For the people who think they've been duped...

[mac12]

I'm not trying to start a bunfight but I'm just curious about this thought process. People who think they've been duped by coronavirus & think lockdowns were a hysterical over-reaction...

• what do you think is going on when countries like China haven't rolled back from their strong stance on this? Do you think it's just to save face? I mean would a country really take a wrecking ball to their economy to save face?
• why have countries like Israel or some US states, which did reopen, decide to start closing down again? Why wouldn't they just crack on and carry on with full reopening if it was so clear that they had been duped & it had all been an overreaction?
• why wouldn't all governments be taking the Sweden line? Our govt isn't averse to the odd U-turn, why wouldn't they do this if they genuinely thought it was safe and they had overreacted?

I'm just wondering why people think governments would persist with this if it was so obviously an overreaction?

@TheDailyCarbuncle

What I find interesting is the extent to which people are willing to trust a model, the creators of which say themselves is not accurate (because that's how models built without much data work) and are willing to bet their entire lives on it - the future of their country, their economy, the welfare of children, pretty much everything, even though there is nothing to say it's in any way true. At the same time when there is actual, living evidence from Sweden that a full lockdown isn't necessary to control the spread of the virus, people just disregard it, citing a whole range of reasons. I always say STOCKHOLM instead of Sweden because there is some small chance that people won't be able to trot out the 'Sweden is another planet inhabited by strange aliens' excuse but it rarely works.

If you think lockdown was necessary, that's great for you. You will be shown to be wrong and you will be among the people who will, in the future have to face the fact that lives were destroyed for nothing. Because there will be endless, endless articles and tv programmes and PhD theses about it.

I'm out.

Ok Re Stokholm

Stokholm population 1633000
covid cases 23101
deaths 2384

London population 9000000
covid cases 34930
deaths 6130

See the difference.

If you think lockdown was necessary, that's great for you. You will be shown to be wrong and you will be among the people who will, in the future have to face the fact that lives were destroyed for nothing.

I think when generations look back they will question why people didn’t follow the rules, even though they were told it would save lives.

You are the type to argue the use of mosquito nets because not all mosquitos carry the malaria parasite, so they are a waste of money and might effect people’s sleep. Even though they saved thousands of people from getting malaria. But I’m sure you think that is based on an inaccurate model too.

Learn more about viruses and how they work and you will understand why people want to follow the rules the experts have suggested.

@Sunrise234

If you think lockdown was necessary, that's great for you. You will be shown to be wrong and you will be among the people who will, in the future have to face the fact that lives were destroyed for nothing.

I think when generations look back they will question why people didn’t follow the rules, even though they were told it would save lives.

You are the type to argue the use of mosquito nets because not all mosquitos carry the malaria parasite, so they are a waste of money and might effect people’s sleep. Even though they saved thousands of people from getting malaria. But I’m sure you think that is based on an inaccurate model too.

Learn more about viruses and how they work and you will understand why people want to follow the rules the experts have suggested.

Sorry I have to answer this one because it's so stupid.

Don't put words in my mouth. Hanging a mosquito net is so many millions of miles away from closing down entire economies leading to millions of job losses that making the comparison just makes you look like a raging idiot.

I know plenty about viruses and I also build models like the Imperial model so I know exactly how they work, what their purpose is and how inaccurate they can be. I think it's that model that will be held up as the biggest problem and failure of this whole shitshow and the dickhead that made it couldn't even follow the rules it led to the utter utter cunt.

I'm too fucking angry for this shit. It's like screaming at someone to be careful as they dance merrily towards a cliff edge. It's just so unnecessary and wrong and not only can people not see it, they're actually happy to be dancing towards their doom.

Fuck me I could never have fathomed up something so bleak in all my wildest, darkest daydreams. It really is the limit of sheer pointless destruction.

And now I really am out.

I'm too fucking angry for this shit. It's like screaming at someone to be careful as they dance merrily towards a cliff edge.

This is how the majority of the rest of the world think about people like you.

You keep using the comparison of Sweden so I am using the comparison of malaria. I could have used the tiger and rock theory but I felt a disease was better.

Forget about all the top scientists around the world in every single country saying the same thing, your conspiracy theories must be correct and everyone else is wrong.
Just wondering what shape you think the Earth is?

PP said Stockholm is a relatively sparsely populated city though, less than Manchester or Birmingham

Google says that Stockholm is almost exactly the same population density as Manchester, both somewhat more densely populated than Birmingham.

Yes and am I right in thinking if we had done as Stokholm did London would be looking more like 13000 deaths instead of 6k. Hopefully Carbunkle will stop banging on about Stokholm.

