Originally Posted by
shorthauldad
Not wishing to seem dismissive, but I've never really understood what the phrase "life-changing" is supposed to mean, it always felt a bit too much like newspeak to me.
It's perfectly true that some COVID cases have a night or two in hospital, may get an oxygen line, may be put on drip, and are there more for observation. They are the lucky ones in my view.
Quite a lot of those who leave ICU leave with severe mental health trauma. PTSD in about 50% of COVID cases, for example, and just under half of that half will suffer PTSD for the rest of their lives, if it follows Ebola. Many a marriage breaks up a few years after ICU - sometimes the patient finds it difficult to maintain the bond, their priorities change; sometimes the spouse finds the patient is no longer the person they married. We are seeing a lot of permanent lung damage, ruling out things like going cycling with your kids. They would be the top 3, there are about 20 similar outcomes, with lower incidence levels. The people who are unvaccinated and who suffer most in hospital are disproportionately from lower socio-economic groups, very unlikely to have a degree, more likely to have left education at 16 years, less likely to own their own home or have a well paid job. So they often leave hospital in dire economic straits. This, unfortunately, is often the way with poor health outcomes, health inequalities just hammer those least able to ride it out, while the middle classes get their jabs and rarely get exposed to this.
Why on earth would any sensible adult even contemplate risks like that, even at a low risk level, when a free, safe, effective vaccine takes away 90% plus of these outcomes? Even if they don't care about themselves, in my experience there will be someone in their family who will feel tremendous guilt for not "making them" take their vaccine.
I'm only in ICU as part of a research project, those nurses and doctors who work in COVID ICU are real hawks on getting all their family vaccinated since they have seen the avoidable damage done to younger lives - I'm quite laid back by comparison! The only good thing is that after getting out ICU almost every single patient - and their families - get their vaccines after the requisite 4 weeks, I can't think of a recent exception to that, and I'm often the person administering it.
As for the point about children not getting educated or seeing relatives - yes I completely agree that there is also a mental health crisis buried in here, the like of which hasn't really surfaced yet but it scares me. But the restrictions are now largely over, children are only off school if they are ill, and the quickest way to get back to normal is for all those eligible to get their jabs. At that point we, collectively, will have taken all the reasonable steps. No other solution is realistically on the table.