Global lockdown fatigue?

[Workingman]

The number of reports where communities are actively kicking back or simply ignoring lockdowns is increasing - the latest is Barcelona - but these things are happening far and wide.

It is hardly surprising when one looks at the raw numbers. There are about 7.5 BILLION of us on the planet and yet only 14.7 MILLION of us have caught the virus. 8.8 MILLION of those have recovered and there have "only" been 611,000 deaths or 'not a lot' per million.

Then there are reports from the likes of Microsoft president, Brad Smith, the UN and the International Labour Organisation, warning that upwards of 250 million jobs could be lost affecting about 1 billion people in mature global economies and we have the perfect storm.

There is a saying that the cure could be worse than the disease and maybe people are now thinking that Covid - 19, and the reaction(s) to it, are a case in point.

[miasmum]

From the get go WM I said I hope this is all worth it, but sadly I dont think it will be. And I feel that even more strongly now. The damage to children's education, teenagers job prospects. The economy, the loss of businesses and jobs. The effect on people like my neighbour, who was doing so well with his dementia. His wife was taking him to dementia lunch clubs, singing with dementia, they were both coping and he was still managing well. Now she is in tears, he has completely deteriorated. He cant even find his way round the block anymore and he doesn't recognise his family. As she says through her tears, I will never get him back now, Covid has killed him and he didn't even have it. I am sure he is not alone.

[cromwell]

That is so sad MM.
People are social animals. We like to get together, to see friends and family, to go out for a meal etc etc.
Being in lockdown is not natural for us.

[saundra]

I agree it's destroying generation of people
Time after time
I also think the media and government mishaps certainly
haven't helped
I don't even make a point of listening to it on the news like I used to

[Workingman]

Shell, at the begining I was a fence-sitter in some ways.

I knew about herd immunity as it has been a known strategy for dealing with epidemics for almost a century, especially for certain types of diseases, and so it could have been a way forward. I also knew about quarantine as it has been around since the 1300s and it is also known to work.

Unfortunately what the world got, apart from in a few places, was something called "lockdown" and that was not a proved strategy for the control of a virus. Lockdowns come in different flavours and can work to control people partaking in things such as civil disobedience, rioting or protesting. They can control entry and exit to areas or even lock people in or out of those areas. Whether they would work against a virus was unknown.

It is now looking as though lockdowns were a sort of half way house approach to a relative of SARS and MERS, which was known to be more contagious to them, but with only an assumption that it was as deadly. Seven months or so in and we are caught between hell and high water. We know that Covid - 19 is not as deadly as first thought and we also know that the light touch lockdowns, whilst having partially worked, are decimating economies.

Politicians the world over know that if we totally ease lockdowns then millions more will die but not in the tens or hundreds of millions originally predicted, but still unacceptable to the public. On the other hand there is the real risk of a global depression if we keep on doing the same thing, and that is also unacceptable.

Until vaccines or working treatments come along it is now looking as though we are trapped.

[Suff]

I always thought that lock downs were a stepping stone to a vaccine, conceived as a palatable stopgap.

It was pretty clear that the only way to be sure of avoiding it totally was to live in a biohazard suit and to sterilise all consumables. Hardly feasible.

One other benefit of a lockdown, not really discussed, was that it could act as a choke point to ensure the health services were not overrun the way they were in Italy.

The big risk was that the true impact of the lockdown might be felt before a vaccine was a reality. Something which is emerging now.

Of course we have to factor in WHO, playing to China all the way. When it looked like the Chinese economy might be crippled by barriers, WHO cast doubt on whether it was a pandemic. Once China was able to halt the spread and bring their economy back online, WHO cast doubt on every other possibility to contain the virus, including immunity and even a vaccine itself. Whilst the Chinese economy goes from strength to strength, the rest of the world continues to be crippled economically.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Is it any wonder that people are saying enough already.

Less than 15 million infected, 7.6 billion on the planet!

[Workingman]

Less than 15 million infected, 7.6 billion on the planet!

And only 611 million dead!

Is there a chance, a slim chance, that the world might have got this wrong?

A lot was said about the Spanish Flu and how it unfolded, but things have moved on since then yet we appear to have been working to the old rules. I am not confident that anyone, anywhere, now knows what to do.

[Suff]

There will be 20:20 200% hindsight on this one about 5 years after it is over.

When the next one happens, about 100 years from now, they'll know exactly what to do...

As for Spanish Flu, they hadn't even decided whether it was viral or bacterial, had no antibiotics, no antivirals and no computers with virus vaccine models on them.

I thought it at the time and have not changed my mind on that. Basing your response on something medical that happened in WW1 is simply insane in the 21st century.

We will see as it goes. One point I did note today. The EU, minus the UK has had 134k deaths. Which is a close parallel to the US.

Making the situation in the US simply another one that has gone before. However the US has a Much higher BAME mix so should see more deaths.

Most of what we see, read, or hear, are vapid witterings. This virus is doing what it is doing and we are barely slowing it down without total isolation. The issue with total isolation is that your community is simply unable to resist the second wave.

It will be what it will be. The UK has ordered 190m doses of 3 different vaccines and put a reserve on another 40m more. We shall see where this goes.

[Workingman]

There is some thinking / evidence that a related coronavirus could have taken hold in the Far East years ago and that it, along with cultural / lifestyle practices, could be providing some form of immunity / resistance to SARS-cov-2.

The story is here.

Might this provide a pathway to some sort of solution along the lines of when cowpox antibodies were used to eradicate smallpox? One to keep an eye on.

[Suff]

Over time, there will be a full analysis of the pandemic. It may be that tests for specific antibodies and T cells miss cases where the person fought off the virus, effectively, with similar antibodies from a prior virus. In this case they would not show up as having been infected at all.

We already know that BCG helps people fight off Covid-19, but it is not a targeted vaccine.

This is all surmise right now, but time will tell.

In fact the most telling way point will be at mass vaccination time. Either the pandemic will stall and draw back or it will not.

We will begin to find out about that later in Autumn.