If you've never said "Covid iS jUsT ThE FLu," but do think "Covid is becoming more flu-like, and therefore it's reasonable to gradually treat it more and more like flu" you might be a Covid centrist.

[greenteafiend]

I've heard the phrase "Covid centrist" being tried out for size quite a bit on Twitter and think that we could do with mainstreaming the term a bit more.

The great majority of people I know, including myself, have always understood that Covid has represented a significant threat to the world, have (mostly) stuck to the various rules and restrictions, albeit with some grumbling, and have happily had our vaccines and encouraged our friends and families to do the same.

We do not, however, wish to engage in a pointless "ever-war" against Covid, and believe that as the threat from the virus diminishes and tails off into the endemic phase, that the way we handle and treat Covid should respond in the same manner and that we should gradually start moving towards treating it more and more like seasonal flu.

It's therefore extra frustrating when the people in the public sphere speaking out the risks or harms of allowing restrictions to drag on for years on end tend to be the Laurence Foxes and Toby Youngs of this would, who have a lot of really unpleasant politics in general and who seem to have a lot of really stupid and unscientific beliefs about the virus itself, including being openly or covertly anti-vaccine. Whenever I've tried to point out the risks of being to quick to do things that damage children's education, for example, I feel like I'm being lumped in with those people. And I'm not one of them!

Pro-vaccine, pro-most-restrictions-while-getting-the-jabs rolled out, but anti-living-with-endless-restrictions-that-drag-on-forever people... are you there? Do you feel the same way? I feel like we need a label for ourselves if we want to make traction!

Feeling ‘safe’ doesn’t resonate with me anymore

It was a good tool for compliance pre vaccine but now I’m listening to new messages - eg German Health Minister’s line and I think I’ll be exposed to it. I’m fact have been to delta already.

So feeling safe isn’t something I need as part of decisions

To me feeling ‘safe’ is a very broad concept, and goes way beyond covid. If anything the emphasis on covid is making me feel less safe overall. A few examples:

• The government’s focus on covid means the greatest threat to humanity, climate change, is not getting the bandwidth required by govt, both nationally and globally.
• Health workers isolating when they aren’t ill puts more pressure on health services more widely
• And lockdown measures to keep us safe having horrific effects on those suffering violence in the home. Most of whom will be women or children

So when someone uses the term ‘safe’ but only in relation to covid this needs to be put into the context of safety more widely

Paul Hunter from UEA just on Times radio saying he thinks testing / isolation etc should be stopped by Easter.
He has always been a sane voice where you really don’t know his politics ( unlike say Indy sage commentators where their politics is more obvious and clouds / directs their judgements imo) and so I like to listen to what he says. He’s been right a lot.

Flu does not cause anything like the number of excess deaths

But pandemic flu can and has. Which is why we had a pandemic flu plan in place. Still, none of our pandemic flu planning involved keeping restrictions in place forever, because we accepted that once the flu strain was endemic and once we could vaccinate against it, it would not be enough of a threat to warrant that.

We have new strains of flu every single year. We don’t whack on restrictions and ban people from non-essential shopping ‘just in case’. Restrictions are things we do for exceptional emergency situations… and covid won’t be am exceptional emergency situation indefinitely.

@HerculesMullligan

To me feeling ‘safe’ is a very broad concept, and goes way beyond covid. If anything the emphasis on covid is making me feel less safe overall. A few examples:

• The government’s focus on covid means the greatest threat to humanity, climate change, is not getting the bandwidth required by govt, both nationally and globally.
• Health workers isolating when they aren’t ill puts more pressure on health services more widely
• And lockdown measures to keep us safe having horrific effects on those suffering violence in the home. Most of whom will be women or children

So when someone uses the term ‘safe’ but only in relation to covid this needs to be put into the context of safety more widely

Yes this would be closer to where I am if I had to use it

Esp being more protected from harms of lockdown - by not having them. And looking at isolation period again.

