This thread really troubles me. I like these forums, but the state of the cherry-picking, use of evidence, argumentation construction and understanding of risk and causality shown by the majoirty on this thread has really troubled me.
I struggle with where to start, particularly because I'm not a one of these lockdown-fanaticists: I think that we should be getting kids back into schools for a whole range of health and equality reasons, that masks are only appropriate where people are spending long times indoors or in very close proximity with others, and that in outdoor spaces being less than 2m from people is very very low risk, as long as you're not in deep conversation. I'm pretty optimistic that improved treatments will intersect with first emergence of vaccines to signficantly reduce mortality of covid-19 by the end of the year.
I think people need reminding of a few things:
* 2020 has seen nearly 64500 more deaths than usual so far in the UK: that's 143% of normal deaths. 51804 are directly attributable to covid-19. And that is with the lockdown conditions we saw from mid-March. I see spurious comparisons to cancer, road deaths, etc, as if we do nothing to try and stop these. The UK spends £800m a year on cancer research, with, for what it's worth, 450ish deaths a day. That's less than half of what covid-19 was delviering in April. And frankly IF cancer or road accidents suddenly appeared over 2 months AND there was an obvious way of cutting their number tenfold, then we'd take those steps. I struggle to see how attempts to stop these are 'madness'.
* Globally, covid-19 is en route for being a something like 10-15 in the rank of global deaths. Many of those ahead of it are multi-cause conditions ('cancer', which can be a virus, a condition of old age, or chance occurance) rather than a single cause, and most pertinently, none of these have emerged from almost nowhere in a few months.
* We have seen only 3 months of restrictions. People are posting as if these have been going on for a long time, or as if they are projected to be permanent. If the majority of these rules are still in place by autumn 2021 and any of them by autumn 2022 then I'll join you in the protest against them. If R stays below 1, then almost all measures will be done by September: that's less than 6 months of our lives.
* Covid-19 is rising in many states of the USA, most of Latin America, and lots of central/southern Asia. Just because we're in a lull in the UK, doesn't mean it's not an active epidemic that could return here - look at the growing R number in Germany, and remember that infection reports have a roughly 7-14 day lag from when they actually happened.
A lot of this thread seems to be complaining about minor inconveniences, on the grounds that some other person, situation, or action will spread covid-19 in another context, and therefore why bother. Again, there are inconsistencies and problems with rules, but this does not equate to 'madness'. And this sort of argument does seem to miss the point that if we reduce 25% of spreading opportunities, the fact that 75% remain doens't stop us having reduced a quarter of infections. That we don't stop all infections is not a reason to not stop some.
Again - I'm really not a lockdown-evangelist, who annoy me as much as many of the posts in this thread. The UK's approach overall has not been succesful. If the arguments were well made, drew from evidence, or showed any understanding of statistics and risks it wouldn't irritate me. I don't mind a well-supported/made argument I disagree with. But so much on here seems to be Peter Griffinesque "what grinds my gears" stuff, which to be honest I find disappointing from a usually intelligent forums.
