Insane panic

[Acidburn]

Hi All
I feel like the majority of people around me have lost the plot really. If Omicron is essentially a cold (for the vaxxinated people) then why is everyone so scared of it? Why is there a conversation for more restrictions to come? Why do we need restrictions to fight a common cold (which is what Omicron is apparently)? In New Zealand and South Africa they have removed all the restrictions, because it just a cold ffs - people don't even self isolate anymore if they get it! Why the panic mode again?
I suppose for those who chose not to get vaccinated - it might be more than a common cold. But then it's a consequence of their own choice - I'm sure they thought it through.

So why do we panick again?

Are people scared ?

@Blubells lots of people are scared, yes. Mostly because of possible restrictions and no furlough this time.

Well if ICU is filled with unvaccinated people then everyone else better be careful and lucky to not need any medical intervention.

Also, if many NHS staff are absent then that's more pressure. I think it's good to be cautious for a couple of weeks & see what happens. That doesn't mean I'm panicking

Ffs it certainly doesn't mean insane panic to be cautious

Yeah I don’t get it either but I am surrounded by fully vaccinated people who are losing their shit over this and want the whole of society to grind to a halt.

I’m not panicking about ME.
I am nervous about the capacity of the NHS to be able to cope and still provide adequate care for others in need.

I thought that was fairly well documented now.

I don't know anyone who is scared.
Most people I know are getting on with their lives and hardly mention covid these days Expect the Scottish Government 🙁

@Acidburn have New Zealand got rid of all restrictions? Are all the travel restrictions lifted? Is there any distinction between vaccinated and unvaccinated?

@toomuchlaundry all my info is from a friend who lives there. She says that 90 percent of people are vaccinated. The government said - no jab = no job, maybe thats why. They are required to do boosters every 3 months. No self isolation, nothing like that. They were told its a common cold now, so better for everyone to get it and be finished with it. No idea regarding travel restrictions, but I can ask.

If the hospital admission rates are half that of previous variants but twice as many people have it then the demand on the NHS is the same. So with the original variant say there were 1000 infected people and 1% - 10 were in intensive care. With the current variant 2000 are infected, only 0.5% go into intensive care which means 10 people in intensive care.

Yeah, I don't get it either. I'm living as normal, I'm vaccinated so if I catch Covid it's incredibly unlikely I'd end up in hospital.

A climate of fear over covid has been deliberately generated by the government to obtain compliance with their diktats, where they were worried reasoning with the public would have failed; it worked better than they could ever have hoped. Panic occurs in the more sensitive types who are exposed to it.

The majority of official statistics relating to the epidemic are somewhere between unreliable and outright fabrications devised by the government's 'nudge' people as part of this campaign. The computer modelled forecasts issued by SAGE, Imperial (i.e. the totally discredited Ferguson), LSHTM etc. have all been exposed by the passage of time as hysterical nonsense.

Some MNers might find this an interesting take on the current situation.

And before anyone wonders, I've had both my vaccinations and a booster.

@Takemine wow, so I wrote the word "panic" three times and one of them was misspelled, you were so lovely to pick this up
I don't have any dyslexia, I have a Master's Degree, and I speak 3 languages (English being not my mother tongue) - what do you have exactly?

@Waxonwaxoff0

Yeah, I don't get it either. I'm living as normal, I'm vaccinated so if I catch Covid it's incredibly unlikely I'd end up in hospital.

But what about if you have an accident, your parent has a stroke and the nurses are all off sick with covid? I am not particularly worried about myself, more what would happen to essential services.

@Takemine

You can't spell panic which makes me think you either have dyslexia or don't have the benefit of further education.

I'm saying this because to understand, you would have to read and analyse.

There are many threads explaining why increased transmissibility increases hospitalisations more than increased severity of illness. Also other threads pointing out that our vaccines don't give full cover so if even a small proportion are ill, it could still be a very large number. Also plenty of threads pointing out that it's not just the unvaccinated who are at risk but the elderly, CEV and anyone who might need the services of the NHS while they are being cared for. The unvaccinated are not going to be left to die so they're a problem, as is waning nation with waning immunity and a virus that moves faster than the booster roll out. This is not panic (though thanks for writing off my well founded concern for my CEV son as such) but just stating the facts.

So before you spend the afternoon listening to yourself posting from a place of apparent ignorance, I suggest you do some reading.

Do you realise how you sound? It’s not clever by the way - educated people do not need to put others down to feel better about themselves.

Plus the op can clearly spell panic.

"You can't spell panic which makes me think you either have dyslexia or don't have the benefit of further education. "

You lost me when you posted that. Totally pedantic unnecessary and condescending.

I do personally think we are getting towards the point where you only isolate if symptomatic and shorter quarantine but that will rely on employers not forcing people in who are unwell to come in and I don't have much faith in employers to do that.

I am worried because if one of my children or my husband (or me) needs unexpected emergency medical assistance, the response time and assistance are likely to be affected by the number of people who are crucial to the smooth running of our services who are either off with Covid, isolating or on the point of burn out after two years of dealing with it.

I don't think many people are scared of Omicron. But enough people are either still unvaccinated otherwise clinically vulnerable, that the numbers of infection could put unmanageable strain on the NHS. I'm not scared of catching Omicron and I don't know anyone who is. I AM scared of me or someone I know getting hit by a bus and dying in an ambulance bay because the hospital is full of Covid patients. I am also scared that with car numbers rocketing and that prospect on the horizon, the government will fuck up their response, so instead of some annoying but bearable restrictions we'll end up with a full lockdown.

Those are the two things everyone I know is scared of.

I completely agree op. I’ve posted this before but the vast majority of people no longer care - covid has become like cancer and other horrible illnesses - bleak and dreadful if happening to you or a loved one, but other people are emotionally detached. This is not necessarily a bad thing - we can’t be in a heightened state of alert for a long period of time, we’d exhaust ourselves. Humans adapt to their situation. People who panic are either genuinely vulnerable or have lost their sense of perspective. I say this as someone whose dd was vulnerable to swine flu - we protected her as best as we could but I didn’t expect anyone outside of our immediate family to care.

Wow, that's a lot of fucking typos in my post. 🤦‍♀️ I have nothing diagnosable, for those concerned.

We have not been panicking but have been testing a lot to ensure my 81 yo vulnerable mother could enjoy a family Christmas. Omicron may be like a cold for most of us but for her it could be fatal.

Because services are already grinding to a halt.
Flights are cancelled, trains are cancelled, places are closing because staff are isolating. They're not physically sick. They're contagious.