>>The prospects for this winter do look grim
I'm not so sure. If it is grim, it will probably be politician & tabloid inflicted rather than virus inflicted.
Agreed that known cases are climbing. Whilst the figure is a very high number of *confirmed* cases there's somewhat more to it that that.
So far in the UK 24 million people have been tested, 550,000 have been found positive. Just over 2%, I think. That's not much.
14,000 were tested positive, which seems rather a lot, but I think the estimate at the peak (not much testing) was something like 100,000
Patients in hospital is currently at 3,100. In May it was 20,000.
70 people died yesterday from COVId-19, in May it was around 1,000 per day. Of the 545,000 confirmed with COVID, 42,000 have died. 7.5%. at it's height it was 14%. It is falling and continues to fall.
In August the UK had negative excess deaths. Suggesting that, nasty as it is on a personal level, on a national level CPOVId-19 was killing people who were going to die shortly anyway.
And, sadly, many of the very vulnerable have died. They can't die twice.
I took my figures from GOV.UK this morning.
We are not in the same scenario that we were in April / May and it should be treated differently.
Full lockdown is an unwise panic these days. The vulnerable and those who live or work with vulnerable people need to continue to be very careful. The rest, not so much. Employers need to be very considerate with the precautions that the vulnerable need to take. With the rest, not so much.
What good does it do preventing someone getting the virus if in fact it will be relatively mild and they will recover? Absolutely none at all. In fact it is counterproductive.
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