//Yesterday there 20 more deaths in England.//
Out of an average daily total (from all causes) of approaching 2,000. So about 1% (for yesterday, that is - the average figure over the last few weeks is nearer 0.5%). There are now, on average, more daily deaths from suicide(some, no doubt, caused by the effects the anti-Covid measures have had on some people) than from Covid itself.
//Ergo the good judge said - ditch all computer models no matter what.//
The good judge said nothing of the sort.
We can argue over the relative figures for 1968 and now, but that isn't the point I'm trying to make. In 1968, just as at the start of 2020, nobody knew the effect the pandemic would have. It was a nasty, infectious disease which took a lot of lives. Whether it was thirty thousand or forty thousand doesn't really matter - by any measure it was a lot but at the start – just as in early 2020 - the likely total was unknown . But nothing like the measures we see today were ever contemplated. They simply were not. But the government was in equal ignorance of the possible outcome in 1968 as it was in early 2020.
There are now far more daily victims of “Summer ‘Flu” and pneumonia than Covid. Far, far more. But the NHS is at a virtual standstill for non-Covid ailments and there is increasing evidence that this standstill is already causing far more deaths than Covid.
So my point is why, when there were definite similarities between the position the UK faced at the start of the 1968 outbreak and that faced earlier this year, was the reaction so very different? It’s important because I believe that this continuing strategy of shutting things down and keeping vital services in hibernation (I can get my hair cut – for the moment - but cannot see my GP) will cause far more damage than the disease itself.
If the country believes it can continue like this with no serious repercussions until either a vaccine or a cure is found it is in for a profound shock. The beginnings of that shock are already being felt and they will multiply considerably when the furlough scheme ends next month. They will ramp up further when deaths from untreated non-Covid illnesses begin to increase dramatically as they surely will. I haven’t even begun to mention the fact that the most restrictive conditions on life in peacetime have been imposed by no proper Parliamentary scrutiny and have instead been imposed by ministerial edict. When compared to the fuss kicked up over Brexit last year when a similar approach was proposed it makes me chuckle. It is time for Parliament to debate this issue properly because I sincerely believe a change of approach is vital. But that may be a topic for another thread.