Coronavirus attitude poll
 

What's your approach to the Coronavirus? This is a public poll so your BE name will show. Keeping it simple:

Careful - anywhere from very careful to paranoid; possibly anxious; with or without reason.

Average - following the guidance, but not convinced one way or another on the infection risk; economic concerns are high.

Sceptic - where's the bleach?! risk is totally overblown, like the flu, scientists don't really know and a vaccine is on it's way. more important to live life !

Serious poll, so I've chosen non-controversial options, and kept it simple. Interested to know where other BE'ers stand on the topic as we go into what will be (by most accounts) a tough winter.

Re: Coronavirus attitude poll
 

Average with a bit of careful thrown in.

I follow basic guidance like not hanging out in groups and wearing a mask.

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I’m probably pretty Jsmth about it too. I’m content to wear a mask for the safety of everyone, accept that I may well get it, but could, if I do, quite likely recover. Generally I’m quite pragmatic, but occasionally I have an angst filled day, not for me, but worrying about humanity in general, and in particular individuals I have loved and left, and may possibly never see again, and I want my son to have a joy filled life and fear he won’t.

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Option 3 is non controversial? :eek:

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I voted "Careful" but I agree with bits of all three choices - we are at the point where the economic risks are very high, and overall I think the risks may be overblown - but I am prepared to let other people take that risk if they want to. The Pulaski family are doing OK under self-imposed lock down, and will remain so for now until the picture becomes clearer and/or a vaccine becomes available.

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I voted careful because none of the other descriptions fit.

I have to say that I have it incredibly easy compared to most on here - we only have 10 active cases in the state, all in returned citizens / residents, and all in hotel quarantine. I think the last time we had a case not in quarantine was August, but could easily have been further back than that.

Because of this, life is fairly normal, with just a little cautiousness - not many masks, supermarkets will pack shopping in your bags, you can drink in a pub, or play sports. There are restrictions - reduced visitors for aged care and you must have had a flu vaccine; maximum people in a shop limited to 1 person per 2 square meters, etc - but we do have it very easy. The only thing we cannot do is leave the country without getting permission. Anyone returning from overseas has difficulty getting flights and everyone goes to two weeks hotel quarantine that they have to pay for.

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I couldn't resist, honestly I couldn't ! Tried to make up for the small dig with a emphatic sentiment at the end. :D

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I'm somewhere between the 'controversial' and 'average.' I don't think coronavirus is fake, but I am 100% firmly in the camp that these measures cannot go on forever and rights and freedoms should not be trampled on in the name of collective safety, when one can take individual action such as the Pulaski family is doing in order to remain safe should you be in more of the "careful" camp. I also firmly believe the support systems for those who wish or have a need to isolate and do not want to venture out into the world remain in place until this is a distant memory. Sure it might cost us some money but i've never quite understood the effect of the "collective debt" on the individual.


I'm getting a little frustrated with how annoying and frustrating daily tasks are, even the simple pleasure of sitting in a cafe getting a coffee by yourself has been disrupted by lineups, social distancing circles and masks. Enjoying a meal out with your family is all but impossible due to the capacity restrictions unless you remember to make a reservation days in advance (some of us like to do things by the seat of their pants ;) ) ...and even then they still wont allow groups bigger then 6 even if you are part of the same family/all live under one roof.

And of course Canada has very draconian travel restrictions in place that the government has tacitly confirmed will go on into the new year, so travel abroad is off the table. But, even if one were to travel abroad and accept quarantine on return, is it even worth it? See the point above - the trip would likely be soured by all the restrictions in place it wouldn't be worth the money you spent on it nor the 2 weeks in isolation on return.

How long do we want to live like this before it becomes enough? The government keeps giving false hope, but the situation is getting worse, and honestly it doesn't seem like all the distancing & masks are helping. Numbers are still going up. The more they keep backtracking and changing their tune (in the name of "we keep learning new information") the more people will distrust and grow tired of the guidelines.

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This has been touched on in a couple of other threads but not really picked up.
If only it was as simple as those 'wanting to stay home' can do so and those wanting to carry on as (near) normal.

I'm 63 now - even if my stepson thinks I'm like a child sometimes :lol: - have a couple of co-morbidities and my MIL is 82. Two stepkids in the house are healthy enough. How do we live (I mean that in the general way rather than continue to breathe :rofl:) so that two can do what they want, shake off any covid they get but then come back to a house with two at risk people?

