No isolation when covid positive in March

[Whathefisgoingon]

I just cannot get my head around this.

As far as I know, no other country has announced this.

For two years they’ve told us that it’s dangerous and now they’re prepared to send me to work directly next to someone infected with covid?

I had always believed it should be more socially acceptable to simply stay home when sick, as too many feel forced in to work with flu etc, but this takes the biscuit.

I understand we need to find a way to get back to some kind of normal but this seems extreme.

Will this really happen in less than 2 months!?

@Tealightsandd

For the eight million bloody time, Tea, these nice little tweaky measures appear to be doing sod-all to control spread in countries that are doing them.

Wrong. And the WHO agree with me.

In what country is it working?

A few weeks back, Japan was listed as a country to aspire to because of its low cases.... Look at it now.

I work as a cleaner. Don't get paid if I don't show up. My whole team has worked throughout. No masks, no social distancing at work, only off sick if genuinely too ill to crawl in and get through the shift.

[quote Spudina]@AnEpisodeOfEastenders but my patients are CEV. They have blood cancers and the research shows they don’t have great responses to the vaccines because of their impaired immune systems. A lot of them are still not seeing anyone or doing anything as they are too frightened. They have lived this way for two years. And this plan is just throwing them under the bus frankly.[/quote]
I appreciate that it must be extremely hard for those with this condition. However, if they are still very vulnerable even after 4 shots of vaccines and anti-virals, then presumably they're very vulnerable to all the very many viruses that have always been circulating? Covid is just one more virus to add to the list.

I remember when my DM had chemo about 20 years ago and I was still living at home as a young adult. In effect she shielded over this time despite there being no Covid, and I remember isolating in my room with a nasty cold and wearing a mask to make trips to the bathroom and to get to my room when going to and from work.

Case numbers, and the prevalence of Covid in the community is the biggest risk factor... Anything short of China-style suppression would simply ensure that cases remain plateaued at their currently very high levels for a long time, perpetuating the risk. Removing residual restrictions such as isolation would allow Covid to pass through much more quickly, allowing numbers to drop as he bulk of the population has immunity to the current strain. Yes, immunity will wane, and new variants will spring up, but there's a much better chance that Covid levels will remain low for longer that way.

@greenteafiend

Masks and good ventilation.

Measures that have been common place in Japan and other East Asian countries ever since the flu pandemic 100 years ago.

Have you seen the case figure trends from Japan and SK in the past couple of weeks?
Admittedly, they've "flattened the curve." The bad news is that they seem to have flattened it against the "y" axis rather than the "x" axis....

Not many serious cases, but if the argument here is about CEV people, it's the number of cases that is relevant, since the whole "point" of CEV is that you are much more likely to get a severe case even for diseases that cause mild illnesses for everyone else.

Some seem to be stuck on old lines rather than checking what’s going on.

@Joystir59

I work as a cleaner. Don't get paid if I don't show up. My whole team has worked throughout. No masks, no social distancing at work, only off sick if genuinely too ill to crawl in and get through the shift.

Can you say it louder for the neurotic MNers at the back please who like scaring each other?

A lot of CEV people are not as terrified as people would like to think. Going about their business as normal but being careful re going to crowded places etc.

But people in favour of keeping restrictions forever like to say they are thinking of the CEV people primarily.

I'm also of the view that we can't go on like this forever. Omicron was so transmissible that the two elderly CEV people I know caught covid over Christmas (they were fine). My double vaccinated/wearing masks in freezing classrooms at school/driving to school son caught it too.

I'm sorry but I'm not willing to wear masks and isolate for the long term. I have sympathy for CEV people but most have the benefit of the vaccines and presumably have always been at risk from infectious diseases. If I was CEV, I'd wear the proper FFP2 masks (I have some, they're easy to buy and fit better than the surgical masks) and ask visitors to take LFTs before they come. I wouldn't expect people to do more that that.

My SIL is CEV as she's diabetic and a bit overweight. According to my brother, their local community hasn't followed the lockdown rules and were constantly in and out of people's houses (he didn't). As many of them worked together in jobs where you couldn't socially distance, they didn't see the point.

What will happen with health and social care - will isolation be dropped there too?

If it is, people will be treated by covid positive staff and if it isn't, we'll be in an even worse staffing state as with no mitigation's, infection is likely to be very high - its lose lose either way.

I don't think the hospitals can sustain keeping covid management as is now when outside all mitigation's have gone - it won't be contained so I can only imagine isolation will be dropped for nhs staff too.

@yellosoutback

It will be strange. My friends a ICU consultant and currently she isn’t even allowed in whilst her kids are awaiting a PCR test, unless they are totally and utterly desperate, which so far they haven’t been!

