Trigger point for taking Covid seriously....

[W12GT]

There are a lot of varying opinions on here and some news portals in relation to the seriousness of Covid-19. I have read many posts where people are rather flippant to the level of deaths we have seen to date as being in line with ‘the norm’ (whatever that is).

So my question is:- At what point did/do you think the number of people dead made/ will make you think ‘this is serious now’. Use the numbers of the vote as the threshold trigger point ie when it hits/goes over that number for the UK not globally.

For me personally it was a concern from the beginning but the real alarm bells were when my dad got it and then unfortunately died which was really early on, so I’d go at the 1k mark.

Probably best to place a cut off date to establish a timescale, so say by the end of 2021 (rather than ?? deaths of it over 20 years).

[johnboy1975]

1,000?



Flu 2021/22 season will be here in 10 months. There's not much point you leaving your house. Ever. Its the only way to be truly safe.....and with WFH, Amazon and Tesco deliveries, why would you ever want/ need to?

Ill go with 100k being "of concern", double a bad winter. But it will all even out over the next few years

[Fusion777]

I went with 1k, too. We'd already seen the chaos it was causing in other countries such as Italy and Spain. Pretty sure we locked down here before we hit 1k deaths (still in March). By that point it was clear it (literally) wasn't business as usual.

[Willy Nilly]

I'll start taking it seriously when young, fit people start dying

[Uhtred]

It’s not just about deaths though is it?

[Ashfordian]

I took Covid seriously early April when it became obvious Government policy valued saving a death from Covid ahead of a death from any other reason.

Ignoring the current collateral deaths of around 35k already, longer term many more will die from the economic impact and lower future spending being available for our care services.

Then there are the poverty related deaths.

With the hundreds of thousands of missed cancer appointments, how many deaths will this lead to?

Then what are the long term mental health impacts. And what about the disruption to the education of millions of children.

Covid is a serious virus but it is our great medical & care system that extends the life of millions that leads to us having a higher exposure to Covid.

There is no option for this in your poll so it will just be this post in the thread

[Taylor James]

Willy Nilly said:

I'll start taking it seriously when young, fit people start dying

Me too and when hospitals look like the scenes we saw in Italy (except full of non-obese younger people) and not like Croydon on NYE:

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=192154...

[andy43]

Ashfordian said:

I took Covid seriously early April when it became obvious Government policy valued saving a death from Covid ahead of a death from any other reason.

Ignoring the current collateral deaths of around 35k already, longer term many more will die from the economic impact and lower future spending being available for our care services.

Then there are the poverty related deaths.

With the hundreds of thousands of missed cancer appointments, how many deaths will this lead to?

Then what are the long term mental health impacts. And what about the disruption to the education of millions of children.

Covid is a serious virus but it is our great medical & care system that extends the life of millions that leads to us having a higher exposure to Covid.

There is no option for this in your poll so it will just be this post in the thread

I was taking it seriously early on - initially we had no idea really but after seeing some of the footage coming out of China it was concerning me well before 1k deaths here.
But it isn't the deaths we've had to date - I suspect long term health problems and early deaths will be what covid is remembered for, whether the virus has directly or indirectly caused the problems.
Blood clots, strokes and so on in the short term, then add on stuff that's been put on the back burner like cancer, then add all the psychological impacts and it'll be a big number.

[LeftmostAardvark]

It’s not about total numbers I think, it’s about first-hand experience.

People don’t take total number of deaths seriously, that is just another government statistic, which doesn’t mean anything.

They take it seriously when they’ve had first-hand experience of it. How serious that is, depends on how serious the case was.

[Dr Doofenshmirtz]

Willy Nilly said:

I'll start taking it seriously when young, fit people start dying

This.

My wife has Covid right now. Tested positive 5 days ago. She says it's just like having a cold and she's lost her sense of taste...but is otherwise fine.

If you're silly enough to not look after your health, then you might want to be careful, but otherwise, you have nothing to worry about.

[dmahon]

There’s also the mislabelling issue. Out of current 70k there must be tens of thousands who have effectively died of old age, or in hospital for something with a risk of death but acquired Covid.

The government have a huge trust issue after crying wolf and manipulating figures all year.

[powerstroke]

dmahon said:

There’s also the mislabelling issue. Out of current 70k there must be tens of thousands who have effectively died of old age, or in hospital for something with a risk of death but acquired Covid.

The government have a huge trust issue after crying wolf and manipulating figures all year.

This .. and they never say how many extra deaths
This year compared with averages from previous years..

[Liokault]

I’m still not taking it that seriously, I have only known anyone who had it in the last few months.

For every person I know who has had Wuhan flu, I know 5 that have lost a job.

[Condi]

Uhtred said:

It’s not just about deaths though is it?

This....

A fixation on the immediate deaths is not healthy for anyone and ignores huge side effects of lockdowns.

