I'll tell you what happens at A&E at present...
You get a letter from your doctor, you go along but you're not let inside as there are too many people waiting already. Once you *are* let inside, you're not allowed to take anyone in with you, so even though you're at death's door, the best they can do is push you inside in the wheelchair, walk out, see the doors shut behind you and wonder if you'll ever see that person again...
Then you wait for hours to be seen, before eventually you are. Then you're admitted, and placed on a bed for yet more hours, waiting for a space on a ward. These spaces are under pressure because, of course, at this stage any infection from Covid could finish you off because you're so weak, and you don't want bellends pointing out you got Covid when in hospital, so its not *really* Covid that killed you. You then get your bed in a ward where they keep the windows open if at all possible (but of course the time of year is not great for that, so it's a payoff of freezing your patients, and giving adequate ventilation in criminally underfunded buildings) and give you a Covid test daily, because any infection spreading in the ward could finish off all who are there with you... and you don't want bellends pointing out you got Covid when in hospital, so its not *really* Covid that killed you. No visitors for that reason either, as they absolutely *need* to keep infection away from you.
Then you get rehabilitated as quickly as they can, and sent home as soon as they can because, even more so than usually, they *need* the beds for the next queue of people waiting for admission. Then again, it might be too soon really, but you haven't seen your family for a couple of weeks, and they haven't seen you, and they need to tell you that they love you. You've avoided being finished off by Covid too, by the measures put in place, but those measures restrict capacity too, of course... exacerbated by an underfunded system, that means there's no spare resource available for a crisis.
And rinse and repeat. Actually, this time we were allowed to bypass A&E and go direct to the ward. Of course, all I could do was sit in a corridor and wait for my Dad before taking him home, where he'll be spending Christmas without his wife for the first time in over 50 years. At least this time I could hold my Mum's hand at home for half an hour, tell her I love her... and pray I get to see her again. I have a present on the stairs from my Mum and I don't know if I can open it, it upsets me too much. At least she got to see me married last year, even if it could only be both sets of parents there. Not what I wanted but, if I'd left it for this year, she'd have never been able to travel.
So, for those who want to tell me that I want to be scared, those who bang on in surety about the fact that we need no restrictions, those who bang on about people dying with, not of Omicron, I want you to consider this...
The policy has always been to protect the NHS. The transmissability of it can overtake any protection that is there if it does turn out to be milder. That is why people are analysing data, rather than just concluding it automatically. That is entirely right and proper.
Deaths are not the sole thing, it's capacity in the health system - capacity to help people like my Mum and to keep her safe, not to make her a statistic that well, she's old anyway. Not, for that matter, to keep her occupying a bed that could be needed for somebody else, because we didn't take measures to protect from complications.
This time last year, a friend's Dad had a fall. He would have recovered from that, but he caught Covid in hospital, died. This year, my friend has Christmas without his Dad around for the first time. He doesn't really care about semantics, what he does know is that without Covid his Dad would still be here.
Wearing a mask, taking a LFT doesn't actually stop you from doing anything. It's incredibly stupid to not try and slow the spread of something before you know what you're dealing with. One lesson we should have learned from March 2020, and 'look at Italy' type posts at the beginning of this thread. I fear I was guilty of that, too. We are in so much a better place than this time last yar, and it would be madness to throw that away on a whim. Better to be cautious, and then celebrate the fact that there is light at the end of a tunnel. Frankly, masks and wfh shouldn't have been taken away in the first place, it makes them so much harder to put back, and they are no big deal really.
So, think of mental health in all ways. My Christmas is trashed, completely. I can't go and see my Mum because they can't let Covid spread to people like her, where vaccine or no, it would have a damned good chance of taking her out before they get a chance to try and save her. Of course, we all hope this variant is actually not *too* bad, that it can blow through fast and then things can start to lift up a little. But, life is not just about me or you... a civilised society looks out for one another, a civilised society learns from the past, a civilised society is prepared to sacrifice a little for the greater good and, again, as it stands what does wearing a mask, taking a LFT actually stop you from doing?
A civilised society listens to the medical experts. Now that is critical thinking... not just looking for the ones that vindicate what you want to happen. We all want our 'old' lives back, it's been hard for all of us. But to get to that point, we have to trust in the consensus of medical experts, and actually show some critical thinking to not try and go down random rabbit holes.
And most of all, remember that you don't know anybody's situation on here, we can all be suffering.
Should I leave this post up, really? I don't like personal posts, really. But, this thread, and board, is getting so full of gung-ho attitudes that are understandable, maybe, because who wants to be restricted. They're not necessarily helpful, however. This thread and board is also getting a prevelance of rather destructive posts that are downright wrong, and damaging, really.