Ok, so I have been chatting with some other people who aren’t stupid, and we all smell some pretty major rats with the way this is being handled, for many reasons:
The information being given to the public does not relate to the anecdotal information. Whilst this is common in situations where some of the people involved suffer from ‘science’ snobbery – as in they believe that their epistomology is superior to everybody else’s – we don’t quite understand how this could be mishandled to the degree it appears to have been.
According to the information most people seem to have, there is no point in wearing a mask because it is ineffective. This is a bit like saying condoms are ineffective. Clearly a virus originating in the nose and mouth should be prevented by covering your nose and mouth. Why nobody that is not Victorian or Korean accepts this I do not know. I would have thought that it would make sense to even the stupidest person, but apparently not. It is also far easier to effectively clean a nice smooth glove than it is to get into every crevice of your hand, so whilst washing them is nice, wash them and then put them in a glove and wash them again.
Coronavirus also has an incubation period, which varies according to your immune system. Whilst your average Joe incubates it for five days, a healthy person can incubate it for far longer. (I once delayed the onset of shingles by three weeks because of my knowledge of nutritional health, for an example of delaying the onset of a full blown virus) This means in the case of coronavirus that you could be cheerfully spreading it for up to forty or so days without knowing it. Clearly the only answer to this issue is to mask and glove up to protect others rather than messing about with training yourself not to touch anything.
The official line is that you are looking out for a fever and dry cough. This is far too late. All the available anecdotal information that I looked at indicates that you are actually looking out for a sore throat, tiredness and travelling headaches. This is approximately a week earlier than any potential fever and dry cough. So are we to understand that you actually want people to spread this disease and recover from it without knowing that you had it?
Why is Sir Patrick Vallance still Chief Scientific adviser when he induced the Prime Minister to make a speech which would normally add up to career suicide? Why would you still listen to someone who appears to be delibarately misunderstanding the nature of a virus which is known to repeatedly infect the same person? You would have to be a complete numpty to suggest any herd immunity solutions to this, or perhaps a hardline Tory who has never experienced any real difficulties in his life and who does not value ‘useless eaters.’
I also question this lockdown idea. This would seem to be a lethally stupid economic idea and a trigger for a number of changes to civil liberties which are entirely undesirable and which neither I, nor any far sighted individual would countenance for a second. This may be a novel virus, but the practical solutions to it are all well documented by the Victorians, who had thousands of respiratory infections and oodles of experience with pneumonia. Why is this not being entertained? It is not even possible to question anyone about it, far less propose an alternative.
I also wonder why the public are being discouraged from boosting their immune system, since this affects immunocompromised people. Why would you do this? This ought to be a golden opportunity to remind people that their diet ought to be of huge concern.
Are we to assume that this is all a series of huge errors of judgement, not from our government, but from everyone’s? If so, it is definitely time, dear reader, to join a political party or perhaps start a new one.
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