Has the world overreacted re Covid-19
Poll: Has the world overreacted re Covid-19
Total Members Polled: 368
Discussion
robemcdonald said:
An interesting article, but not really substantive.
We will soon know how effective the lockdown has been though. Let’s see f there is a spike in new cases in the next few weeks.
I do think if there was any evidence of the NHS fiddling the numbers DC would be on it like a tramp on chips.
I don’t think they are deliberately fiddling numbers, there appears to be some cases of no testing after death so I can only assume the numbers aren’t accurate.We will soon know how effective the lockdown has been though. Let’s see f there is a spike in new cases in the next few weeks.
I do think if there was any evidence of the NHS fiddling the numbers DC would be on it like a tramp on chips.
With regards to a spike, we were told there would be a massive spike after VE Day and that hadn’t happened, but as you say let’s see what the next month brings.
Teddy Lop said:
pquinn said:
Gweeds said:
As a virologist said right back in March, “if it looks like we over-reacted it means we did the right thing’.
No, it means you overreacted. This is why you don't have virologists set policy. 
Virologists panic about viruses. Its their job
Same as astronomers panic about comets, fire chiefs panic about fires, environmentalists panic about the environment, and so on and so on, they will all tell you that much more should be done in their particular field.
We do seem to encourage a panic-drama mindset about everything today where everyone seems to think they need to over play their agenda.
V8covin said:
SS2. said:
Exactly this.
The ONS has even cast doubt on its own figures because of the manner in which Covid-19 deaths have been reported, especially those from care homes.
How do you account for the 65,000 excessive deaths in the last 3 months then if not covid ?The ONS has even cast doubt on its own figures because of the manner in which Covid-19 deaths have been reported, especially those from care homes.
mx5nut said:
We have America as an example to the world about what happens when you do next to nothing.
And we also have Sweden as an example of having a consistent social-distancing policy with far less disruption and cliff-edge policies. On the Pubs thread i said 3 months ago let them remain open as long as certain criteria can be achieved - table spacing etc. Same for public transport in cities. What is safe now was also safe then.Edited by fido on Sunday 5th July 21:44
As they say Hindsight is a wonderful thing!
Governments are dammed if they do and dammed if they don't. It is very easy to pick apart decisions made from an arm chair after the fact, I think the numbers coming out of countries like Brazil give a good clue as to where things may have been if nothing was done.
To the OP, if you were in charge and faced with an unknown epidemic what would your decision have been and could you live with it?
Governments are dammed if they do and dammed if they don't. It is very easy to pick apart decisions made from an arm chair after the fact, I think the numbers coming out of countries like Brazil give a good clue as to where things may have been if nothing was done.
To the OP, if you were in charge and faced with an unknown epidemic what would your decision have been and could you live with it?
HoHoHo said:
There is no way whatsoever that over 40,000 have died in the UK from the virus.
A family member works with the NHS and has said if you die and it even looks like you’ve got Covid a box is ticked and that’s your cause of death....with no testing after death so the figures are, frankly absolutely inaccurate.
IMO the number of deaths due entirely to the virus is tiny and probably no more than a couple of thousand at most and the real number of deaths with the help of Covid is thousands, but not 40,000.
Look at the total number of deaths in the UK. All of them regardless of cause. They spike up way above the usual rate for the time of year through the spring of this year and then in the last few weeks they come back down to the normal seasonal rate. If you don't think that substantial increase was caused by Covid, the onus is on you to propose an alternative.A family member works with the NHS and has said if you die and it even looks like you’ve got Covid a box is ticked and that’s your cause of death....with no testing after death so the figures are, frankly absolutely inaccurate.
IMO the number of deaths due entirely to the virus is tiny and probably no more than a couple of thousand at most and the real number of deaths with the help of Covid is thousands, but not 40,000.
2019 saw an unexpectedly low number of deaths. Such events tend to be corrected by a higher than expected number of deaths during the following year, with a spike occurring during the early months.
Not saying that accounts for the numbers in entirety, but it's perhaps not as black and white as it's often made out to be.
Not saying that accounts for the numbers in entirety, but it's perhaps not as black and white as it's often made out to be.
Sophisticated Sarah said:
Teddy Lop said:
pquinn said:
Gweeds said:
As a virologist said right back in March, “if it looks like we over-reacted it means we did the right thing’.
No, it means you overreacted. This is why you don't have virologists set policy. Virologists panic about viruses. Its their job
Same as astronomers panic about comets, fire chiefs panic about fires, environmentalists panic about the environment, and so on and so on, they will all tell you that much more should be done in their particular field.
