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Saturday 1 August 2020

Lockdown Lunacy



J.B. Handley has a very useful post on the coronavirus debacle and reasons why we may regard the primary epidemic as over in many parts of the world. It seems to have been over in the UK for weeks.

If you’re hoping the COVID-19 pandemic will go on forever, this post may disappoint you. And, I get it. We have gone frothing-at-the-mouth nuts over a slightly above-normal virulence virus, with a unique and obvious age-distribution pattern that should have made containment easy and panic completely unnecessary.

The piece is written from a US perspective but is applicable to the UK. The probable consequences of a wildly misinformed public for example.

Americans over-estimated the TOTAL number of compatriots who have died from COVID-19 by 200-fold! When asked the question (in mid-July), “How many people in your country have died from the Coronavirus?”, Americans responded “9%,” which would be roughly 30,000,000 people, versus the actual number of 151,000. No wonder people are panicked (and wildly, wildly misinformed.)

Unfortunately here in the UK we probably have to face up to the existence of a political agenda driving pandemic policy rather than public health. A screw down the ordinary voter agenda deriving from a developing totalitarian ethos. There is nothing democratic behind all this.

5 comments:

James Higham said...

"Unfortunately here in the UK we probably have to face up to the existence of a political agenda driving pandemic policy"

Tell me it's not so.

Sobers said...

Total deaths from all causes in the UK are now below long term averages. By any objective measure the pandemic finished about a month ago.

A K Haart said...

James - I would but you wouldn't believe me (:

Sobers - yes and that seems to be the best objective measure we have.

Mark Wadsworth said...

What Sobers says, for the past month or so, total deaths have been undershooting the average.

What is particularly worrying is total covid deaths approx 45,000 (and that is probably overstated).

Total excess deaths (i.e. total deaths in first six months of 2020 minus average total deaths of preceeding few years is approx 60,000.

So that's 15,000 collateral damage deaths because of lock down (and because the NHS focussed on nothing but covid).

A K Haart said...

Mark - yes that is the worrying aspect and unless things go back to normal that number could increase.