O/T:- Are we over-reacting to COVD19?

[drillerpie]

I know how you feel. I get exasperated with people feeling exasperated. I was just stating a view. Don't be melodramatic.

Err OK. You get exasperated with people too, that is good to know. And if you're communicating the fact that you're exasperated on a message board, you are by your own criteria being melodramatic too. So we're both exasperated and melodramatic. Anyway nice of you to start your post off with a few lines of inconsequential nothingness, just to set the tone.

Says someone who writes a post almost three times longer, arguably to the same effect.

No. My posts do say something. They are advising people to take this virus seriously, keep your distance from other people, make changes to your lifestyle for the greater good, as I've seen how the situation can get out of hand very quickly.

Your posts so far have gone from telling people to be more worried about getting a flu jab (ill-informed and irresponsible), framing coronavirus as a media-driven non-event (really? Even in China where everything is state run or censored?), rejecting the importance of it by saying you won't die from it so whatever (I'm alright Jack), to last night's gem of "people don't like dying (great insight) but we've always had pandemics so they should just sit back and suck it up" (I'm alright Jack 2.0).

I actually agree with you that I was stating the obvious. [Many] People don't want to die, so they carry out certain actions which they feel help them recover some control of the situation, and to a certain extent this may be beneficial, but overall there is only so much we can do in the face of a force of nature such as this virus.

Again, no. Trying not to die has not been 'to a certain extent beneficial', it has been the driving force behind every kind of human progress everywhere, ever. Tools were invented to stop us dying, houses were invented to stop us dying, cooking was invented to stop us dying, antiobiotics and vaccines were invented to stop us dying.

I'm quite happy for people to continue trying not to die, even if they are old or sick. Partly because why not? I think I'd probably do the same, but also because it seems like these pandemics will become more and more common so we're going to need to practice how to deal with them. Taking this one seriously and doing everything we can to stop it could lead to important discoveries and habits for future pandemics, don't you think?

I don't see why you're already going to the "there's only so much you can do" position when so far you've been required to sacrifice what exactly? Miss a football match? Wash your hands?

Snap. I'm in a relatively low risk age bracket but I have a parent in their 70s with COPD, so faced with that higher risk I've advised them that it's sensible to limit their social contact and avoid mass gatherings until this thing passes.

Ah ok, so you didn't tell them it's a media driven phenomenon and they should worry more about their flu jab then? Interesting. Looks like your attitude changes when you've got some skin in the game, so to speak. That also makes me doubt you would be so sanguine about mortality if you were staring down the proverbial barrel.

As for me, the game is on this afternoon so I'm taking the measured 'risk' of attending. The scientific advice seems to be that if we all went into complete lockdown, all it would do is temporarily quell the virus and then lead to a spike when those restrictions were removed, so you're as bad burnt as scolded.

I don't know if you're being deliberately obtuse, but the choice is not between total lockdown and carry on as normal. The earlier you act, even as a single individual, the less drastic measures you need to take in the long run. The time saved can then be used to build new healthcare facilities, procure necessary respiratory equipment, trial experimentary drugs (apparently there's an anti-arthritis drug which looks promising), and any restrictive measures can be relaxed gradually to ensure the health service is never put under too much pressure.