It's precisely my realism that causes me to disagree with you so often, your eternal pessimism being very detached from reality.
I'm customarily neither pessimistic nor optimistic, just accepting the reality.
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Brexit, for once some facts.
- Thread starter flecc
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I'm customarily neither pessimistic nor optimistic, just accepting the reality.
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By "ignoring it, as part of accepting that its rubbish", as you said, yes. I can sympathise with that (am migrating from one dysfunctional team in the nhs to another and have an overwhelming urge to **** off to the boat and head out to the Caribbean, it's even the right time for a crossing), but ultimately disengagement and denial isnt meaningful.
It's clear you have a terribly unbalanced range of contacts from how you ended your last post:
"majority of people I meet are not unaffected "
The vast majority of this county's people are unaffected by Covid:
97% haven't caught it.
Of the 3% who have, most have suffered few symptoms, some none at all.
Almost all of the population don't know anyone who has died from Covid,
The majority don't know anyone who has suffered badly from a Covid infection.
Little wonder there are so many Covid cynics, given how little evidence they see.
For many almost the only evidence they have is the word of known liar of a politician or the failed predictions of experts in a field where very few answers are known.
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And Rotherham.. We aren't starving quite just yet. Give it time tho and I, m sure all the panicking masses will empty shelves.
Better batten down the hatches, take to my barricaded front room...
To be fair I was supposed to be going to Camper Calling this weekend. Decided not to since its only 5 days post cataract op and 2 weeks prior to next. But I see that as bad timing (didn't expect op so quick) and being sensible... But there you go.. I, ll go food shopping instead.....
Sorry .. decimal point misplaced .. but if anything makes the point more clearly...and the fact that it reduced by 16% last year due to lockdowns etc , makes the CV19 number even more stark. Whether people isolate themselves because of government dictate , or do so voluntarily by self modified behaviour is not in question, but unless they do one or the other , the death numbers rise. Of course we have to live in the world as it is not the one we might wish , and if the event is short term, then rather than risk it it is prudent to avoid it.
Flecc,.. where are you creating your statistics from?. According to Worldometer, and based on the UKs figures , 10% of the UK population have had CV19 and 2 in every thousand of the general UK population has died of it. That is 2% of those who have got CV19 have died from it.
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No, I work in the nhs with people who are not unbalanced, but directly or indirectly profoundly affected. Outside that microcosm I disagree with your assertion that people are largely not affected. If however one take that as true, it's part of the problem. A newer variant has lots of scope to let RIP exponentially.
So what do you advocate Jonathon?
Lock downs? More restrictions? Enforced vaccinations? Rounding up Covid rule breakers along lines of China... In reality we have no choice but to get on with things but take care where possible..
Or perhaps a New Zealand like isolation, stay at home eliminate Covid strategy?? Afraid it won't work... Well not forever, which is how long World will have Covid for.
It's very difficult. Courtesy of boris (and, it must be said, his cabinet) we are in a deep **** scenario. One simple thought that occur to me is that we should stop digging - unconstrained opening up and closing, febrile fantasies about herd immunity. I'd rather we were New Zealand, or japan, even after the Olympics, metaphorically speaking. Lockdown, unpalatable as it is, may be hugely less damaging than boris almost deliberate creation of mutation habitats for the virus with lifting and exposing partially protected citizens
The 97% and 3% are a litle date now. However, using your figures:
90% have not had Covid-19.
99.8% haven't died from it.
Both very big majorities as I posted.
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I said the range was unbalanced, not the people, and it clearly is due to working in the NHS. As you say, a microcosm.
The majority are definitely largely unaffected, my own case illustrating that very clearly:
For the first two months of the pandemic London was the worst hit with an infection rate at 2.5 times the rest of the country and my Borough of Croydon the worst hit in London. Fortunately that lessened but overall we've been at the high end of the Covid figures throughout.
I've been 84 and 85 witn marked underlying health problems, predominately heart/lung.
I'm a member of a 12 strong committee for the local wildlife reserve. Our youngster is 60 and the two members I work with most are both 87. They unsurprisingly have major health problems, one with only 19% kidney function, currently in hospital with a suspected stroke.
We have an average of some 40 regular volunters for work in the reserve, mostly retired and in their late 50s and 60s. Our Friends organisation membership has well over 200 paying members, who I regularly see in the reserve.
Yet despite living in this notorious Covid hotspot with many of the most vulnerable including myself, none of us have had Covid and I don't know anyone who has.
I'm quite sure my lack of Covid experience is replicated all over this country by the majority, given how much less many areas have suffered than London.
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we still don't know how long covid will still be with us.
On top of the deaths, there may be an equal number of people seriously injured by covid. There has not been a more serious disease in my lifetime.
I should have included you in my list of misery members.
Twice!
Really? Over 90% recover from catching Covid, most scarcely affected by it.
Would that cancer survival was as good. 1 in 2 men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, infinitely higher than Covid. The cancer death rate (cancer mortality) is 158.3 per 100,000 men and women per year. Covid's overall mortality rate was 118.1 per 100,000 population as at January 31st.
Cancer has killed almost all of my extended family in the last 60 years and still threatens two of those remaining. None of all the remaining generations have even caught Covid.
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Because I inhabit health forums, I do see many, many reports of people who have had Covid and, while they might have been almost dead or hardly affected at the time, have been significantly affected ever since. Sometimes in the Long Covid sense, but far more frequently in more subtle ways. Things like finding the long-term medicine doses which had been fine for years no longer seeming right. One day feels too much, the next too little.
Some of us have histories which make it hard not to think about them.
And I didn't mean that I spend hours pondering them. Just that I have a somewhat increased awareness which fleets the subject through my mind.
As said, life is largely a rubbish experience. That goes for almost all of us and our histories.
That's why I've always argued that life for us is nature's dirtiest trick.
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You really really need to listen to some Townes Van Zant..a Texan Folk singer and writer, who worked with Nanci Griffith... Perhaps his" Waiting around to die" will cheer you up.
I'm a very happy person, as I posted earlier about life's ills, I accept by ignoring. I don't mourn anyone and avoid attending either type of funeral, death or the other kind, marriage.
Translation: It means I don't worry about any of it.
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But flecc is arguing to get on with it, make best of what we have, then any enjoyable bits, the bits worth having are a bonus and appreciated. As we all know only too well flecc certainly lives his life to fullest..
The naysayers, pessimists, doom and gloom merchants are the ones you should be giving advice to.
Yep, world can bee a sh! t place with or without covid. Think for some covid juststifies the Victor Meldrew in us all.
No... but the problem is that the 90% who have not got covid yet are all susceptible, even if partially vaccinated and even if fully vaccinated. Moreover even the 10% who have previously been infected are not guaranteed immunity. The Delta variant carries a punch.
The only figure we can both agree on is that the 2% who have died are immune from dying again. You might recall that I have been watching that figure closely since April 2020 , and seen it steadily drop from a then ≥ 10% towards an asymptotic 3% , and now with better hospital management getting down to 2% is an achievement. A real concern should be what happens when hospital resources get stretched. That crunch is likely within the next month with Schools back, Traffic building up, poorer weather