Agree. It was clear even at the time that very little if any effort had been put into understanding the situation, what sensible efforts might be needed to mitigate and making those preparations. I'm not sure anything was screwed up though, more just nothing had been done.
It was a necessary panic measure, and one that most countries took. There is a hell of a lot of hindsight going on here!
It was a panic measure, the debate is was it necessary.
I disagree with you that it was necessary but we've done this discussion to death in other threads so I am not going to have that discussion again. Let's stick to the infection rates vs death rates debate.
They reckon cases were up to 100,000 a day when the panic button was hit.
It must have been a LOT more than 20,000+ per day for it to make sense. Otherwise, I agree with you.
But may well be enough including those people who have T cell immunity to prevent a second wave.
I'm in my sixties, so still being quite cautious, but I have started some socialising with friends again. However I think younger generations have returned to normal social life much more quickly. I was out and about in London on bank holiday Monday, and most of those I saw on the streets and in pubs and restaurants were under-30s, often in groups of up to half a dozen with no social distancing. I could well imagine that the virus might circulate quite widely in such groups, but being basically strong and healthy they're unlikely to need hospitalisation for it in most cases.
You can bet there'll be headlines 'NEW CASES ALMOST DOUBLE OVERNIGHT AS SECOND LOCKDOWN IMMINENT', be interesting to see if there's a reason for this and if there'll be any restrictions put in place due to this (hopefully not)
And yet hospital admissions remains static at 124 (which in itself is inflated by about 50 as Wales includes "suspected" cases in that number), and the number of patients in hospital is also static.
I bet almost all these cases are in younger people, in reality this is good news as more that have it closer we get to herd immunity but no way politicians or press will see it that way. Expect they'll blame schools going back and this is start of second wave. Doom mongers will love it.
I'm guessing you've not read the last couple of pages of this thread?
If the increase is amongst the young then there will be a delay before it reaches the more shielded vulnerable people, and a delay before they start dying.
Who'd have thought it? The original plan to shield the vulnerable may have been the best one, without trashing the economy. But "U turn Boris" was scared witless by Neil Ferguson.
Are you saying that lockdowns didn’t squash the runaway infection rates, when people were dying in their thousands in care homes etc?
I said “more shielded”. My dad isn’t shielding (he goes local shopping, my sister and I go into his house, etc) but he doesn’t do any social events, lectures, supermarket shopping, pubs, bus/train trips etc
As I remember it most of the press and growing public opinion was saying that lockdown was too late, as almost everyone else was in one. But for that I reckon Boris would have questioned Ferguson’s stuff more and looked for more opinions.
How did Sweden’s death rate compare to neighbouring countries?