UKC

Looks like ClimberEd got the last word.

I don't believe I have claimed to be on a moral high horse over this.  I don't think that I am.  I think some people are more wrong than others.

Opinions are not equally valid.  That's crap and you know it.  How an opinion is formed and what it is based on affect is validity in terms of predictive ability or usefulness etc.  

You just gave an opinion that in March "The most vulnerable should have been in total lock down, everyone else should have got on with life.".  How were we supposed to do this?  Myself and NeilH stated the bledingly obvious problems with this.  As opinions go, it's garbage.  We couldn't do it then, we've struggled to do it over the next few months.   Ideally we would have been able to do that, but you said we should have done that instead of lockdown.

I don't recall anyone saying we would have the same localised devastation.  I recall a lot of people giving evidenced opinions on why comparing our policy and actions vs Italy's policies and actions we were likely to see the same sort of growth in cases.  This was evidence based opinion.  You gave a scattergun list of words for why this probably wouldn't be the case.  That is a lower grade of opinion.  Also the wrong one as it turned out.

From the other thread...

Thanks, that sounds like a really good read. I've ordered a copy.

I also recommend this documentary about the American tabloid National Enquirer, entertainingly told and gave me a whole new understanding of the influence of the tabloid media.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000kbnw/storyville-scandalous-the-ta...

I found out how Schwarzenegger and Cosby managed to suppress the gory details of their private lives, and how Donald Trump publicised his and got to be President thereby.

Apparently the journos were Brits as the Americans didn't understand tabloid journalism, and run by a mafia boss. You definitely couldn't make it up!

Thanks for the recommendation; just watched the whole thing, well worthwhile.

I think in repeating this we get tired and miss key factors. Italy was hit unexpectedly hard, we had two weeks extra notice. Italy's hospitals were overwhelmed, when mortality rates for C19 increase quite a bit, and unrelated secondary deaths increase: still our per capita excess deaths ended up higher than theirs. They were hit in a serious flu outbreak we were not. They had a reputation of chaotic minority politics, we had a big majority government. Looking back Ed was right about national differences but in the exact wrong direction... maybe we were always going to end up worse despite having most of the advantages.

The 'lockdown' the old and vulnerable or more like 'lock them up' idea is one of the most ludicrous ever put out there....when I pointed out to one proponent of this policy that many of these people need to be cared for by those out in the general population where the virus will be rampent he said all those people should be locked down as well i.e. care home workers would move in and live in the care homes....i then pointed out many of these people will have families they need to care for as well and he went silent. 

Indeed.  It's not quite as ludicrous as their idea that any two opinions are equally valid however.  This silly idea lies at the bottom of a lot of rot, especially when someone like Newsnight feels compelled to give equal time to a subject matter expert and someone from whatever loony fringe for "balance".

With it being a job that often has poor working conditions and poor pay, low income households will be highly represented in the workers, which is now emerging as a significant risk factor for the virus. As well as the household caring responsibilities you rightly pointed out, they will have medical needs of their own so you'll have to lock down the care workers, their personal dependants, and sufficient doctors and nurses to care for them.  But then, what about the dependants of the doctors and nurses?    Lock them down to?  Where do we end up - a wide lockdown...  Then there's the various complex external support people required by the residents, better lock them all down too.   There are positive steps that help - balkanisation as much as possible by not having people move about between different care homes (staff, external medical professionals), having people who are able to move on site do so, not returning infected people to care homes from hospitals but creating specific covid positive care homes, regular and prompt turnaround testing of staff and residents etc.  But these are risk reduction and damage control, not the kind of lockdown ClimberEd thinks would have let the rest of us to "have got on with life."  Not that, in my opinion, magically locking down the must vulnerable and having no other lockdown would have resulted in a very good few months, as a fraction of healthy, non-vulnerable people have a far worse time from this than from seasonal flu due to the immune over response mechanism.

It is notable how many advantages we squandered.  Like having run a detailed cabinet level simulation a few years ago which it seems laid out on stark clarity what needed to be done for us to be prepared...

We don't know if Covid likes to take long walks on the beach.