To name a few;

Economic disaster - in the short term; job losses, lower council tax income (business rates), higher government borrowing.

Across the medium term businesses go bust, people lose their incomes. Taxes have to go up to pay for it, but the tax burden falls on a smaller number of people.

In the longer term a downturn in the economy leads to lower life expectancy, as a result of poor diet, health conditions from being unable to afford heating and exercise, higher drug and alcohol abuse.

Mental health problems from lockdown - up to now more under 40's have died from suicide than covid.

Kids off school has serious consequences for their learning, their socialising and their wellbeing. Not only that, but if kids are off school then parents have to be at home to care for them. Many cannot work from home and so are forced to be off work.



Quite simply it is harder for the government to ignore 50,000 deaths in 6 months than 100,000 deaths over 2 years, and so the fixation on immediate deaths is not surprising. What is surprising is the lack of context around the numbers. Saying 1000 people died last week sounds terrible, but if on average 1200 people die per week then last week was actually a great success. They are using dodgy numbers and dodgy data to scare the population and it ignores all the longer term problems, which IMO will be worse than the short term.

As one Swiss MP said in their Parliament, "every death is a loss, but not every death is a catastrophe." Even in average years over 10,000 people per week die in the UK. Its not something anyone can hope to avoid, and if you've got to 85 then you've had a pretty good innings and you are naturally more susceptible to any virus. Locking down the entire population to postpone the inevitable is a silly policy IMO.

[CraigV6]

Bit of an attention seeking thread this one, not going to vote, but will add a question-

What’s the average life expectancy and the average age of death from Covid?
Never good to lose a family member ever, worse so early, but there’s absolutely zero point putting everyone’s lives on hold (and in doing so enduring decades of paying (educationally, economically, mentally) to do so) for a disease that appears to cause people to die on or around the time the were / are expected to die.

Edited by CraigV6 on Sunday 3rd January 17:42

Edited by CraigV6 on Sunday 3rd January 17:45

[Benbay001]

W12GT said:

so I’d go at the 1k mark.

And how do you justify owning a car? Yet alone a fast car.

There are a few thousand road deaths per year in the UK and countless more people disabled for life.

You cant effectively wrap everyone in cotton wool on the off chance something bad *may* happen to them.

Of course there is a point at which peoples freedoms and liberties have to be sacrificed to curb the virus's spread, but there is no instant tipping point.

I think the virus is extremely significant, but yet the lockdown is too severe.

[Whoozit]

When Mrs Whoozit, a hospital consultant at a major London hospital in a field far away from acute medicine, was assessed for her acute skills in case she could be repurposed. June/July IIRC.

And yeah, the last week has seen some scary emails from senior management about shutting down all elective surgery and all non-elective to be done by consultants, so the junior staff might be free to work on the Covid ward.

This ain't over.

[ChocolateFrog]

Are we talking per day? Or total? Pretty meaningless.

At 1% fatality rate I'd consider it noteworthy (it isnt anywhere near that)

At 2%, which was bandied about in the early days then it'd be serious and justify some of the self immolation we've gone through for the last 10 months.

At 5% it would be carnage.

It's none of those things. If we're being generous it's killed how many? 30000 people in a year. Less than 5% of all deaths.

[JagLover]

Dr Doofenshmirtz said:

Willy Nilly said:

I'll start taking it seriously when young, fit people start dying

This.

My wife has Covid right now. Tested positive 5 days ago. She says it's just like having a cold and she's lost her sense of taste...but is otherwise fine.

If you're silly enough to not look after your health, then you might want to be careful, but otherwise, you have nothing to worry about.

Yes

As it has spread in this second wave I have known people being more badly affected.

One cousin who had the paramedics round checking oxygen levels and one former work colleague who was taken to hospital. Both are now recovering.

Both also were the wrong side of fifty and were STONES overweight. Not just a bit overweight, very overweight.

This is a disease of the very elderly and those in poor health and one aspect of being in poor health is being obese i'm afraid.

[W12GT]

Benbay001 said:

W12GT said:

so I’d go at the 1k mark.

And how do you justify owning a car? Yet alone a fast car.

There are a few thousand road deaths per year in the UK and countless more people disabled for life.

You cant effectively wrap everyone in cotton wool on the off chance something bad *may* happen to them.

Of course there is a point at which peoples freedoms and liberties have to be sacrificed to curb the virus's spread, but there is no instant tipping point.

I think the virus is extremely significant, but yet the lockdown is too severe.

Note I used the words trigger point. It’s the point that you know something bad is going to happen, having observed what was happening elsewhere, for me it was obvious that with the steps that hadn’t happened early enough combined with the way it was being handled that things were about to go very wrong.

The best way I can describe it - ever been caught out on black ice or aquaplaned and you know the car is no longer doing what you’d intended no matter what you do? To me it felt a lot like that; I could see it following the ‘path’ that others had gone.....

Edited by W12GT on Sunday 3rd January 17:57