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.

Strange

@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?

This.

Such ableist thinking in the OP.

While COVID can still make the immune-compromised very ill, we all need to be aware of the risk we pose to others.

I hope that they sort out funding for the nhs and adult social care, so that everyone can get the care they need during future pandemics.

@TomsPrisonConsultant

I thought the idea is really to try to protect everyone who might need hospital care? Flu kills people every year but the number of hospitalisations isn't often so high that critical care can't be offered to those who need it. It's not necessarily about stopping vulnerable people getting covid for the sake of proecting them alone but keeping hospitals running so that the man who has a heart attack in January or the child in a car accident etc can all be treated. If there are so many cases there aren't enough healthcare workers, or so many cases that hospitals are overwhelmed, then anyone who urgently needs hospital care is in big trouble. And that could be any of us.

Yes, but we're now at the point where we're starting to move on from worrying about the numbers of cases and actually examining what your typical case of COVID looks like in, for your average person, and asking if we can live with it. Remember the first lockdown, before vaccinations? We were all terrified of getting COVID because we knew that the risk of death, and terrible after-effects, however small, was a real threat.

Post-vaccination data now tells us that the risk of death from COVID is now very small in comparison to the early days. It just feels like the end of the pandemic IS coming....

Okay but how will cancer and transplant patients have planned ops involving intensive care stays if the intensive care units are full of Covid patients who usually stay in intensive care for far longer than average and so take up space? The only way it would work would be to make vaccination compulsory.

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.

Absolutely agree with you OP.

Completely agree and we were having this same conversation yesterday. If you are proper ill stay at home. Otherwise, as you were.

Thats the problem in education, we are doing and schools are having to close because we are off sick.

No, the schools are having to close because we all currently HAVE to stay off for 10 days if we catch COVID. The majority of staff are totally fine after a few days, and then feel able to come back to work, but are not currently allowed to. They will then continue to be totally fine for months and months on end till they catch it again. And repeat.

Hopefully!! I read somewhere today they may cut the isolation time to 7 days, as early as sometime this week…. I think with daily lateral flow testing after 7 days. That’s a step in the right direction at least!

4 in our house (including me) currently have covid and for us it’s been just like a normal cold, in our noses mainly…. Seems crazy we have to stay in so long 😳

@Flowersandhearts

Okay but how will cancer and transplant patients have planned ops involving intensive care stays if the intensive care units are full of Covid patients who usually stay in intensive care for far longer than average and so take up space? The only way it would work would be to make vaccination compulsory.

The magic that works when you stop covid testing will apparently stop them going into ICU too. To be fair they wouldn't survive long because their nurses would be working with it and with no immune system that would be curtains for them. But as they say, we can't carry on for the vulnerable and I presume that means those with cancer too.

@Iggly

I hope that they sort out funding for the nhs and adult social care, so that everyone can get the care they need during future pandemics.

Yes, this. Adequate staffing levels for those sectors and also education would certainly help. It's bare bones staffing in some parts of the public sector which has caused a lot of the issues brought about by the pandemic.

CurlyhairedAssassin
Not where I live, everyone who has had it has been sick and been off for longer than the 10 days. Yes there will be some who don't get that ill or no symptoms I don't dispute that but many are getting sick and having to be off work for extended periods of time at the same time as others so with no alternative that is what happens.

That really doesn’t accord with most people’s experiences, @Awalkintime. Yiu must have been incredibly unlucky

There is a very interesting youtube video by Dr John Cambell about Omicron, showing the latest research frim Hong Kong.
Basically it replicates 70x faster in the upper airways than Delta, that’s why it’s more infectious, but is 10x slower in the deeper lung tissues, so bronchitis rather than pneumonia.

It will become just another cold, hopefully.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a spike in previously avoidable deaths next year due to lack of early diagnosis/ treatment of other diseases.

Eventually, if it weakens as we all hope. Not immediately though.

@WouldBeGood

That really doesn’t accord with most people’s experiences, *@Awalkintime*. Yiu must have been incredibly unlucky

The shortest amount of sickness I have known has been 2 weeks, longest 8 weeks and counting. Even the healthiest person who does marathons in our school was very ill. I don't think we are unlucky just that the myth it is just a cold is untrue and I don't believe the DM.

The magic that works when you stop covid testing will apparently stop them going into ICU too. To be fair they wouldn't survive long because their nurses would be working with it and with no immune system that would be curtains for them. But as they say, we can't carry on for the vulnerable and I presume that means those with cancer too.

I think there would have to be different sets of guidance for people working on cancer wards. And staffing at the right levels. When my mum was being treated for leukaemia (pre-COVID) we stayed away if we knew we had the slightest sniffle. Yet other times when we visited when we were 100% healthy we witnessed the staff sometimes obviously sick with a cold. If staffing levels were correct, and sickness policies were sensible, and there was still full isolation for staff with confirmed COVID then those vulnerable groups of patients on chemo etc would better protected.

Let me guess Awalkintime you work in the public sector and all these weeks off are on full pay

@Awalkintime 🤣🤣 yeah yeah

I hope so.

We keep hearing that hospitals, schools and the like can't function because so many staff are 'off sick'. In many cases, of course, they are either only very mildly ill or asymptomatic. We don't need another 'pingdemic'.

@Awalkintime That's really not been the case in my experience. Pretty much everyone I know has had it (we live in one of the worst hit areas) and although a couple of people who had it at the start were flu-equivalent ill, those who got it later (so presumably Delta) were no worse than a cold. For me it wasn't even as bad as a cold...I had achy legs for one night, a headache that went away with paracetamol for 2 days and lost my sense of smell. I'd personally take COVID 10 x over than Flu (which I got aged 21 and was in bed for a fortnight) or Norovirus (which put me in hospital with severe dehydration), COVID was a total non-event for me and pretty much everyone I know

Depends on probably another 1-2 years of vaccine data and information on mutations plus potential therapeutics to be developed and tested.

Would expect next winter to be a repeat of this one in the UK unless we can get higher vaccination rates and faster vaccination adjustments to mutations. If we are v lucky current mutation might prove less deadly. Isolation/circuit breakers/lockdowns will be a tool we gave to use until then.

@Montecristocount

Let me guess Awalkintime you work in the public sector and all these weeks off are on full pay

No I worked from home between naps for a few hours at a time before needing rest again. One of my colleagues were vomiting on while on screen working. So no sick leave as such, you're expected to still work even if you can't get out of bed.

Is asymptomatic flu a thing?