Cost of covid

[Hopefullyupwards]

I've seen various threads on the cost of lockdown. Does anyone know any forecasted costs/impacts (health, financial, educational, workforce etc) of living with such high covid rates, given long covid and post covid heart, lung, brain damage etc? Assume some cost benefit analysis has been done somewhere?

I don’t know if there’s any projected figures out there yet but I expect long term the impact of life with Covid will be expensive and adversely affect growth. High levels of sickness within a population can’t be good economically.

3 years on and still new variants are emerging, we really don’t know what multiple infections will do to our long term health overall so an agile robust NHS is crucial. What we have now is a already stretched service modelled on precovid life trying to cope with the realities of Covid life against a context of high levels of sickness, economic crisis and understaffing.

If this winters nasty Flu season and Covid wave is anything to go by employers are going to have to reassess their absence policies because people are getting sicker for longer and more often.

Living with Covid is a misnomer in my opinion. But for a large majority as long as they don’t have to wear a mask or take precautions it’s fine - life goes on, they’re prepared to live with a devastated NHS, having the worst cold ever every other month, outbreaks of viruses like Strep A, weakened immune systems in their children etc.

I’m not advocating for lockdowns or restrictions I’m saying we need to be pragmatic and think about rewriting some of the precovid rules because I believe the game has changed. We have to live with it regardless, whether it wins or not is down to us.

Agree with much of what you have written, which is why, given what is known about covid and assuming government are confident that this is the best way forward, where is the data to back that up? Must be somewhere! Where is the data on how we realistically support and strengthen the infrastructure (and people) that is/will be adversely affected by current policy?

I wouldn’t be surprised if the plan going forward is to just carry on regardless and ignore the unmovable elephant in the room. I just don’t want it to become normal to be bedridden with flu or a bad cold every few months which is looking to be the case for many friends and colleagues if the last 6 months is anything to go by.

I’m shocked no one else has commented on this thread though?

For my work perspective alone, the impact of COVID has been massive, from staff actually having confirmed illness, taking longer to recover and come back to work. At the height of COVID staff absence cost us a fortune in agency staff as cover. Now we have some staff who are having various long term health issues following COVID with many periods of absence. A lot of these are people who have been employed by us for a long time with no previous health concerns so we want to support them as best as we can but it has an ongoing financial impact.

Having long Covid has cost me tens of thousands in lost income and additional expenditure. I don’t see anyone adding up the cost to the individual …I’d like to see this sort of calculation.

There may be some modelling, but I can't see how there's going to be reliable data at this point because whichever of the shit sandwiches we choose, it's new territory. It's a very long time since we had labour shortages on a population level, for example, and while we've known for a long time how our population pyramid was going, we've never actually done this before.

It comes up quite often in here for example that people think it's poor management for workers to get away with certain things they probably wouldn't have in 2019, but actually, it might very well be a recognition that they're not necessarily in a position to make the employee come into the workplace, not block out the school run, work weekends etc because they'll leave and a replacement might not be available. The cultural understanding that actually we now have to do a better job of making workers happy than we used to isn't fully there.

On a practical level, part of the reason neither restrictions (which I realise nobody in this thread is daft enough to be advocating for) or behavioural nudges are possible for the government at the moment is an understanding that they're in no position to take the population with them. If Sunak tried it people would laugh in his face. For obvious reasons the Tories don't want to quantify just how fucked they are.

If the plan is to just carry on as we are, i.e. some funds allocated for targeted vaccines and research, normalising much higher levels of sickness, longer term ill health, then surely even a rough qualitative assessment should have informed the decision?!

I'm also surprised more people haven't responded - some posters seem very clear in their view that current plan is the best way forward and I hoped they could point me in a direction that explains why.

It's a difficult situation for employees and businesses. I'm glad your company is trying to support those colleagues. Has your firm made any changes to try to reduce levels of covid at work?

Quite. It can have a huge financial impact.

@SirMingeALot it would be good to see whatever modelling scenarios - shit or otherwise of the options considered, or any analysis really. I think more progressive employers do recognise benefits of happier workers - and back this up with remuneration/policies where possible, rather than lip service. Hopefully more will.

