To think we soon won’t be isolating even when we have covid.

[Grida]

If covid is spreading as rapidly as it seems to be, surely people who have tested positive but who don’t have symptoms/aren’t feeling ill will have to carry on working. The country will stop functioning otherwise.

I hope this happens soon.

@CoffeeMuggins

What do we expect the vulnerable to do when this happens? Stay inside forever or gamble with their lives every time they need to go to work or pop to the shops?

A large amount of CEV have had to do this, long before Covid existed.

It's been part of my life for years.

@Chloemol

Great good idea, tested positive feel ok? Ok go to work

Spread it amongst those cancer patients you look after, or the person you are operating on

spread it amongst those kids you teach, who can take it home and spread across the elderly relatives, after all they have had their life

Spread it amongst others you work without who have to take time off work, but don’t you worry that they only get SSP and can’t afford food that week for the rest of the family

If you go to work positive you will spread it, it will mean even more of sick ( simple equation, workforce of 10: you have it positive, ok to work, can’t wfh, so in you go, then 5 others go down with it who are unwell, so instead of just 1 person off, they now have 5 )

Yeah, it's not rocket science is it, I despair!

Once we've got more robust data to confirm that Omicron is not as serious health wise when you catch it, then it has to be done as there are no other real alternatives.

Omicron is so contagious, that only a full scale lockdown on a par with March 2020 would slow down transmission and then it will come back as soon as people are out and about again.

We don't isolate for 10 days for a cold. If - and I do think a bit of caution is required- Omicron isn't as severe in impact as Delta, we need to start looking at alternatives to lockdown. Reducing isolation to 7 days is a good start. Unfortunately I live in Scotland so we'll likely be late adopters of any change as Scottish government likes to be slow on these things.

@Magnited

Give or take a few weeks this will be about right.

Yes. To be prudent, probably a bit later around 29 April to 2 May we will see more formal public confirmation from a variety of national and international sources that Covid has been beaten. However, by about 19 March it will be beaten on the ground.

And you source for nonsense is...???

@venusmay

Until it really has weakened and is no threat to the vulnerable then we still need to self isolate. I feel sorry for those who have immunity problems, it's like they are constantly being cast aside.

Do you self isolate when you have a cold normally?

@Doggoo

I agree. I know 4 nurses currently isolating with no/very mild symptoms. Our public services are so thinly stretched that none of them can function with this constant disruption. People love to talk about ‘protecting the NHS’ without giving much more thought to what that means, other than what the government tell you to think that means.

So, how exactly, would it be better that they go to work, spread it around vulnerable patients & colleagues?

Can you not see how much worse that would make the situation? Let alone for those people they spread it to?

@NovemberNovemberDarkNights but if everyone keeps isolating when they feel well enough to work we will have NO NHS or public services at all because the whole systems will collapse at this rate - and that is catastrophic for the very people you’re talking about (people who, like me, have on the whole been triple jabbed and are unlikely to suffer major complications with covid now). People need to stop thinking that covid is the biggest threat to vulnerable people now, because it really isn’t.

If someone cannot access chemotherapy, or get treated for a cardiac arrest or cannot access treatment for what is a health issue that could be life threatening long before covid existed then that is a tragedy if the reason for that is because NHS staff are sitting at home isolating with something that is making them feel no worse than if they had a cold - or even worse, completely asymptomatic. What is the point of that?

Perhaps people who aren’t able to have the jab for clinical reasons and are vulnerable should be in specific isolated wards where testing is done, but that’s no different than before covid where such people would need to be kept in isolation from all sorts of bugs etc.

People who are vulnerable and able to have the jab should be protected from severe illness now.

There will always be a few - a very small few - who will die of the flu or covid despite having a jab. We cannot destroy everyone’s lives because of this.

There will always be a few - a very small few - who will die of the flu or covid despite having a jab. We cannot destroy everyone’s lives because of this.

22,000 flu deaths in 2017/18. Nobody raised an eyebrow.

We really need to start doing this. My eight year old tested positive last week all he had was mildly sore eyes for a couple of days and no smell or taste..its absolute madness therefore that a full family (Scotland) was made to isolate. My eldest missed her prelims. My husband is self employed and made no money. It is just ridiculous. The amount of friends and family who are all having to isolate due to a positive case but no one is ill or mildly ill no longer than a couple of days, is just daft.

@Blossomtoes

There will always be a few - a very small few - who will die of the flu or covid despite having a jab. We cannot destroy everyone’s lives because of this.

