What now

[Ashfordian]

However I do think you have a point, not regarding Covid, but future pandemics. As time goes on and as more of the population wakes up and accepts that we overreacted and hugely overspent on the Covid pandemic, it is likely we will not treat future pandemics with the respect they deserve. It will be much harder to fool the country with fear a second time. That is if the country can afford to implement mitigations. This is just another long term consequence from our short term overreaction to Covid.

With regard to the next time, I just can't help ideally wondering how long it will take, next time, for all the history re-writers to get going.

(I'm also reminded of my old: "Is my car safe?" scenario - but I won't bore you with that again here!)

History is already starting to be rewritten. Those without closed minds are starting to realise and accept the damage caused from our overreaction to Covid. Let's label it "The cure was worse than the virus"

The last people to accept the damage caused by our overreaction will be those who have been mentally damaged from the fear spread by the government, and those with too much of an ego to accept they were deceived and misled by the government and medical experts.

[servodude]

interesting premise
could find a more suitable home elsewhere

[Ashfordian]

:roll: interesting premise
could find a more suitable home elsewhere

Why? Because it makes you feel uncomfortable to have to face up to the consequences of the actions and restrictions that you were gullible to support without question over the last 3 years?

[XFool]

History is already starting to be rewritten.

I know that! My questions are: Who by? and For what reasons?

Those without closed minds are starting to realise and accept the damage caused from our overreaction to Covid. Let's label it "The cure was worse than the virus"

Why? Did more die from the precautions than died from COVID? Have you the figures? Are they real or imaginary? Are they verified?

I am hardly claiming there was no damage to anyone or anything from the COVID precautions, that would be silly! The fundamental point is this: In a global pandemic there is NO cost free option. No magic 'get out of jail free' card. Damage is coming, one way or another. The job of those in charge is to mitigate the damage as best they can and keep society sheltered until the worst is over and hopefully until medical science comes up with the goods. Which it did in this case.

But then again, even in this case, all over the Internet history is being 'rewritten'! Anyone hip to the groove 'knows' that the vaccines are 'causing mass death' on an unprecedented scale. Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions (billions?) are dying from a deadly poison administered by 'the powers that be' - possibly even deliberately and knowingly (all part of 'The Great Reset', apparently).

The last people to accept the damage caused by our overreaction will be those who have been mentally damaged from the fear spread by the government, and those with too much of an ego to accept they were deceived and misled by the government and medical experts.

Perhaps it was then all a... conspiracy?

It always happens like this...

(Must check if my car is safe)

[Arizona11]

However I do think you have a point, not regarding Covid, but future pandemics. As time goes on and as more of the population wakes up and accepts that we overreacted and hugely overspent on the Covid pandemic, it is likely we will not treat future pandemics with the respect they deserve. It will be much harder to fool the country with fear a second time. That is if the country can afford to implement mitigations. This is just another long term consequence from our short term overreaction to Covid.

You are quite right that we have overreacted to Covid. 221,591 people in the U.K. would agree with you, except they are all dead from Covid (according to government stats). 6,887,000 around the world would also agree with you, except they are all dead from Covid (according to WHO stats).

1,600,000 other people in the UK would also like to agree but they are still suffering from long Covid. But of course, there must be so many people over the years who have suffered from long flu.

Yes, we have definitely overreacted.

[Lootman]

However I do think you have a point, not regarding Covid, but future pandemics. As time goes on and as more of the population wakes up and accepts that we overreacted and hugely overspent on the Covid pandemic, it is likely we will not treat future pandemics with the respect they deserve. It will be much harder to fool the country with fear a second time. That is if the country can afford to implement mitigations. This is just another long term consequence from our short term overreaction to Covid.

You are quite right that we have overreacted to Covid. 221,591 people in the U.K. would agree with you, except they are all dead from Covid (according to government stats).

Yes, we have definitely overreacted.

Or to put it another way, 997 people out of 1,000 did not die from Covid.

So the question is, given that 3 in 1,000 death rate, did the UK government do too much, too little or about the right amount? And the answer to that probably depends on what financial value is ascribed to the saving of one life? Or more accurately to the saving of one member of the cohort that skews older and sicker?

[XFool]

Or to put it another way, 997 people out of 1,000 did not die from Covid.

This kind of 'argument' can, of course, be extended to cover anything you need it to. (Likely its point?)

The Black Death? Well, only killed about half of the populations of Europe and North Africa. Look on the bright side, that meant half survived, not so bad really. And anyway, not everybody is European or North African.

World population in the 1940s, ~2,300M. Number of Jews killed by the Nazis, ~6M

6/2300 = 0.26%

0.26% ? So 99.74% of the world were unaffected by the Holocaust? Trivial nonsense! Why do people bang on about it so? Time to do some "rewriting of history", methinks!

Oh! I think they may have started on that already...

[Steveam]

You are quite right that we have overreacted to Covid. 221,591 people in the U.K. would agree with you, except they are all dead from Covid (according to government stats).

Yes, we have definitely overreacted.

Or to put it another way, 997 people out of 1,000 did not die from Covid.

So the question is, given that 3 in 1,000 death rate, did the UK government do too much, too little or about the right amount? And the answer to that probably depends on what financial value is ascribed to the saving of one life? Or more accurately to the saving of one member of the cohort that skews older and sicker?

How many would have died if the mitigation actions had not been taken? Would there have been mass and catastrophic panic? Would the virus have evolved in a different way if we'd taken other (less costly?) actions? I think use of the .3% statistic in this way is poor.

Best wishes,

Steve

[9873210]

History is already starting to be rewritten.

Yes, it is. Some people are rewriting what happened in Milan and New York City in 2020.

[Lootman]

Or to put it another way, 997 people out of 1,000 did not die from Covid.