Also the ability to have a business not destroyed and livelihoods maintained too

I think the restrictions in place will always need to be a response to how essential services are coping with the volume of patients needing NHS care. I’m assuming you are fit and well and don’t envisage suffering while you have to wait for an urgent operation because your hospital can’t see you because it is full of covid patients and half of the staff are on the sick with covid because they can’t come to work because they are in contact with vulnerable patients. The point is, seasonal flu does not affect tens of thousands of people in the same way that a pandemic virus does.

I’ve noticed a shift on views around NHS capacity and ‘protect the NHS’ language as well. Lots more “I pay taxes, it’s the government’s job to protect it by funding and running it properly, not mine by staying in my house” feeling.

I don’t think there was any way that even a well-funded NHS could have coped with spring 2020 without some sort of restrictions in place. But it’s a harder case to make in winter 2021.

But what is the end game? None of us will ever be completely safe from this virus, because it’s here to stay. We need to have a reasonable discussion about where to draw the line- that’s the point.

But that’s exactly what I mean. Nobody wants endless restrictions, and ‘where we draw the line’ will depend on each individual’s perception of risk. So for me, non-vulnerable, triple vaxxed and having already had COVID, being able to say ‘enough now’ is much easier than someone cv, unvaccinated and in danger. So it’s unfair to say those people are wrong, because they’re still at risk.

@Pumperthepumper It’s because everyone has a different perception of risk, and attitude to risk, that I think further restrictions are a bad idea. Imposing restrictions means than everyone has to live with the level of risk preferred by the most cautious, which is massively frustrating for lots of people.

If there are minimal restrictions then those who are more cautious and risk adverse can behave in ways they’re comfortable with without impacting others. If some people choose to carry on avoiding shops, restaurants, planes, anyone outside their immediate family, that’s their call. They shouldn’t be able to impose their preferred level of risk onto me though.

[quote BadMotorFinger]@Pumperthepumper It’s because everyone has a different perception of risk, and attitude to risk, that I think further restrictions are a bad idea. Imposing restrictions means than everyone has to live with the level of risk preferred by the most cautious, which is massively frustrating for lots of people.

If there are minimal restrictions then those who are more cautious and risk adverse can behave in ways they’re comfortable with without impacting others. If some people choose to carry on avoiding shops, restaurants, planes, anyone outside their immediate family, that’s their call. They shouldn’t be able to impose their preferred level of risk onto me though.[/quote]
But that’s a different conversation - I agree with you, I don’t think more restrictions are the way forward.

But at the same time, I don’t think it’s helpful or necessary to make those who are in more danger from covid the bad guys.

I also don't think vulnerable people "prefer" that behaviour, if they're at more risk but everyone else has gone "fuck it" they don't have a lot of choice really.

@Galvantula

I also don't think vulnerable people "prefer" that behaviour, if they're at more risk but everyone else has gone "fuck it" they don't have a lot of choice really.

Bit rude. Which perhaps could be excused if it were accurate. But it's not, is it...

Even if Covid were not around, would not the vulnerable have to exercise caution?

Isn't it now just the same as a bad flu season?

Isn't it now just the same as a bad flu season?

No, not remotely so. Even in a bad flu season the numbers of excess deaths (and the number of cases) is substantially lower. Also there are more (and more readily available) retroviral drugs. Also a substantial proportion of flu deaths are actually pneumonia and there is an effective vaccine for that - usually given only to the over 70s it is given to patients of any age who are likely to be at higher risk.

There have been various threads on which this has been patiently and repeatedly plainer. But it's a false equivalence that still gets trotted out.

Yes, there are some people for whom any infection can be extremely serious. But of course one which is in free circulation in very high numbers poses a threat of a completely different magnitude toma much wider group than that

Also a substantial proportion of flu deaths are actually pneumonia and there is an effective vaccine for that

There’s an effective vaccine for bacterial pneumonia. If you get pneumonia as a result of a viral infection, it won’t protect you. But fortunately we also have effective vaccines against flu and covid now so that’s good.