Sweden has also cancelled GCSEs, all graduations, sporting events etc and they’ve also taken a big hit to the economy and have one of the highest number of deaths due to COVID in the world.
Their way failed which is why other countries didn’t copy them but copied countries like China who took more of a drastic approach.

If we could have everything open and still control the number of cases -don’t you think that’s what we would have done?
The government doesn’t want to see the economy collapse just as much as we don’t.

Sunrise you have your scientists and people like myself and carbuncle have ours. So lay off with the conspiracy and flat earth bullshit yeah.

@Sunrise234 The problem with lockdown is you have to come out of it and as countries around the world are finding, infection rates shoot straight back up.
Once work, public transport and pubs/bars are opened, there is nothing to stop the virus, these areas render SD impossible.

I'm not against lockdown as perhaps Carbuncle is but neither do i think its the panacea you seek either.

www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/herd-immunity-coronavirus/614035/

This is a really interesting read. It shows we really do not have all the answers and I totally support @TheDailyCarbuncle point that we just do not know how this will play out. I also find it very frustrating when people constantly refer to the Ferguson model predictions as facts. We simply do not know how Covid would spread if left unchecked and only time will tell how this plays out but what we do know is there are some very damaging effects from lockdown so it should be a last resort measure from now on.

I don’t always agree with @TheDailyCarbuncle but I find a lot of her/his posts to be well argued & thought provoking. I don’t think we should be so personal in attacks on people who view the situation differently. We should all be questioning ourselves all the time - we are in midst of public health & economic crisis & I don’t trust our politicians to have the answers.
The economic & health impacts of lockdown are going to be devastating, I don’t doubt that for a second. Not to mention impact on children, young adults & vulnerable people facing abuse.
I also think not taking action in the face of Covid would have been devastating & I’m not actually talking about death rate at all - I think we have barely begun to see the burden of long term chronic health impacts this virus will trail in its wake especially if early reports of reinfections with ADE are borne out by further research. If that proves significant, then we’ll be glad every effort was taken to contain spread.
With all of this, so many moving variables & huge unknowns. I certainly hope Daily Carbuncle comes back.

Sweden has also cancelled GCSEs, all graduations, sporting events etc and they’ve also taken a big hit to the economy and have one of the highest number of deaths due to COVID in the world.
Their way failed

UK has a far higher per capita death rate than Sweden, based on official figures not excess deaths, indeed we make the USA rates look excellent.
We also didn't test early deaths, so ours is likely even higher..

@Jussayingisall you have a huge majority of scientists saying the same thing but then you literally have only one or two saying something different but you choose to believe those? And most of the people saying these things aren’t even scientists.

We know there are some scientists who are conspiracists like the doctor who blamed autism on the measles vaccinations and the one who blamed HIV on the polio vaccine. So surely you would be wary when only one or two are saying something completely different to the rest of the world.

Yes and am I right in thinking if we had done as Stokholm did London would be looking more like 13000 deaths instead of 6k. Hopefully Carbunkle will stop banging on about Stokholm.

As far as I know around 17% of Londoners were found to have antibodies and it's around the 10% mark in Stockholm, so I doubt it would ever have been that bad

@mac12 yes I agree i enjoy the discussions and trying to see other people’s point of view as that’s how we learn but there is no need to get personal or use swearing as a way to win an argument.
It is a frustrating and worrying topic so emotions can run high but I still value their opinions.

@jasjas1973 I believe Sweden had one of the highest in the world but now we have apart from the USA a couple other countries but I know we’re close to the top now.

It's not one or two though is it, we have just not got time to give thousands of examples. The guy I quoted is a Nobel prize winner, not a participation in school sports day trophy like Neil Ferguson has achieved. I have listened to many different arguments and discussions and I still think we have overreacted.

Nope Sweden still below us and we are still way ahead of the USA

www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/

@TheDailyCarbuncle
Absolutely.

If it was just our country then I would probably agree but every other country (apart from Sweden) has had a strict lockdown and the spread slowed.
No country would choose to lockdown unless they felt they had no other choice.

If we had lockdown earlier we could have controlled it even more. We are an island so putting the country on lockdown would have massively helped as it might not have come over here and we wouldn’t have needed to have a lockdown.

This says we are below the USA

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?utm_campaign=homeAdUOA?Si

But are all countries recording the deaths the same?

Wasn't there a report in the BBC yesterday that Iran has covered up the actual number of their deaths.

And although Sweden didn't have a lockdown they did have social distancing. It looks like with schools being open they used social distancing and remote learning, so everything wasn't as normal

www.tes.com/news/have-swedish-schools-really-carried-normal

I share your utter frustration @TheDailyCarbuncle.

No I don’t believe all countries are reporting the same.
I think I remember China was under reporting deaths or something too.