BBC news said over 500,000 people in the uk had coronavirus last week. Death rate of around 350 a day so round that to 2500 deaths that week. Anyone know what 500000/2500 as a percentage is? Yep, 0.5%. Obviously not an ideal scenario that it’s killing 1 in 200 people who get it. But it’s also not ideal to put the word on pause either. If you delved deeper into it and found how many of those 2500 had underlying problems which would have been exacerbated by something like the flu or covid or a chest infection etc I’d speculate it would be a large proportion of them. It’s certainly a conundrum, I just don’t think lockdown is the answer at all. Massive sacrifice for what’s been proven to be quite marginal gains in the fight against it.
Any idea how that looks with excess deaths this time of year? Haven’t seen that graph reported for a while.
The issue is, if there were no or fewer restrictions, that 350 per day would rapidly become a much higher number. So what you term marginal gains are actually probably much more than marginal. If we can hold the deaths at 350 per day that’s a sign the restrictions are working, not that they are pointless. Ultimately no one knows what that higher number would be - but it would mean an end to more lives to find out.
Fortunately you don't die the minute you test positive, there's a lag of at least 2 weeks - so comparing positive tests and deaths from the same week is nonsense
Who'd fancy their chances with this then? Not sure I would... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54873105
I'm not a scientist but 43k people tested doesn't sound like very many to me, and since it usually takes years to get drugs approved what is there still to learn about this one? I'll just stay at home a bit longer...
OK for pubsec workers getting full pay for not working, or able to work from home,not so great for front line pubsec workers or those on furlough or those who are going to be out of a job soon.
Interesting that this news was delayed until after the next most powerful man in the world was decided. If this news had broken two weeks ago, who knows?