I think the flu comparisons always go wildly off the rails and end up pointless anyway, because you can’t directly compare the two.

Was covid in 2020 worse than normal seasonal flu? - obviously yes.

Was covid in 2020 worse than 2009 pandemic flu? - yes

Was covid in 2020 worse than a pandemic bird flu would be if it ended up being easily transmissible between humans? - no.

Is my personal risk from covid as a low-risk vaccinated person higher than my risk from flu? - dunno, depends on the flu?

Is 2022 covid after vaccines substantially more dangerous than a normal seasonal flu? - probably not? But who knows

Is covid going to end up as another endemic human respiratory virus that circulates like flu does with about the same risk flu has? - probably.

So bit pointless to say either “it’s just the flu!” or “it’s nothing like flu!”

If you get pneumonia as a result of a viral infection, it won’t protect you

Yes of course it will, if it is an opportunistic bacterial infection! And a substantial proportion of them are

Covid is not flu, and is producing considerably greater excess deaths than flu does

Yes it is possible to hypothesise outbreaks that are even worse, but of course we then also need to hypothesise what public health measures wouid be brought in if ever flu was that severe. It's not a given that they would be the same as a 'normal' flu year.

Yes of course it will, if it is an opportunistic bacterial infection!

If you get viral pneumonia, then being vaccinated against bacterial pneumonia will not protect you.

Covid causes pneumonia directly, and the pneumonia vaccine doesn’t help a bit.

You can even get fungal pneumonia…

It's not a given that they would be the same as a 'normal' flu year.

No obviously they wouldn’t, if we were hit with a bad wave of pandemic flu. We know what the plans for that were - they were public. Flu was the potential pandemic we thought we were at greatest risk from pre-covid. Next pandemic will probably be flu.

Again, you are mixing up ‘seasonal flu’ with ‘pandemic flu’, and mixing up ‘covid pre-vaccines and widespread immunity to ‘covid now’, in a way that makes the comparison between ‘covid’ and ‘flu’ confused and pointless.

If you get viral pneumonia, then being vaccinated against bacterial pneumonia will not protect you

Of course. You do not seem to grasp that secondary pneumonia is highly likely to be a bacterial infection, and that it accounts for a substantial proportion of flu deaths (which include flu/pneumonia)

You do not seem to grasp that secondary pneumonia is highly likely to be a bacterial infection

Sigh. Never mind, it’s Christmas, I can’t be bothered banging my head off a wall any more.

I do look forward to the point at which Covid discourse drops ‘seems to grasp’. Along with ‘letting it rip’ and ‘riddled with’ and ‘thrown under a bus’ (presumably the same bus that was killing all those people who died within 28 days of a positive test but ‘could have been hit by a bus!’)

If you don't understand that secondary bacterial infections are a major component of the death rate of flu, then I doubt any amount of headbanging is going to help you.

I dint follow why having a grasp of the basic things that comprise the death rate of flu is a bad thing. And of course thats utterly unconnected to 'letting it rip' or any of the ways deaths are counted (within 28 days of a test, from death certificates, or the rather more complex stats that go in to calculating excess deaths)

Please not that I am not conoaring covid and flu - I am answering the question about why now is not the same as a flu year from the POV of the vulnerable.

Using political language for a public health matter doubles down on the tribalism, as seen in the US where right wingers/anti gun control/storm the senate and suchlike also hitch themselves to anti vaxxing and vice versa.

Centrism in this context takes away from Science.

as seen in the US

And also here, to be fair. Big overlap between the #FBPE lot on Twitter and the people who see any lifting of measures as a malicious Tory thing. Very glad we didn’t end up with a culture war issue with the vaccines like the US did, though, at least we dodged that one.

I’m kinda Covid centrist.

I think it’s ok to go

“Let’s get vaccinated”

And

“Let’s do a lateral flow test before I see my 80 yr old Grandma/cousin who is doing chemo/friend who has lung problems”

then

“ok it’s positive, 7 days isolation so I don’t pass it to anyone who dies”

Then move on with my life.