So the question is, given that 3 in 1,000 death rate, did the UK government do too much, too little or about the right amount? And the answer to that probably depends on what financial value is ascribed to the saving of one life? Or more accurately to the saving of one member of the cohort that skews older and sicker?

How many would have died if the mitigation actions had not been taken? Would there have been mass and catastrophic panic? Would the virus have evolved in a different way if we'd taken other (less costly?) actions? I think use of the .3% statistic in this way is poor.

If you wanted to know that then look at nations that did little or nothing about Covid, like some places in Africa and South America. They may have had higher numbers but not shockingly so. Did any nation have a death rate over 1%? How many over 0.5%? And at its worst Covid was still only the third biggest killer in the UK.

But anyway the point I was addressing was the idea that the government should have done even more than it did, or that it should still be doing more. And not just that it may have over-reacted. Although of course some nations did over-react even more.

[XFool]

If you wanted to know that then look at nations that did little or nothing about Covid, like some places in Africa and South America.

Really?

COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_South_Africa


COVID-19 pandemic in South America

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_South_America

"As of 12 January 2023, South America had recorded 67,331,547 confirmed cases and 1,344,031 deaths from COVID-19. Due to a shortage of testing and medical facilities, it is believed that the outbreak is far larger than the official numbers show."

The great "rewriting" project continues!

[Lootman]

If you wanted to know that then look at nations that did little or nothing about Covid, like some places in Africa and South America.

Really?

COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_South_Africa

COVID-19 pandemic in South America

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_South_America

"As of 12 January 2023, South America had recorded 67,331,547 confirmed cases and 1,344,031 deaths from COVID-19. Due to a shortage of testing and medical facilities, it is believed that the outbreak is far larger than the official numbers show."

But in percentage terms, not so bad as those places have huge populations. Find me a nation where the death rate from Covid exceeded 1%. Fairly sure you cannot. And even then the fatal cases were mostly the old and the sick, and this was known early on.

Peru is cited as the worst case but only about twice the UK rate, so still well under 1%.

Some countries may have under-reacted but others over-reacted.

[Mike4]

But surely the life expectancy in SA is down in the low 60s. So there is hardly anyone there at high risk unlike in the UK, yet they still lost a similar percentage of their population.

[Lootman]

But surely the life expectancy in SA is down in the low 60s. So there is hardly anyone there at high risk unlike in the UK, yet they still lost a similar percentage of their population.

Yes but there was more to it than that with the low numbers in Africa. Nigeria has a large population and yet it had only 14 deaths per million. Dirt poor countries like Chad and Burundi had negligible deaths. Very odd.

In fact globally the death rate from Covid was under 1 in 1,000.

[Mike4]

But surely the life expectancy in SA is down in the low 60s. So there is hardly anyone there at high risk unlike in the UK, yet they still lost a similar percentage of their population.

Yes but there was more to it than that with the low numbers in Africa. Nigeria has a large population and yet it had only 14 deaths per million. Dirt poor countries like Chad and Burundi had negligible deaths. Very odd.

Surely not odd at all. The risk of dying from catching Covid rockets with age and the poorer a country, the lower the average age of the population (I'd have thought). So the younger population, the lower the death rate we should expect from Covid. In the broadest possible terms.

[dealtn]

"As of 12 January 2023, South America had recorded 67,331,547 confirmed cases and 1,344,031 deaths from COVID-19. Due to a shortage of testing and medical facilities, it is believed that the outbreak is far larger than the official numbers show."

The great "rewriting" project continues!

What is this great rewriting project?

A claim was made no country had a death toll >1%. Sure, there will be questions of many (all?) countries statistics, but your response to it provides data that backs that claim, does it not? (I haven't checked all countries). Brazil for instance looks the worse but us about 0.3% deaths of its population.

[dealtn]

Yes but there was more to it than that with the low numbers in Africa. Nigeria has a large population and yet it had only 14 deaths per million. Dirt poor countries like Chad and Burundi had negligible deaths. Very odd.

Surely not odd at all. The risk of dying from catching Covid rockets with age and the poorer a country, the lower the average age of the population (I'd have thought). So the younger population, the lower the death rate we should expect from Covid. In the broadest possible terms.

True, but I would also want to adjust that to not just include age, but also the quality of the health provision too. It's probable a country spending less on its healthcare is less positioned to provide protection - particularly to novel viruses.

[Lootman]

A claim was made no country had a death toll >1%. Sure, there will be questions of many (all?) countries statistics, but your response to it provides data that backs that claim, does it not? (I haven't checked all countries). Brazil for instance looks the worse but us about 0.3% deaths of its population.

The source I looked at is this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_ ... by_country

It gives deaths per million from Covid for each country. Brazil is just fractionally worse than the UK.

[XFool]

COVID-19 misinformation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation

"False information, including intentional disinformation and conspiracy theories, about the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic and the origin, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease has been spread through social media, text messaging, and mass media. False information has been propagated by celebrities, politicians, and other prominent public figures. Many countries have passed laws against "fake news", and thousands of people have been arrested for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. The spread of COVID-19 misinformation by governments has also been significant."

[Hallucigenia]

Yes but there was more to it than that with the low numbers in Africa. Nigeria has a large population and yet it had only 14 deaths per million. Dirt poor countries like Chad and Burundi had negligible deaths. Very odd.

The thinking is that it was pretty bad in Africa - but just didn't get reported. Certainly there seems to have been a massive amounts of excess mortality in the BRICS that wasn't reflected in the official "due to Covid" figures, the Economist's central estimate is for 21 million excess deaths versus <7 million "official" Covid deaths. See eg

https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid
https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(21)02796-3/fulltext