Miss Ann Thrope

Not sure where you got that breakdown as it's completely wrong, aside from the awful arithmetic.

And surprise, surprise, as thoughtful observers have been anticipating, it turns out that the headline death number is also a massive under-count. Around 55,000 "excess deaths" have occurred in the UK during the period of the covid pandemic, possibly as high as 61,000.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...ending8may2020

All six of the deaths I know about personally were of people under the age of 60, some considerably below, and none with serious health conditions. Not representative, of course, but not reassuring either.

Even if we accept your dodgy data and the premise that we should just re-open and get on with things, what's the real option? Isolate a fifth of the population (those over 65 accounting for 90% of your reported deaths plus other high risk groups, which may end up including people with darker skin who can't produce much vitamin D in less sunny climates, by the way)?

Despite attempts to portray Sweden as some libertarian trend-setter, they have been encouraging practice of social distancing just not legally enforcing it. And, as well as the significantly higher death rate than their neighbours, they have suffered a slightly greater economic contraction. If "herd immunity" is supposed to be their ultimate prize, then that's one hell of a gamble based on some highly questionable assumptions. Aside from the fact that herd immunity from a given disease among a large population (such as that of a big city or country) has never before been achieved without vaccines, a corona-virus is a most unsuitable candidate for such an experiment. This was already known. The emerging evidence from people that recovered from SARS seems to confirm the concern that surviving a corona virus may not, in fact, make you immune from re-infection in the long term as the antibodies gradually but fairly quickly disappear from your system.

And if there are US elections in September then that will be a major news item, regardless.

Standanista

To be let out of the Industrial Area you need to confirm you've tested negative and install the Ehteraz app for contact tracing. For the drive-through testing I don't know, but in Qatar, the authorities can always find you if they need to.

martinbkk

I always felt I needed my passport anytime I had to go in there, what a zoo, in pretty much every sense of that word.

DXBtoDOH

Yeah, yeah, yeah, our favourite Guardian/NYTimes/CNN poster is back with his deep belief in the sanctity of the guesswork and projection and faulty modeling of epidemiology and confusing it as factual science. But but but healthy young people are dying! Gotta blow up the entire global economy! Who cares about the hundreds of thousands if not millions of poor kiddies in Africa who'll die from being plunged into poverty. Hey, it's not like anyone really does even in the best of times.

I sat back and thought of all the young people I knew who died over the years. I'm just 40 and of those in my age cohort from school and university and life in general, we've had brain tumour, drug overdose, heart attack (a fitness freak who used to scold me for being unhealthy when I used to subsist on coffee and cigs), brain aneurysm, at least two car accident fatalities, broken neck from falling out a window. A kid with leukemia from way back, although he doesn't quite count as healthy I guess. And those are just the ones I had first degree of connections with.

In short, the function of life is to die. Thanks to Chinese ineptitude and botched cover up, we're blessed with a pandemic. But I must admit, as pandemic goes, this one isn't particularly too bad. It kills off the unhealthy old while sparing the healthy young (sorry to break this to you, healthy young people are not dying from COVID-19 in meaningful numbers). But an entire generation of young people are going to be paying the economic toll for many years of trying to prolong the lives of primarily unhealthy older people another year. Perhaps this was the right thing to do. Who knows.

Millhouse

The only number that was wrong was the 90pct of people dying are over 65. In fact it should have been 99pct. Thanks for highlighting my mistake and reinforcing my point.

csdf

Man, you've got a high risk cohort. I'm 44 and to my knowledge only two people (schoolfriends) of my age have died. Both died when they were in their late teens, early twenties. Oh, and there was the guy who fell off a ferry. Again, in his teens.

scrubbedexpat141

He hasn't got a high risk cohort, it's all made up.

csdf

No, it should have been 89%.
The UK death data is available from the ONS: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...nglandandwales
Total covid deaths for people aged 65 or older = 36,423 (up to 8th May)
Total covid deaths = 41,020
Deaths for people aged 65 or older as % of total = 89%

weasel decentral

I find it strange that I am on the side of the lockdown, it feels to me like the right thing to do. Anyhow let's play devil's advocate and see it from the other side.

So putting aside the deaths and sacrifice of older people to the great euthanasia project of 2020, (except my family and friends and maybe some random 'cool' older people), and run the scythe through the common or garden OAPs. The concern now is purely economic, the release of lockdown is to save the world from the next great recession.

We have the general projections and current reality of economic doom, but what is the expected economic outcome for a scenario where we just lock up the older people or in a more extreme scenario just a lassez faire policy of take your own chances. To date I'm only seeing arguments pointing out how bad things will be but nothing of note demonstrating how much better off we will be adopting a different policy. As Miss Ann points out above, Sweden seems to be facing a bigger economic downtown despite not enforcing a lockdown.?

weasel decentral

Back to bean counter school Millhouse, though in your defence plus or minus 10% is probably well within allowable error tolerance.

scrubbedexpat141

I think a big issue now is the fear. How many of us would go back to the office tomorrow if 100% capacity allowed and back to 'normal'? I wouldn't want to be in there 5 days a week.
The habit of hand washing, mask wearing and such things just a fact of life now? Would I go to a busy pub tomorrow night if they opened?
Have I succumbed to corona-fear?
Do economies rebound quickly or does the fear mean caution and whatnot?

csdf

If it's Ok for the national entity responsible for gathering statistics to have an error tolerance of ±10% on deaths (death being fairly unequivocal), then heaven help us all!

weasel decentral

I was assuming dead or alive is a rather binary state, I was pointing the finger to Millhouse's calculation tolerances in this case.

weasel decentral

That's kind of my point, just because there is no official lockdown doesn't mean there's no economic effect. A good economy is based on the confidence and optimism of both businesses and the people to spend - I'm not sure that is present under no implementation of a lockdown.

Millhouse

I would go. Mostly as I need to print a lot of stuff to do my tax return.