elbows
Well-Known Member
Partly depends on whether they move the bar for what counts as a local lockdown trigger.
The whole thing is a bit of a silly mess but it was always going to be a strange period. Some of it is still down to the testing regime and its absurdities and capacity limitations. Some of it is down to what measures they are and are not prepared to take in the local lockdowns, ie they still try to prioritise businesses staying open etc. Some of it is down to not always being sure what the data they are looking at means, and whether rises elsewhere are being missed when testing capacity is diverted to known hotspots. Some of this stuff makes me cry out once more for sewage-based data that might give a better indication of real levels of infection everywhere and not missing rises in areas that have not been under the microscope in recent months. It would also be easier to see if their actions are appropriate if we were at a stage where the varying situation in different places showed up clearly in the hospital data we get to see. Although I of course do not wish for a period where more people are becoming more seriously ill, such signs do help reconnect more people with reality and risk.
Some of it is probably because some of the preferred strategies might have been a better fit for a reality where we managed to get levels of community infection down to lower levels than were actually achieved before national restrictions were eased.
In a way its similar to what I go on about with contact tracing - yes it is perfectly possible for countries to find themselves in a situation where they can keep a lid on a pandemic by doing a hell of a lot of good quality test & trace stuff. But that doesnt mean that a country exists that could always rely on such things in every circumstance. Things can still get out of control and require more draconian measures quite quickly, even in places like Australia that seemed to have a grip. And sometimes you just have to listen to what the tracing stuff tells you and be prepared to act more broadly. For example sometimes even a world class contact tracing system doesnt let you keep the bars open, indeed it might end up being the very source of the information that tells you that actually you need to close the bars because there is too much transmission via that setting for your more nuanced measures to cope with.
