I feel that at some stage soon I need a nice long break from talking about the pandemic on this forum. Its going to be a challenge, because so far I've felt like I have developed some sort of obligation to respond to a range of viewpoints and very much to respond to this sort of one. And normally I respond with a draining mix of things I would consider facts, some concepts and info about the story so far, and a rather angry bunch of emtional responses when I think the position being presented is foolish and deadly.
I cannot sustain that. I wasnt the sort of person that could argue endlessly about brexit for a number of years. It will be the same with a bunch of core issues with this pandemic and the human response to it. So let this be my notice that during June I wont be doing this, all manner of positions that I consider wrong, impossible or otherwise doomed could be mentioned in these threads and I will not be there to respond in the way people are used to.
As for this final occasion, I will skip much of what I would normally say, people should be able to guess a bunch of it anyway. Let me just say this - if people want to argue about lockdown and the most extreme of measures that is one thing, about whether that stuff will be necessary in future. But dont waste your time talking shit about a world you might think we can return to where there is no social distancing at all. Because I dont se that from even the successful countries, none of them involve normal life as it used to be with no social distancing. And actually reopening things is only one part of the story, the detail of how humans can behave and distance within those spaces is where much of the action is. Likewise there is no point imagining an economic picture of the future that is too simple, because the economics will be far more complicated than open or closed. For example, if public confidence in how safe all sorts of things are is eroded because people perceive that the government has acted too soon or too recklessly, then it doesnt matter if businesses have reopened. In fact, they might even be in a worse financial situation than if they had remained closed and on government financial life-support. Because its not just social distancing measures that can reduce a businesses ability to get in enough customers to turn a profit, its also about those customers feeling safe enough to want to use that business in the first place.
Anyway I hear that a whole load of SAGE documents and minutes have come out so now I'm likely to put much of my remaining energy into sifting through those in the coming days, then maybe I will take my long break.
So far all I have read is the following BBC story about it. A story that also reminded me that I wasnt entirely happy with all of my posts here in recent days. Posts where I was complaining about peoples gloomy attitudes. Where I was trying to encourage a particular sense of proportion about things in terms of how much peoples actions have helped. And how various lockdown relaxations, and lapsed behavioural restraint from some, doesnt mean we are certainly doomed to more heavy pandemic waves and associated lockdowns etc. Probably the reason I'm not completely happy with what I said is that the obvious flaw is in the logic of where we are right now - my attempts to have a period of mental recharging before fixating on future woes is rather spoilt by the idea that there probably isnt very much wiggle room in the first place. ie the wiggle room in regards R, the current levels of ongoing infection in the community, etc. It been many weeks now since I said it would be important to try to give people some kind of relaxed something for morale etc purposes, but I cannot honestly say that all the benchmarks for the size of our epidemic are where I would want them to be at this stage. And it sounds like there is a bunch of stuff in some of the SAGE documents that rather underscore the delicate nature of the current situation in the UK with the virus.
Warning from top scientist advising government says cases are still at very high levels.
www.bbc.co.uk