Your perspective on the pandemic

Sweden did it right.

You should have titled the thread "My perspective on the pandemic" if you were going to tell it to us.

This is the first pandemic of this scale since the age of quick and constant travel. Everybody is just making things up as they go, with mixed results. I say this as someone whose life was pretty much business as usual, except no big races.

If I was going to pick a pandemic to botch the response to, it would be this one. The next one will be better now that we know what and what not to do.

When a reall one comes we are all screwed. This want even a real one man

Nature does its thing.

This pandemic could have been a whole lot worse if it weren't for scientists working around the clock. Many more millions of people would have died. We are not out of the woods so to speak, but if we keep up the current standards of social distancing, washing hands and wearing masks for several more months, we will probably be ok.

I agree with what you say but I would change your last sentence to “ Several more years“ rather than months. Unless we do a Chinese system type of lock down it will be next to impossible to return to a “normal life” within the next few years is my take, and sorry for my pessimism.

I reside in France, and for the past year has been stop and go with different measures by the government trying to appease the people with a little positive affect overall. It’s a real nightmare frankly. Lives have been ruined. Mental health issues. Suicides which people are not talking about. Financial ruin. Education has been greatly compromised and people thinking that remote learning can work as learning on site I think are gravely mistaken. Nothing replaces in situ. Social isolation and fear of one’s fellow man and woman has increased exponentially and will be a terrible legacy if and after this pandemic ends.

I reside in France, and for the past year has been stop and go with different measures by the government trying to appease the people with a little positive affect overall. It’s a real nightmare frankly. Lives have been ruined. Mental health issues. Suicides which people are not talking about. Financial ruin. Education has been greatly compromised and people thinking that remote learning can work as learning on site I think are gravely mistaken. Nothing replaces in situ. Social isolation and fear of one’s fellow man and woman has increased exponentially and will be a terrible legacy if and after this pandemic ends.

I would say it’s the same in Canada. I live on the West Coast and they just made up a new rule that we can be fined over $500 for travelling out of our health region. They have even closed camp grounds ffs. And don’t even get me started on the terrible job this country has been doing on getting the vaccines out.

Greg hasn’t been affected much due to not having a job or money to travel often in the first place. Personally I have saved a lot of money from not being able to race, travel or eat at restaurants, but need to travel in order to see my family. I also really miss races.

Good to hear that you are beating Covid in your own way, Greg.

How is your plan coming along to volunteer at the food bank? As you said, Covid has been hard for a lot of people (the ones not so well-equipped as you to handle it). These people rely on food banks and other help, so it's very gracious of you to pitch in.

Have you decided how many hours per week you'll be spending on the volunteer work?

It's here to stay. Like any "new" virus it is most virulent at first and Darwin happens. I had it, mostly a lot of fatigue for a couple of weeks and now feeling pretty normal. I was talking to a medical friend of mine who suggested I could make $$$ by selling my plasma with the antibodies in it.

Got and getting through it great . It still sucks. Angry for the kids.....all kids not just mine.

Sham 69 wrote:

Nature does its thing.

Nature? Mans' stupidity caused this!

Well, what amazes me is how complacent a lot of people are. Just yesterday, I was reading about a study that looked at the long term health effects of catching Covid that are leaving a huge amount of people with permanent damage to various parts of their bodies . It made frightening reading.

AND, surely mankind has never experienced a pandemic like this before EVER! We've had plagues but they weren't world-wide. Even aids was restricted to people who had sex AND weren't careful about things. This is an invisible menace that can strike anyone, I feel that we've got to try to totally eradicate this as a dry run for something a lot nastier that will surely emerge in the future.

I'm lucky that I can work from home. Yeah it's depressing being in the same room all day and not seeing mates, but at least it's financial security.

Plenty of self employed people struggling even with the furlough & grants.

And so many pubs, bars and other independent small businesses have shut down for life.

And then there's the NHS workers putting themselves on the front line, many of whom have died.

So be grateful for what you *do* have.

And also be thankful you live in a country where the vaccine rollout has been world beating. Boris screwed up the lockdowns but has finally done good now.

Be thankful that we can sit out in pub gardens drinking a pint of our favourite beer or lager, basking in the sun, as cases in other countries like France and USA are back rising again, and even worse India are hitting 5k deaths a day now.

And be thankful that races are now back open. Most of us on this site run as training for competition.. life is good for us now comparatively.

My wife and I are retired. We can hunker down at home and maintain minimal contact with the outside when we wish.

It aint the plague of the 14th Century. People need to get over it.

Watched about an hour of the baseball game in Chicago last night. The attendance was 8,500. Great to see people were coming out and doing something normal like going to a sporting event.

COVID-19 had no effect on projected global population growth in 2020. The world population INCREASED by 80 Million last year.

It got Julia Webb, the American record holder in the mile Alan Webb and a number of the unsophisticated....and many pastors from Tyler Texas and Arkansas

I don’t have anyone in my friends circle so unsophisticated so I only see such people on LetsRun downplaying its severity (eg Jamin, Unkle, Sham69)

It killed guys like Herman Cain and Luke Letlow and Jerry Relph

During the toilet paper craziness (March 2020) it was a great time for when people were acting Super irrationally so stocks as a whole were at a real bargain price so it gave opportunity for some people to buy pretty low and realign with retirement goals. It also was a good time to focus on the things you can control...fitness goals, gardening goals, career goals (assuming you can work from home). So it wasn’t all that bad imo.

portsea57 wrote:

Well, what amazes me is how complacent a lot of people are. Just yesterday, I was reading about a study that looked at the long term health effects of catching Covid that are leaving a huge amount of people with permanent damage to various parts of their bodies . It made frightening reading.

AND, surely mankind has never experienced a pandemic like this before EVER! We've had plagues but they weren't world-wide. Even aids was restricted to people who had sex AND weren't careful about things. This is an invisible menace that can strike anyone, I feel that we've got to try to totally eradicate this as a dry run for something a lot nastier that will surely emerge in the future.

Oh, yes, and I should have mentioned that in the study, referred to above, experts reckon that jst having Covid will shorten the life-span of millions and millions of people. This is very serious stuff!

Life expectancy is shortened due to the pandemic death effects on statistics. That's not the same as stating that people who have had covid will have a shorter life. That makes no sense. Our immune system fights off viruses all the time. Why should covid be anything different?

As for my perspective on covid, I've learned that people are generally science illiterate. But I have also come to realize that science 'knows' too little. We can't expect science to answer most gritty questions, simply because no one has researched them. So we're left with guess work based on analogy to previous studies. Hard to get a concensus that way.

RyecorDone wrote:

portsea57 wrote:

Oh, yes, and I should have mentioned that in the study, referred to above, experts reckon that jst having Covid will shorten the life-span of millions and millions of people. This is very serious stuff!

Life expectancy is shortened due to the pandemic death effects on statistics. That's not the same as stating that people who have had covid will have a shorter life. That makes no sense. Our immune system fights off viruses all the time. Why should covid be anything different?

As for my perspective on covid, I've learned that people are generally science illiterate. But I have also come to realize that science 'knows' too little. We can't expect science to answer most gritty questions, simply because no one has researched them. So we're left with guess work based on analogy to previous studies. Hard to get a concensus that way.

Oh dear. You just don't get it at all. AND, the problem is, there are millions like you.