Thread by @1goodtern

Why don't people grasp how serious this is?

Across an entire population, losing more than three years of your healthy life expectancy...

That is just staggering.

Especially because of this:

The big problem is that it *isn't even distributed evenly*.

I mean you might think that losing 3.3 years is bad.

But actually, that's 3.3 years spread across all the people.

So if the population were 5 people, it would be 16.5 healthy years lost.

But because it is not distributed evenly, different people lose different amounts of healthy years.

So Person A might lose 1 year of healthy life.
Person B might lose none.
Person C might lose 2 years.
Person C might lose 0.5 years.

And then the rest of the full weight of the loss of healthy years comes down heavy on Person D.

They lose THIRTEEN YEARS of healthy life.

And actually it's bad enough if it's distributed evenly.

That's three and a third years of lost salary, lost contribution to society, lost family time, lost pensions contributions, lost joy.

But also the weight of all of that loss having to be carried by society.

The economic loss caused by that?
Huge.
The societal loss from all of that?
Huge.
The individual loss from all of that?
Huge.

But when it's distributed unevenly, you get some lives that win the lottery and some that don't.

And that's where the current injustice hits hardest.

Some people's lives have been absolutely ravaged by long covid.

Their healthy years have been snatched away from them, and it's there being charted in brutal black and white:

And blue and light blue.

But actually a load of people haven't even noticed yet that their own health has been stolen by covid infections.

I'm supporting a woman who's retiring early after developing a string of health problems after her covid infections.

She's struggling financially because she's supporting her own daughter who has a string of health problems after her covid infections.

And what's even more hideous is that the full effect of covid infections is not even fully evident in the healthy life expectancy charts.

These charts are built on actual health situations now.

They don't factor in what it means to kids born today to catch covid every year for the rest of their lives.

So the full scale of the problem isn't even close to appearing in these charts yet.

And, as someone who was predicting this decline in the charts long before it was even visible, believe me that it is going to get worse.

And worse.

And worse.

You should have believed me the first time.

You should have believed the science.

Covid infections, every covid infection you have throughout your life, will shave time off your healthy life expectancy.

Stop catching Covid, stop spreading it.

Unless you like growing old early, growing sick early, and dying early.

ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…

Here's a simple analogy: