What's new
Pinball info

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Coronavirus - Letter in Today's Daily Telegraph

DRD

DRD

Registered
Joined
Oct 26, 2014
Messages
5,434
Location
Newark
Most people I know have expressed similar views to those in the letter below, including old folk, people with elderley family members and people who are immunocompromised themselves.

Indeed, a number in my village went to the pub last night, even after the Government announcement that all boozers had to close. 'er indoors and I remained indoors.

I would be interested to know what folk think on here, as I do find it a great place for advice/ knowledge on both pinball and other matters .....


Counting the cost

SIR – As well as being 66 and in poor health, I also have three sisters in the at-risk category for coronavirus. I therefore feel qualified to say this.

We are demolishing our economy and small businesses and wasting many billions of pounds to protect an at-risk category comprising about 1 per cent of the population. The science suggests that the rest of us may get a mild form of the virus but will recover.

The best estimates state that up to 250,000 people will lose their lives. This accounts for less than half of 1 per cent of our population. This is extremely sad and awful for those affected, but while governments should be caring, they must be pragmatic. Many of these people –myself included – will succumb to something else in the next few years.

How can we justify the impact of this path? We are spending, effectively, £1.2 million per expected death on people whose life will be taken soon anyway, yet we cannot find the tens of thousands of pounds for specialist cancer treatment for much younger people. It will take years to recover from this ridiculous path.

Darryl Davies
Glan Conwy, Denbighshire
 
DRD said:
Most people I know have expressed similar views to those in the letter below, including old folk, people with elderley family members and people who are immunocompromised themselves.

Indeed, a number in my village went to the pub last night, even after the Government announcement that all boozers had to close. 'er indoors and I remained indoors.

I would be interested to know what folk think on here, as I do find it a great place for advice/ knowledge on both pinball and other matters .....


Counting the cost

SIR – As well as being 66 and in poor health, I also have three sisters in the at-risk category for coronavirus. I therefore feel qualified to say this.

We are demolishing our economy and small businesses and wasting many billions of pounds to protect an at-risk category comprising about 1 per cent of the population. The science suggests that the rest of us may get a mild form of the virus but will recover.

The best estimates state that up to 250,000 people will lose their lives. This accounts for less than half of 1 per cent of our population. This is extremely sad and awful for those affected, but while governments should be caring, they must be pragmatic. Many of these people –myself included – will succumb to something else in the next few years.

How can we justify the impact of this path? We are spending, effectively, £1.2 million per expected death on people whose life will be taken soon anyway, yet we cannot find the tens of thousands of pounds for specialist cancer treatment for much younger people. It will take years to recover from this ridiculous path.

Darryl Davies
Glan Conwy, Denbighshire
Click to expand...
Sounds like standard Torygraph media clickbait to me. Little England pretending the global phenomenon isn't really cause for alarm and we should all get a grip and carry on.
My take is, popular or no, is that this, like climate change, is a challenge that we have to face and all find a new way forward to encompass. Defo not business as usual in any sense.
Trust everyone is gaining proficiency on their home machines at this time!
Take care of yourselves, take care of each other.

Sent from my FP2 using Tapatalk
 
Yes. We’re all most likely to catch it sooner or later. For most of us it’s a couple of days feeling crap. For others though it’s going to be a nasty lonely death.
It’s not about stopping it. Realistically that’s not going to happen. However, the actions that need to be taken will hopefully stop the NHS being utterly overwhelmed.
if people can’t drag themselves out of the pub for a few weeks to potentially save the lives of others then what does that say about us?
 
i got a slating on facebook for mentioning the same point. seems you can only say it if you are over 65[emoji23][emoji23]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
sorry this isn't limited to older people.

diabetics, asthmatics and even fit and healthy people have died from it.

don't say you are up for the madness unless your up for watching your kid die in the car park by literally choking to death... or they watch you die in that way,
 
Neil McRae said:
sorry this isn't limited to older people.

diabetics, asthmatics and even fit and healthy people have died from it.

don't say you are up for the madness unless your up for watching your kid die in the car park by literally choking to death... or they watch you die in that way,
Click to expand...
Exactly! I had breathing difficulty at night not so long ago, not sure what it was caused by but it was terrifying. You can’t help but go into panic mode and you must try to calm yourself down which is easily said.
Italian Dr said on tv can be bad for anyone.
 
