Since you?ve all got nothing to do, you can play with this. It?s the covid version of the QRisk app, if you are familiar with that. It even has the algorithm.

I have at least a ten times higher chance of dying of a heart attack than covid in the next three months if I compare them. So we are back to the self evident need for people to get some exercise. Who knew?

https://qcovid.org/Calculation

If you want the short answer, Type 2 is the highest risk factor and worse than some quite startling conditions.

Is it just me or does that website seem very suspect?

If you consider the NHS & Oxford Uni to be:
https://digital.nhs.uk/coronavirus/risk-assessment/population

Seem there's more chance of getting splattered in a car crash or getting some other horrible condition.
If the numbers are reasonably reliable it's a 0.03 per cent chance when I ran them, which seems remarkably low given where we are.
I do sometime wonder if paranoia and other interests have overtaken practicality and pragmatism.  Difficult to tell from all the media spin.

There's still 21,000 people in hospital & 2,700 on ventilators (we only had just over 4,000 ICU beds at start of this), just need to wait for the flu season to end.

Following Zombiecake's post, it's not the absolute risk of getting Covid that's the problem, it's the potential for a further major outbreak.

Overall, less than 20% of the population are believed to have had the disease so far and a similar number have been vaccinated. Therefore, 60% of the population have no protection. 'Herd Immunity' probably needs 85-90% of the population to be protected. The highest risk categories who have already been vaccinated aren't great contributors to general disease transmission as most of them have been relatively shielded. In a few weeks' time, most of those at greatest risk of death will have been vaccinated so it would be possible to relax restrictions even in the expectation this would cause a further outbreak among the young and 'healthy'. This will lead to a further rise in hospital admissions and deaths, though hopefully peaking at a much lower level than the most recent outbreak. Similarly, there will be a rise in people with long Covid. It probably wouldn't break the NHS but would definitely delay the time the NHS started to get back to normal and would have a major impact on the already huge waiting lists.

This may be a price worth paying if the economic, psychological, social and political gains of re-opening society outweigh the costs of letting the disease loose again. However (1) I suspect the government will be especially cautious as they have been so over-optimistic on several occasions in the past and have little credibility left and (2) the risk that further mutations in the virus will invalidate some or all of the benefits we have seen so far. How serious this risk is, I don't know but there is an influential group of virologists and epidemiologists who are arguing for a very, very cautious approach.

More virulent strains will obviously extend the "flu season"

Fjell said:

I have at least a ten times higher chance of dying of a heart attack than covid in the next three months if I compare them. So we are back to the self evident need for people to get some exercise. Who knew?

Click to expand...

Lets hope the lockdown continues to work, then and the numbers continue to decline, so that when you have your heart attack, or get hit by that bus, the nurses and doctors can give you the attention and dedication you've come to expect from them.

However - there's far less uptake of the vaccine among members of the BAME community, a large proportion of NHS staff overall. This feature on C4 News the other night was a bit alarming as it suggests that even within hospital staff the take-up is much lower:

https://www.channel4.com/news/study-suggests-vaccine-take-up-at-hospital-trust-lower-among-black-and-asian-staff

So we could end up with a situation where every racist old granny in Britain starts refusing to be treated by BAME staff in hospital. And you know where that leads. Even outside the hospital environment, the effects on society could be similar if that mistrust starts running backwards and white (vaccinated) folks start avoiding black and brown (maybe not vaccinated), etc. Not what we really need right now, especially when the Black Lives Matter campaign will be essentially running the opposite story. The leader of the study says that "I'm no expert on ethics". Neither am I, but I'm not bad, after half a century on the planet.

Well at least the chances of getting run over by a bus have lessened (for most people)

There's possibly a higher chance of a bus driver falling asleep at the wheel from utter boredom or loneliness

Your chances of dying form non-Covid related causes may differ on an individual basis.

HOWEVER:

The point to bear in mind during a pandemic like this the question you should be asking is not "Will I get Covid and die or have a major illness or  long term effects?". It should be "If I get Covid, symptomatic or not, will I infect someone else?"

