If covid policy stays 'as is', how do we tackle the impacts

[NotReadyForAutumnYet]

Inspired by another thread. I think we should be doing more to tackle covid, but that is not for this thread. I'm interested in knowing how if we maintain current policy, we tackle the impacts.

So, impacts on social care,
impacts on healthcare (for everything - not just covid),
access to healthcare (where threat of covid on current health conditions for some means to risky to access healthcare with no infection control), access to healthcare as other issues triggered by covid exacerbate in population, hospital acquired infections leading to longer stays, susceptibility to and impact of other viruses rise post infection,
impacts on mental health and mental health services, impacts on number of people able to donate organs, blood etc (can't if have long covid)
confidence/accountability in/of public health / government messaging (during lockdown, post restrictions, vaccination and current- much can be picked apart on messaging inc. honesty)
impacts on education, impacts on attendance,
impacts on workforce, impacts on businesses
impacts of not being able to exercise, impacts of increasingly sick population (including those sick, but able to work), impacts on finances - increase in poverty, impacts on very vulnerable,
impacts on those in abusive situations, impacts on those wanting insurance policies etc etc.
I know there are many other areas, but hopefully you get drift.
How do we tackle the impacts of current policy?

Seems to be we just wait or tackle other health issues and accept the ongoing deterioration in the mean time. Sorry kids - here's another can we've kicked down the road for you to pay for in more ways than one!

We still know very little about the long term impacts of Covid and I agree we can't just ignore them

The average annual death rate has gone up significantly and sickness absence rates, certainly in our local schools, has gone through the roof. Whether this is caused directly by Covid or by impacts related to the pandemic we need to address it every bit as much as we are addressing deaths from road accidents/drugs/alcohol/drowing etc.

We need to get the nation healthier that's how we tackle it.
Get people eating better, being more active, being mentally stimulated, having social contact (especially for elderly), having easily accessible green spaces, getting vitamin d.
We do that and we can have a more efficient nhs with more resources and healthier people with better recovery rates and less ill health in the population.
We tackle that and we improve on all the things you listed.

I don't disagree, but how do we do that?

Plus some people who are getting long covid were already very fit beforehand, so we won't fix that just by making everyone healthier. I think we're stuck with those growing numbers of people with long term effects until we find a cure. Until then we have to manage a workforce without them in.

We aren't going to cope.

We aren't going to face the sequelae until it is far too late.
Huge increases in diabetes (T1 and T2), stroke, other cardiovascular issues, consequences of immune system deregulation, effects on brain (inducing and accelerated dementia, other effects on cognitive function).

Debilitating effects of long covid - for which there is a 10% chance per infection, and we're setting up our DC to have 2 or more infections per year before their bodies have matured.

People don't want to see the potential dangers. They want to believe that it's all OK. Maybe it won't get much worse then it is right now (economic damage limited to the significantly higher number out of the workforce). They really want to believe that if you're not in a high risk demographic to die from the acute illness there's nothing to worry about. They don't care if the "vulnerable" die (conveniently ignoring that that includes everyone with a cancer diagnosis, so getting on for half of us at some point - but cancer care won't be safe, because people would rather "see your smile" or refuse a "face nappy" rather than weat a proper mask in clinical settings.

We wouldn't be so stuck if we:

• invested in ventilation in public enclosed spaces, particularly schools
• required masking in clinical settings
• widened the vaccination programme
• provided prophylactic MABs to the critically vulnerable (when available)
• invested in research into a fully sterilising vaccine
• invested in long covid research
• fostered a society in which it was not ok to go about business as usuall when symptomatic (attitudes and employers' standards)

All valid points. Healthier lifestyles would help NHS. Does tobacco tax offset cost to economy of smoking? Obviously you can't exercise your way out of long covid, nor is diet/exercise a barrier to covid-induced illness.

@UnmentionedElephantDildo - agree - but these are policy changes to reduce the covid burden which govt does not want to do. Govt will know impacts and have decided for whatever reasons not to act. I suspect it's v short term thinking as even economists are warning about the burden.

It is highly unlikely that it is possible to invent a fully sterilizing vaccine for COVID. Sterilizing vaccines only work for a few types of virus, such as measles.

We do have masks in hospitals etc. here in Japan (it seems to be the new normal now - I am not bothered by this, to be honest), but it hasn’t stopped COVID getting absolutely everywhere this summer!

As for not going about with symptoms - I agree with this as a general thing for life in general, but the COVID my family got this year was from someone not showing symptoms at the time.

I don’t know if there is any realistic way of making a significant difference to this virus. Less obesity would help reduce deaths among the middle aged. If people are very elderly…. I don’t want to sound horrid, but something is going to finish all of us off eventually.

Has anything been done to address indoor air?

When you consider that there sre schools, hospitals, theatres and shopping centres that need to be prevented from actually collapsing, I would hazard a guess that the answer is no.

Depends entirely on the owner of the building

But I think that there ought to be some minimum standards for new public buildings, ditto for rebuild/renovation.

Also schools could make the construction of Corsi-Rosenthal boxes a DT project

Sorry, I know it's been addressed here in some government buildings and the schools it was trialled in had a positive effect on attendance. I meant to address it to the poster from Japan.

My mums hospital appointment was put off because most of the team was out with Covid. She went in the other day and the doctor we were talking to looked grey( just back after being out for two weeks). I think we just Barton down like with flu and bugs, if you’re sick wear a mask and stay away from people.

ihate people won't get healthier though. I have no idea what the solution is. I'm slowly watching a snack sharing team at work get bigger and bigger every few months. People drink too much, use lifts and escalators, won't walk to the shops etc.

Covid is going to mean we have more ill people more often and more lingering health issues. I don't have time for it so I'm doing everything I can to keep healthy.

Long COVID is an issue. I know people can get long term issues from other illnesses like flu and glandular fever, but I only know one other person other than myself who had glandular fever when younger and know very few people who have had flu, but know many people who have had COVID, many of them having it multiple times, so surely long term Long COVID can have a huge impact on our population

@user1477391263

Agree with all of this. I guess that eventually there will be a worldwide push to reduce covid transmission but it could be in a couple of decades. Maybe it will become ‘normal’ to die at 30?

These are all things lockdowns seriously negatively affected.

I'm immunosuppressed, I've had covid ten times, I say we need to look forward and up our game for the next pandemic and only be examining past ones to see where we went wrong.

Of course it was an still continues to be awful, but where are you getting a life expectancy for general population of 30? Is there studies or information out there? This worried me so i looked and there was uk wide 422 covid related deaths of under 30s well the data they have so far, can you suggest where else to get this info please?

I haven’t seen any data, I’m just speculating that if a child born today keeps getting covid once/twice a year, how many infections can a body take before it shuts down? Perhaps it will all be ok and we end up surviving multiple infections, but I’m pretty worried about the long-term impacts of repeated Covid e.g. on the cardiovascular system. Most people are I know are onto their third/fourth bout by now and we’re not even 4 years into this. Maybe there will be a sterilising vaccine available at some point.

I think 30 is just grabbing an alarming number to make a point.

Which is not that you'll die of covid aged 30ish. But that the repeated assaults on the immune/metabolic/cardio-vascular/metabolic systems and of course brain will have a cumulative effect on the body and life expectancy will be shortened.

Insurance companies and governments have already noted a small diminution, which cannot be entirely explained by acute covid.

And of course there may be a reduction on quality of life both from long covid and covid impact on onset/severity of other conditions.

We won't do anything because doing anything costs and no one wants to pay

The rich assume they'll be ok with their cash and the poor don't count because their vote can be manipulated

It's a dog eat dog , I'm alright society we have created

The gene pool will eventually strengthen - about 10% of people have useful covid resistant genes

The biggest impact covid had, and is still having, is the bloody stupid lockdowns!

It was obvious it would send us into economic free fall, and then the Ukraine war added the cherry on top.

Lockdown for March and April 2020 made sense, by May we knew it wasn't the death knell we expected it to be. At that stage we should have started plowing into the NHS more, onto educating the youths who could go on to be the doctors and nurses not stopping their education.

The daily death show shouldn't have ever have been a thing, as it just created panic and health anxieties for those pre-disposed.

There absolutely should be a legally recognised allowance for flexi working for CEV people.

Posr viral syndrome isn't new, I had a virus 20+ years ago got PVS that still causes me a variety of issues but I don't see any hand wringing over that! I just had to learn, at 20 years old how to adjust my life to fit my health. And at 42 I'm doing a pretty good job of it.