Neil McRae said:
sorry this isn't limited to older people.

diabetics, asthmatics and even fit and healthy people have died from it.

don't say you are up for the madness unless your up for watching your kid die in the car park by literally choking to death... or they watch you die in that way,
Click to expand...

All good points - a large proportion of the people in intensive care in France and Italy are in their 30s, 40s and 50s.

The main problem that we are trying to avoid via these measures is the NHS being overwhelmed. We have a pitiful number of ICU beds per capita in this country - less than Italy where the system has already effectively been crippled. We also don’t have many ventilators, nor staff trained to care for people who require them. Not to mention the lack of PPE equipment for health staff.

Everyone I know in healthcare is incredibly concerned re what is coming after having seen the impact in Italy. In just the past 24 hours I’ve been told about an NHS hospital that is converting the majority of its theatre space to additional ICU capacity, and perhaps more tellingly several of London’s private hospitals are effectively closed as of last night to provide additional NHS capacity from Monday.

If the transmission of this virus is not slowed and the NHS is overwhelmed / ICU hits capacity, we’ll end up moving to a wartime style triage system where resources are diverted to those who are most likely to survive, as has occurred in Italy over the past few weeks. In Italy this has meant not providing critical care to those aged over 65 and those younger than 65 but with pre-existing health conditions, in favour of those who are more likely to recover - and again, they have more ICU beds per capita than we do over here.

This would of course also impact critical care for those who don’t have the virus, but who suffer other health emergencies. If the system is overwhelmed and ICU beds are full, it will mean that the fatality rate for car crashes, strokes, heart attacks, pregnancy complications and so on will be significantly higher than normal - I.e. any critical health emergency that we or our loved ones could suffer at any time.

That is the big picture here - these steps aren’t being taken just so fewer people die of the virus, they are being taken so that the healthcare system can continue to provide critical care to the population as a whole and not just those with the virus. This is going to be the biggest challenge that our current healthcare system has ever seen and due to years of underfunding it needs all the help it can get.
 
The lack of some people’s empathy is thoroughly depressing.

My family have been desperately ill with Corona symptoms these past 2 weeks and we’ve required medical intervention 3 times. This includes an otherwise fit 45 year old and a 13 year old boy. I can tell you that watching a child suffer with the panic of not breathing is a genuinely horrifying experience.

It’s like people can’t give a **** unless it directly affects them.

Please think before casually dismissing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people as some kind of academic exercise.
 
People have to be forced to self isolate because they're too stupid for their own good. My cousin has just taken this photo in Leeds. People queuing for the release of a new pair of trainers. Because trainers are more important than health.
 

Attachments

  • FB_IMG_1584795074510.jpg
    FB_IMG_1584795074510.jpg
    141.2 KB · Views: 59
Rob zombie said:
People have to be forced to self isolate because they're too stupid for their own good. My cousin has just taken this photo in Leeds. People queuing for the release of a new pair of trainers. Because trainers are more important than health.
Click to expand...


FFS

I don't mind admitting that my views have changed after seeing reports from Italy in the past week or so.
It's now all about stopping the nhs being overwhelmed. I go to work, come home. Will visit shop when neeeded. That's it. Steering clear as much as possible 're my mum and dad.Visited yesterday to drop some meds and food off. Trying to keep a distance, and also gave them sanitizer as they didn't have any
 
I haven't been out of the house since 22nd February. Too busy working. I kept thinking I really must get out for a day and this happened. Typical.
 
Couple of tweaks in places that are staying open that I've seen - B&M yesterday had tape on the floor with the idea that instead of a normal queue the tape marks where the next person should stand to keep the right distance - good idea but needs to be halfway down the shop rather than 3 places; also discouraging payments in cash. Wouldn't be surprised if all supermarkets end up doing that, along with a screen to help protect the till operator.

Auction I was at on Thursday they tried staggering the chairs, but that didn't really work - next week one auction (that I don't usually go to) is trying it with no bidders in the room.
 
Rob zombie said:
People have to be forced to self isolate because they're too stupid for their own good. My cousin has just taken this photo in Leeds. People queuing for the release of a new pair of trainers. Because trainers are more important than health.
Click to expand...
How selfish. He could at least of offered to get you some!
 
