Thanks, @Ed_Levey, for speaking out on this.
Elevating one issue above all others is at the core of this insanity. Respiratory pandemics fizzle out not by infections reducing to minimal levels but by natural (and now artificial) immunity & the evolution of less dangerous strains.
It is crazy to measure the progress of this one by ‘cases’ - and even crazier when they are not all cases in any meaningful way as they include asymptomatic infections.
And it is dangerous to link our ‘freedoms’ (or rather the licence given to us by the state) to the progress of one virus.
@SCynic1@AdamWagner1@DAaronovitch That, before the People’s Republic of China, no modern state has ever restricted the movements of all its citizens in response to a respiratory virus;
Or any state, for that matter;
@SCynic1@AdamWagner1@DAaronovitch That all state and WHO pandemic plans didn’t just recommend against restrictions on healthy people, they didn’t contemplate it while recommending against mass testing once a virus had become endemic ( apps.who.int/iris/bitstream…);
Great research into the ethical and safety standards of the company whose product has just been given emergency authorisation to be used on 12-15 yr olds.
This is on the basis of the testing of only around 2,000 children.
Let’s measure that against the risk of Covid to them:
In two respiratory virus seasons (considering that March-May 2020 can be treated as one) only 40 children have died in England within 28 days of a positive PCR test showing they have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, out of a population of around 11 million.
The logic of vaccination ‘for the sake of others’ fails on the logic of those propounding it.
These vaccines are only tested for their ability to reduce serious symptoms.
If transmission is possible by those who are pre- or a-symptomatic, vaccination will make no difference.
If that form of transmission is incredibly rare if it happens at all, the logic of lockdowns, masks and vaccination ‘to protect others’ falls away as transmission of the virus will be avoided by sick people avoiding close contact with others.
850 deaths out of 27,000 a day in India. And the pressure is for India to impose measures that will divert its limited resources from the expenditure on healthcare and sanitation that will actually preserve life, while depressing its economy and so starving its poor.
While western countries undertake a grotesque distortion of humanitarian aid and help not India’s minimal healthcare for diseases from which vast numbers of Indians actually die but on tests that won’t begin to help them with a disease from which they largely will not.
Not to mention pressing for social distancing measures that can never work in a country as poor and overcrowded as India, save to push millions below the breadline.
And, unlike in the west, that does actually mean starvation.