Off Topic Covid 19 restrictions have done one

no I don’t think the lockdowns where necessary. Some action was needed but not lockdowns.
Even the WHO said lockdowns were the wrong approach.
I spent lots of 2020 in Sweden, no lockdowns there. Not a single day.

 

There's little if anything to support your claim, as there are recognised and accepted techniques for calculating uncertainty, which would be readily available, and applied before it's published, or a note made giving the explicit reasons why it may be liable to change.

 

Yes they did
https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/herd-immunity-lockdowns-and-covid-19

Large scale physical distancing measures and movement restrictions, often referred to as ‘lockdowns’, can slow COVID‑19 transmission by limiting contact between people.

However, these measures can have a profound negative impact on individuals, communities, and societies by bringing social and economic life to a near stop. Such measures disproportionately affect disadvantaged groups, including people in poverty, migrants, internally displaced people and refugees, who most often live in overcrowded and under resourced settings, and depend on daily labour for subsistence.

 

The UK, for various reasons including the government's early handling of the situation, was hit harder than most countries. We were properly ****ed. Hull City Council were begging us to stay at home because local hospitals were so knackered.

I'm pretty sure Sweden had implied lockdowns rather than legally enforced ones, from what I recall of talking to a Swedish colleague at the time, but that's irrelevant anyway because the issue was how bad the situation was here.

Yes lockdown was miserable, no one wanted it. The government were desperate to avoid it because they're obsessed with money and they knew it would hugely impact the economy. Ultimately they were forced because the death toll and hospital situation was getting too dire to ignore.

 

If I recall correctly, the WHO (or at least a representative of it) said that lockdowns don't work unless they're carried out in conjunction with vaccinations. Or something along those lines.

The number contracting it whilst 'lockdown' in prisons, hospitals and care homes seems to support that.

 

No Sweden did not have implied lockdowns, places of work remained open, restaurants & bars remained open ( the most strictest measure was limits of 10 at a table & bars closed earlier)
Masks not mandatory & most choose not to wear them - and yet some how we all survived

 

What irritates me, and why I try to stay clear of these debates, is that if you question some aspect, such as the poor use of data, others then seem to try to claim it means you must be some sort of conspiracy nut, even though even those involved question a lot of the ways that the data has been handled and presented, and there are similarities in many other areas, where data is misused, often by incompetence, or ignorance.

Even an expert on epidemiology, is unlikely to be an expert on the detail of how the data is gathered and statistically processed before they get it, which has an impact on the conclusions that they draw.

This is made worse when they try to apply the data to inform a model.

 

You didn't all survive, Sweden had one of the worst death rates for a while.

But I'm not really interested in arguing the ins and outs of every aspect of different countries' policies, my concern here really is why you are so determined to believe that 'the man' is or was exaggerating this virus. What possible gain is there?

Having a paranoid obsession with covid being blown out of proportion and putting so much mental effort into believing it, is a conspiracy theory I'm afraid.

 

No worries, I’m off to the pub. Enjoy your evening

 

You seem to be agreeing with me and SW3, but using slightly different words. You seem to have realised that it wasn't just made up by Trump as you claimed, but we'd best not get in to politics.

 

Data which you dont know how it is gathered or processed isn't data, its rumour.
Which is why we will probably have to wait 5 years for peer reviewed publications to sort out what actually happened and why.

 

Exactly, yet it is churned out, mangled and repeated in so many fields, and still described as 'science' to be quoted by people that think science is a thing rather than a process.

 

I know what he said, and what you replied with. They're written further up this thread.

 

I'd like to think I'm as far away from being conspiracy theorist as its possible to be PLT.

I wouldn't for a second question the science behind the effectiveness of mask in stopping particles of respiratory droplets which may be carrying the virus. Medical professionals wear PPE for good reason.

However, that science is applied in the real world. So i question the value of wearing a mask in say a supermarket. The time and proximity you send with others in the store would make transmission via respiratory droplets quite small already. That IS an opinion BTW I don't have data to prove it except perhaps that the transmission rates here at the height of things without masks in shops was just about the same as the UK.

I'm pretty sure that view shouldn't make me a crazy conspiracy theorist though.

 

It’s annoying if you don’t believe everything you’re told you’re a conspiracy theorist and it’s micro chips in the brain bollocks

 

Were they? Hmmm

 

It's pretty evident that there are issues with the data, and given that's what the decisions are made on, the media should be looking in to that, rather than criticising the decisions based on it.