22,000 flu deaths in 2017/18. Nobody raised an eyebrow.

Exactly.

And anyone who is clinically vulnerable will know that every year when you get your flu jab there’s a chance that you might get it anyway and end up dead or seriously unwell, or the strain of flu might change and evade the vaccine. It’s just something you learn to live with and accept as someone who is clinically vulnerable to stuff like that. Covid will end up being the same. It has to or we are all fucked.

This is what I'm hoping for - if omicron is the mild variant, then it's on its way into becoming like seasonal flu etc.

If the data supports it, I'm all for it. Hope those of you who currently have it feel better soon

But if medical staff don't isolate, it means many vulnerable people cant get treatment.

@Bagelsandbrie I am cev. I already know most people don't give a fuck about disabled people.

I say that because if you have flu, then yes you should be staying at home anyway. Not struggling into work. Its alarming to go into work and find someone sneezing away and know that as a result I could end up in hospital.

@aliceca

I say that because if you have flu, then yes you should be staying at home anyway. Not struggling into work. Its alarming to go into work and find someone sneezing away and know that as a result I could end up in hospital.

You can’t go to work if you’ve got flu. You can barely get out of bed. So you’re suggesting that people should stay at home every time they get a cold. We’d have no society left in the winter if that happened.

No not an ordinary cold. I have seen people come into work when they barely look able to sit upright at their desks. I am talking about people very obviously ill.

@aliceca

No not an ordinary cold. I have seen people come into work when they barely look able to sit upright at their desks. I am talking about people very obviously ill.

If you’ve got flu you’’re physically incapable of going to work. A cold can make you feel like death, it doesn’t make it flu.

I've already read they are considering lowering the number of days to 7 so yes I think it's inevitable eventually

@aliceca

No not an ordinary cold. I have seen people come into work when they barely look able to sit upright at their desks. I am talking about people very obviously ill.

Then you need to address sick pay and work absence policies.

Too many people are made to go without pay for the first three days when they take time off for illness - and after that many only get SSP which is nowhere near enough to live on.

If you want people to stay home when they're sick; you need to pay them to do that. People with colds aren't going to stay home if doing so means they can't pay the rent that month.

@liveforsummer

I've already read they are considering lowering the number of days to 7 so yes I think it's inevitable eventually

Yes, same. I read this and thought it sounded hopeful, as the scientist suggesting it is Neil Ferguson I think. If it was some random Tory backbencher, I'd think it was possibly dangerous! But I trust NF more.

I was joking to a friend yesterday that, (selfishly and purely from my own perspective and not a serious suggestion), if they were well enough to work and the choice was between having no fire crew available when my house caught fire or no ambulance available when I was having chest pains for example (all hypothetical), I'd take my chances with a a paramedic or firefighter who had covid over having none at all! But I appreciate it's more complicated than that in reality.

Honestly I don’t know how someone could just go out and about knowing they had covid and knowing that they could possibly give that to someone who could die from it!!?

People keep insisting it’s the same as flu - in which case can we at least call it a really really really bad flu that kills shit loads of people who would normally have been fine if not exposed to it?

Exactly.
22,000 vs 150,000. Basic maths no?? That’s why no one gives a shit about flu!

[quote IfOnlyOurEyesSawSouls]@Covidclaire to be honest you really don't know what you are talking about.

What we know about Covid is that even for people who have mild none hospitalised cases , that children and young people who have had covid will have poorer physical health outcomes in adulthood.

We are set to have a future generation of adults who are physically adversely affected by even mild covid .

But what do I know iv only been up front and personal with it for nearly 2 years as opposed to being an armchair scientist. [/quote]
**to be honest you really don't know what you are talking about.

What we know about Covid is that even for people who have mild none hospitalised cases , that children and young people who have had covid will have poorer physical health outcomes in adulthood**

And what evidence do you have to confirm your claims in your second paragraph?…

And anyone who is clinically vulnerable will know that every year when you get your flu jab there’s a chance that you might get it anyway and end up dead or seriously unwell, or the strain of flu might change and evade the vaccine. It’s just something you learn to live with and accept as someone who is clinically vulnerable to stuff like that. Covid will end up being the same. It has to or we are all fucked.

Some people just don't want this. Covid is their lives now and essentially how they spend their spare time, reading about it, talking about it, thinking about it. Don't know what they'll do when it no longer dominates the news.