Why have people forgotten February 2020 ?

[DottyHarmer]

When Northern Italy was in a terrible state - dreadful scenes of overrun hospitals and over 70s were told to stay at home if they were ill because they were being deprioritised for beds. In China the situation (that we could see) wasn’t thrilling either.

And now we have people - posters on here - saying that there’s no point in vaccines “because they don’t reduce transmission” and people don’t get that ill anyway.

I don’t think the world shut down in 2020 for a laugh, and certainly not for some nefarious purpose to which so many were privy but has never been revealed .

The simple answer is that most people are more worried about the restrictions on their lives and livelihoods imposed by governments than catching the actual disease.

This is the situation in London today, just 4 days ago most London boroughs were at 700 cases per 100k, now all are at or near 1000 and exceeding the levels seen last winter. It is also demographically different to last winter, currently concentrated in working age groups (2500 per 100k) and not at the moment growing so fast in areas with vulnerable diverse populations where it was high last winter, like Hounslow. www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-borough-covid-omicron-rates-infections-per-100-000-people-christmas-b973021.html

Marsha Perhaps my perspective comes from having two twentysomethings on the frontline in Central London and their experience and that of their friends and colleagues. The incidence has actually gone down in school age children here.

[quote Berlinkreuzberg]@aoeu people have been going hungry and cold for years. Some as in hundreds of thousands of children have lived in poverty, with poor education, abuse etc for years. Did you care then or only when your kids are temporarily affected ?[/quote]
Comments like this are as bad as “lock up the vulnerable/only the elderly/vulnerable are dying” IMO

Some of us work in this area. The impacts of restrictions and lockdowns are stark. It doesn’t hurt to remember the negative impacts of these rules, even if your view is that overall they do the least harm

Could also do without the “just because people want to socialise” stuff. That is not what this is about. I have seen some of the worst outcomes both of covid and of the restrictions. It’s not a competition, it’s all awful and compassion is needed

@AchillesLastStand

People have very short term memories and feel ‘they’ve done their bit’ and now want to move on with their lives.

Personally I think we’re heading into a completely new epoch of this virus and when eminent scientists like Jeremy Farrar calls the case numbers ‘eye-watering’ I think we might be in big trouble.

But hospitalisations are not eye-watering thankfully.

I find comparisons with the black death, or even with smallpox, so bizarre. They were both diseases with an over 90% death rate. Nobody would need any lockdown in such a scenario, you'd have to pay people to leave their houses. Nobody would be complaining about socialising, because they wouldn't be able to find food to cook anyway. Why that means people can't question the measures taken to contain a virus with a death rate of about 0.5%, vaccines and treatments, is beyond me. The two are not remotely comparable.

I can understand why people are struggling. DH died during the second lockdown and I'm reaching the end of my tether, having followed all the rules throughout, including for his funeral, and now seeing that those making the rules didn't bother.

I will keep doing following the rules and being careful, because I don't want to think that I have in any way contributed to anyone else going through what I've been through, but it is very, very tough.

@Cherryblossoms85 obviously covid is not the black death. It would be hyperbole to say it was.
The point is even with a very deadly disease, some people still live like normal. For various reasons some people totally ignore any risk however large it is.
Black Death by the way did not have a 90% death rate. People recovered and some appear immune to it. But the mortality rate is incredibly high. And we still get cases in Britain.

@Treaclepie19

From what I'm reading on here a lot of people just don't care now if the elderly or vulnerable get ill because that's "part of life"

Its not about not caring for one group, its about not caring for one group at the expense of others. The government gave us a very hard sell that restrictions were to protect the elderly and vulnerable. People were on board with that until they started to see the cost of that to other groups; those who are not getting treatment for other conditions, those who can't access MH resources, those who have lost their livelihoods. Obviously framing restrictions in terms of protecting the vulnerable is overly simplistic, but this was the message given to and heard by the public. I don't think those who absorbed it can be blamed if they think we are prioritising one set of lives over others. As an aside I'm also deeply sceptical of all this worry about 'The Vulnerable'. Having worked with vulnerable people for 30 years, Ime, few gave a thought to them before they became an acceptable veil behind which to hide their own fear.