I did some googling and it seems that in North America 25% of Seniors share a household with non seniors and something like one in five households include someone with a disability. Of course not all disabilities mean 'at risk' but then there's a bunch of medical conditions that do mean 'at risk' but don't count as a disability.

It suggests an awful lot of households - at least a third, maybe up to half - containing someone at risk and others not at risk.

Fortunately for our household Covid is almost non existent inn the province and almost exclusively travel related but in other places it's probably not a good idea for the stepkids to go out and about without a care in the world and then come home.

I think that varies. Here there's one part of the province hit by travel and community spread. It's on the border with hard hit Quebec with many people living one side/working the other and exempt from self isolating. It's also reported much less mask wearing, distancing etc than the rest of the province.

Until the travel restrictions were lifted for those people crossing the border we were getting about one case a week, all returners.

Maybe rates are still going up but at slower and lower rates because of the measures. Who knows? But it does seem that every time there's been a relaxation of restrictions, there's been a spike in cases.

It's only been one summer. Soon we won't be wanting to go out so much. I'm sure we can see out the winter and see where we are with the vaccines and then decide the way to go.

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How can you reach that conclusion unless everyone is wearing a mask and SD is being universally respected as far as practical? :confused:

There are still plenty of people in my neck of the woods who won't wear a mask, who don't respect SD guidance (or don't understand it - they seem to be aiming for "as much as 6ft", not "as much as possible and in any even at least 6ft"), and who are generally out and about not (IMO) exhibiting good judgement. From what I have read mask-wearing is much less prevalent in the UK than in the US too.

But generally I agree, the continuous changing of rules and guidance, and some blatant inconsistencies (such as, for obvious reasons, wearing a mask it not required in a pub or restaurant) just creates confusion and fuels resistance, and clearly many people are tired of the rules that they don't understand, and in many cases don't even want to understand.

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This is the difference between the Asian response and the Western response. We are too busy debating the effectiveness or masks, the effectiveness of SD, groups sizes, etc, and meanwhile the virus is spreading from person to person. There's a kind of stupidity premium being paid by society as a whole. Unfortunately, it's generally the stupid ones that are reaping what they sow - it's the vulnerable. Looking at the USA from a very far distance, there's even the argument that America is a "winner's society" and if culling the weaker members are what it takes, so be it. I imagine there are many Americans ready and willing (through ignorance, of course) to sacrafice themselves or their families to keep the great shopping malls and American economy open. I don't have such a convenient analogy for the UK. Perhaps just British liberalism.

The other point that comes to mind is Stalin's aphorism that, "one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." I think we are very much in that mindset now.

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That's one perspective, another is some combination of personal freedom and independent self-reliance that are traits of both the US and the UK, and the people who live there, respectively, make Asian-style hard lock-downs impossible to achieve.

Then there is the political hot potato, in the UK at least (perhaps the US too), of those who are UK citizens but don't fully buy-in to being British, and think that the can run their own semi-autonomous communities, and who appear to have been flouting/ ignoring many attempts to restrict social mix at both a household/ family level and at the level of larger gatherings. Perhaps explaining most of the large city hotspots in the UK. :unsure:
Yup, that is very close to where we are. :(

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That's certainly the common assumption, but I don't think it has to be so. Say the infection and mortality rates were 10X what they are now, would the mythical freedom and self-reliance still hold? The irony is that the Asian countries that gave up their "freedom" in March now enjoy much more of it in October. I think the West needs to re-think its stance, the next virus might not be so forgiving.

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I'm very frustrated by the new reality, especially as I'm cautious as f*k. Nevertheless, it doesn't follow that masks and SD aren't helping. That's like saying, it doesn't seem like seatbelts save lives, given the number of traffic fatalites. I think society should toughen up a bit and get with the progam. Governments haven't handled this level of pandemic before, and althogh the UK and US are trying to out compete each other in incompetence, every government is in fact trying to do its best. The virus is a threat to the collective and therefore the collective has to protect itself against the virus. Individual viewpoints or preferences are irrelavant. As I've noted before, if this virus killed children (as opposed to the elderly) society would be far more determined in its resolve to defeat it.

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Are your stepkids being fairly sensible about the virus? There are indeed many intergenerational households, and that is why a two tier approach (of letting the young circulate freely) is problematic. And yet, in the worst case scenario, it may come to that.