@OnceuponaRainbow18 we were the same until a few weeks ago when our staffing has completely imploded - now it's staff Tetris and moving the high risk for passing it on staff to the back room and redeploying others to the front. It's an absolute shit show.

There's talk about this in many countries. It's happening by stealth already in many places now. No other disease requires you to test or isolate when you are not ill. Now we have vaccines we need to get back to living. The cev have been susceptible to winter viruses before covid, ones without vaccines and we carried on. Life needs to return to normal

My friends in the USA tell me restrictions are ending in March

@Wellbythebloodyhell

Good! I've just taken over a week's unpaid leave to look after an isolating DC that is not in the slightest bit ill and I've now got the worry of how I'm going make my next wage cover all the bills. This isn't the first time I've had to take 10 days off to look after a dc that's perfectly well. It's not sustainable. I have every sympathy with anyone medically vulnerable, but we can't allow others to become socially vulnerable to protect them.

If you're that close to the bone why are you testing? Anyone who can't afford to isolate should have stopped testing by now. It's easy to say stick to the rules when you don't have to worry about paying bills.

Massively relieved. I now can go out to work without the risk of getting sacked due to multiple times at home looking after covid positive but well children. It’s happened twice to me now.

Time to get one with it thank god

The trajectories of China, HK and NZ suggests that the only long term way to make a significant difference to the transmission rates of these newer and more infectious varieties of COVID, is to either become a hermit kingdom, or systemically and grossly infringe civil liberties on a mass scale. There is no appetite for this in most of the world, so it is pointless to even talk about.

Bingo.

Although in fairness to the people advocating for the more minor, 'sensible' measures that haven't stopped cases rocketing anywhere they've been tried, pretty much none of them do talk about this point. Even when specifically asked what they'd want to happen if the lesser measures completely fail to get cases under control.

@Mookie81

I generally do not test my kids at all for that reason but their head teacher will not let them back in to school without a PCR if they’ve had even a tiny niggle of anything. They’ve had covid and they’ve had tests for allsorts of things because of this reason.

It’s a very small primary with around 15 kids per year group in a not very affluent area. We’re all fucked financially because of these isolation rules. Large majority cannot work from home.

@Spudina

I don’t think hospitals will go ahead with this. We are all still masked. Visitors have to lateral flow etc. Our patients remain vulnerable. It’s frustrating that this is happening at the same time as 10% of our workforce are being fired. Cases will go through the roof.

Visitors have to lateral flow? No they don’t, visitors need to report a negative result and you can do that without actually testing or testing and getting a positive but reporting it as negative. The system is flawed.

"It's happening by stealth already in many places now"

It's not really happening by stealth if Governments are making public announcements via the mainstream media!

@TyrannosaurusRegina that particular poster has history for twisting or misinterpreted things other say to suit her agenda. Best ignored.

[quote OnceuponaRainbow18]@yellosoutback

It will be strange. My friends a ICU consultant and currently she isn’t even allowed in whilst her kids are awaiting a PCR test, unless they are totally and utterly desperate, which so far they haven’t been![/quote]
And maybe those that are with the exceptionally vulnerable should continue to be extra careful.

But stopping a perfectly healthy child from going to school, it has got to stop (and don't come back with what about the teachers. From the moment household isolation stopped they have been grossly exposed to it )

@Sparklingbrook
But with flu and D&V you are actually unable to go to work as you are so ill.
I clearly imagined all the 48 periods I the past with onr of my dc at home perfectly well because they vomited once.

Or ditto with chicken pox. Yes they were poorly initially but not for the whole period of isolation.
I now see you said work which may be different rijes of course.

I think the best thing they could do for the ECV especially the immunosupressed like cancer patients and those on immunosupressants would be to offer them antibody tests. It would really help them if they knew whether their 3 or 4 vaccines had generated an immune response.
It must be so hard for them not knowing whether they are protected especially when they are doing unavoidable things like working and attending hospital appointments etc especially once the small level of protection we now have ends.
Obviously anti viral are promising but not everyone qualifies.

@nether

It's going to be shit for the critically vulnerable

Who are not all old and terminal, and who include the people least likely to form the intended response to the vaccine.

Basically, don't get cancer,, because you won't be safe if you need chemo, not even in hospitals

But this has always been the case! CEV have always been at extra risk from all sorts of viruses etc. Rightly or wrong the world didn't stop!

[quote Cameleongirl]@Spudina. I appreciate what you’re saying, but what sort of advice were your CEV patients given pre-pandemic? They would have been as susceptible to colds, flu, D&V as they are to Covid now. People weren’t isolating for those types of illnesses pre-pandemic. My CEV late Mum would catch a cold and end up in hospital with pneumonia, because her lungs were damaged. It happened several years in a row. The same would happen now, whether it was a normal cold or Covid. Unless she stayed at home forever-and even then she caught colds from my Dad.[/quote]
This!!!!