Oh and as for the mortality debate. It probably will end up around 1-2% overall. The problem is that it is hugely more infectious than the flu, so without lockdown you can assume that a huge proportion of the population would get it. Of which 1.5% would die, overall. That is a massive number. Massive. Not far off our normal annual mortality. So basicially you are saying, for the years 2020 and 2021, instead of 1.2m people dying in the UK, which is about normal, we can have 1.8 million instead. Ah, but it’s only the old that are dying. Not so, it seems that from what I have heard and read, people are losing between 8 and 10 years of life by dying from covid.
You can average that out and say 1 in 50 people dying 10 years early, why that is only an average of ⅕ of a year of life expectancy lost across the population. But to look at it like that, like some have, is just plain wrong.
Then the added deaths of those who can’t get healthcare for cancer becasue of covid. I have no doubt that there will be some issues that come out that say the health service could have done better first time round, but I am certain we are doing much much better this time at doing our best to keep essential services running. But that does not stop the late presentations of cancer. Young people might not dies so much, but they still end up in hospital, using health resources which then cannot be used for other stuff.
The economic impact is huge, and that brings with it mortality and morbidity. The scale of the effect on our kids education, on the poorest and most vulnerable and those at the start of their careers in casual jobs is going to be huge.
It is overwhelming. It is very very real. And it is very very scary. I do not have all the answers. But I do know that debating PCR technology or the finer points of incidence fatality rate vs case fatality rate is window dressing for the absolute shitshow that the UK and the US have managed to produce over the last 9 months.
Normal bants will be resumed but I needed to get that off my chest
