Coronavirus - are older people being treated as expendable?

Adding to my post above MH has said we are still doing more testing than most other countries. Not sure what to believe at this point.

Tickingbird People with severe end stage pneumonia are usually peacefully asleep.

Growstuff Thank you for your explanation about the 1918 flu pandemic,

gracesgran, I have tried to help by giving as much information as possible. What more do you need? If you want analytical, read up on scientific papers. There is no magic bullet

I apologise, craftyone. I didn't know you were one of the scientists advising the government. Their thinking is what I was asking for.

Just wondering why you need to be so personally rude crafyone. It's not helpful to anyone although maybe it gives you an anonymous person's buzz. Very, very sad. The vast majority are just swapping the information they have gathered which is a lovely change from the recent past.

Let’s face it. CV is a very nasty bug with a higher than average mortality.
But.. (ducks for cover) ... never forget that if there is a 13% chance of dying from it, the chances of NOT dying from it are a huge 87%

grandMattie No need to duck, you’re talking sense.

Morning
I m not sure expendable is the right word. We re high risk and our NHS does not have the equipment needed to cope with the possible volume of infected patients. Realistically, they must try and save those who have the highest chance of recovery.

But they are trying their best to help
Us not to catch it by encouraging us to cut down on social contact! Then people still complain!! If everyone mixes and gets infected the hospitals will not be able to deal with them all. Stay in and stay safe!

Where did you get 13% from grandMatte? The WHO estimated it was 3.4% as of the 3 March.

Not that it matters much when you think 100% of us will die of something.

Currently mortality for CV is around 3% - and that is of reported cases, probably lower when unreported cases are considered.

Mortality varies across age groups, but that applies to any infection. Older people are more likely to have pre-existing conditions so mortality rates for them will be higher, but it is the pre-existing condition that is the problem - and smoking. The first two deaths in China were otherwise healthy men, but both heavy smokers.

It’s more like 14% for over 70s monica

Yes, but almost entirely those with pre-existing conditions, who will be very vulnerable to any infection anyway. My father and others in my family died because when ill and vulnerable they picked up random infections and could not overcome them.

This will not mitigate the grief of the families of those who died. But the majority of over 70s who get this illness will survive.

Personally, I have a DiL with an auto-immune disease and a 9 year old grandson, who is what in old fashioned terms would be termed 'delicate'. He picks up any bug doing the rounds and has been in and out of hospital throughout his life with minor illnesses that got worse than expected. I think they are both far more at risk from this disease than I am, who have no underlying health problems and is physically fit and very active.

As i already said somewhere or other, a low tech 'ventilator' is an oxygen bottle, a gauge to screw in the top of it with a tap on the gauge, a length of rubber tubing, and a plastic funnel. I cannot think that would be more difficult to mass produce than sliced bread.

Tweedle24 wrote:
"Jools22 I have wondered if the reason so many young people died in the 1918 epidemic was because so many of them had spent the previous four years crammed together up to their knees in mud in the trenches, "

There is an opportunistic element to any invasion by pathogens; germs like an easy life.

To illustrate: lung TB. During recent times when lung TB was endemic it became active with symptoms in people who were undernourished, over crowded, over worked, and so forth. Because TB was widespread the better off people resisted it , became immune, and suffered no symptoms or death from it, Generally speaking.

However covid19 is unlike lung TB as covid19 is so new that nobody worldwide has any acquired resistance. That, together with the general opportunism of all disease germs is why covid19 is pandemic .

As always, the poor people who live in unsanitary rooms, or on the streets, and eat nasty food, and suffer cold and wet, are going to be the worst affected.

To put all this into perspective I have just learned of the death of a forty-year old friend of my adult children; nothing to do with coronavirus but a long term health condition. I barely knew this person or their family, but know that life was lived to the full against the knowledge that their lifespan possibly was limited, as tragically was the case.

Please, no sympathy for me because this is not my loss or my grief, but a shocking reminder that death is ever present and there is only so much that can be done to forestall it.

Like most people my self-preservation instincts make me scared to die, and so I fear getting covid19. But not getting it would probably only preserve my life for another 5-10 years during which time I am costing the country my state pension and free prescriptions etc etc, and businesses are going bust just because of the measures that are trying to help old people like me not to die of this one particular cause. Common sense tells me it's better the old people die than the country goes bust because that's going to ruin the lives of the 80% that were going to survive - possibly for generations to come.

That, Ready Meals, is IMO what religion should be about.

Alexa. That is not a ventilator. That requires a motor to regulate breathing or even take over breathing. Giving oxygen only works if the patient is able to breathe without help.

tickingbird you were concerned earlier in this thread because you had heard that the UK only had about 50 ventilators.....the true figure is around 5,00.

8,000 private hospital beds to be rented to the NHS for £2.4million per day - capitalism is failing us and the private sector is lapping up the profits

How many ventilators could you buy for 2.4 million Boris Johnson? The government's response is pitiful

Oh stop the political nit picking Grany it’s not the time or the place.The government is buying help from the private sector because this is an emergency, to help us mainly older
Patients!

If the Tories didn't deliberately underfund the NHS and cut beds we would be in this situation of having to buy beds from private sector

There were 35,000 avoidable deaths in the winter of 2018 which stretched to March 2019 making it 45,000, mostly due to the cold of that year.