No one has said if they leave the house they will die and I am not aware of any educational or even political message around covid that implies that. If you want a fear and misinformation campaign check out Farage's Brexit. Apart from that though you make a serious point. Lockdown affects some much more severely than others. Much easier to be middle class and have a spacious house with a big garden than cramped up in a council flat with screaming kids on the poverty line. As you say, mental health is a big issue this last year. What's the immediate alternative given that people consistently vote in right wing scum who care nothing for public health investment, housing or disparity of income? Open everything up and tell people to do what they want? That's hundreds of thousands of deaths. What about their relatives and loved ones? How many suicides will that be? How many alcoholics, how many drug addicts, how many in an agony of grief? And what about the complete overwhelming of hospitals, how many more deaths for those suffering accidents, heart disease, cancer who can't get a bed?
It's interesting to me that those publicly advocating an end to all restrictions are right wing nut jobs who don't give a sh*t about anything except protecting the rich. Not saying that's you or anyone else on here, I'm thinking of Peter Hitchens, Julia Hartley Brewer and Murdoch's talking sh*t radio.
Fear is everywhere, coming from govt officials and media that is impossible to avoid. Remember those models that we were seeing earlier in the year? One clown had projected 2M deaths in the US (
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/world/europe/coronavirus-imperial-college-johnson.html). They keep coming up with massive #s that make no sense. Here's a recent one projecting the # of deaths to double in the next 3.5 months (
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/researchers-covid-19-death-toll-could-double-winter-world-war-n1247726) which is obscene considering most of the "low hanging fruit" already died , people's awareness and improved therapeutics. Local governments do the same and i've seen similar outrageous "forecasts" at my state level.
Then there's the "BREAKING NEWS: TOM HANKS HAS COVID", or "BREAKING NEWS: 1 STUDENT TESTS POSITIVE AT LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL". Do you ever see the headlines being about all the people who recovered, which is the absolute vast majority? No, it's always about who got it and who died.
When this is all you see, there's no surprise some people are scared to get treatment for their illnesses. Locally, hospitals have had to lay off entire departments because so many patients stopped going.
All summer long, kids were in summer camps and youth sports and not a word on schools from local government. 1-2 weeks before schools are schedule to open suddenly new studies come out about the risks at school.
How this has been handled has been a disaster and in great part of that is due to the fear being pushed onto people with all those BS models and constant reporting of every case and every death.
The elder and immuno-compromised should be protected and the young and healthy allowed to lead as close to normal lives as possible.
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