Thread by @HZiauddeen

🧵 'Living with' COVID-19: why do we have to & what is it going to be like?

(TL;DR: because that's what our leaders have led us to & it'll be a bit like what things are like now in the UK and Sweden, only a lot worse.)

Longer answer ⬇️
(1/30)

'Living with the virus' is not going to be for everyone. One major group it won't work very well for are those who will die from* the virus (conservative estimate- in the region of 40,000 every year in the UK)

*if you're going to say 'with', this isn't the 🧵 for you.
(2/30)

It will mean living with ongoing infections and their short and long term consequences, for health and for the rest of life. In case there is any doubt, COVID-19 is not an infection you want to catch, it is definitely not one that you would want your child to catch.
(3/30)

This is to emphasise that it is therefore not an infection you would want anyone to catch. Because apart from LongCOVID and MIS-C, this is a virus that invades the brain and causes a multi-system illness with many potential and very plausible long term complications.
(4/30)

Living with the virus will entail a significant burden of morbidity for the foreseeable future. It will be a factor to consider in many future healthcare consultations for various conditions 'Did you have COVID-19?'*
(5/30)

*On mental health impacts:

https://twitter.com/HZiauddeen/status/1448050555281096704?s=20

So whether you're the govt or a citizen, asking people to live with the virus is one helluva 'take one for the team' with the added insult that if you do take one, you're no longer part of the team.
(6/30)

The deaths and the health impacts will have a profound impact on people's lives and all the other systems we depend on from healthcare to the economy. In the UK we are already seeing the health service on its knees.

This btw is the unlikely benign scenario.
(7/30)

It's the scenario in which govts & vested interests don't take advantage of the situation to further advance their own agendas & interests & gain further control over resources. All indicators are that they absolutely will.
(8/30)

https://twitter.com/HZiauddeen/status/1437024094915072009

One can get why govts, businesses & vested interests want us to live with the virus. Those whose wealth making has been affected by the pandemic are very angry (for wealth makers, not being allowed to make as much wealth as they want can be worse than losing wealth).
(9/30)

But why would our fellow citizens, including those who are more deprived and disadvantaged, want this? There are some very understandable reasons and some less charitable ones, most of which link to capitalism and way it has shaped the world, in some way.
(10/30)

The understandable ones:
1. Their lives, health & livelihoods have been seriously affected (esp given the failures of govt support & the health service being overwhelmed) & it seems things will not get better till life returns to something like the previous normal.
(11/30)

The latter bit is a lie they have been fed by the govt and the media. There isn't going to be a sustainable return to the previous normal.
2. They are fed up with the inconsistency & incoherence of the govt's strategy & messaging 'If it's really serious then why do X?'
(12/30)

3. They are weary and have already lost so much.
4. It is difficult to see the positive impact of their actions i.e. how do you see all the people you stopped from dying and falling ill?
5. They have been seriously misled by the govt, media & other actors (e.g. FaceBook)
(13/30)

6. They have never had a proper sense of what this is all for or been thanked for their work (again a failure of govt) but they have felt the losses and the pain and not had their suffering acknowledged (instead it has been weaponised).
(14/30)

The less charitable reasons:
1. They don't really care about what happens to others. This is easier if you've been led to believe that COVID-19 is not a serious illness 'it's just like the flu'.
2. They don't think it will affect them because they're rich and/or special.
(15/30)

3. They don't think the protection of others is worth the inconvenience they will have to be subject to.
4. 'Look we've put up with enough from you alarmists and catastrophisers, now we want out and properly out, no masks, no tests, no nothing!'
(16/30)

5. COVID-scepticism, antivaxx and other related drivers*. You are so convinced you're in the right that you believe you are doing the right thing.

*There is lot of blame to be placed on the many actors (incl govt, media, FB) who have actively promoted these movts

(17/30)

My biggest worry about all the above is how badly they have poisoned the well of collective action.
Because if we are to turn this situation around, not just in the UK but across the globe, we will need collective action because this is a truly global pandemic
(18/30)

We need to control our individual national epidemics to protect the rest of the world because once you open up travel, we'll see a resurgence of the epidemics (see Vietnam, Singapore, Australia), especially now with the more transmissible delta variant and its variants.
(19/30)

And that's why 'living with the virus' is a mindset of 'I/we will be fine (tough luck for the others)'.

How will we manage to coordinate collective action with things as they are? It will take extraordinary leadership (so not an option for the UK) and grass roots work.
(20/30)

The latter is difficult when people are weary & just about managing to survive under the collective stresses. However it is going to be impossible if we're going to pretend it's going to be ok.

It's worrying that other countries are looking to the UK as model to follow.
(21/30)

Because they're looking at a country that seems to be a projecting a massive pretence while things crumble. We're a terrible cautionary example!

Finally, why are we here? Because we were brought here. There were so many points when we could have changed course.
(22/30)

But at every point our govt took us further down this road & other govts have done this too. We didn't need to live with this virus (and as I've said above, we can't). But the longer this has gone on, the further we get from this.
(23/30)

https://twitter.com/HZiauddeen/status/1414236543137591299

We have more transmissible & more virulent variants, vaccines that only target the wildtype virus, massive vaccine inequity, and we have the crushing weight of all the failures of leadership that led us here & the massive change of direction that we need seems unlikely.
(24/30)

Now, we may very well have no option but to live with this virus. This is a position that we have been led to, not the position we started from. When it is presented to us now, it is presented as if it was always this way or that it was inevitable.
(25/30)

There's one particular aspect of the living with the virus that I want to mention is the idea that SARS-CoV-2 will become endemic in the future, like the flu. This frequently made statement is a small masterpiece of scientific legerdemain.
(26/30)

It seems to say that SARS-CoV-2 will become like the flu (thus contradicting all those who have insisted thus far that SARS-CoV-2 is just like the flu), namely a virus we live with that causes a mild illness in most and a fatal illness in a few.
(27/30)

But all it can reliably mean is that SARS-CoV-2 will become endemic (i.e. become a stable illness in the population) in the way that flu is endemic (a stable illness in the population). It doesn't necessarily mean that it will become a mild virus or illness.
(28/30)

Malaria is endemic in many regions of the world and it is not a mild illness.
It may be that over time SARS-CoV-2 may become a mild virus. Even if it does, it will kill and maim a lot of people on its way there, and we're talking about years here.
(29/30)

So saying we need to live with the virus because it'll ultimately become endemic and possibly milder is accepting that a lot more people are going to die and fall ill and that's a price that we'll just have to pay to get there.
(30/30)