The other C word (Covid)

I was really healthy - walking up steep hills etc. Now I have Long Covid. A trip on the train to London the other day completely wiped me out. I've been put on a Long Covid support group as I've been feeling a bit sad about it - no Am Dram as it's messed with my memory (brain fog). Can't concentrate as I used to, so writing children's fiction (not published but have written several full length children's books) isn't an option. Can only walk for 12 minutes without my chest feeling tight. And the fatigue isn't normal tiredness. It's like someone has taken out all your batteries. Can't join in with my friends in the same way or entertain as we did. Can't sing loudly any more.
Don't take Covid lightly. You might feel on top of the world right now (I did), but it can change your life.

I didn’t report the now deleted post - I wonder if my response will be deleted because I quote part of it

Marydoll and others in our CEV group won’t forget how our health needs continue to be impacted by this virus

Several weeks into lockdown one of the excellent GP’s at our practice phoned to ask how I was. Initially he was worried that I was walking my dogs early morning and evening. Every time yiu leave the house your risk increases. Then he agreed with me about the risk my joints and muscles would seize up and I’d be miserable if I stopped walking. I assured him I avoided people, kept a distance

I saw our Practise nurse recently for the shingles jab( newly 70 eeek) and asked about the next round of Covid jabs. Only 75s & older in my area are being offered them

I reported the post. I thought it was disgraceful,

MissChateline

Yes, I do agree that vulnerable people should have isolated themselves and the rest of society should have been allowed to get on with their lives as normal as possible. If I had been vulnerable at all I would have taken greater precautions and kept myself safe. But I’m not vulnerable. Neither did I contract covid so didn’t infect anyone else. On the whole the people who were very ill were those with underlying health conditions and they knew who they were. They could choose to isolate. I think that we all had a personal responsibility to look after our own health and for many if us this wasn’t harming our mental health and physical health by sitting at home in our own for months on end.
Never again should this happen.

How do you know that you never caught it and never passed it to anyone else? Just because you never experienced symptoms does not mean that you've never had it! Many that were asymptomatic passed it on unknowingly, you could well have been one of them! You'd help many others if you would wear a large sign that says, "Beware! I don't give a damn about anyone other than myself!", because that's what you're bragging about! You have little knowledge of what you speak (measures other countries took, how they were affected, how we "should" have reacted, and whether you ever had it) which is staggeringly scary! People like you prove that the masses in this country couldn't be trusted to make their own decisions!

Iam64

*you were used, blagged and fell for the biggest scam in human history*
Could you help us understand the scam Usernametaken?

I've never yet heard a satisfactory, or even slightly plausible, explanation why multiple countries conspired with each other, virtually overnight, to perpetrate this 'scam' on its populations; one - which by its very nature - would damage and inconvenience those who engineered it!

Suzey

So your five vacs didn't work

If they're still alive, they did work. The vaccine doesn't prevent infection, it prevents SERIOUS infection in the majority of people. As with everything, there will always be people for whom the vaccine doesn't work, but thankfully that's a very small percentage. The death rate is down due to the vaccine, so it DOES work.

CatsCatsCats

Callistemon, they weren't that strict in Australia, at least not all of Australia. I've not long returned from visiting my son there. Some regions were lockdown free, as the regions were relatively remote. However, those in these remoter regions weren't allowed to visit those that were in lockdown, so it had pretty much the same effect.

Australia were very strict. They closed their international borders, allowing no one in or out. Each state also had border control. My son's partner at the time was a hospital doctor, and she had to have special passes to move from the state she lived in to the state she worked in. Most businesses able to do so, went completely to home working. My son lives in the Gold Coast and they were in strict lockdown for quite a while.

NittWitt, spot on! Of course, our government doesn't care too much about the economically inactive - why should they? Somebody, somewhere, is gleefully calculating the 'savings' in pensions and disability benefits - you can count on it.

At the worst point of the pandemic, my daughter's friend a (now ex) intensive care nurse was encouraged to work throughout a Covid infection (as she didn't feel too bad) - as 'everyone has it anyway and we really need the staff!'. She felt heartbroken, holding the hands of the dying - many begging for vaccinations they'd earlier refused, unaware that they'd missed their chance.

I'm constantly amazed at the conspiracy theorists who insist that Covid was a government-perpetrated scam. These people really believe that every country in the world put aside their differences, ceased war and unrest, and conspired together to con the entire world's populace. To what end, they've never been able to tell us, but they firmly believe it to be true. If any government, especially ours(!), had even a fraction of the organisational skill required to orchestrate such a conspiracy, they would have chosen a much better way to do it! It beggars belief that there are people out there that are intelligently stunted enough to fall for such nonsense! I read an article during the height of the pandemic that accused the NHS hospital staff and patients of being actors, paid to pretend to be dying! I felt like I'd lost a good proportion of my own brain cells just by reading that article!

0ddOne

CatsCatsCats

Callistemon, they weren't that strict in Australia, at least not all of Australia. I've not long returned from visiting my son there. Some regions were lockdown free, as the regions were relatively remote. However, those in these remoter regions weren't allowed to visit those that were in lockdown, so it had pretty much the same effect.

Australia were very strict. They closed their international borders, allowing no one in or out. Each state also had border control. My son's partner at the time was a hospital doctor, and she had to have special passes to move from the state she lived in to the state she worked in. Most businesses able to do so, went completely to home working. My son lives in the Gold Coast and they were in strict lockdown for quite a while.

My son's partner at the time was a hospital doctor, and she had to have special passes to move from the state she lived in to the state she worked in.
Ditto for our relative although they banned the young doctors from travelling over the border to work at first!

0ddOne

I'm constantly amazed at the conspiracy theorists who insist that Covid was a government-perpetrated scam. These people really believe that every country in the world put aside their differences, ceased war and unrest, and conspired together to con the entire world's populace. To what end, they've never been able to tell us, but they firmly believe it to be true. If any government, especially ours(!), had even a fraction of the organisational skill required to orchestrate such a conspiracy, they would have chosen a much better way to do it! It beggars belief that there are people out there that are intelligently stunted enough to fall for such nonsense! I read an article during the height of the pandemic that accused the NHS hospital staff and patients of being actors, paid to pretend to be dying! I felt like I'd lost a good proportion of my own brain cells just by reading that article!

...To what end, they've never been able to tell us...

At the height of the pandemic I was discussing this on a social media site with someone who informed me that I was one of the gullible "sheeple" who'd fallen for the scam. Persevering - to get to the bottom of the whole thing, I asked why all these countries had joined forces to 'scam' us - apparently, it was to prepare us for the day of "The Great Re-set" drawn up by the WEF where a socialist world government would be imposed after the deliberate economic collapse, run for the benefit of powerful capitalists.

,,, how these capitalists would run a socialist world government was never explained. Which didn't matter much because I'd already lost the will to live...

Oddone and Dickens - I heard similar from a person with 'learning difficulties' - convinced that we'd all been conned. It was a rare (perhaps once-in-a-lifetime) opportunity for her to feel somehow 'superior' and 'in the know' at last. So sad and dangerous.

growstuff

MissChateline

Am I right in believing that Sweden didn’t lock down, didn’t close schools etc and their outcome was better than here in the UK. They expected the population to take responsibility for themselves and they did. We should never have destroyed our economy or subjected the population to the torture of enforced isolation which has resulted in such a high level of mental health issues and wrecked the education for so many of our children.

No, you're not right. Large gatherings (more than 8 people) were banned. Secondary schools and institutes of higher education were recommended to work online and eventually closed for a period. The number of deaths in care homes was high and eventually people were recommended not to visit their relatives and were then banned. Initially, face masks weren't recommended but eventually they were. People were advised to work at home if they could and about 50% did. Social distancing was recommended and there were restrictions on travel.

There was no formal lockdown in Sweden - you could go out, shop, travel (although people were scared), people went on holiday, to work (although working from home to save on commuting was popular).

Nurseries and schools remained open for 1-16 year olds - however 16-19 colleges, adult education and Universities went online - but never formally closed and students stayed in their University accommodation throughout the pandemic if they wished to. Many formed Uni groups of up to 6 to socialise together

Restaurants and bars remained open but had to have tables 2m apart and close at 8pm.

There were restrictions on gatherings - numbers varied between 8 and 50 and different points so a lot of social and sporting events were cancelled

I don't remember any particular restrictions on travel.

There was never the shopping chaos and shortages that were reported in the UK, no queueing to get in etc. I remember the period where reports from the UK were of huge amounts of panic buying and shortages of toilet paper and things like pasta but that didn't happen really in Sweden.

There were major problems in care homes and in other residential services, PPE was also an issue in the early days. My 65 year old, diabetic partner who works in healthcare at a closed unit that had a major outbreak (traced to a nurse who was totally without symptoms) and had no visor, no gloves that fit although sometimes paper masks were available

Sweden's rate of deaths per 100,000 of population was lower than the UK despite the UK's strict policy
UK - 297.79 deaths per 100,000
Sweden 219.27
www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate-europe-by-country/

But Sweden is much less densely populated as the UK. And I believe their death rate was higher than their Scandinavian neighbours that had a stricter population. The Swedes also tended not to live in houses of multiple occupation: something that was a major factor in the death rate in the UK. However, the myth that Sweden didn’t lock down and and fared much better than other countries is baked into peoples perception. Their food is supplemented with Vit D, too, because of the lack of sunlight there.

