How many covid deaths per month is too many?

[PrincessNutNuts]

3000? 4000? 5000? 6000?

At what point would you begin to be uncomfortable with the body count caused by the government policy colloquially known as "living" with covid?

Boris Johnson has been reported as saying that unless 50,000 are going to die he's not changing course.

This number can be expressed as about 238 dead British people every day from September - March inclusive, or 137 deaths per day over a year. Or 416 per day from November - February inclusive.

Is another 50,000 on the covid death toll ok with you?

Or not?

Has anyone pointed out that the excess deaths from Covid are not all going to be in addition to excess deaths from flu, or even mostly. Many of the people who die will be dying of one or the other, surely?

@PrincessNutNuts

I'm a can do, hard working, positive "always do your best" sort of person so surrendering to a virus isn't in me.

Arguably by allowing Covid to substantially impact how you live your life, you are giving it control.

My dad died from sepsis, one of the 50,000 per year who do so. Lots of those deaths are preventable but our lives do not revolve around preventing deaths from sepsis and nor should they in my view. There is more to life than not being dead.

That is 50,000 per year in the U.K. only by the way. Over 10 million people die from sepsis each year worldwide.

To me it's more about the action which you would need to take to prevent deaths from covid than the number.

The only thing which has really proved effective to reduce case numbers and therefore deaths is full lockdown including not seeing family or friends, children not going to school, people not going to work, no wedding, funerals or celebrations and most of the whole of the hospitality and retail sectors closed. To prevent deaths long-term you would potentially need to keep that up indefinitely. That type of lockdown is completely unsustainable and would make life not worth living and probably cause more harm than it prevents. Any restrictions short of that sort of full lockdown do not appear to have had a significant long-term impact on case numbers.

I would much prefer die of covid before my time in forty years or so having lived a normal life than live in lockdown until I reach my full life expectancy (and if I had to live in lockdown that long I would likely die prematurely of suicide anyway). And in any case harming the health of one group of people via lockdowns and restrictions to possibly improve the health of another group is ethically very dubious.

If you want to save lives there are much more efficient ways to do it than putting the UK into perpetual lockdown to prevent covid cases. You'd save more lives than that just by improving sanitation for children in developing countries or making sure they were treated for parasitic infections, both of which would be orders of magnitude cheaper than locking everyone down and which would have negligible impact on anyone else's quality of life. When there are so many lives in the world which could be saved relatively easily I don't understand why we would spend billions on very inefficient and expensive attempts to prevent covid deaths.

Me too, 1 in 2 people will be affected by Cancer during their lifetime

And at diagnosis, they become CEV, and therefore (as I have seen posted on other threads) going to die anyhow so it doesn't matter if they die of covid. So same person, still dead, but If it's covid during their cancer treatment that's in the OK side of the balance (on the oft stated lines of: we can't have any SD at all anymore even though it makes getting to treatment a bit safer) but in any other circs is a terrible avoidable tragedy.

@BrainBleachNeeded

Had a parent die of it. Also best friend’s husband died of it.

We’ve had a shit 1.5 years. I’m tired. Really really tired. We’re vaccinated, eldest aged 14 is getting vaccinated tomorrow. Im still wearing masks out. I stayed in when needed to (still didn’t help df and he caught it). So if you’re going to get it and die, then it’s unfortunate. But you can take all the precautions, this virus is sneaky.

My younger 2 children are now below average in school. I got told my son is really behind in reading and maths, when he was on target 2 years ago. I want to enjoy my life now. I will not be sacrificing our happiness and my kids education any longer.

Well said Sorry for your losses

450 deaths a day from cancer.

130 deaths a day from covid.

So how many deaths are acceptable princess?
How many suicides
How many women killed by a partner
How many people in road traffic accidents
How many because their cancer was not diagnosed.
How many from sepsis .
People die every day from lots of different things.

Globally children are dying because they dont have clean water. Malaria kills thousands and thousands each year. The effects of covid in poorer nations. I'm personally more bothered by this.

@PrincessNutNuts

How many of those 30,000 "bad flu seasons" are we going to be having every year?!

There are choices to be made, and more British people die with some options than others.

To choose those options is to choose to sacrifice British lives.

In their thousands.

I'm not ok with that. Plenty of people are.

I'm interested how many people will pretend it's inevitable and there's nothing to be done despite NZ and others out there proving otherwise, and how many will put a number on it.

How many dead British people is your "freedom" worth?

Per month preferably

Because 4000 a month horrifies me, but you all seem fine with it, so where's your line?

You realise that roughly 45k British people die every month anyway right? Not saying 4k is not a bad number but covid isn't going anywhere. You can sit and pretend that we can mask up etc for however long but at what point do you suggest we stop??? Because I can tell you that what ever time you think that is, is not possible.

The issue with covid is that it creates huge pressure on the nhs.

You cannot wish that away or “live with it” unless the capacity of the NHS is increased. Or funded properly in the first place.

Otherwise it’s an acceptance of people dying needless deaths when hospitals are too full to treat them - when otherwise they may survive.

Are people happy with that?

