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Originally Posted by Hugh
I thought CF'ers might find this item that I found on Twitter informative - she explains clearly why lockdown (to get the number of infected down) then track and trace is the optimal policy until a vaccine is available (uses US figures, but I'm sure they are the same for us).
https://twitter.com/rachel_elisse/st...17792488062982 |
Rachel seems to contradict herself and is not entirely accurate in her portrayal of this issue.
However, I just want to highlight two points in particular, as most of this has been done to death already.
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And unless you staff nursing homes with robots — and that is just the start — you CAN’T shield the vulnerable.
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Surely, this is the point - you cannot shield the vulnerable - or the rest of the population, for that matter, from this virus. So the lockdown is not eliminating the deaths, it's just slowing down the infection rate. If you locked everyone away so it couldn't get to them, the virus would simply start spreading again as soon as you unlock the doors again, because the virus is out there and people from abroad will keep bringing it in. Only herd immunity or a vaccine is able to thwart it.
It would be bad enough if we managed to deliver a vaccine by September, but it is unlikely that this would be mass produced and given to all the population by the end of the year. That is the best case scenario.
People are already sick and tired of the lockdown and starting to breach it in greater numbers, and we are only in week 5! I cannot understand how people can seriously believe that this lockdown can be sustained until the end of the year, let alone another 18 months, if this is how long it takes to get a new vaccine. I can tell you that the government is not going to be funding 80% of salaries for much longer, and businesses need to get back on their feet pretty quickly or they will collapse, taking all those jobs with them.
No, people have had enough, and that means we have to get to some semblance of normality quickly. Sadly, yes, that will mean more deaths. But which is the less of two evils, and is it really in our gift to control this thing? Waiting in lockdown or partial lockdown for 6-18 months is not at all sustainable.
Incidentally, I have heard many older people say that they are not prepared to spend their final years in lockdown, and they will not comply with these rules beyond the 12-week period. If that's what older people think, how will you control the younger ones? I can tell you, you won't, and this is one good reason why this country needs to relax these restrictions as soon as possible, despite the death toll.
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...there are some who argue that the virus is less deadly than thought, perhaps no more deadly than the flu. If that were the case, it might make sense to let the virus go. But that also flies in the face of the evidence.
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Some may argue that, but I think what those of us who are trying to put this into perspective have been arguing is that the death figures are not all that exceptional, in that you can get something like up to 40,000 flu deaths in a year and people barely notice this. Yet look at the news each night and the figures are sensationalised to the point that some more highly strung people have been terrified by this. But we have only just reached these kind of numbers and the figures are now declining.
The five year average for the number of deaths in the UK have been exceeded now, it is true, but not by a particularly large number - 184,950 in 2020 compared with 174,718 over the same period on average over the last five years. Does the BBC announce these figures throughout the year and agonise over these deaths? No, they don't, and people scarcely notice as a result. The media is scare-mongering big time, and while it is sad that anyone has to die, most of us know that you cannot control nature as some would claim.
The power of human beings to control everything is limited and we need to come to terms with that. We have to ask ourselves whether the ruination of our economy is worth the relatively small impact we can make on the continuing progression of this virus before a vaccine can be found.