Re: restrictions - I've learned on mumsnet, that restrictions can sometimes equal any preventative measure from offering vaccination to addressing indoor air quality. Others would take restrictions to mean their life is a lot more restricted as a result of continual high levels of covid or as a result of catching covid. Not trying to be an arse, but what do you personally mean by restriction? If someone suggested a restriction, would that make them any more daft than someone who suggests none, given that all options have some drawbacks?

Behavioural nudges - still here and ongoing - just more in terms of normalising current policy. How often and for how long did you hear 'back to normal', 'pandemic is over' etc? Just like Brexit, how often is covid mentioned (unless they absolutely have to) by govt?

I'm not familiar with any definition of the word restriction that includes purely optional measures such as vaccination that isn't required for work or accessing public spaces. That seems a nonsensical usage of the term to me, and I'm disinclined to pay much attention to anyone who does it.

Restrictions are measures imposed by the government on the population. None of those would be sensible or workable at present and some have already failed in the UK, so yes there isn't any way to advocate for that and it not be daft. I thought that was essentially the tone of this thread actually, I saw a pp state that they weren't advocating for them. People don't have to like that the population won't buy in to accept it as a reality.

Others can consider that their lives are more restricted as a result of government policy, although as there are demonstrably no restrictions we could have that would control Omicron its a more difficult argument to make. People who are arguing for eg better drug access are on stronger ground than those who want, say, mask laws given that the latter don't work.

I don't pay much attention to government messaging and am very alienated from the Tories so can't answer the questions in your last paragraph.

I imagine it has been but they won't publish it. The problem with even trying to control it, is it's so contagious plus so many are asymptomatic (for us it's a cold with a 2 day sinus headache) the chances of actually controlling it is zero (look at china now).

If you truly want zero COVID the costs are going to be massive (financial and socially) vs the system we have now. I know which system I pick and it's the one we have now. Also hygiene hypotheses rings alarm bells for chasing zero COVID

Nope!

And they’ve cut back on analysts and data gathering in this area so no, there is no department churning out accurate data modeling of the cost of Covid now and in the future.

Some researchers might personally choose this area, but there is no government coordinated data analysis looking into the future.

This is why I assumed the discussion was more about structural factors.

That's rather dramatic. Who is being bedridden every few months?

I have a few colleagues between 24 and 47 years of age who have been bedridden with the nasty strain of flu going around twice in 2022, with lingering symptoms they couldn’t shift for weeks. So it’s not dramatic it’s reality. 🙄

I wonder why they're so poorly?
I don't think I know anyone who has been bedridden every few months, or at all.
Why would it be normal to be bedridden with a cold?
Perhaps we need to be looking at our nutritional status, levels of inflammation and so on and work out where we could be supporting our health better.

Covid dysregulates immune function.

A lot of pathogens do this (conversationally you'd say 'run down after')

But Covid seems to be rather good at this.

Obviously the degree to which it occurs varies between people, but as more research is carried out it's becoming clearer that it can affect anyone (more common after severe disease, but also happens with mild/moderate) and can last for 8 months (sorry to say that duration lengthens as more time passes)

So if we're really going to have covid peaks every 3 months or so, then as a population are also likely to see increased levels of other infectious diseases.

2022 has been the worst year for excess deaths. This is a price tag mainly of infectious disease - the cost of the NHS collapse will be in the figures for next year.

I guess I was thinking more in terms of some assessment of options - however rough.

Option x could decrease cases by 15-25%, saving taxpayer y by avoiding e.g. health costs, benefits, loss of earnings and associated tax impact etc. Option x would cost taxpayer z to implement. Option x not preferred due to time/cost/whatever.

Or a plan to deal with current policy and costs. Vax costs a. Research costs b. Cost/Saving to economy/health infrastructure/workforce/education is c. Estimated years of life saved is d.
Impact on economy of high covid levels is e, impact due to those removed from workforce is f, impact due to numbers removed from education is g, cost of treating higher number of patients with post covid organ issues is h. Years of life lost is i. Plan to strengthen infrastructure is j etc etc

World peace - that's not a long stretch it's thought that the pandemic pushed Putin over the edge and fractured the global "consensus" of globalised economic co-operation. That cost ultimatley could turnout to be huge.