Politics of fear and its side effects

Anyone who has symptoms of Covid should not be going for a booster vaccination anyway.

They should go for a PCR test and there needs to be 4 weeks between recovery and having the vaccination or booster.

Well the politics of fear doesn't work on public transport here. Quite a lot of people aren't wearing masks and you'd need to be made of strong stuff to point it out. No one checks.

Well, there we are. If you or people you love haven’t suffered (and I do mean suffered) from Covid obviously it was always a load of fuss about nothing and just an unnecessary reaction on the part of Government.

If your family had been badly affected you might think differently. You might wish people had been a bit more afraid and taken more care.

Especially when your family members were so ill because they had to provide the medical care for people who just thought it was fearmongering,

Peasblossom, spot on, thank you

We have never suffered a global pandemic in our lifetimes so some people simply do not get it, and talk about the politics of fear, as if there is some deliberate attempt to make people unhappy and scared for no reason.

The facts of covid are scary in themselves and that is where the problem lies. Peasblossom has illustrated this very clearly.

The desire to find someone to blame seems to be rife. It is the virus that is to blame.

Peasblossom I had Covid last January, I was hospitalised with it for twelve days, I was on oxygen for all that time, and I was given eight different medications. I was discharged very far from well, but well enough to recuperate at home. I have scars on my lungs from the Covid pneumonia, my last X-ray was a week ago and they are still there. I apologise if others have seen this before but I think Peasblossom should know as she seems to think I don’t know how serious Covid can be. In my post I was pointing out that government policy, and SAGE policy appears to have been to scare people into compliance, it’s a different point altogether to knowing how serious Covid can be. I think I know that!

And only last week we were told that there could be 6000 deaths a day! There weren’t six thousand deaths a day at the height of the pandemic, and whilst I totally agree that people should take all measures to protect themselves and others, when such ridiculous figures are spouted, people simply don’t believe them, and therefore it’s not helpful.

I think maddyone that you know only too well how serious Covid was for you. And I’m sorry that you had to suffer it. It’s not something to be wished on anyone.

What I would question is your understanding of how serious it would have been for very many more people if it had been allowed to proliferate unchecked. People needed and still need to be afraid of that. Yes they do.

You received the treatment that enabled you to recover because most people kept themselves infection free. The doctors in my family didn’t have to chose between you and someone else because there were enough of them to tend to you.

Were they afraid that would happen? Yes they were and now, because of the sheer numbers involved, they are anxious again. Not least because so many of them are unable to work in hospital after being in contact with a patient who wasn’t fearful enough to take precautions and test.

A pandemic unchecked is a fearful thing.

I understand and agree with your points Peasblossom, but my point is that if numbers of possible victims are so ridiculously high, that whilst older people may listen and act accordingly, younger people, fed up of hearing about over inflated numbers, will dismiss them as scaremongering, which is of course true. And if they dismiss the figures, they will be unlikely to take proper precautions.

Incidentally I didn’t fail to keep myself safe. I caught Covid from my elderly mother, 94 years old, who had been hospitalised after a fall. She caught Covid in the hospital, but the staff had assured us that she had tested negative twice and it was safe to visit her. We were in a care bubble with her, because at the time she lived alone, and my husband called in to move some furniture for her that was in the way of her newly acquired walker. Unfortunately, despite the negative tests she was actually positive, as we found out the next day when she became unwell, and then tested positive. This was before any of us could be vaccinated. My husband became infected and infected me. Nobody’s fault, no rash behaviour, just giving care to an elderly lady who had had a fall and sustained two bleeds on her brain from that fall.

Well, there we are. If you or people you love haven’t suffered (and I do mean suffered) from Covid obviously it was always a load of fuss about nothing and just an unnecessary reaction on the part of Government.

*Peasblossom, no one is saying that, and my family has been beset by COVID, with one person with a compromised immune system catching it and 2 others. I have also had to deal with my DH having a heart attack, bypass surgery, which went well, but being given a non-COVID infection that came close to killing him and required 3 operations and 6 weeks in hospital. A year later he is still struggling,. Oh, and DD nearly died the first summer of COVID. She too came very close to death. So you have no monopoly on suffering.

