Eat Out To Help Out: Brilliance or Lunacy?

[verdantverdure]

On the day the Covid Inquiry convenes I thought I'd ask your opinion on Eat Out To Help Out.

Covid case numbers and deaths were low, as we'd done a phased return out of the first lockdown.

Then we had Eat Out To Help Out and it all kicked off again within weeks.

What did you think? At the time? Now?

YABU Eat Out To Help Out was brilliant, I loved it.

YANBU Eat out To Help Out was a bloody stupid idea that was obviously going to help the virus spread, leading to another wave, more economic devastation, and tens of thousands of us dead. And it didn't even help the hospitality industry because it screwed up Christmas which is usually their most profitable quarter.

Hasn't he though?

Or did he just not care if people died?

I made my husband take the policy at its word and he didn’t catch anything 😉

You must have missed the bit where I said they should be held to account

He didn’t care f poor people died.

God almighty.

I can't help being shocked by the callousness, the lazy uselessness and the lack of understanding 9 or so months into the pandemic.

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak had recently had a meeting with people from HART and Great Barrington Declaration so perhaps that's why they were so gung ho for our parents and grandparents to die.

And we trust them now with the complete dismantling of it all?

To the extent that cancer patients (some of the most vulnerable in the country) are not safe - because our hospitals are not safe. They are still trying to kill off the CEV

It's an ongoing disgrace

Covid kills more DC than chicken pox, btw. But you wouldn't think so from the messaging.

Covid depresses immune function, making many diseases more severe - but lets blame a years-ago lockdown instead

Many countries, including UK, are seeing more people off work or shortening hours than ever before, but lets overlook a disease that impairs many body systems and instead blame malingering and threaten to remove free prescriptions

And of course, lets make sure that everyone gets it, so there is no longer a group in previous normal health, so we can continue to lie, and say the "new normal" twas ever thus, and find all sorts of excuses to attribute the change in the nation's health to anything but covid.

I liked it and still like it. It not only attempted to break people's state induced germaphobia but also bring people through the doors of the decimated (also state induced) hospitality industry.

At the time, Boris was talking about a normal Christmas, and we were step by step removing the worst excesses of government overreach and overreaction.

Given that they panicked once more in Autumn, and far too long into the summer of 2021 I can see how EOTHO in August 2020 now looks a rather disjointed idea. But it was a policy from that short lived period of optimism.

Now, EOTHO represents a great stick for political opponents of Rishi to beat him with, a proverbial open goal.

Why do you think that is a response to the comment?

One of the very basic science things that is important to understand is that just because one thing follows another, it does not mean there is a causal relationship.

Most of the measures tried for managing covid don't really seem to have affected its trajectory. It went up and down in the way new viruses do, rather than in response to attempted interventions which had minimal effects, at least on covid (they did have effects of other kinds on people.)

It was understood early on, within weeks actually, that a large % of the population would have covid over the first two year period and that was inevitable. And that it would almost certainly become endemic after that, which is to say just like other endemic viruses, people would be exposed regularly. And there was, and is, no real way to mitigate that.

The media was very quiet about all of that though it was well understood by people in public health and epidemiology.

Reposting this for @TempestTost

Whose opinion is that?

Is it of Chris Whitty who is giving solid evidence atm?

I’m surprised if it’s just from an opinion piece of a writer. I thought The Lancet had a good rep, maybe not above click bait.

Richard Horton, their Editor-in-Chief

So not a prominent CMO or likewise, from the inquiry now or after.

Bloody hell I can’t see why he’d have a vested interest in broadcasting his own unsubstantiated views for sales.

Incredibly irresponsible. But works with some in the same way the Daily Mail or GBN gets clicks and profit.

It's a bit gobsmacking to me that based on "following the science" advice from Chris Whitty and others MI6 enacted their pandemic plan a few days into February 2020, and the government who were getting the same advice did more or less nothing at all.

The lack of responsibility in the media was and is insane.

No wonder we ended up with so much fear and damage.

Chris Whitty has said much the same in his evidence as Richard Horton says in that piece.

So has Patrick Vallance.

Chris Whitty said most of the 230k deaths were preventable?

Can you quote?

Oh absolutely, the media are the problem.

Not the people who said

"Let the bodies pile up"

And

"Just let people die and that's ok"

Can you quote where It was said most deaths would not have happened?

Can you give their figure, was it say fewer than 50k deaths?

Erm no - I was not on furlough and I used it a couple of times

It's implicit in Chris Whitty's evidence where he was talking about advising the government about suppression and containment in January and early February 2020 and the government did nothing and the opportunity was lost.

We know that just from our own memories.

When covid measures were effective hospitalisations and deaths decreased.

When they weren't, they increased.

No you’ve got it wrong. You can’t stop the pandemic, as CW said.

Any claims on reduction of deaths as that cover does needs to be substantiated.

Four days earlier for lockdown measures was a small change. And the gov were surprised at how comprehensively the public reacted.

And you haven’t given figures. Don’t fall for clickbait and spread it, funnily enough the person earning from that magazine keeps their own name off the magazine cover on that quote.

You’ve been duped as people are by many misinformation headlines

Do you not remember Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance on tv in September 2020 with their so called "Graph of doom" saying we'd be at 50,000 cases a day by mid October which would lead to 200 deaths a day by mid November if the government didn't put effective measures in place to prevent those deaths.

The government didn't, and those deaths were not prevented Neither were the 85,000 deaths that came in the couple of months after them.

I’m going by the Covid inquiry and the CMO has not stated most of the 230k deaths were preventable

That an Editor in Chief of that particular magazine has quoted his own views which are hyperbole like that is so astounding

But note without referencing his name, it is so incredibly poor it surprises me

When you see ‘man comes back to life click here’ at least you know what you are getting - hyperbole and click bait

With this it is not meant to be pure clickbait. Unbelievable and shoddy as anything.

I thought it was bloody stupid at the time. And said so. Loudly. Sadly I was proved right. Goddess preserve us when the next pandemic rolls round.