A vaccine will only work if there is long term immunity from the virus. And you convince the anti vaxers to have it.
otherwise it will probably end up being a reoccurring virus for a long time to come.
"Don't tell me how I'm feeling" is your familiar refrain.
I'm not overly emotional about this. Other than distance from family (I'm concerned for my mother who is lonely and alone with no partner and mentally and physically impaired) this whole thing has been very easy and not hugely disruptive for me.
I think your refusal to engage is intellectual cowardice Yoni. My opinion is based on these main facts:
- We've been repeatedly forewarned
- Scientists and health officials have told us exactly how we needed to prepare for this
- Our governments did not heed their advice and take basic planning action
- People are dying in the thousands because of that
The above facts are unarguable. Given the above, the requirements of democracies to hold those responsible to account is clear - and it's down to the citizens of our countries to demand it.
Your position is in opposition to that action.
I like you Yoni. But I find your position utterly indefensible. Fine, don't explain yourself - but don't justify ignoring that argument by lying to yourself that I'm being overly emotional about this. I think you're doing this because it's not nice to blame people. But if we can't do the necessary when bodies are piling up (that's not an emotional description - it's just cold hard fact) then what chance do we have with the more urgent and, frankly, more important global crises that humanity faces.
Actually,
People are dying in the thousands because of that
is supposition. The tardy response of UKGov is certainly a factor, but the experience of Italy, and particularly Spain, who responded quickly and aggressively to the virus, but still had massive death tolls, suggests the it's not the only factor.
While Boris and co should never be given a free pass, I have a sneaking suspicion cultural and demographic factors (like in Italy the prevalence of multi-generational families in one house) will turn out to be the most significant drivers of varying infection and death rates, and each country, or even region within countries, will have it's own drivers of infection.
Today is the first day we are allowed out of our houses for a walk or sports, jogging, cycling etc. There are strict time slots if your municipality has more than 5000 inhabitants (ours doesn't) but people are dumb. This is @gunner440 's neck of the woods
Police swamp in at 10.05 AM and start making arrests and issuing fines on Spain's Costa del Sol - Euro Weekly News Spain Spain News Article
Everyone was given clear instructions. They're trying to play dumb and blame everything but themselves for being out past the cut-off. It's good where I am and not crowded at all but pretty much everyone head towards the beach considering the weathe today (26º).
I'm glad they're fining those that are taking the piss.
The experience of Italy and Spain are the experiences of countries that didn't lockdown, test test test and contact trace because they, like us, hadn't prepared properly and put the relevant emergency plans and infrastructure in place for such an inevitability.Actually,
People are dying in the thousands because of that
is supposition. The tardy response of UKGov is certainly a factor, but the experience of Italy, and particularly Spain, who responded quickly and aggressively to the virus, but still had massive death tolls, suggests the it's not the only factor.
While Boris and co should never be given a free pass, I have a sneaking suspicion cultural and demographic factors (like in Italy the prevalence of multi-generational families in one house) will turn out to be the most significant drivers of varying infection and death rates, and each country, or even region within countries, will have it's own drivers of infection.
The experience of Italy and Spain are the experiences of countries that didn't lockdown, test test test and contact trace because they, like us, hadn't prepared properly and put the relevant emergency plans and infrastructure in place for such an inevitability.
The ones that were prepared (South Korea being my particularly oft-used example) haven't suffered needlessly.
Other than the unacceptable lag in lockdown decision making I don't think the government has done a bad job in managing the circumstances as they are.
However, if they'd done the job they should have done years ago then the story would likely have been very different.
I'm not making hard and fast fait accompli comparisons - it's frustration about the lack of preparedness.Even arguments about contact tracing are glib when Britain has vastly higher travel inflows and outflows than South Korea. You just can't compare off the cuff.
I'm not making hard and fast fait accompli comparisons - it's frustration about the lack of preparedness.
I've made this argument multiple times now but the world had SARS, MERS and Ebola - not just south korea - and I don't accept the argument that just because we didn't experience these severely and personally that that's a valid excuse for our lack of preparedness. It cannot be allowed that we have to start dying personally before we learn lessons from an interconnected world. We had our warnings and didn't act.
That lack of preparedness is hampering our ability to deal now - apparently the UK is lagging behind most of our european counterparts in the rate of slowing of contageon. The front line? Healthcare workers are where the majority of this is coming, and guess what they lack, due to our lack of preparedness.
Yes, the gvt. is doing the right things now - but doing the right things in a rush to put out a fire with poor equipment is no substitute to funding a fire service, installing sprinklers, ensuring your building regs are up to spec and buying PPE in advance of an inevitable disaster.
"Countries like South Korea". You mean, just South Korea, a sample of one. A country that went through SARS and MERS so had infrastructure developed for a reason. A country where people wear face masks in public and in shops as routine because of previous diseases?
Every other country's stats and experience tells us nothing informative at this stage. Look at Germany and France, identical infection rates but France has twice the deaths of Germany. Does that mean France's hospitals are twice as crap as Germany's? I somehow doubt that.
Even arguments about contact tracing are glib when Britain has vastly higher travel inflows and outflows than South Korea. You just can't compare off the cuff.
South Africa has done remarkably well.
South Africa's ruthlessly efficient fight against coronavirus
Exercising the freedom to jog in South Africa
They had a severe lockdown measures
Has it? Or is it just (lack of) testing/reporting? I'm dubious about anything that comes out of the mouths of South African politicians, especially about health.
So????There were four SARS cases in the UK.
Whilst I was only commenting on what's been reported I don't have much to disagree with here (apart from it, again, is not really about the problem of our lack of preparedness - which is clearly what I've a bee in the bonnet about)As for the UK lagging behind other European countries, map for population density and you'd get a different story. This is exactly what's so dangerous about country v country comparisons; there are large parts of the UK with no cases, just like lots other countries, but then you also have some low pop density outliers (County Cavan in Ireland for example) which may end up being because of unique social factors or an above average cluster of care homes or OAPs. There's not enough information to make sweeping country generalisations, and bluntly there are also a lot of countries under-reporting or outright lying.