But we cannot live the way we are now forever. we do have to learn to cope with the virus and between vaccination and improved treatments this will become possible and all of us have to decide how far we are prepared to go to return to normality.

Thirty years ago my sister died when she was knocked off her bike as she cycled to work. A few months later I was offered a job where the best and easiest wy to get to work was to cycle. So I got a bike and started cycling. Yes, I was terrified, I knew how easily a genuine accident could happen. The driver of the vehicle that hit her was not drunk or on drugs and he was travelling at walking speed, but I refused to driven by my fears and I mastered them.

But I did everything to reduce the risk. I was very visible with lights and reflective clothing and I planned as quiet a route as I could.

This is how we have to deal with COVID. Take all sensible precautions and then grit our teeth and enter life again.

The diatribe fed to us by the media has made us very sensitive, today nobody indoors was without a mask, a big change from a couple of weeks ago. In practice these blue masks most use are very little protection from virus far too much leaks around the edges, the black fabric masks are no better, it’s mostly psychological.
Some are bound to overreact

I think the message from the last few posts is that people should use their brains rather than their emotions. If only!

Peasblossom

Well, there we are. If you or people you love haven’t suffered (and I do mean suffered) from Covid obviously it was always a load of fuss about nothing and just an unnecessary reaction on the part of Government.

If your family had been badly affected you might think differently. You might wish people had been a bit more afraid and taken more care.

Especially when your family members were so ill because they had to provide the medical care for people who just thought it was fearmongering,

Our family was the same September 2020 our youngest daughter got Covid. “Helping others” teaching full time in a primary school. Then she got long Covid and was really poorly for nine weeks. Breathless, Scared “what’s this doing to my internal organs mum I’m so frightened. Especially at night. I lie there worrying I might die and leave my 2 babies with their daddy and no mummy”.

She had never been so ill. Covid is not just a cold. It’s very real.

However, she got better and returned to full time work 2 weeks before Christmas last year.

Now?
We all get on. With life. What’s the alternative? Hiding away?
We take sensible precautions.
Wear masks when asked (not in the street, none of us!)
We socially distance at all times.
No hugs and kisses with friends.
We ‘flow and go’.

But & here’s the thing. Last September we didn’t have those amazing vaccines. They came on the grid December last year. A 96y old family member was in the first cohort to get one.
Hurrah!

Since then we’ve all been jabbed twice & as of last week, all of us including our daughters and husbands all mid 40’s have been boostered.

We don’t want to shut down our lives more than we have to. It’s not good for mental health sitting in all the time, worrying.

Happy Christmas everyone.
Let’s hope 2022 brings us better times. And hope for our futures.

MOnica ? x 100

You're assuming a lot here. Nobody wants to shut down their life. I can guarantee that if I were to do a poll, almost 100% of people would prefer to carry on as if Covid had never happened (apart from the few who have profited).

The majority could indeed carry on at minimal risk to themselves, However, what they (and possibly you) are ignoring is that some vulnerable people will inevitably die or suffer long-term health effects.

At times such as this, the dividing line between those who only care about themselves and those closest to them and those who genuinely care about their society/country becomes obvious.

Urmstongran

MOnica ? x 100

Yeah right! Enjoy your time in Unicorn-land!

Yes, I’m absolutely sure this happened.

What? Do you mean my family AmberSpyglass?
Or are you answering the OP’s thread title?

growstuff you are a very intelligent person. A teacher. But you always seem so chippy.
With me mostly. I must rile you up out of all proportion.

If I put a smile at the end of a post you deride me and say I’m being smug.

I was replying honestly to PB about how my family feel after a Covid scare last year. Yet you accuse me of being cavalier in my attitude.

Well your attitude hurts me. You are so cutting.

