goon wrote:
UK taking a very different approach to everyone else. In fairness I see the logic behind it, hopefully it turns out to be the right decision.
I think they're taking a huge risk, and I think people will pay with their lives.
Schools staying open blows my mind. Okay, so perhaps kids won't get too sick (we hope this to be the case, but we don't know, and who knows what might happen if the virus infects millions of children in terms of possible strains and mutations?), but given how little is known about the R0 of cases that are mild or asymptomatic relative to those with more serious cases: it's absurdly risky. It looks to me that the government is basing these decisions on evidence that is not strong enough to warrant the incredible additional risk they're subjecting the entire population to, especially the elderly and vulnerable. And then there is the more practical issue of the teachers and other staff members that it takes to run a school, not to mention the parents that are ferrying the children back and forth. I also think they know that the infection is going to be so widespread that schools will close all over country regardless of their official line, but are working on the basis that it will cut down on the 14 weeks they themselves say these kids have to be in lockdown. Choosing to favour behavioural science over virological science: again, it just seems absurd to me. People should be made to damn well do what they are told when doing as they please will get other people killed; that's about the one thing that anyone of any political persuasion bar anarchists agree a government should be doing.
How many children, teachers, parents, and elderly and vulnerable people will lose their lives because of this decision?
Not cancelling sporting events as of the moment the COBR meeting ended is so staggering it would be comical if it wasn't for the fact that many more people are going to die as a result. The chief science officer spoke the biggest load of tosh I've ever heard when asked why they hadn't made the decision to cancel/postpone everything whilst almost every other country has. The only silver lining is that the decision will be taken away from the government--which is almost certainly what the cowards want to happen so that they can't be blamed for the huge amounts of money it is going to cost some very rich people--by players and teams not being able to participate because they have infections and forcing organisations to make the decision to cancel.
Boris has aged so much in a week that it looked like he had his father stand in and do the press conference for him. He does not look a well man. He knows this is desperately serious and going to dominate life in this country and on this planet for a long while to come, and it must be hard to sleep at night knowing he has decided on a path that is going to get a lot more people killed whilst ramping up to the top of that curve and an outright epidemic on the basis that it will build an immunity to it in the longer term.
I just hope they know what they're doing, but I really don't think they do. I think this is a wing and a prayer from them, and if they get it wrong we'll be doing what we should be doing now in two weeks time, only with an awful lot more deaths and the NHS with its legs cut off.
