There’s no doubt this heartless virus is readily transmitted and can be fatal.
However the purpose of lockdown was to “protect the NHS and save lives” (sorry can’t quite remember the nightly broadcast statement now). My understanding is it was achieved, one way or another, in that the NHS didn’t collapse and the poor folks that needed hospital care were able to get it, thankfully. Today the UK death rate has dropped significantly (thankfully a fact) and I understand that hospital intensive care beds are no longer anywhere near full of CV19 (I’m happy to see data on this aspect, as I’ve only anecdotal info from Mr. I-Can’t-Say-Who). And this is while the number of cases is going up again.
I don’t think additional lockdown will help anything just now.
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I think all we are seeing is testing picking up the true prevalence of the virus, and indirectly confirming it is in the majority benign.
More tests = more positives.
If the test is 99% accurate, which by all accounts is about right, there will be 1% erroneous results.
For simplicity say these split evenly between false positives and false negatives.
In a population of 65million thats 325,000 false positives and 325,000false negatives.
So if by some miracle we tested the whole population overnight, with the current test, we would see 325,000 cases reported in errors alone.
Now, it has long been suspected the virus is a lot more prevalent and the majority of people have either had it or are carrying it asymptomatically.
We are entering sniffle season so every mallingering halfwit with a cold is getting tested in the hope of getting a two week holiday, maybe harsh, or the hysteria whipped up has people genuinely petrified.
The death rate.
The death rate is not increasing now as it did previously.
There are three possibilities,
1, The vulnerable have already been taken and those left are much more resilient.
2, The original deaths were wrongly attributed to Covid.
3, The virus has mutated to something much less virulent.
Unfortunately the government has reacted in a manner that has forced their hand as to future action.
If they say "It wasn't as bad as we thought" they are blamed for trashing the economy and possible avoidable deaths as a result of limiting access to health care.
So it looks like they are doubling down but I can't see an exit strategy, when and how do we return to normal?
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You've highlighted an important point... when you're managing a country you need to look at the macro level, not the micro level. You have to do what is good for the country as a whole and not what is good for Mrs Jones at No. 32 or your M-I-L.
Whenever the government or indeed commentators on this forum, talk about the general situation, someone will always bring up a specific case of someone they know who has died or might die. That seems to instantly trump the situation of the whole country... so we never get anywhere.
The simple fact is that the vast majority of people that catch the virus have either no symptoms or very mild symptoms. The number of people that have symptoms that require medical attention is incredibly small... and yes yes yes I know that 'small' does mean that 'some' will suffer, but it's a very very small proportion.
An example of the nonsensicalness of all this is the school teachers saying they didn't want schools to reopen until it was 'safe'. Kids are far far more likely to get run-over on the way to school than from the virus when they get there !!
If a similar argument was used for road traffic we would have to ground all vehicles until driving can be made safe.
What is safe, no deaths, no injuries, no crashes?
uk.yahoo.com
