It's not "only the flu", we've done this one to death. The flu doesn't mutate like this virus does, it's not as contagious either. The flu also doesn't kill over 100,000 people in a year, in fact, it's usually about 10% of that.
*Love* the idea of some having a certain amount of people dying as a measure of whether they should take precautions or not. "Oh only 100 people died today, it's fine". We've now reached the point where actual people dying just becomes a statistic, basically dehumanised in order to defend people's decisions. Alright isn't it, until you're the one that starts losing loved ones and then those numbers actually start to mean something again.
We've opened up, we're not going to go back to lockdown again. I can deal with that, but I haven't stopped wearing a mask because I'm in a classroom with 28 kids and another adult over 50 for seven hours a day, **** knows how many times I'm exposed to it and I won't risk spreading it to others. I've had four kids off with Covid this week alone, one was blue lighted to hospital because her heart rate spiked. She's seven and was a perfectly healthy child, hopefully this won't impact her long term but I doubt she'll be so lucky, nobody else I've met who's had it has fully recovered, even those who had it a year ago. So you go ahead and treat it like flu or a snotty nose or whatever you tell yourself to make yourself feel better about your choices. You do that.
This virus isn't going to be stopped by a vaccine alone, it's going to require everybody taking precautions to limit interaction where possible, just like other countries have. I'd wager a bag of cash with a dollar sign on it that the UK ends up having the highest Covid figures in Europe this winter, we just don't like being told to change our habits. Electric cars? **** off. Eat less meat? Shares in Toby Carvery shoot up. We just can't do what other nations can. We're isolationist as a nation, but even at a societal level, we're incredibly self centred and we just aren't willing to take that step to pull together. Until we do, this virus isn't going anywhere.
Hopefully everybody pulls through this Christmas with no tragedy or illness, I really hope they do after the year we've had.