We do seem to encourage a panic-drama mindset about everything today where everyone seems to think they need to over play their agenda.
gottans said:
As they say Hindsight is a wonderful thing!
Governments are dammed if they do and dammed if they don't. It is very easy to pick apart decisions made from an arm chair after the fact, I think the numbers coming out of countries like Brazil give a good clue as to where things may have been if nothing was done.
To the OP, if you were in charge and faced with an unknown epidemic what would your decision have been and could you live with it?
Difficult to answer because I’m not an expert, I’m simply asking a question to discuss on a forum.Governments are dammed if they do and dammed if they don't. It is very easy to pick apart decisions made from an arm chair after the fact, I think the numbers coming out of countries like Brazil give a good clue as to where things may have been if nothing was done.
To the OP, if you were in charge and faced with an unknown epidemic what would your decision have been and could you live with it?
Firstly I agree they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. However I disagree with the double standards and seemingly change of direction almost on a whim depending on the day if the week. Some of the decisions over their last week are frankly ridiculous, for example, you can have your hair cut, go to Thorpe Park and get pissed in a pub but you can’t have your nails done..........
If I were the PM I’m not sure what I would have done however what did seem to happen was a knee jerk reaction to the way the world was handling the virus and our government went from a tight Red Arrows formation to disappearing in different directions at the rate of knots! Given the money available I would have spent money on a track and trace system/app that works and once you have that (which I believe is possible quite quickly and Germany seems to have cracked that one if I remember correctly) you have a good tool to not only establish exactly what’s going which will allow nessesary steps to be taken according to the accurate data.
ATG said:
HoHoHo said:
There is no way whatsoever that over 40,000 have died in the UK from the virus.
A family member works with the NHS and has said if you die and it even looks like you’ve got Covid a box is ticked and that’s your cause of death....with no testing after death so the figures are, frankly absolutely inaccurate.
IMO the number of deaths due entirely to the virus is tiny and probably no more than a couple of thousand at most and the real number of deaths with the help of Covid is thousands, but not 40,000.
Look at the total number of deaths in the UK. All of them regardless of cause. They spike up way above the usual rate for the time of year through the spring of this year and then in the last few weeks they come back down to the normal seasonal rate. If you don't think that substantial increase was caused by Covid, the onus is on you to propose an alternative.A family member works with the NHS and has said if you die and it even looks like you’ve got Covid a box is ticked and that’s your cause of death....with no testing after death so the figures are, frankly absolutely inaccurate.
IMO the number of deaths due entirely to the virus is tiny and probably no more than a couple of thousand at most and the real number of deaths with the help of Covid is thousands, but not 40,000.
I vote yes and no!
It was right to bring in social distancing rules, to shut places like cinemas, sports venues, gyms and so on, to encourage peiople to work from home.
It was over reaction to close many businesses as they have now reopened and operated safely, some did not shut so it was possible to operate. The rules to open things like hairdressers could have been brought in sooner.
Chasing people with drones by the Police was over reaction
Edit: I have a niece who works with the virus and early on she emailed telling us to be very careful and to isolate whenever possible
It was right to bring in social distancing rules, to shut places like cinemas, sports venues, gyms and so on, to encourage peiople to work from home.
It was over reaction to close many businesses as they have now reopened and operated safely, some did not shut so it was possible to operate. The rules to open things like hairdressers could have been brought in sooner.
Chasing people with drones by the Police was over reaction
Edit: I have a niece who works with the virus and early on she emailed telling us to be very careful and to isolate whenever possible
Edited by Armchair Expert on Monday 6th July 00:56
V8covin said:
How do you account for the 65,000 excessive deaths in the last 3 months then if not covid ?
Well first of all you need to distinguish between dying with Covid-19 and from Covid-19.If someone is very frail, and only a year or two from death, and they then contract Covid-19 and pass away is that with or from?. Deaths from seasonal Flu follow much the same pattern and a mild seasonal Flu season (which is what we seemed to have as deaths from pneumonia were running below usual levels in February and March) would leave more to die with/from Covid-19.
Secondly we have had thousands of excess deaths because we basically shut down our health service for a time to deal with Covid-19 and that was the message given out to the public. Emergency calls from the public about heart attacks for example were (from memory) about 50% down at one stage. People have been dying preventable deaths due to messaging by the authorities and media.
HoHoHo said:
gottans said:
As they say Hindsight is a wonderful thing!
Governments are dammed if they do and dammed if they don't. It is very easy to pick apart decisions made from an arm chair after the fact, I think the numbers coming out of countries like Brazil give a good clue as to where things may have been if nothing was done.
To the OP, if you were in charge and faced with an unknown epidemic what would your decision have been and could you live with it?
