British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the people of Great Britain on Friday that the government is "now seeing a second wave" of COVID-19 confirmed cases.
It is extremely difficult to know what this means. Throughout the period of COVID-19, governments have been putting out fear data without the context to understand the data. It is the same with this data. There is no indication what the size of the testing is relative to other periods. There is no indication as to the severity of those testing posititive.
The one thing we do know is that as of now the number of people infected in hospitals in the UK with Covid-19 or dying from the disease are all at far lower levels than at the peak in the UK back in April-May. This could change, we just don't know because the UK government is not providing the full data picture.
The government officials are, of course, acting as if a worst-case scenario is about to develop.
The BBC reports that the Johnson government is considering a new three-tiered set of restrictions.
The first tier would be the level of measures currently in place in most parts of England now - with social distancing the key aspect.
The second tier would involve what is currently being imposed north-east of England - curfews on hospitality venues and a ban on meetings between households.
The final third tier would involve stricter lockdown measures.
If this plan is put into action, "Tier two" restrictions are expected to be imposed on a region-by-region basis, but it is thought likely that they could eventually cover almost all of the UK, according to the BBC.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said it was "increasingly likely" that the nine million people in the capital will need to follow areas such as the north-east and come under additional measures.
Public Health England's medical director Yvonne Doyle warned of "far worse things to come."
"Clearly when you look at what is happening, you've got to wonder whether we need to go further than the rule of six that we brought in," the prime minister said, referring to measures introduced on Monday.
A second wave should not come as a surprise, if you lock people down, there is not going to be as many opportunities for the virus to spread. But when you ease the restrictions, and herd immunity has not been reached, the number of COVID-19 infections will start to climb again.
Thus, I have been careful not to argue that lockdowns and masks "don't work," I have no idea whether they do or not. That said, there are many other reasons to object to the lockdown.
First and foremost, it is a virus that appears to only be a life-threatening virus for the elderly (possibly only with comorbidities). Thus it makes zero sense to lockdown the young and those of working age. This not only crushes the economy but also has severe mental health consequences.
From the US Center for Disease Control:
Overall, 40.9% of 5,470 respondents who completed surveys during June reported an adverse mental or behavioral health condition, including those who reported symptoms of anxiety disorder or depressive disorder (30.9%), those with TSRD symptoms related to COVID-19 (26.3%), those who reported having started or increased substance use to cope with stress or emotions related to COVID-19 (13.3%), and those who reported having seriously considered suicide in the preceding 30 days (10.7%)
Further, as I point out in an episode of my podcast, Dread Risk Fear And Its Role in the Current COVID-19 Fear, government lockdowns are blunt instruments that fail to take into consideration individual situations or even the differences in risk profiles of different individuals.
In short, government lockdown and other COVID-related regulations are monstrous anti-liberty measures ordered by what F. A. Hayek would call the fatal conceit of government officials who believe they, with their blunt instruments, understand better how to manage the reaction to a virus better than the individuals who must actually balance the threat of COVID-19 infection and what is likley to result relative to other parts of their lives.
It will be interesting to see how quietly the British people react to anti-liberty COVID-19 regulations ordered by Boris Johnson a second time around. There are indications that a wave of civil disobedience could face the lockdown tyrant that could be much more severe than the second wave of the virus itself.
-RW
"we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall...Er, uh...oh never mind that poppycock."
ReplyDeleteThe phony second wave is right out of the Event 201 playbook. It will employed in the US, too.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like a casedemic. A result of hysterical testing. Death numbers in uk are still very low. Need to see icu numbers. They are the better indicator.
ReplyDeleteTests seems to have a 2-8% false positive rate depending on type. Poor tuning can make the tests even less relaible.
With just a 1% fp rate, a consistent testing regime would always find covid. Even if covid did not exist.
David B.
Folks test positive ... big deal. Our governor tested positive ... then tested negative minutes later.
ReplyDeleteAnd cases are an abused term. Look at reported daily deaths in the UK. No spike whatsoever. Just a dozen or so being reported as dying WITH COVID. Big deal.
Anything to foment fear.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
ReplyDeleteIt's too bad the news reports only the bad news, not the good---especially when the good far outweighs the bad. We should be seeing these kinds of headlines: "328,199,098 people did not die of Covid-19 yesterday, and 328,156,372 people did not test positive."
ReplyDeleteQuarantining healthy people whether by mandated lock-downs, masks or social distancing is something only a totalitarian society would do. And it has nothing to do with health.
ReplyDeleteExactly. And with the incentives for the hospitals (and governments) to lie about positive cases as I was told directly happened and I imagine it still does, what else can we expect? For 6 freaking months now the Alaska government medical “experts” have been saying “we do expect a rapid increase in positives cases (who cares) and hospitalizations in Alaska in the next couple weeks”. Every week They say this. And we have 40 dead people who ALL had underlying issues. And a whopping 34 hospitalizations was the tops at one given time. There is a article in the Anchorage rag that calls itself a newspaper that got everyone riled up last week cause a gal died who was 44 years old. So the story was supposed to make us think that now it’s after the younger people, not just the old. Well if you actually read the whole damn thing, near the end, and the way it’s written you don’t really notice, it says “she was admitted into the Alaska Native hospital with DOUBLE PNEUMONIA!!
DeleteAnd the whole story is about how the family wants everyone to know that COVID is a killer that’s just waiting for us like a lion outside our door. Plus she was over weight and not healthy in the first place.
I have 2 friends I was talking to about it, one who is a COVID believer, and I said, “but she had double pneumonia when she was admitted” and neither one of them saw that in the article until I told them and they reread it. This whole thing is a fraud. And the government is going to glean it like a starved person in a fruit orchard. We have to fight (push) back.
Or we are done. Period. The loss of jobs is nothing compared to the loss of Liberty we will NEVER get back. It won’t matter who is president or who is in Congress. We will never get it back.
“ Liberty once lost is lost forever.”