If you cannot see that this isn't about health or saving lives, then you are truly lost. If you want lockdown, stay home..if you have an injection to protect you from a virus, why worry about someone else having it? That's like telling someone to put a seatbelt on to protect you from going through the windscreen in a crash.

Sorry, I may not have been clear in my OP. I didn’t mean at all that we are still in a February 2020 situation, but that a considerable number of people have forgotten what mess we could have been in, and could be still without certain measures and how vaccines and improved medical knowledge have altered the covid landscape.

wincarwoo Covid hospital admissions went up 50% last week and Barts has joined Guys and StThomas in cancelling all non essential work.

And the virus is currently concentrated in young people, it has not yet spread to the older age groups or the areas of ethnic diversity that saw high cases and hospitalisation in the past.

In fact if you look at cases by ward the cases numbers are highest in places that have been gentrified by lots of relatively affluent young people, like Herne Hill and Hackney.

So you would not expect them to be hospitalised with Covid. Quite a lot of them (estimated 4m) will also be leaving London to spend Christmas with their fa
Molies elsewhere.

@5128gap the restrictions were never about saving elderly people or the disabled. If they had been elderly people with covid would not have been discharged into care homes killing many people. And disabled people would not have forcibly had DNA s put on their files with no discussion.

It has always been about stopping the NHS getting overwhelmed so they don't have coverage on the news of kids not able to get a hospital bed, or not able to get a broken bone set.

@aliceca I'm not sure why that other poster mentioned the black death either. It is indeed hyperbole, but not mine. Smallpox was over 90%, pneumonic plague also - yes, bubonic plague had lower death rate, but not by that much. The immunity to plague in Europe is thought to be down to selective pressure - immune survived and had kids (or more kids), so we've collectively inherited that.

As mentioned above, Darwin Theory in action and a few innocent people will pay the price of peoples arrogance 😔

Mum * if you have an injection to protect you from a virus, why worry about someone else having it Because you could still catch it and have to isolate, you reduce your risk but it isn’t perfect, and you could give it to someone else, and you might not have been able to get the booster injection two weeks ago and might be even more vulnerable . Because there might be so many cases in your workplace that it has to close or you are put under incredible stress, or you are at risk of losing your job. Because you are worried about transmitting it to vulnerable relatives and can’t see them.

Thankfully I managed to get to my Dads 89th birthday before this hit but I don’t know when I will see my parents next, I am certainly not traveling out of an area of high infections that is close to shutdown to one of relatively low.

And I might add that I am triple jabbed, part of a study into which part of my DNA played a role in me getting Covid with no symptoms and may have a super response to the vaccine because of previous exposure to SARS so I really have no reason to worry on my own part and thankfully my family are in a similar situation. However that does not stop me from being deeply concerned about my community at a local and city level and all the friends and colleagues who are more vulnerable

Out of interest can anyone tell me why it is that a large number of HCPs
are refusing to be vaccinated and who are prepared to lose their jobs over it?
I read in an article in the Guardian that a maternity unit might have to close down if 40 or so of its midwives continued to refuse when it becomes mandatory.
I am genuinely puzzled by their reasoning.

Meh.

Life is short. None of us know how long we have left. I'm not willing to live like I did for the entirety of the pandemic anymore. Over the past few months perspective has set in I think and I've realised that I'd rather live a somewhat normal life than a life full of anxiety and fear, when it could all come to an end next month for all I know. I know too many people who've had loved ones die (not from Covid) before they were able to see them, they didn't spend any of their last weeks or months with them thanks to lockdowns, and they'll never see them again.

Time is the one thing you can never get back.

I don't think the world shut down for a laugh, but similar to what others said, I think people are tired of having everything compared with death, especially that type of very visible, painful mass death.

Among all the media reports and confusion from early 2020, what I remember clearest is when exams were canceled. I told my DS1 moments after the announcement and he sobbed, he'd literally just finished a practice paper. When I later went online and saw other teenagers expressing the same hurt, I saw grown adults telling them that they should be grateful, that they need to buck up, how weak they were, they needed to think of their grandparents and WW2. I remember my rage both at how the government was acting and how so many adults who should have known better were acting like any upsetting emotion on the matter was wanting people to die and being too soft.