Difficult to answer because I’m not an expert, I’m simply asking a question to discuss on a forum.Governments are dammed if they do and dammed if they don't. It is very easy to pick apart decisions made from an arm chair after the fact, I think the numbers coming out of countries like Brazil give a good clue as to where things may have been if nothing was done.
To the OP, if you were in charge and faced with an unknown epidemic what would your decision have been and could you live with it?
Firstly I agree they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. However I disagree with the double standards and seemingly change of direction almost on a whim depending on the day if the week. Some of the decisions over their last week are frankly ridiculous, for example, you can have your hair cut, go to Thorpe Park and get pissed in a pub but you can’t have your nails done..........
If I were the PM I’m not sure what I would have done however what did seem to happen was a knee jerk reaction to the way the world was handling the virus and our government went from a tight Red Arrows formation to disappearing in different directions at the rate of knots! Given the money available I would have spent money on a track and trace system/app that works and once you have that (which I believe is possible quite quickly and Germany seems to have cracked that one if I remember correctly) you have a good tool to not only establish exactly what’s going which will allow nessesary steps to be taken according to the accurate data.
I guess in hindsight you need to look at other plagues in the past that wasn't understood and the effects they had. Remember it's not just about deaths, look at the hit the economy and national debt has had. As we saw from 2008, that had a 10 year austerity knock on and we were just climbing out of that...
Realistically, we didn't act soon enough to shut down the spread. We're an island nation, so would have been easy to lock down borders early, anyone coming in an enforced two week isolation. There's claims now it's all on trust and they can't track, so why not use the current system and tag people?
The countries that previously had Sars had their wake up call and reacted quickly. I think next time will be so much more strick, quicker response etc.
As per the Mail today it seems they are going for the old German war propaganda of ‘if you tell a lie enough times it eventually becomes the truth’
Suicide Sunday - young people partying at raves after boozing all day Saturday.
Article headline implies that all these people will be dead by next week and that Covid is a 100pc fatal virus.
No wonder we are stuck in a negative feedback loop.
Yes we have overreacted and will continue to.
Suicide Sunday - young people partying at raves after boozing all day Saturday.
Article headline implies that all these people will be dead by next week and that Covid is a 100pc fatal virus.
No wonder we are stuck in a negative feedback loop.
Yes we have overreacted and will continue to.
ATG said:
Look at the total number of deaths in the UK. All of them regardless of cause. They spike up way above the usual rate for the time of year through the spring of this year and then in the last few weeks they come back down to the normal seasonal rate. If you don't think that substantial increase was caused by Covid, the onus is on you to propose an alternative.
Wrong. The Onus is on you to prove the spike was Covid not for someone to prove it was not. You make the assertion, you prove it.IN addition, what happened to cancer and heart disease mortality rates during the same period?
HoHoHo said:
To be honest, like many people I know we don’t even know anyone who’s definitely had COVID!
I know several, non of whom have had anything more than a very mild case, although I am in one of the lowest risk groups and so are my friends. Indeed, a friend who works for BUPA got it, and has a test to prove so, yet her boyfriend who she self-isolated with in a 2 bed flat for 2 weeks never had so much as a single cough. Many people who went skiing in February and March came back with what we now know are classic Covid symptoms, yet were unable to access a test to find out for sure. These cases were never recorded. It's one reason I am convinced that the virus was far more widespread early on than the modelling suggests, and which is in turn why the calculations around how dangerous the virus actually is are also wrong. For younger people it simply is not something to be concerned about, and there is no reason why they should have been locked down once the evidence was there.
Since we're talking world
“...almost 40 percent of Americans earning less than $40,000 a year lost their jobs in March.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/opinion/coronav...
There's many people living paycheck to paycheck. We were lucky here with the furlough scheme, lockdown gave people th echance to spend less
Education, national debt, personal finances, not just deaths but the long term effects of the infection of sufferes health and possibly the stigma will all have long reaching effects.
“...almost 40 percent of Americans earning less than $40,000 a year lost their jobs in March.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/opinion/coronav...
There's many people living paycheck to paycheck. We were lucky here with the furlough scheme, lockdown gave people th echance to spend less
Education, national debt, personal finances, not just deaths but the long term effects of the infection of sufferes health and possibly the stigma will all have long reaching effects.
loskie said:
maybe the world is overpopulated and needed a bit of a clear out.
If that was the case it didn't work very well.Take the amount of true CV deaths, deduct the amount of people who would have died anyway and compare it to the global population.
It's been like attempting a mass shooting with an air pistol.
Personally I don't know anyone who died from it, I went to 3 funerals in April, not one was CV related.
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