We are in the midst of a pandemic with many people being unwell, some seriously and far too many dying.
We are also in the grip of a severe epidemic of anxiety and depression. I thought I was immune to this until recently. When I spoke to my GP about the very bad stomach problems I’d been having for some weeks I was told it was a classic case of anxiety and stress. Of course I was relieved to hear that it wasn’t anything more but I’ve joined the ranks of those whose confidence and mental well-being has been damaged. Please be tolerant when people show signs of mental health problems.

aonk I’m so sorry to hear you’re suffering symptoms of acute anxiety. That is horrible for you and I hope you improve soon.

The truth is that whilst some people, large numbers of people in fact, behave as if there is no Covid, and I think in particular of those who refuse to be vaccinated, and those who mix freely without taking any precautions, most of the people on here will act responsibly. To a great extent that will keep people safe, but as this is a highly infectious virus, despite being sensible and responsible, some people will still become infected sadly.

Peasblossom you are not the only poster on here who have medics in their families, and whose families caught Covid because of their work. My family, just like yours, has medics and those medics both caught Covid, in one case through working in the Covid Hub.

I am not suggesting that anyone does anything that is unsafe or puts others at risk, but I think a lot of people are over reacting, like the lady I mentioned in my OP.

what they (and possibly you) are ignoring is that some vulnerable people will inevitably die or suffer long-term health effects.
That has always happened regardless of whether COVID exists or not. There have always been people whose health is compromised and who must be careful about where they go and what they do and those who know them, do all they can not to compromise them.

I am not suggesting a reckless free for all but each of us taking steps to open up our lives within safe limits. I went up to London last week to see an exhibition. I put my mask on at my home railways station and it stayed on until I got back there. Outside or in, my mask stayed on. There was a tube strike and I did a lot of walking above ground, but my mask stayed on and I was social distancing.

I did a LFT today and it showed I did not have COVID, not that I had any reason to think I might. Come the new year, if there is another eshibition on I want to see, I will repeat the experience.

It is these carefully assessed and protected activities I am thinking of, not rushing around to crowded events without a mask and then visiting my friends and hugging and kissing them. But there is a middle ground between that and locking yourself in your house and throwing away the key, bleaching all your food and leaving the post in the garden for a week before opening it.

I'm just so sick of the excuses, with people harping on about 'learning to live with it' or 'protecting mental health' in a weird effort to minimise the fact that we're in a world pandemic.

The logical reaction is to avoid all unnecessary risks, including shopping, travel and socialising, until the case numbers fall dramatically and it becomes endemic. There's plenty of other things to do.

By then, they'll be no shortage of ITU beds, no excess staff shortages due to infection, no possibility of major disruption to society. Routine and emergency care will not be compromised (any more than pre-Covid, anyway).

Then (and only then) it will be appropriate to resume 'normal' activities - without selfishly putting other people's lives at risk.

All the silly excuses just send a message, loud and clear, that you really don't care about anyone else - full stop.

My goodness so many judgements.

We are experiencing something akin to a type of world war, which is killing millions and injuring tens of millions.

People will obviously react in myriad ways as they try to come to terms with what is happening, by assuming all sorts of misplaced ideas and adopting what appears to be irrational behaviour.

Even the OPs reaction is assuming something that she simply cannot know, by blaming what she describes as “the politics of fear”. The woman in the queue reacted the way she apparently did for a completely unknown reason.

We are constantly being presented with the different models and scenarios from which we use our judgement to adjust our behaviour accordingly. Models are not the “politics of fear” they are best/worse case scenarios, nothing more or less.

It is the same when looking at other models like climate change. We are being constantly presented with such models, it is the way science,economists etc work. But do not look at them as cast in concrete. Models are flexible and change constantly, they are simply a snapshot of the current data which of course changes constantly.

Blaming the messenger is never a good way to react to information.

I think the majority of people would not have done as that woman did, there are a lot of people though who are struggling mentally after 20 months, especially those living alone, she sounded very frightened. It’s not your husband at fault or the woman, it’s just the times and stress some people are under.

Firstly the masks are not effective against viruses.
Secondly if you are as ill as my DD was with Covid you will be lucky to be able to stand without collapsing never mind carrying on with life as usual.
Covid is extremely serious for some, vaccinated or not.