The only thing which has really proved effective to reduce case numbers and therefore deaths is full lockdown including not seeing family or friends, children not going to school, people not going to work, no wedding, funerals or celebrations and most of the whole of the hospitality and retail sectors closed.
This is absolute nonsense! Take a look at other European countries! Lots (if not all) have much lower case rates than the UK. None are still in lockdown. Some key things that other countries are doing differently: effective contact tracing rather the costly shambles that is Test and Trace, testing anyone with Covid symptoms rather than telling people they're not eligible for a PCR test if their symptoms don't fall within a narrow range, offering full vaccination to anyone aged over 12, requiring mask wearing in more situations, requiring people to show proof vaccination or a recent negative Covid test to undertake some activities, and achieving higher rates of vaccination. You may not want all or any of these measures in the UK. You may think that our much higher Covid rates are a price worth paying to avoid such measures. But to suggest that lockdown is the only way of meaningfully reducing Covid rates is completely untrue and shows a profound level of ignorance regarding the situation in countries that are our closest neighbours.

@Iggly

The issue with covid is that it creates huge pressure on the nhs.

You cannot wish that away or “live with it” unless the capacity of the NHS is increased. Or funded properly in the first place.

Otherwise it’s an acceptance of people dying needless deaths when hospitals are too full to treat them - when otherwise they may survive.

Are people happy with that?

People haven't been happy with that for years.

Maybe we should be lobbying the government to increase funding and capacity for the NHS instead of letting them continue to abdicate their responsibilities by calling for lockdowns every few months.

Maybe we should be lobbying the government to increase funding and capacity for the NHS instead of letting them continue to abdicate their responsibilities by calling for lockdowns every few months

Yes we absolutely should.

And we also need better structures in place such as test and trace etc because I strongly suspect this will not be the last pandemic we see in our lifetime.

@Iggly

Maybe we should be lobbying the government to increase funding and capacity for the NHS instead of letting them continue to abdicate their responsibilities by calling for lockdowns every few months

Yes we absolutely should.

And we also need better structures in place such as test and trace etc because I strongly suspect this will not be the last pandemic we see in our lifetime.

For better test and trace would you be ok with higher phone surveillance?

Iirc SK we’re able to track more easily through this

effective contact tracing

What western country has pulled this off? Because I'm in ROI and I honestly think they've just given up on it now.

@flower11

So how many deaths are acceptable princess? How many suicides How many women killed by a partner How many people in road traffic accidents How many because their cancer was not diagnosed. How many from sepsis . People die every day from lots of different things.

Globally children are dying because they dont have clean water. Malaria kills thousands and thousands each year. The effects of covid in poorer nations. I'm personally more bothered by this.

@flower11 comfortably takes the gold for whataboutery

Yeah I'm fine with people dying of it every day.

would much prefer die of covid before my time in forty years or so having lived a normal life than live in lockdown until I reach my full life expectancy (and if I had to live in lockdown that long I would likely die prematurely of suicide anyway). And in any case harming the health of one group of people via lockdowns and restrictions to possibly improve the health of another group is ethically very dubious. Totally agree with this

So what do people actually expect to die from. There seems to be so much attention to reducing death rates in x, y, z disease. I really think I'd rather die from covid or flu then dementia when I'm 80 plus. People have to die from something. Sorry if that's pretty cold.

@sparkle17

So what do people actually expect to die from. There seems to be so much attention to reducing death rates in x, y, z disease. I really think I'd rather die from covid or flu then dementia when I'm 80 plus. People have to die from something. Sorry if that's pretty cold.

People may die who didn’t need to die - simply because the nhs couldn’t cope.

That’s the issue. Are you happy with that?

For better test and trace would you be ok with higher phone surveillance?

I would prefer that it was handed back to schools for cases in schools.

I would prefer it was handed to local authorities who have better local connections.

So I mean better at tracing known contacts. That has gone out the window.

Where's @PrincessNutNuts gone?!

Starts numerous threads but doesn't like to keep going with them. 🤔

@Iggly

For better test and trace would you be ok with higher phone surveillance?

I would prefer that it was handed back to schools for cases in schools.

I would prefer it was handed to local authorities who have better local connections.

So I mean better at tracing known contacts. That has gone out the window.

Tbh with delta it’s not possible

Melbourne can’t contain it nor NZ and that’s starting with 1 case and closed borders

@Iggly

I definitely think the NHS deserves more funding and better staffing so that those that can be treated can have good quality healthcare. I was more just raising a point about death and disease especially as we have such an aging population.

@Iggly

For better test and trace would you be ok with higher phone surveillance?

I would prefer that it was handed back to schools for cases in schools.

I would prefer it was handed to local authorities who have better local connections.

So I mean better at tracing known contacts. That has gone out the window.

There just isn't the infrastructure or staffing levels in place to contact trace effectively with case numbers in the thousands. It can't be done.

You can't conjure up trained Public Health contact tracers in the same way you can't conjure up doctors and nurses, no matter how much money you throw at the problem.

These issues are structural and systemic in nature, it will takes years, if not decades, to make meaningful changes.