Many thanks. I didn’t realise that.
There does seem to have been some confusion around this, at present 70+ plus that doesn't have any high risk medical conditions is classed as moderate risk and doesn't have to fully shield like high risk groups, but would be well advised to be careful and limit going out to a minimum which was also my point about over 50's.
It is the point you keep trying to make about the over 50s, but you haven't provided even the faintest crumb of evidence for it. There's a barely discernable rise in the proportion of over 50s dying compared to the 40-50 age group. The difference in proportion of people in that age group with pre-existing conditions is quite a lot larger. All the evidence is that if you are under 70 and healthy then you're more likely to do yourself an injury by worrying about it.
If you think there are some stats which support your position, please do post them.
Start to increase, yes from an extremely low level of risk to a low level of risk.
Feel free to link to, and quote from, people who make such claims. I will then debunk them accordingly.
I'm not determined to minimise the risk of anything; on the contrary I will take a pragmatic view, considering all known risks and benefits of ant situation. There are activities I do which have risks, such as cycling and football. But I also understand the benefits of such activities.
By your own admission you have a health condition that means you need to take precautions to avoid crowds, regardless of the Covid 19 situation and that this advise given to you pre-dates that.
With respect, the total number of deaths in any country is going to vary enormously even if the rate of infection were identical, due to huge variance in population.
Yup... A while ago the stay-at-home brigade called those who ventured out coined the word covidiots for anyone who dared go out. Now we have what I call coronacowards who seem to think that just coming anywhere near another human being for a few seconds will be fatal. It is laughable.
No, they were never shielding (per the detailed guidance issued at lockdown). My wife and I are, having received the letter (and her consultant's advice before that), being classed as extremely vulnerable, as are about 2m others.
www.healthline.com
If your an expert on this virus then feel free to debunk my comments, if your not and trying to debunk purely on the basis of this article I will give it a miss. Yes if you believe those stats as you appear to do then yes if your a healthy 50 year old then the risk doesn't appear to be much greater than younger age groups. But at this stage given we have stats earlier in the epidemic that suggested different things I will take the stats with a pinch of salt until we get more data. I would also comment that as you get older your more likely to start falling into the high risk medical conditions and in some cases you may not even know your in those high risk groups which was the case with me for at least 2 years.
By the time you are 60+, the risk is getting significant (especially as there is a roughly similar risk of being seriously and unpleasantly ill before recovering enough to be discharged from hospital). Just as I take recommended steps to reduce my risk of heart attack, stroke, diabetes etc., I would think it wise to reduce my risk of Covid19 (even if I were not shielding for my wife's sake).
The recommended steps to reduce my risk of heart attacks are broadly speaking to quit smoking, drink less, exercise more and consider taking the odd tablet if that doesn't sort the blood pressure. Apart from smoking, which has largely been priced out of the market, people don't seem to be inclined to do any of those things. Why should they therefore start taking wild and drastic action to avoid something arbitrary in a similar risk category. The graph a few posts up isn't terribly current, but the comparative figures haven't changed a great deal, and where they have moved it has been downwards. According to that graph your risk is about 0.5% even if you catch it, and most of that risk is still to people with significant pre-existing conditions
Agreed. If this happens again in 40 years or so, I won't be hiding at home. What's the point? To be honest my biggest dread is ending up in a care home. They are depressing places. I've had two members of my family in their mid 90s in them. Having both been very healthy and active, it was very sad to see them barely able to move, see or hear.
Kids under 15 are more likely to die in a road accident than of the virus. 50 deaths per year compared with three in two months. I presume that all the people saying they won't send their kids back to school will also stop driving them to school when they eventually do go back?
So please explain how Sweden’s hospitals have not been overwhelmed, despite NOT implementing similar measures to us.This completely misses the point. The NHS can cope with the normal annual death toll from flu and everything else, but there is not much slack in the system. When a new virus comes along which is contageous and there is no herd immunity and no vaccine, the virus propagates exponentially if no measures are taken. The potential of hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of extra hospital admissions (on top of the normal annual hospital admissions) will push the NHS into a state where it simply cannot cope. The whole point of the lockdown measures is to keep the infection rate and hospital admissions down to the point where the hospital can cope. It is not about risk to any individual, it is about avoiding a health care crisis on a country population scale.
It is like having a rail strike on the weekend before Christmas and claiming this would have no significant effect on road traffic because such a strike would only load another 5% of traffic onto the roads.
Here’s Why COVID-19 Is Much Worse Than the Flu
Experts note that COVID-19 has a higher hospitalization rate as well as a higher death rate than the flu. It’s also more infectious, and there’s no vaccine yet.
Actually, the number of UK deaths so far represents 0.0541% of the population.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. At 60 and assuming average health for that age, all the indications are that even if you catch it, the chances of you dying from it are 0.5%, or likely rather less as the number of people we think have had the disease has crept up quite a bit since those stats were accumulated.
Precisely. The risk to under-60s is so small that lockdown is, for us, a huge overreaction. I had a free screening for bowel cancer in January last year, and was, thankfully, clear. How many people whose screenings for this and other cancers have been cancelled since this crisis began, are now going to die prematurely while hospital capacity is left idle, I wonder?
This is the attitude of the majority of the retired people I have spoken to.
But not quite so confusing as last Wednesday's cumulative new infection total. It went down by 525.
