I don't know how helpful it is to compare Covid mortality to the number of deaths from suicide, other illnesses, or road deaths. But if you wish to do so, the current 7-day average for Covid dead is over 40+ per day, and rising: suicide deaths are below 20 per day, road deaths average around 5 each day and some 450 souls succumb to cancer.



I don't think I see any general obsession about Covid death rates. They are reported daily, and there is an understandable measure of concern when the rate notches up by 50% in a week: there are clear memories of the horrors of last year.

yes however those mortalities are generally understood. i think we are just at a period when we have a new illness and we just dont know what happens if someone gets it. yes we see the super ill and deaths from last year but now with long covid and other evidence of damage to other organs, it is just a different animal.

In my opinion Covid will not be eradicated. Eventually it'll become another illness, something we'll need to cope with, and potentially it could be a cause of death. I think there's an obsession with it - there definitely is one in the media - for I don't see, for instance, a ticker tape on Sky of the number of cases of cancer for instance. But that's just my opinion and not the main message of the post you quoted.

Meanwhile, in Whitehall... I wonder if the Gove LFT trial will be dramatically resurrected!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57877373

It appears that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak are, indeed, part of a pilot programme that means that they will not have to self-isolate despite being pinged by NHS Test & Trace.

Covid: PM and chancellor not isolating after Javid test - BBC News

Utterly pathetic. Why anyone is left listening to their rules is beyond me. A rapidly decreasing number I realize.

Ah, that old chestnut of a "pilot programme" aka "Gove Trial". I think I'll self-enrol in it next time I get pinged.

All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

‘almost’

I cannot go clubbing, I cannot stand at a bar, people ask me about masks everywhere, there are huge queues outside many places due to social distancing.

It’s not fair for people who don’t go to bars and clubs to say there is no lockdown, because there is.

so there is lockdown, but tomorrow it will end.

In fact one could argue that making travel so difficult could be a lockdown, but for the sake of domestic lockdowns let’s just say that it will end tomorrow for the first time since March 2020

Yes, there are some things we cannot do. But 95% of us can do 95% of the things we want to do 95% of the time. That is not lockdown.

how many people can you legally have around to your house? If you don’t think that’s a draconian limit on your civil liberty then I don’t know what is? It may be a justified restriction, but please stop downplaying these restrictions as if they are nothing.

What is then in your world?

I rather like the experience of visiting a pub at the moment. Always preferred table service to queuing at the bar.

it is a genuine trial, I have friends who have chosen to do this.

That said, Boris and co have done a U-turn and chosen to isolate.

I'm not sure... is it still 6? Certainly more people than I have wanted to have in my house at the same time for a very long time, and in practice not much of a restriction for many people. :)

But I really think we're only arguing about semantics. I do agree that the restrictions that are currently placed upon us are unprecedented, would in normal times be unthinkable and also that they clearly cannot and should not go on forever. I also believe that some of the current restrictions are unnecessary, and the whole thing (in England, at least) is an incoherent and inconsistent mess that is unpoliced and as good as useless.

However, I still contend that this is not a lockdown because, quite simply, we are not locked down. What is currently happening in NSW and Melbourne is 'lockdown', whereas I can go almost anywhere, whether in the UK or abroad, whenever I want, for any or no purpose. Let's just agree to disagree on the exact meaning of 'lockdown' and move on.

Is CWS still publishing his coloured tables comparing the UK to elsewhere? If so would someone be able to remind me of the thread?

Thanks

Good, I thought they'd be incapable of feeling shame.