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You have more chance of dying from car accidents than Covid if you're under 55 years old. By locking down hard on age groups who aren't vulnerable to the viru

You have more chance of dying from car accidents than Covid if you're under 55 years old. By locking down hard on age groups who aren't vulnerable to the virus you're enabling the clown world that OP is referring to. Sure lock down the elderly that's fine but making national health policy based on one demographic is full on straight clown world stuff.

chillfox 6y ago
COVID is not just about deaths, it also has a risk of lung/heart damage. Also, even if people don’t die or gain lung/heart damage they can still take up hospital capacity until there’s not enough capacity for the people who can survive with hospital care but won’t without. Anyway, my point is that the UK choose their current situation by being afraid to act back when small steps could have made a huge difference.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  Oh right and Covid toes? No no it doesn't. What is the percentage of people who have that type of reaction? Have you even looked at that? It's miniscule. It's argued not to be from Covid directly but by comorbidities and would happen with any illness. The news media blew it up out of proportion to scare you and millions of other people like you who have a poor grasp ofstatistics and risk... for money and it worked! Welcome to clown world. Honk honk!
  - chillfox 6y ago
    Honestly, the only people who seem to be in clown world now are the people living in states that did not take it seriously early. Your leaders not taking it seriously to begin with is the reason you are in this situation now. Where I am we took this seriously early last year, and as a result have been able to live life mostly like normal since. Anyway, you live in a democracy, so maybe convince as many people as possible to vote someone else in at the next opportunity. And if you think they are all stupid then run yourself.
    - nickthemagicman 6y ago
      Borders closed is not really somewhat normal. Honk honk!
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Car accident rate doesn't grow exponentially, with doubling time measured in days. With an infectious disease like this, what you want is to curb its ability to spread. That means disrupting the entire social network, because while the virus is most dangerous to the elderly, it spreads best through the young. Also lung damage, the fact that small chance of disability or death multiplied by whole country getting infected equals to more harm than inconveniencing everyone a bit and nipping the problem in the bud, yadda yadda. These are all tired points. The main way UK (and US, and a chunk of EU) response was a "clown world" was pretending there's no problem until it was too late, and then doing too little, and then doing stupid things that nullified the effect of previous interventions.
- esotericn 6y ago
  Your second paragraph is of course true. But right now, we're eleven months in and it's illegal for me to have a single friend over for a cup of tea. Not advised against; not something we should limit; illegal, punishable by law. I'm at the point at which I've been told by medical health practitioners to ignore this nonsense and see people for my own wellbeing. We have a vaccination program running in the UK and it's going fairly well. The thing that is keeping me clinging to sanity is the fact that once the vulnerable groups have been vaccinated, I'm just getting on with life. Without that; well the news is saying 'social distancing until 2022' and the Government are telling us that maybe in a month it'll be legal to sit on a park bench with a coffee. This is not me being hyperbolic. It is currently illegal for me to leave my house and sit on a park bench. If I followed that stuff to the letter, I'd have already gone postal or just thrown myself in front of a train. This is a policy that, if it works at all, works for specific types of people; nuclear families, introverts, etc. Those might even be a majority. But it's not viable at a population level because a significant percentage of people are either in situations whereby they need to mix households in order to function, or have brain chemistry which means that avoiding social mixing for prolonged periods (months or more) causes them to become depressed, anxious, or in extreme cases psychotic. We're doing all of this stuff in an attempt to reduce coronavirus cases prior to vaccination, because we care about public health, not purely for the sake of it. That would be "clown world".

chillfox 6y ago

COVID is not just about deaths, it also has a risk of lung/heart damage. Also, even if people don’t die or gain lung/heart damage they can still take up hospital capacity until there’s not enough capacity for the people who can survive with hospital care but won’t without. Anyway, my point is that the UK choose their current situation by being afraid to act back when small steps could have made a huge difference.

nickthemagicman 6y ago
Oh right and Covid toes? No no it doesn't. What is the percentage of people who have that type of reaction? Have you even looked at that? It's miniscule. It's argued not to be from Covid directly but by comorbidities and would happen with any illness. The news media blew it up out of proportion to scare you and millions of other people like you who have a poor grasp ofstatistics and risk... for money and it worked! Welcome to clown world. Honk honk!
- chillfox 6y ago
  Honestly, the only people who seem to be in clown world now are the people living in states that did not take it seriously early. Your leaders not taking it seriously to begin with is the reason you are in this situation now. Where I am we took this seriously early last year, and as a result have been able to live life mostly like normal since. Anyway, you live in a democracy, so maybe convince as many people as possible to vote someone else in at the next opportunity. And if you think they are all stupid then run yourself.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    Borders closed is not really somewhat normal. Honk honk!

TeMPOraL 6y ago

Car accident rate doesn't grow exponentially, with doubling time measured in days. With an infectious disease like this, what you want is to curb its ability to spread. That means disrupting the entire social network, because while the virus is most dangerous to the elderly, it spreads best through the young. Also lung damage, the fact that small chance of disability or death multiplied by whole country getting infected equals to more harm than inconveniencing everyone a bit and nipping the problem in the bud, yadda yadda. These are all tired points. The main way UK (and US, and a chunk of EU) response was a "clown world" was pretending there's no problem until it was too late, and then doing too little, and then doing stupid things that nullified the effect of previous interventions.

esotericn 6y ago
Your second paragraph is of course true. But right now, we're eleven months in and it's illegal for me to have a single friend over for a cup of tea. Not advised against; not something we should limit; illegal, punishable by law. I'm at the point at which I've been told by medical health practitioners to ignore this nonsense and see people for my own wellbeing. We have a vaccination program running in the UK and it's going fairly well. The thing that is keeping me clinging to sanity is the fact that once the vulnerable groups have been vaccinated, I'm just getting on with life. Without that; well the news is saying 'social distancing until 2022' and the Government are telling us that maybe in a month it'll be legal to sit on a park bench with a coffee. This is not me being hyperbolic. It is currently illegal for me to leave my house and sit on a park bench. If I followed that stuff to the letter, I'd have already gone postal or just thrown myself in front of a train. This is a policy that, if it works at all, works for specific types of people; nuclear families, introverts, etc. Those might even be a majority. But it's not viable at a population level because a significant percentage of people are either in situations whereby they need to mix households in order to function, or have brain chemistry which means that avoiding social mixing for prolonged periods (months or more) causes them to become depressed, anxious, or in extreme cases psychotic. We're doing all of this stuff in an attempt to reduce coronavirus cases prior to vaccination, because we care about public health, not purely for the sake of it. That would be "clown world".