and for exporting Delta to much of Europe, don’t forget.

I’m no fan of the U.K. government (I assume that’s who you mean, rather than its population) or of its handling of delta, but what do you mean by “responsible for exporting delta to much of Europe”?

@feesh

We have had rates steadily decreasing since last winter and now they’re sub-200 in a population the size of London. We haven’t had any lockdowns since the start of the pandemic and we have all had a minimum of 3 jabs, including all teens. Everyone wears masks indoors but apart from that life has carried on as normal.

Yes, it is impossible to eradicate the disease altogether, but my god the U.K. has handled things so unbelievably badly throughout and now it’s basically a breeding ground for new variants - ones that might eventually lead to vaccine resistance. It’s utterly irresponsible of the government to let it circulate at such high levels when most of the rest of the world is getting it under control.

The U.K. was responsible for the Kent variant, and for exporting Delta to much of Europe, don’t forget.

Everywhere will be the same if no restrictions, same vaccination rate and no contact tracing / isolation etc - do you have that?

Do you have border restrictions?

The perception outside the U.K. is that handling it travel reopening by the U.K. was pissing poor at the beginning of delta, with a substantial number of travellers coming back from India (and religious gatherings in India) left unchecked, able to bypass quarantine rules. Large numbers, little controls, more aggressive variant.
By comparison, the number of flights in other countries was a fraction, qnd the procedures for test&trace much more stringent.
Seriously, regardless of other aspects, we’ve had a very badly done tracing, in general. Most people I spoke to have been called days if not weeks after contact.
Most of my colleagues who have been quarantined in EU (for instance post travel from U.K.) had daily visits at the doorstep to check they were where they were supposed to be.

It’s ripping through schools where I live, and the students are back too. So it feels somewhat inevitable. Being double jabbed, and having had it once very early in the pandemic (along with my youngest child - but seemingly not the other members of the household) means I feel relatively ok about it. In fact, the inevitability of it means that I have been more comfortable taking risks I wouldn’t have a few months ago. In fact yesterday we had a fairly normal pre pandemic Saturday of walking into town, popping into the library, having brunch and then getting the bus back (tired kids).

So yes, I think it’s inevitable, and that’s actually helpful for me.