As people are facing forced or voluntary isolation there have been many headlines worldwide about how people can ‘feel like a leper’. The Leprosy Mission is calling on everyone to stop using this terminology and to stop comparing coronavirus to leprosy.
“The term ‘leper’ is deeply offensive to the millions of people worldwide who have been diagnosed with leprosy. Further, leprosy is a mildly infectious disease that 95% of the world population is immune to and COVID-19 is a highly contagious disease that has caused a global pandemic. It is important that we stop using this term as the misuse of this term creates more fear and stigma around leprosy.”
This crisis shows us how World War and other wars were started: people thought that what was happening in Germany did not concern them, and it didn’t until Hitler invaded.
How many people have said including some politicians something like the following, "I wish I had known how deathly this virus is? ( and it was too late).
@Anglozone
Sorry Tracey - I shouldn’t have said leper colony (especially as I had a good relationship with sufferers from leprosy, whom I saw every day on my way to work, in Bombay).
And given that in the main, people either don’t know they have it, or are not seriously ill from it, is it worth all the hysteria? I heard a virologist yesterday saying the new strain is easier to catch but has milder symptoms. Given that so many are asymptomatic and the majority have only mild symptoms, why all this hysteria? Lockdowns have not been done properly in the UK. Even in tier 4 ,kids will still go to school, public transport will still run, people can still go shopping, go for appointments, go for walks. It either needs a complete lockdown with everything closed for a month, with rigorous testing, or stop pratting about. All the Nightingale hospitals in the UK are completely empty. So frankly I don’t think the risks are as bad as the world is making out. Everything points to it not being as bad.
The mortality rates point to it being bad…this is from UK ONS
Age-standardised and age-specific mortality rates for deaths due to COVID-19 were statistically significantly higher than mortality rates due to influenza and pneumonia when compared with the five-year average and 2020 rates.
The proportion of deaths occurring in care homes due to COVID-19 was almost double the proportion of deaths due to influenza and pneumonia (30.0% and 15.2% respectively).
In comparison with the deaths due to influenza and pneumonia occurring in the year to 31 August 2020, deaths due to COVID-19 have been higher than every year monthly data are available (1959 to 2020).
The issue is that a disease that can be asymptomatic and mild in most people is then much easier to spread to people who are vulnerable for one reason or another and who it could kill.
(It is reported that nightingale hospitals are empty because of lack of staff rather than patients. They are queuing in the corridors in standard hospitals and all non emergency/urgent stuff has been cancelled. Perhaps if they had been able to staff the nightingale hospitals then people could still have had their cancer treatment and knee replacements. Waiting list of 160,000 operations apparently)
I couldn’t agree more, Joyce. All the indications are that things will be better by Christmas next year. Can’t people miss the Christmas family get together for just ONE year for goodness sake? Actually I’m planning of having an “Australian” Christmass with my family in July by which time we think it will be possible, bloodymindedly having roast turkey and all trimmings, christmas pud and all the rest of the jollities by the swimming pool in the heat. But if it is still not safe we’ll wait.
They cannot use the nightingale hospitals because it has been reported that they have or are the process of dismantling them and they are not there anymore, unbelievable all that money and effort to build them and they have probably been slung in a skip or sold off to one of Boris pals for next to nothing
Looking at the photos there was no equipment in them…and I seem to recall that there was a shortage of the positive pressure oxygen hoods so with no staff and no hoods they were little more use than a trolley in a corridor.