It's still happening now and it's so draining - the government's vague language & messy actions perpetuating further us vs them rhetoric and themselves above the law and people still telling those who are hurt or sad or upset that they don't have enough perspective & don't they know people are still dying so they're not allowed to be sad or annoyed at canceled festivities, like there is no way people couldn't know or have cared for dying people and still feel sad about anything else.

People are reacting to that type of emotional manipulation with a lot of pent up feelings largely from other factors with the loss of what little control and solid ground people have had. Some of the reactions may be cutting of their nose to spite their and others' face, but I think it's more remembering the clusterfuck than forgetting.

As for nefarious purposes, I more think the World Economic Forum and similar who chose to use language like "the Great Reset" or Gates linking Amazon deforestation to the toilet paper scramble just proved how disconnected they are from most people and life in general. They think they're doing the right thing, and that can sometimes be the scariest motive of all and should rightfully be questioned particularly those with so much social power. My intent means little in the grand scheme, but some of them can do a lot more and if anything, the pandemic just showed it even more.

@AskItaliano sure that is the attitude I have generally to life. But I still take precautions because that might die next month is not so hypothetical to me as it sounds to you.

@BiBabbles

I don't think the world shut down for a laugh, but similar to what others said, I think people are tired of having everything compared with death, especially that type of very visible, painful mass death.

Among all the media reports and confusion from early 2020, what I remember clearest is when exams were canceled. I told my DS1 moments after the announcement and he sobbed, he'd literally just finished a practice paper. When I later went online and saw other teenagers expressing the same hurt, I saw grown adults telling them that they should be grateful, that they need to buck up, how weak they were, they needed to think of their grandparents and WW2. I remember my rage both at how the government was acting and how so many adults who should have known better were acting like any upsetting emotion on the matter was wanting people to die and being too soft.

It's still happening now and it's so draining - the government's vague language & messy actions perpetuating further us vs them rhetoric and themselves above the law and people still telling those who are hurt or sad or upset that they don't have enough perspective & don't they know people are still dying so they're not allowed to be sad or annoyed at canceled festivities, like there is no way people couldn't know or have cared for dying people and still feel sad about anything else.

People are reacting to that type of emotional manipulation with a lot of pent up feelings largely from other factors with the loss of what little control and solid ground people have had. Some of the reactions may be cutting of their nose to spite their and others' face, but I think it's more remembering the clusterfuck than forgetting.

As for nefarious purposes, I more think the World Economic Forum and similar who chose to use language like "the Great Reset" or Gates linking Amazon deforestation to the toilet paper scramble just proved how disconnected they are from most people and life in general. They think they're doing the right thing, and that can sometimes be the scariest motive of all and should rightfully be questioned particularly those with so much social power. My intent means little in the grand scheme, but some of them can do a lot more and if anything, the pandemic just showed it even more.

The lack of empathy towards anyone struggling has been absolutely horrific.

Back during the first lockdown we had people on our estate reporting neighbours to the police for talking in their front gardens at a distance.

The pandemic has changed my opinion of so many people I'd previously have considered friends, who I'd have thought were kind and compassionate people.

Look up the definition of the word vaccine.

@Mumknowsbest79

If you cannot see that this isn't about health or saving lives, then you are truly lost. If you want lockdown, stay home..if you have an injection to protect you from a virus, why worry about someone else having it? That's like telling someone to put a seatbelt on to protect you from going through the windscreen in a crash.

I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to spell it out exactly what it’s about then? And a vague ‘control’ doesn’t cut it, we’ve been controlled for a long, long, time already.

It has always been about stopping the NHS getting overwhelmed so they don't have coverage on the news of kids not able to get a hospital bed, or not able to get a broken bone set

I don’t want that either although my perspective is less about coverage and bad press - I don’t want my child to suffer unnecessarily. My friend has a dc with a severe anaphylactic allergy - she’s pretty concerned about current ambulance waiting times. Epipens don’t ‘cure’ an allergic reaction they buy some extra time to get to proper medical help, with the best will in the world she can’t replicate a paramedic and access to their resources with a dash to hospital in her own car.

@Mumknowsbest79

Look up the definition of the word vaccine.

Definition of vaccine 1: a preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body's immune response against a specific infectious agent or disease.