Emily I have already pointed out to Sheik on two different threads that recent research has not found any of the foundations for previous definitions of who is vulnerable to this virus have stood up, apart from age. When adjusted for other factors like the prevalence of frontline working etc they all do not account for vulnerability. However certain particles on DNA are emerging as predicative of serious disease (or mild disease). I am one of the supposedly vulnerable people who had asymptomatic Covid (and I know many more. I am part of a study into it.) So at the moment there is no way Shiek can be sure they aren’t vulnerable and therefore likely to take up a hospital bed.
The real source of my health anxiety at the moment is therefore not Covid but that my hospital has declared a major incident, and has once again had to make wards that would be treating other problems into Covid wards including one of the orthopaedic wards. The other orthopaedic ward is jammed with octogenarians with dementia who have injuries from falling but could be released in to a much better care environment if the care homes could take more people, they can’t because of staff shortages. Don’t break a leg around here at the moment, you will be stuck in the hell of scared old people screaming in pain and confusion, and kicked out long before your specialist thinks it is safe (actual experience).
It is interesting to see how people in need of a narrative that denies the nature and impact of Covid latch on to causes. The issue of starving the NHS to bring about privatisation was in play before Covid. And the way that government responded, privatising the response, was just reinforcing the evidence. However the Scientists who are supposed to be part of the plot were the ones criticising the handling of the pandemic and their response was to mount a public sector testing initiative to get staff back on the wards of GOSH, the Royal Marsden, UCL etc. All masterminded by the clinical head of Cancer Research U.K. and Sir Paul Nurse , Nobel prize winner. Just leveraging the science, not some weird plot.
One early and particularly offensive one was this issue of Cancer treatment, where were these activists in fighting drug rationing and postcode lotteries. Another is that they all accept death as part of life. Well I hope they have been part of the death cafe movement and supporting activists like Rachel Clarke who is trying to take the terror out of society’s perception of death. Somehow I doubt it. And why add to the lives left unlived, like my grandfather who died, healthy and fit from Hong Kong flu and never saw his grandchildren. One month later there was a vaccine.
As to the environmental impact of Covid well all those bits (and they are bits) of plastic over a pandemic period of two years to good effect, pale into significance compared to the mountains coming out of every house every day for sheer convenience.