I don't want to overreact to this until it's verified by a named government source but if it's true then fucking hell!
Pubs and clubs might close for a bit, schools might close for a bit but over 70's must enter strict isolation for four months?
Fuck right off.
This would cause untold death and suffering to the most vulnerable people in our society just so we can carry on pretending nothing's happening for a few more days.
WHO have strongly warned against moral decay:
Dr Michael Ryan: Countries making their pandemic plans are well aware of the numbers and estimates in China for many weeks now. And I think it’s very important when we make the sometimes brutal calculations of herd immunity and delaying of spread and achieving herd immunity, and how maybe we should let the wave pass over us and then more people will be immune, and this will all go away, that there are many vulnerable people in our communities for this still will not go way.
And turning to face that fire is very important. Our elderly, our people with underlying conditions, people with cancer on chemotherapy and others, are precious members of our society, and the arithmetic of epidemiology, as I said, for me, in epidemiology we talk about the n, the size of the population we’re dealing with. We often say the n is the population of the country or the population of the world. So is n 7.8 billion? Well, for me, as a medical professional, n equals one. Every person matters.
Every single person matters and every community matters. And every society matters, every country matters. So I think we have to balance what are the epidemiological calculations with what are the really tragic and difficult scenes of family members worrying about particularly their elderly relatives, or spouses worrying about their partners who have cancer or are on chemotherapy. This is a very personal story, and it’s very easy to wrap it up in numbers and graphs and trends.
But in the end there are many, many people around the world who are concerned, and they’re particularly concerned about those in their families and communities who were very vulnerable. It is the duty of us all, governments, communities alike, to do as much as we can to protect those communities. And particularly to protect those vulnerable people amongst us. n equals 1.
Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus: I think this particular issue, especially about our senior citizens or the elderly is very, very important. If anything is going to hurt the world, it’s a moral decay. And not taking the death of the elderly or the senior citizens as a serious issue is one of the moral decays. And Mike has said it. Any individual, whatever age, any human being, matters. And it pains us to see, actually, in some places, when they want to move into mitigation, because the virus kills seniors or older people only.
That’s dangerous. Whether it kills a young person or an old person or a senior citizen, any country has an obligation to save that person. So that’s why we’re saying no white flag. We don’t give up. We fight. To protect our children, to protect our senior citizens. At the end of the day, it’s a human life. We cannot, I have said this many times by the way, we cannot say we care about millions when we don’t care about an individual person who may be senior or junior. Who may be young or old.
So that’s what WHO is saying. And for all countries, a comprehensive approach, a blended approach, an approach that can help contain this outbreak, is very important, because the death rate from this outbreak is high. We shouldn’t categorise it by young or senior. Of course, to understand the epidemiology it’s fine to do that. But for action I think every life matters. Every individual life matters. If we don’t care about one individual, whether it’s old or young, then we’re not serious. And that’s why we’re saying this is a moral decay, if we try to categorise it that way. A moral decay of the society.
www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/transcripts/who-audio-emergencies-coronavirus-press-conference-full-09mar2020-(1).pdf