Here's a scary fact, 50% of the 1525 corona virus patients in intensive care in France are under 60 😳
 
Yeah I get that. My wife tells me we have to look after the sick because that’s what a civilised society does.
 
DRD said:
Most people I know have expressed similar views to those in the letter below, including old folk, people with elderley family members and people who are immunocompromised themselves.

Indeed, a number in my village went to the pub last night, even after the Government announcement that all boozers had to close. 'er indoors and I remained indoors.

I would be interested to know what folk think on here, as I do find it a great place for advice/ knowledge on both pinball and other matters .....


Counting the cost

SIR – As well as being 66 and in poor health, I also have three sisters in the at-risk category for coronavirus. I therefore feel qualified to say this.

We are demolishing our economy and small businesses and wasting many billions of pounds to protect an at-risk category comprising about 1 per cent of the population. The science suggests that the rest of us may get a mild form of the virus but will recover.

The best estimates state that up to 250,000 people will lose their lives. This accounts for less than half of 1 per cent of our population. This is extremely sad and awful for those affected, but while governments should be caring, they must be pragmatic. Many of these people –myself included – will succumb to something else in the next few years.

How can we justify the impact of this path? We are spending, effectively, £1.2 million per expected death on people whose life will be taken soon anyway, yet we cannot find the tens of thousands of pounds for specialist cancer treatment for much younger people. It will take years to recover from this ridiculous path.

Darryl Davies
Glan Conwy, Denbighshire
Click to expand...



To think this Darryl Muppet is only a distance down the A55 from me
 
Close everything but keep the massively busy supermarkets open. Hmm, contradictory plan there. Hundreds of people at Tesco today, a table on the way in with some sanitizer on it.
it’s easy to say that it won’t affect you, but the stats are there to see. As a self employed tradesman I could be up the creek when people stop spending on building work, and should I really be driving about working anyway? I have no choice, I have mouths to feed. I haven’t seen or heard of any actual real grants at all, can you imagine the queues for them? The eligibility checks, the 30 minute waits on the phone only to lose signal......

It’s a proper mess, but you need to go back through history to see the pandemics and what’s happened with them. Spanish flu after WW1 killed millions of people. We’ll develop a vaccine because that’s what we have the ability to do now, it’s all about damage limitation at the moment, no one is pleased about it, but we have to be adult about it. Be glad we’re not in an full state of nuclear war, have some respect that the government are making an effort and it’s up to all of us to try to keep the bloody bug at bay.

If you or anybody you know does end up in hospital, you would be pretty ****ed off if they didn’t have to staff to treat you. That’s that whole point of the message. Live in a different manner, be cautious and keep distances, it’s not that hard really.
 
Neil McRae said:
sorry this isn't limited to older people.

diabetics, asthmatics and even fit and healthy people have died from it.

don't say you are up for the madness unless your up for watching your kid die in the car park by literally choking to death... or they watch you die in that way,
Click to expand...
Exactly this. There’s X beds, Y ventilators and Z nursing staff to tend to you. If those there are exhausted and you get it and are unlucky enough to be one of the ones that need intensive care, then - well - you’re ****ed.

The head medical guy even said this explicitly - if we didn’t radically change our behaviour there will be people who will die from the disease despite medical intervention (this is the case now), people who die because there is no medical resource to tend to them, and people who may die due to the measures they are putting in place.

The author of that letter might have made peace with dying, but everyone else hasn’t. How dare he speak for a generation of people!

That’s even before you consider the moral implication of a government deciding to sentence hundreds of thousands to die by overwhelming the health services. They were in danger of going down this path with the whole “herd immunity” tactic, but thankfully changed tack.
 
Here's a scenario that people might want to have a think about. Imagine you and the wife get it and have to be admitted to hospital. Who's going to look after your now infected kids? Their grandparents? Because that's a death sentence.
 
Regardless of whether you catch C19, if the hospitals are full you are f*cked if you have a car crash, a heart attack, a stroke, complications in pregnancy, anything that is normally treatable and we take for granted as being fixable after medical intervention.

It's not all about C19 deaths. The deaths that will happen won't be recorded as C19 related but will inevitably happen.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom