I'm simply wondering how long it will be before the government realises that this problem - such that it is - cannot be tackled by ordering people to stay away from each other.
There are currently just over 700 people in hospital with the virus. There are around 140,000 hospital beds in the UK (many of them are unoccupied, but that's another story). So one hospitalised case for every 200 beds. Put another way, just over 0.001% (one in a hundred thousand) of the population are in hospital with Covid. Also bear this in mind:
- In the week ending 16th January GP consultations (remember them?) for ‘flu-like illness reached 15 per 100,000 people. The current daily average for new Covid infections is 12.5 per 100,000.
- In that same week hospital admissions for ‘flu were 2.43 per 100,000 people. This meant over 1,500 people (over 200 a day) were admitted to hospital in a week. Yesterday 107 people were admitted with Covid.
- The average daily number of deaths from Covid for the month of August was ten. In the last week that figure was eight. In the last three days it was two. In the w/e 16th January there were 2,686 deaths (about 380 a day) where ‘flu and/or pneumonia was given as the cause of death.
- The government’s commentary on that week's ‘flu figures (by any measure worse than the last month’s Covid figures) said “[these suggest] flu is having a low impact on hospital admissions as well as intensive care unit and high dependency unit admissions.” So not a big worry then.
Just how long will this lunacy persist? Do you recall people being locked down, walking around in masks, prevented from gathering, not going to football matches, shop and pub staff working behind perspex screens (and so on, and so on)? Me neither.