Are people just going out with symptoms now…?

[Dandy008]

Went out with DC and a friend this morning.
We started off in local soft play and went to a family pub for lunch.

The soft play was literally full of kids who more than half of them were coughing.
Adults were coughing too.

At first I thought I was just being a bit hyper vigilant, until my friend mentioned it to me and said she felt uncomfortable.

We headed to the pub for lunch and to our surprise, it was the same there only this time it was more adults coughing.

It wasn’t even the same people,

I know it’s that time of year and we have to expect colds etc, but surely if you’re coughing, with a continuous cough, during a pandemic, then you would stay at home… 🤷🏻‍♀️

At the beginning of 2019 I had a cough so awful I broke two ribs. I was coughing pretty much constantly for about three weeks, and it took another three of four weeks to go completely. I felt too lousy to go anywhere for a week or so but after that I had to crack on.

Coughs like this will still be doing the rounds. People can't stay in the house for almost two months just so they don't make others feel uneasy.

OP did you stay at home with every sniffle before Covid?

@Warhertisuff it was absolutely shocking. I just can't believe someone would risk the health of all those sick kids

I cough all throughout the year because I have athsma, its not a new cough to me nor is it continuous, I LFT twice a week for work, so NO I'm not staying at home just to appease the likes of OP who thinks they have the right to be judge and jury on my health at a mere snap shot in time.
You'll find many athsmatics coughing more than usual this time of year. This is absolutely normal for us. Please remember the symptoms of covid are a new and continuous cough that does not describe every cough out there, people did cough before covid you know, be rest assured though athsma isn't transmissible

I actually disagree that children are sent to school with awful coughs & colds and are “perfectly well”. So many parents are too selfish to keep them at home to let them get properly well.

Priorities have changed in the last few decades. People are selfish & quick to carry on regardless

This is a massive oversimplification. It’s not about ‘selfish parents’; schools nowadays are obsessed with their attendance stats because of Ofsted, and the pace of the curriculum means that time off to recover ‘properly’ from every bug risks considerable learning loss, which would be flagged up as a concern by most schools.

Plus many of those ‘selfish parents’ have jobs that don’t allow for time off to care for sick kids, and where any absence is massively frowned on and puts parents first in line for potential redundancy. If we genuinely care about supporting people to stay at home we need to adequately compensate them and end society’s entire culture of presenteeism.

@TempsPerdu

I actually disagree that children are sent to school with awful coughs & colds and are “perfectly well”. So many parents are too selfish to keep them at home to let them get properly well.

Priorities have changed in the last few decades. People are selfish & quick to carry on regardless

This is a massive oversimplification. It’s not about ‘selfish parents’; schools nowadays are obsessed with their attendance stats because of Ofsted, and the pace of the curriculum means that time off to recover ‘properly’ from every bug risks considerable learning loss, which would be flagged up as a concern by most schools.

Plus many of those ‘selfish parents’ have jobs that don’t allow for time off to care for sick kids, and where any absence is massively frowned on and puts parents first in line for potential redundancy. If we genuinely care about supporting people to stay at home we need to adequately compensate them and end society’s entire culture of presenteeism.

Exactly this. It’s not ‘selfishness’ that makes me send my children to school with a cold, it’s the fact that a) I need to keep a roof over our heads and b) school have been very clear that if a covid test is negative and they have mild cold symptoms they should be in school.

@Whinge

I think some people have pandemic fatigue. They are at the point where if vaccinated and therefore not too unwell they just get on with their lives.

Surely that's the sensible route going forward? You can't keep children off school / nursery or stay home from work for every cough or runny nose.

No one is suggesting to do it for everything? Or even suggesting keeping off school?

But for covid or covid symptoms you should be taking a pcr test and not just assuming it's a cold because you feel well enough to go out and about. But people are doing this because they are fatigues with isolation.

Also I do think if a child has something contagious and is coughing and spluttering everywhere you do need to avoid very public places for a few days.

It's different with the poster above who's child has a cough due to a medical condition. But I would imagine in every place with 10 people coughing very few of them even have 1 person in this category.

