O/T:- Are we over-reacting to COVD19?

[drillerpie]

No sh*t? I'm sure that's what our CMO is doing all the time and I've got no reason to think his qualifications and judgement are notably inferior/superior to others elsewhere. As long as the Government follows his advice rather than reacting to the media, I think that's the safest bet.


Actually, spreading and flattening the spike is the best outcome so we don't have to build excessive additional capacity, hence the phased approach. As I've said previously, if you over-quarantine people whose immune systems can successfully fight COVID-19 anyway, you risk suppressing those systems to a point where some become less 'ready' than they would otherwise have been, potentially to greater detrimental effect.


So the public interest is best served by overplaying an illness that kills a relatively small number of people quickly and then disappears, whilst ignoring one that kills a relatively large number of people more slowly and continues? Using that logic, if Notts County win their next game 10-0 then I don't care if they lose the next 10 games after that.


I never did argue with that. My point was about the media not the Government. Of course Coronavirus will be the Government's priority for the next few months while the virus is active, and so it should be, but this does not excuse the media from overplaying the threat and scaring people into panic buying industrial quantities of toilet rolls!



Literally as I write, the number of COVID-19 cases recorded worldwide is 163,332 from which there have been 6,086 deaths against a world population of around 7.8 billion people. The effect of Coronavirus on the world population is and will be miniscule and temporary. Suicide sees 800,000 die each year which is still a small number but ongoing. The level of fear being created around Coronavirus by the media is demonstrably, ridiculously excessive.

I don't care about the media. Why are you obsessed with the media? Do you think the Chinese government's reaction was dictated by pressure from the media? Bear in mind the Chinese government and the Chinese media are one and the same. Please address this gaping logical crevice in your argument before writing anything else about the media.

Your posts are so full of contradictions it's getting hard to debate with you. You've just written that you are not arguing a point when in the previous paragraph you tried to argue precisely that point.

I'm running out of ways to explain this to you, but I'll try one more.

350 deaths in Italy today, up from 200 yesterday. Almost a 100% increase in a country where the vast majority of people are at home 24/7. I hope the penny drops soon.

[jackal2]

I don't care about the media. Why are you obsessed with the media? Do you think the Chinese government's reaction was dictated by pressure from the media? Bear in mind the Chinese government and the Chinese media are one and the same. Please address this gaping logical crevice in your argument before writing anything else about the media.

Well I thought it was obvious but I perhaps should have been specific. I am of course referring to the Western/European and especially the UK media's approach rather than the Chinese media who are obviously a completely different entity. I haven't seen their coverage. I do take yours and sidders' point that not all western 'meejia' are equal offenders, but some are definitely placing sensationalism above sensible reporting and information.

Your posts are so full of contradictions it's getting hard to debate with you. You've just written that you are not arguing a point when in the previous paragraph you tried to argue precisely that point. I'm running out of ways to explain this to you, but I'll try one more.

Well I actually think it's your posts that are full of contradictions, but neither of us should be judge and jury in our own court.

350 deaths in Italy today, up from 200 yesterday. Almost a 100% increase in a country where the vast majority of people are at home 24/7. I hope the penny drops soon.

We know the type and trajectory of the illness and Italy is some way ahead of the UK, so prepare for similar figures here in due course, but this does not mean the measures being taken are wrong or that panicking or totally isolating ourselves will save more people. It means this virus will kill a significant number of people within a certain timeframe, only eased or delayed to a certain degree by any measures we take to control it. That's what viruses do. To put it bluntly, sh*t happens.

Only when the final death toll from COVID-19 is known will we truly be able to reflect on its relative scale as a pandemic compared with the likes of these, and its impact on the overall population relative to other causes of death.

For the time being the best thing to do is follow the advice of our public health experts in a calm, rational manner.