@LivinLaVidaLoki
We were told by whitty at the briefing cases would rise and hospitalisation would go up but the nhs would be able to cope. That deaths would inevitably increase....so why are people acting like this is brand new information, unprecedented and a reason to postpone EVERYTHING! I don't get it. I really really really don't.
I think while we've moved forward in terms of vaccines, we've moved backwards in terms of how we think about covid.
We seem to be back to the (frankly medieval) 'diagnosis = instant death' narrative, which we know isn't true in the vast majority of cases, and the semantics arguments over what constitutes 'mild' symptoms, which is a red herring because what clinicians determine to be mild is totally irrelevant when it's one lay person talking to another on a forum or on social media.
I also think the daily reporting of covid cases, hospitalisations and deaths is unhelpful without context, and if the media reported this alongside similar figures for cardio illnesses, cancers, degenerative brain diseases and so on it might get it into proportion. About 1,400 people die every day in the UK during 'normal' times and two-thirds of these are either from circulatory illnesses or cancers, so a few tens of people dying of covid is a comparatively small aspect of the full picture.
In short, I think people have been trained to be frightened as a baseline. And the authoritarian approach that has been taken politically creates dependency, in a way; people who would normally consider themselves highly liberal are effectively looking to the government to take basic decisions for them. 'Lock me up!' 'Cover my face!' 'Jab my arm!' 'Shut my business!' 'Protect meeeeeeeeee!'
Here endeth the Sunday morning half-awake musing... 