CombatClaret wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 11:11 pm
Optimism and hope are great virtues, however:
There seems to be repeated theme of lockdown skepticism, 'immunity' theories and the general tendency to downplay the severity and impact of the situation from a small minority of posters.
There is also a general tendency to overplay the severity and impact of the situation. People are going to ridiculous lengths to minimise coronavirus risk.
Here's the position if you are over 80. Your chance of dying within a year, on average, is 10%. There are 3 miillion people over 80 and 300,000 of them will die within the year, in a normal year.
If - and it's a big if - the "second wave" kills as many people as the "first wave", then instead of 300,000 over-80's dying, there will be 350,000 died from March 20 to March 21. Their chances of dying will have increased from 10% to 11.7%. Now, offset that marginally increased chance of dying against the certainty that they are going to die anyway, the majority of them within 10 years, and you can see why some people - both the over 80's and younger ones on their behalf - are thinking that the total cessation of social life is too big a price to pay for that 1.7% reduction in danger of death.
I saw someone on another board saying that they would not have an elderly relative to Christmas dinner because of the danger of Covid. This is absurd. The danger to an old person of a single Christmas Day treat is miniscule - just 1 in 1,000 of the people who die of Covid caught it at a single family dinner, then that would mean if 3 million old people went to Christmas dinner, 30 of them would die. That is the risk for which people are willing to cancel Christmas dinner. For crying out loud. If on 25th October you tell the 3m that the one thing they have been looking forward to is off, and they have to stare at the walls for another 6 months, what will that do to their mental health? In any case, 50,000 of them are going to die before Christmas - if the survivors do celebrate Christmas, it may become 50,030. Many people think that's worth the risk.
And that's before we mention the fact that the majority of the over 80's who died, were in nursing homes - where hopefully they will have things more under control this time.
Seriously. If you have a lonely elderly relative who has barely been out and has had no social life all year, tell them that Christmas will be normal. Put yourself into isolation the week before if you must. But please, give them something to look forward to!
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