Coronavirus - Strange times

Jonwo
Posts: 252
Joined: Sat 26 Apr, 2008 02.05

The media seem to be hyping the rise in Covid cases but surely given we've had various big events like Glastonbury, the Jubilee, Hoopla it doesn't really surprise me. I suspect the official response will be recommendation rather than enforcement.
cwathen
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Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 17.28

Jonwo wrote: Fri 01 Jul, 2022 15.07 The media seem to be hyping the rise in Covid cases but surely given we've had various big events like Glastonbury, the Jubilee, Hoopla it doesn't really surprise me. I suspect the official response will be recommendation rather than enforcement.
I did respond to this post a few days ago then thought better of it and deleted it. But the response has changed now. I was getting a bit concerned that the media seemed to be moving towards making Covid headline news again to cover them through silly season with dramatic stories of rising cases closely following France's recommendation of resuming the wearing of masks on public transport which will never do anything just like it never has before but will quickly escalate into more mandated mask wearing. It was the first time since February Covid even made it to headline news. But now we have a somewhat even sillier silly season in the UK following the collapse of Johnson's government to tide us through, Covid has rather predictably once again disappeared from anyone's headline. We really shouldn't be trying to move on from this insane obsession by hoping more serious matters keep coming up though. It was only Partygate that saved us from Lockdown 4.

We just need to draw the line that we should have drawn in September 2020.
james2001
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Joined: Sat 04 Jun, 2005 23.10

It's a repeat of the hysteria we had when Omicron first emerged as well, with the media hysteria and reinstatement of restrictions, and completely ignoring what was happening in countries further along their Omicron wave- only to find the same happened everywhere else.

Both South Africa and Portugal are through their BA4 and BA5 waves- both over quite quickly with little impact on hospitalisations and deaths, cases peaking well below previous peaks and now back below where they were before BA4 and BA5 hit. I expect we'll see the same elsewhere, cases already seem to be peaking or close to in much of Europe, and by the end of the month we're likely to be asking why we got so hysterical about BA4 and BA5 to begin with- only to begin again when the next variant (or, in fact, only sub-variants now, we haven't had a proper new variant for a long time) emerges.

Is this going to keep being repeated every time there's a new variants and cases start rising, even slightly and briefly? Thankfully in the UK at least the government doesn't seem to be reacting to the hysteria, but that can't be said in some other countries- like France bringing them back on public transport as you said and both
Germany and Ireland talking about bringing mask mandates back over the winter for example (Germany for 6 months between October-April! Not sure the FDP would let it pass though).

Interesting though that the BBC have been pointing out now that around 2/3rds of the "hospitalisation" figures are now incidental admissions- people in hospital for something else that merely tested positive and would have been in hospital anyway. Not that it stops the doommongers jumping on the figures as proof the NHS is about to be overrun of course.

Made the mistake yesterday of looking at an account called "Zero Covid NI" on Twitter (they'd replied to someone debunking a scaremongering article on BA4 and BA5) and the stuff on there was shocking, all the hysteria and misinformation. Pretty much the first thing I saw was a deeply offensive retweet about people with disabilities. These people are as irrational and extreme as the covid deniers and anti vaxxers on the other side of the debate.
cwathen
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Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 17.28

Rather than quote bits and make arguments that have been made before I'll just sum this up. Do we 'just' let people die? No. Absolutely not. But the tiny proportion of the population at risk of death from Covid with no other chronic health condition that was going to kill them anyway cannot ever be made to be more important than everyone else who exists.

We don't 'just' let those people die but there are limits as to what can credibly be done to prevent that outcome. And everything we ever did over Covid, not just here, but around the globe, vastly exceeded those limits.

And now we are in an entirely predictable mess which at best will lower living standards for several generations, and at worst we might now be at the start of World War 3.

And in between the chronic damage to mental health done with implementing lockdowns and restrictions with at first literally none, and then later minimal consideration as to what that would do to people because #savinglives will almost certainly cause the biggest spike in lifelong mental health issues and suicides...probably ever.
james2001
Posts: 718
Joined: Sat 04 Jun, 2005 23.10

As I'm sure I said on here before, I lost a family member last year after his cancer diagnosis was delayed by 3 months because the doctors kept fobbing him off with phone and internet consultations and didn't want to see patients in person for anything but covid (even though when he first tried to see a doctor, it was the summer of 2020 when cases and hospitalisations were minimal- so hospitals and surgeries overwhelmed with covid patients weren't an excuse). Those 3 months could have saved his life, or at least given him more treatment so he could be here for longer. All this attitude from some people as if covid's the only disease worth caring about and covid deaths are the only important ones has really made me angry, especially the people I come across who still persist with that attitude. Even now there's still more hoops to jump through to get a doctor's appointment than there was pre-covid.

Whenever someone goes on about how many covid deaths there's been, I want to ask them what about the much greater number of people who have died from other things and how many of those deaths could have been prevented if doctors had seen people properly over the last couple of years. Far too many don't care about that, it's covid and nothing else. Covid deaths are a tragedy, any other death is a statistic.

Funnily enough I had covid a while back, and passed it to my 72 year old mother (who has respiratory issues)- neither of us had more than a cold, and not even a particularly bad one at that (basically, some fatigue, a lot of coughing and a strange sensation in the nose for a few days). But a while later we caught something else that made us both quite ill (her especially) and it got on our chests, affected us for weeks and she needed medical treatment, and she passed it on to our sister (wasn't covid, as we all tested)- where are the demands to shut society down and impose restrictions, bring in endless testing and tracing to track the spread and mutations of that virus? It's ridiculous we're still in this post-vaccination and omicron world elevating covid over countless other viruses out there that are as bad if not worse that we're barely paying and attention to.
all new Phil
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Joined: Sun 13 Feb, 2005 00.04
Location: Next door to Hell

Why are we banging on about this again?
cwathen
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Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 17.28

all new Phil wrote: Sat 09 Jul, 2022 17.12 Why are we banging on about this again?
Because it came back into the news again for a while. Sky News even had some ridiculous analysis piece about 'rethinking the living with Covid strategy' over case numbers last week. Where would that mood music have gone to if it wasn't checked quickly by something else coming along? I'm concerned that yet again Bojo the clown is the only thing that has saved us from action being taken due to another faux pas of his being more newsworthy.

Want to stop banging on about this? Then draw the line under Covid obsession that should have been drawn a very long time ago, and the subject need never be mentioned again...well except to talk about how much we have destroyed the world as we knew it in the process.
bilky asko
Posts: 1400
Joined: Sat 08 Nov, 2008 19.48

cwathen wrote: Sat 09 Jul, 2022 18.37
all new Phil wrote: Sat 09 Jul, 2022 17.12 Why are we banging on about this again?
Because it came back into the news again for a while. Sky News even had some ridiculous analysis piece about 'rethinking the living with Covid strategy' over case numbers last week. Where would that mood music have gone to if it wasn't checked quickly by something else coming along? I'm concerned that yet again Bojo the clown is the only thing that has saved us from action being taken due to another faux pas of his being more newsworthy.

Want to stop banging on about this? Then draw the line under Covid obsession that should have been drawn a very long time ago, and the subject need never be mentioned again...well except to talk about how much we have destroyed the world as we knew it in the process.
I am looking at the BBC News homepage. There is not one story about Covid there, though there is room for a story about Rory Stewart's missing wedding ring.

The world's not been "destroyed" and people have moved on. Try doing that yourself.
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Pete
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I'm going to suggest that unless there's another major lockdown or similar we leave this topic alone for the time being.
"He has to be larger than bacon"
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