Covid-19 and the madness of crowds

They will be called the Coronarians.

Yes, Boris has tested positive and only has mild symptoms. We can only hope.

 

I'm not sure from that which way you're hoping.

 

Utter certainty, then, that half of Whitehall’s senior echelons will be impacted.

Suggestion for the next Labour Party Leader in his/her first question to the PM: “Could the Prime Minister please provide The House with his report and thoughts as to how the handshaking containment phase went?”

It is interesting, and I would be curious to learn of your thoughts on it:

“The government claims its approach to Covid-19 has been based on science. Yet the data shows that deaths from the disease are overwhelmingly among the over-70s and those with underlying medical conditions, and the scientific conclusion should have been that people in those groups must isolate themselves completely while everyone else was encouraged to continue life as normal.

The failure to follow this policy has been compounded by the absence of mass viral testing to monitor the spread of Covid-19, protect health workers and trace contacts of those infected. The effectiveness of large scale screening and contact tracing has allowed South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore to combat Covid-19 effectively without lockdowns.

Instead our government, and indeed most governments around the world, has been panicked by the media and public opinion into imposing draconian restrictions on the whole population. This is exactly the wrong type of herd response - that of lemmings, jumping over a cliff from which the economy will probably not recover for at least a decade.

Excess deaths caused by unemployment and economic deprivation (including reduced real-terms funding for the NHS) will almost certainly exceed the deaths caused directly by the Coronavirus.”

My opinion is that this is an extremely brave and insightful letter. The point about mass testing was made very eloquently here by Steve G (and I apologised to him for talking out of my arse when disagreeing, which he graciously, as ever, responded to). I have made the point repeatedly about the disgraceful behaviour of the media in all of this. Policy has basically been informed by sheer panic, and the war footing leads to poor decision making, not helped at all by the data available to politicians and decision makers being utterly woeful in its completeness, and the fact that years of austerity has led to a terrible situation as regards our country’s infrastructure.

Don’t think that you have heard the last of herd immunity. It will become, in my opinion, necessary, and is being practiced in Sweden, should this lockdown last more than a matter of a few weeks. I don’t think people will stand for extended periods of lockdown, and the financial cost will, by then, be calamitous.

I also think, by the way, that a large section of the population have probably had this bloody thing already. The figures being published daily are simply not credible, based as they are on limited testing, and, of course, if the damned thing is as infectious as we are being told, well many, many people will have spread it far and wide in the two or so months we all carried on as normal. Many will have had either mild, or no, symptoms.

My comments in addition to the letter I quote should not be seen as some form of political rant. The situation is undoubtedly difficult for policy makers (I am not one), but, at the end of the day, we do elect and appoint them for levelheaded responses to situations, and, most certainly, austerity following the financial meltdown was a clear political and economic choice on their part, for which many people are suffering. 

Also, before somebody does post it, I am NOT belittling the extreme pain which is undeniably felt by those who have lost loved ones. The fact that many of them will have had underlying conditions which were in effect terminal illnesses themselves does not detract from that. I am not a thoughtless b*****d, just an ever so slightly autistic sad b*****d who tends to examine such issues clinically and with a cynical eye born of a lifetime in public service. That was my exact approach to Brexit, as well, trying to understand the reasons why the people voted as they did, and putting across a rational argument for them doing so. Didn’t go down well in some quarters, but tough. Debate and arguments are supposed to encompass all shades of opinion. That is how you reach an informed consensus, not a disaster as both Brexit and Covid-19 have been, and will be.

Indeed. I am of the opinion that the fallout from this will be unimaginable, and I am actually a “glass half full” kind of chap. Not this time. It is not out of the question, or scaremongering, to surmise that this will end up as a late 20’s/early 30’s type of depression, and we all know how that ended up.

You are, of course, perfectly entitled to your opinion, but I think that someone who was qualified in immunology is pretty well informed. I might also add that if you put 10 scientists in a room to discuss something, you will, by the end of the debate, have at least 40 different opinions. That is why governments “acting on the advice of the science” is so misleading. The more cynical in society might argue that they are being set up as patsies for the inevitable fallout.

You state that he doesn’t use any factual data. No, he doesn’t. Having said that, nobody is. There isn’t any reliable factual data in the UK, aside from perhaps the numbers of dead. That is because we aren’t mass testing, something the professor rightly points to.

The media endlessly quote the mortality figures, and they are largely, as you say, right. However, what you won’t hear them say is that even on the face of it large numbers are, in reality, fractional in terms of population. In other words, what people like me are saying is that we need to halve a sense of perspective and proportion in all of this, and that has been sadly lacking. The social media mentality is infecting society as a whole, and I regard that as a detriment.

Very few young people who get this virus require hospitalisation. That is what he is saying, and he is right to do so. There are exceptions, of course. There always are. Then again, people die in fairly large numbers every day. Such is the reality of human mortality, I am afraid.

Lastly, politicians not being bullied into decisions by the media? You are joking, surely? Please?