Tam wrote:
Ricky1985 wrote:
I'm in complete agreement.
40m people is also the figure here that is predicted to reach herd immunity, so if the 1% mortality rate is correct, that's 400,000 people that the government are condemning to death with their inaction. What if the mortality rate is higher at the 3-4% being seen elsewhere? Or the 6.7% seen it Italy? What if the fact that the NHS is completely overwhelmed by the number of people that need treatment means many more die as a result of insufficient or non-existent medical treatment? So we end up at a mortality rate of 5%, 10%, or who the hell knows what percentage, when all is said and done. What happens if it works and Britons do develop a herd immunity, but because this disease is in every corner of the world, there are different strains, as we see with winter flu, and there is no built up immunity to those? Do we build a wall?!
Do we have a complete shut down just now then? How far does it go? What amenities and services remain available for access? How long does it last?
What if that does seemingly put a stop to the infections here, we don’t get to the point of developing an immunity across society, then those from every corner of the world you mention bring this variant again, which we thought we had passed, and every other variant or strain you mention?
Genuine questions, I’d like to know your (and other’s) thoughts as to what alternatives we should be pursuing and how far reaching they should be?
One final question, what are you (to everyone, not just Ricky) doing as individuals to combat the spread if you do not agree with your respective government’s advice?
Any measures, in my opinion, have to start and end with attempting to limit the number of those infected above all other considerations.
With that said, I think as events unfolded in China, then South Korea, Iran and, most recently, Italy, that the government should have taken preventative measures increasing in severity as the gravity of the situation became clearer. It would have caused widespread disruption and economic problems for the country and for individuals, but the country and each and every one of us are facing that as a prolonged reality now--except thousands upon thousands of lives could have been spared by early action. It would have seemed to many as a ridiculous overreaction at that time, but it would not look that way now. And government should have acted with the safety of the people as their only consideration and guiding principle; the wisdom of their experts trumping the political and social turmoil early action would have provoked.
Anyone who followed what was happening in Hubei closely back in mid-January knew it was only a matter of time before a similar situation reached their own country; not because the spread was unstoppable, but because governments around the world wouldn't act to contain the disease.
Imagine a scenario where the rest of the world prioritised containing the virus in the same manner Taiwan (50 cases) did at the time China was locking down Hubei on 23rd January? Draconian measures are in many countries now, and they will come here very soon too, but if human beings were the only concern, and not sporting events and GDP, these measures would have been taken then or would have at least been phased in from that time. Instead the governement did nothing and now they talk about containment failing? That's because there was no attempt!
As for what can be done now, I think it's really simple in the short-term: everyone goes to their houses and stays there. Every non-essential service ceases to operate for a period of time. The sick get hospital treatment and hopefully the rate of infection can be slowed enough that the 4,000 ICU beds we have in this country is a larger number than the total of those requiring them.
After that? Slowly an easing of those measures are attempted with a situation report of the NHS as the guiding factor. International travel would have to be suspended until either a staggered re-introduction of enough of the population enables a herd immunity to develop or a vaccine is developed. If different strains from different regions means the world has to become less inter-connected whilst further vaccines are developed or immunity is built up, then so be it.
Yes, it's extreme, and would have been uninaginable 3 months ago, but it's the world we now live in. This virus is going to remain hugely disruptive for a long time to come.
As for what I am personally doing: well my partner has serious generalised anxiety disorder and suffice to say we have been on this since very early on, and have made a number of changes progressively over the past month or so to our daily lives in order to better ready and protect ourselves. Although I'm still far from being in a bubble: that won't be possible until the government step in and declare a lockdown.
I've also tried hard to get those I care about to take the whole thing seriously and to prepare as best they can for a lockdown, with low levels of success over the past 6 weeks. My Dad has bad asthma and has smoked for 40-odd years and his wife suffered a pulmonary embolism last year and has had serious respiratory problems since then. She was getting the tube every day to work in Brixton and has now come down with a bad chest infection; no test for COVID-19 has been carried out, she has been told to self-isolate, whilst my Dad has no option but to continue to work; so that's a real worry, and I can foresee other situations arising as this gets worse. It's getting to the point where we're all going to have fend for ourselves a little bit and so I'm not sure how I'll feel being a fair distance away from most of the people in the world I care about.