I put our parents in the tool, and one of them came out at 1 in 30 chance of death (ie would die if they got it). Good thing we locked them in a cupboard until they were jabbed. Waiting on second jab still for more comfort.

Still leaves the fact that the only real lever outside of vaccines is weight (and thus diabetes). No progress on that front in the UK. Something needs to be done for the long term.

There's still a lot of mixed messages coming out.  Government are now saying there's never been an outbreak related to people massing on beaches  https://uk.news.yahoo.com/no-covid-19-outbreaks-beaches-132834386.html  despite the hysteria at the time that people that do so are killing people.  That also seems to have been the case with all those statue toppling protest in 2020 that didn't result in mass outbreaks.  (By the way I don't go to beaches, I'm spending most time indoors.)
Yet everyone is pretty much banned from going outside except for minimal periods.  Maybe fresh air and sunlight exposure isn't so bad after all?>
Really a detailed independent and regularly revised media spin free break down of all factors, e,g. age, location, weight, ethnicity, population density, pre-existing health conditions, where they might have caught it (care homes, etc.), positive tests vs hospitalisation or death, real test accuracy, and so on is needed rather than blanket extrapolated numbers, and the constant panic driven go out side and you'll kill someone mantras.  Maybe that info exists and there's a reluctance to publish it.  Who knows.

ZombieCake said:

There's still a lot of mixed messages coming out.  Government are now saying there's never been an outbreak related to people massing on beaches  https://uk.news.yahoo.com/no-covid-19-outbreaks-beaches-132834386.html  despite the hysteria at the time that people that do so are killing people.  That also seems to have been the case with all those statue toppling protest in 2020 that didn't result in mass outbreaks.  (By the way I don't go to beaches, I'm spending most time indoors.)
Yet everyone is pretty much banned from going outside except for minimal periods.  Maybe fresh air and sunlight exposure isn't so bad after all?>
Really a detailed independent and regularly revised media spin free break down of all factors, e,g. age, location, weight, ethnicity, population density, pre-existing health conditions, where they might have caught it (care homes, etc.), positive tests vs hospitalisation or death, real test accuracy, and so on is needed rather than blanket extrapolated numbers, and the constant panic driven go out side and you'll kill someone mantras.  Maybe that info exists and there's a reluctance to publish it.  Who knows.

Click to expand...

I don't disagree with the principle.

The problem is that the execution relies either on a very complicated set of rules, or people to use their common sense.

Plus that is what is required to control it in inner cities & if they don't see it happening elsewhere, then there is no chance there (& many aren't, which is one reason it's taking so long)

I'm outdoors for hours a day, every day, as I can't see any point in staying inside if I'm on my own and I don't have to do work during the daytime - I've got all night too! Fresh air, exercise and sunlight is better than anything else if you don't need to spend money on entertainment. One of my friends, a freelance musician, hasn't really left the house since last March, and he sounds shocking on the phone now. He is fundamentally very lazy and unfit, and somewhat anti-social anyway, but he's essentially used the pandemic as an excuse to do absolutely nothing but smoke and watch TV. So half our phone chat is just him coughing. I smoke, but he's ridiculous.

I tried to persuade him to meet me for a walk to get some fresh air, as nicely as I could, on the premise that it would be good to see him 'in person', but he flatly refused on grounds of potential 'contamination' or something. And that walking up and down his stairs was more than enough exercise. Bollocks. He's just gonna die soon anyway from all the other health problems he's developing far faster. I know for a fact he'll start whinging about the vaccine too when it's his turn, but hopefully his wife (who works for the council and so more grounded in reality) will crack him around the head and drag him down to the doc's. I'll help her if she asks.

Looks like the Home Office doesn't even know the law or rules or guidelines:

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/home-office-grossly-misstates-law-133731450.html

Makes it much harder to know what to do.  Somewhat scary.

That is what the government originally suggested, but didn't legislate.

ZombieCake said:

Yet everyone is pretty much banned from going outside except for minimal periods.  Maybe fresh air and sunlight exposure isn't so bad after all?

Click to expand...

The law places no limit on the time you can spend outside