[quote Mantlemoose]@itsgettingwierd Well considering a thread i read yesterday where a colleague started coughing continuously and spontaneously during the day and the OP was flamed for suggesting he should have gone home and got tested - I'm guessing there probably are!
That poster was a just looking for an argument though. They thought they knew everything about their colleague but with their attitude they probably didn't know anything![/quote]
Well she had to be defensive because the first set of replies were awful and people jumped on the bandwagon.

I'm very much out and about living my life but I'm surprised sometimes at peoples attitudes.

That was very clearly a new onset of cough. For that you should test. Wanting someone to leave a public office and test isn't asking too much.

Can't deny the posters attitude got worse throughout the thread but I do think she got a hard time first.

Btw I'm not suggesting people stay home with colds and coughs.

Just that when someone is at the point of that really bad bit they should avoid public places that are unnecessary. Remember a cold actually lasts in average 48 hours. That's the really bad bit.

And I have no idea why when people are coughing and sneezing with a headache they really want to go and sit in a pub or soft play?

@itsgettingwierd

Btw I'm not suggesting people stay home with colds and coughs.

Just that when someone is at the point of that really bad bit they should avoid public places that are unnecessary. Remember a cold actually lasts in average 48 hours. That's the really bad bit.

And I have no idea why when people are coughing and sneezing with a headache they really want to go and sit in a pub or soft play?

You don't think people should stay home with coughs and colds, but you also say that people who are carrying on whilst they feel ok are are doing so because of pandemic fatigue?

If you felt terrible you wouldn't be dragging yourself out to soft play, so those who are coughing and sneezing are just carrying on like you said they should.

@itsgettingwierd

Btw I'm not suggesting people stay home with colds and coughs.

Just that when someone is at the point of that really bad bit they should avoid public places that are unnecessary. Remember a cold actually lasts in average 48 hours. That's the really bad bit.

And I have no idea why when people are coughing and sneezing with a headache they really want to go and sit in a pub or soft play?

Theres just one small problem with your suggestion of staying at home when it's really bad, you have no idea how long the person coughing has been coughing for.

To you it may sound like they are at their worst but they could instead have stayed home when feeling their roughest and they are now out making sure their children have a nice half term because to be honest being stuck inside for even 24 or 48 with small children is no ones idea of fun so why would they subject themselves to it for longer than necessary?

Also not sure why soft play is such an odd choice for an adult who still isn't feeling top notch and in the mood to imitate Mary Poppins. It's been pissing it down here all week so I imagine many parents wil have taken their child to soft play to run about like a loon whilst they got a few hours to sit mostly uninterrupted.

You don't know who has and hasn't been tested, and there are A LOT of coughs around at this time of year.

However I also think that there are lots and lots of people who write their symptoms off as a cold when it's covid. Therefore they don't get tested.

My friend bought her niece to a meeting of our hobby the other night and she was sat coughing in the corner. I asked whether she had been tested (we have lots of vulnerable people attend the hobby as it's a typically 'old person' thing to do haha) and she said no, it's just a cold.

For goodness sake.

It us a tough one OP. I have asthma and gastric issues which mean I cough daily. I had a cold with a dreadful cough recently so I did a PCR despite negative LFT as I had to be sure as the cough was worse than normal.
Some of the people OP will be in my boat. Some will have recovered from COVID or some other virus but be left with a residual cough but given the attitude of dome on SM I am sure some will just not give a shit. Hell my CT relative will not even have a PCR for pre surgery. She would rather continue to be in pain than shove a swab up her nose as it alters DNA, breaks the blood brain barrier or gives or cancer or whater crackpot thing she heard on UK column news no doubt. Obviously she is extreme but lots just can't be bothered anymore.

My dd had a cough for for 4 weeks now, negative PCR & been to doctors and told just one of those things and it will eventually go, so do you suggest we just sit in until it's gone?

I hate these threads, if you're so afraid of covid don't go out, I don't see why someone so health conscious would be at soft play anyway as they are germ factories.

It's flu season, get over it. People will have post viral coughs, they can last for quite a while.

@Cooroo

If we all shelter each other from colds, could we end up in the same position as the Incas in Peru, who were almost wiped out by bugs brought from Europe that they had no immunity to? I fear suffering from coughs and colds is the price we have to pay - and presumably COVID will just become another eventually. I'm not a scientist, this may be populist crap so please enlighten me if you know better!

I'd expect that those places that have had sought to create sterile environments since Covid-19 came along will have a torrid time when they eventually open up.

Take China. Quarantining strictly to stop Covid from entering also stops anything else from crossing the border. The longer they remain sealed off, the worse it will be when they do eventually open up.

Also, those kindergartens in the US where children from 2 have to wear masks all day, even when outside, is (assuming the masks are effective which I'm doubtful of) not helping their immune systems in the long run.

It's different with the poster above who's child has a cough due to a medical condition. But I would imagine in every place with 10 people coughing very few of them even have 1 person in this category.

It's not for the general public to judge whether that child has a medical condition or not based on seeing someone cough a couple of times. People need to be Considerate to the fact that others can cough for a whole host of reasons and not just assume that anyone who coughs is willy-nilly spreading covid. As someone who coughs a lot, I can tell you it's not fun and it's not something I choose to do out of pleasure. It's part of a life long condition of which there's no cure and I will not stay at home forever just to make others feel better.

@itsgettingwierd

Btw I'm not suggesting people stay home with colds and coughs.

Just that when someone is at the point of that really bad bit they should avoid public places that are unnecessary. Remember a cold actually lasts in average 48 hours. That's the really bad bit.

And I have no idea why when people are coughing and sneezing with a headache they really want to go and sit in a pub or soft play?

Yes but as everyone has said, the cough bit often drags on them for many weeks? That’s kind of the point.

I do keep my DC at home (and cancel play dates / days out) at the height of a cold but I’m not sure what I can really do about a hacking cough that is still there 3-4 weeks later?

I have a friends ds over for the day, to play with my dts, all 3 of them have coughs and sniffles. They all had pcr tests earlier in the week that came back negative. I may take them out somewhere shortly. Its ridiculous to assume coughs are unchecked covid.

Yeah I guess no one stays at home when ill.

We want to play group this morning, adults and children coughing.

Perhaps we wouldn’t have noticed pre pandemic.
🤷🏻‍♀️

Ah well. I don’t want to stay in when well and they don’t want to stay in when unwell.

I don’t think we (my family)’will be so considerate the next time we are unwell. Why should we stay home or try to avoid busy places if we’re coughing / full of cold when nobody else seems to.

@Treblebass

I still think it’s disgusting covid or not. If I have a bad cough I stay at home.

If this happened most of my class would have been off home last week. Students who test negative have been coming into school. So I suppose they are doing half term stuff as normal too

Just because people are coughing though doesn't mean they are ill.

I'm in week 4 of a nasty cough. Don't feel ill at all now and haven't done since the first 48 hours, where I did stay home (apart from going for a pcr test). Still need to work and shop etc.

Coughs etc have been around forever and continue to exist alongside covid. It's like people have forgotten about anything else other than covid.

I don’t think we (my family)’will be so considerate the next time we are unwell. Why should we stay home or try to avoid busy places if we’re coughing / full of cold when nobody else seems to.

I know you're trying to make a passive aggressive point, but going about your normal every day life when you have a cold is absolutely fine. People can't stay home for every sniffle, and locking you and your family away for a cold is madness.

@Whinge

I don’t lock myself or my family away and I wouldn’t expect others to “lock away”

What we do tend to do, when unwell, is avoid busy places.
Example, soft play, play group, play dates.

I just think it’s a considerate thing to do.
But honestly I think I’m way to considerate.

I don’t think we (my family)’will be so considerate the next time we are unwell. Why should we stay home or try to avoid busy places if we’re coughing / full of cold when nobody else seems to.

👏👏👏 I'm sure you'll be named in the next Queens honours list either for your public services to coughs and colds or for your amateur dramatics, either way, well done

I've got a nasty non-Covid cough but it's my birthday this weekend and I have lots of plans - will still be doing them. Don't feel particularly ill, am just coughing. I'm not isolating for a cough.