‘At the end of 2020, Norway reported few COVID-19-associated deaths and little severe disease. By contrast, Sweden reported more COVID-19-associated deaths and disease. The substantially different national strategies to control the COVID-19 pandemic in the two countries and the similarity of the countries with regard to confounding variables may provide a natural experiment enabling difference-in-difference analyses [17] to explore the possible benefits and harms associated with the pandemic and its measures. Previous studies were conducted early in the course of the pandemic before complete data for 2020 became available, or have not directly compared countries, states or regions with similar socioeconomics, infrastructure, ethnicity or health care systems [18–20].’

In our ecological study, we used real-world data and transparent calculations to compare all-cause mortality and COVID-19-associated deaths in Norway and Sweden during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 with the years preceding the pandemic.
This is from the National Library of Medicine

Well, I have just tested again and am now clear so feel happy to go out and about again. I still have a cough and a temperature and don't have much energy but hopefully that will pass. As mentioned, I had 5 vaccines overall but as my last one was in October, I fully accept that the beneficial effects will be much reduced. The NHS will only be offering free vaccines to the over 65's (and any vulnerable people) this autumn and I believe it won't start until October. My original post was really intended to make people aware because I was in blissful ignorance - I had even thought that I wouldn't bother getting vaccinated as it 'seemed to have gone away'. I am arranging a large family gathering in October for my dad's 99th (he has had covid and was fine) but will keep an eye on the 'statistics' nearer the time - I have a horrible feeling this winter will be bad for illnesses.

I think the reason the conspiracy theories flourished was because any discussion was shut down, when you do that the discussion doesnt stop it just flourishes in dark corners. It's perfectly reasonable to talk about the approach of other countries such as Sweden, it's perfectly reasonable to talk about the impact on children and the price they have paid and are still paying. I think it will be years before we can look back with any kind of balance. I think however it would be pretty impossible for a government in this country to implement a successful lockdown in the future.

Sweden🤔

www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-03-31/sweden-covid-policy-was-a-disaster

But some of those approaches were used in this country, certainly with regard to people with learning disabilities there were some very questionable decisions.

My comment about parts of Australia not going into lockdown was not a conspiracy theory, it was what I was told by a perfectly sane Australian lady while I was there. She said the area where she lived was not in lockdown but she couldn't visit places which were in lockdown.

Galaxy is perfectly correct - there is no balance. The Guardian and Independent only have to print one of their hand-wringing articles on the return of Covid, and it's 'here we go again'.

There are other opinions, other perfectly rational arguments and other experiences about the effects of Covid, or the effects of the lockdowns and other restrictions, and yet these opinions are beaten down time and time again. I'm leaving this conversation as there is no point in trying to change firmly-closed minds.

CatsCatsCats

My comment about parts of Australia not going into lockdown was not a conspiracy theory, it was what I was told by a perfectly sane Australian lady while I was there. She said the area where she lived was not in lockdown but she couldn't visit places which were in lockdown.

Galaxy is perfectly correct - there is no balance. The Guardian and Independent only have to print one of their hand-wringing articles on the return of Covid, and it's 'here we go again'.

There are other opinions, other perfectly rational arguments and other experiences about the effects of Covid, or the effects of the lockdowns and other restrictions, and yet these opinions are beaten down time and time again. I'm leaving this conversation as there is no point in trying to change firmly-closed minds.

Methinks you’re the one with the firmly closed mind! Which is why you’re leaving the debate

I’m leaving the conversation because I’m really not sure what those people who are clinically vulnerable expect the rest of us to do without being labelled selfish and ignorant.
I was castigated for “lacking in compassion or empathy? Whilst expecting vulnerable people to live in isolation so you can get on with your life?”
Please, am I expected to live in isolation for the rest of my life in order to be seen as empathetic? Seriously!
Those who are aghast at the fact that I continued to hike the moors daily, thereby retaining my sanity (but sadly not my marriage which was destroyed by the ludicrous travel rules and regulations) throughout lockdown thereby breaking the law maybe should read the following article from the guardian.

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/10/end-of-englands-hug-ban-highlights-confusion-over-law-and-guidance?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

So how do you expect CEV people retain their sanity?

Those who are aghast at the fact that I continued to hike the moors daily, thereby retaining my sanity (but sadly not my marriage which was destroyed by the ludicrous travel rules and regulations) throughout lockdown
I'm sorry to hear that.

However, without wishing to be unkind, your marriage did not survive what were relatively brief separations compared to those experienced by many couples, service families for instance.
You cannot blame clinically vulnerable people for that.