Coronavirus / COVID-19

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

And deliberately not following a course known to be effective is not a similarly artificial decision? China have got it down to zero local transmissions for several days in a row. Other countries have similarly got the numbers down. We know what works.

China will shoot you in the head if you disobey the Government - are you advocating that here? Singapore just enacts corporal punishment, we do not have that kind of society. Italy has started to see numbers fall but only once the population was sufficiently terrified of the disease, a week ago Italians were flouting restrictions just like Brits are now.

In any case, both China and Singapore are still seeing cases coming into the country, which means that they need to keep restrictions in place for the foreseable future - it's like keeping your hand on a saucepan lid to stop the pan boiling over - as soon as you let go the lid come flying off and all the steam comes out.

Yo, this is straight up disgusting. "my life is worth more than yours old man cause you are supposed to die by now from your fragile body."

Talking about battered young mothers as some sympathy card while simultaneously downplaying the pain that older patients go through of having 5-10 days of their life choked by limited breathing capacity and slow death.

Get your head out of your ass.

Not remotely what I said. In case you missed the hint I'm currently self isolating after developing a Dry Cough yesterday, today the cough isn't too bad but I have a sore throat, am dehydrated and am starting to feel a fever coming on. After writing this I'm moving my PhD research to the university's shared cloud storage and writing a letter to a colleague with my username and password authorising her to retrieve the research in the event of my death.

No, I am absolutely not joking - I'm working on the principle I have something like a 1 in 800 to 1 in 200 chance of not surviving this, which is pretty lousy odds, really.

Now, my point is this: Shutting down civil society for 12-18 months, which is what is now being subtly explained to the British public, will cause long-term damage to a lot of people. Mostly children who's development will be stunted, and will probably end up with health problems later in life from being overweight. Then there are the people with depression who will be deprived of stimulus, that group is at high risk of suicide but even if they don't become suicidal they can become dependent on anti-depressants or just plat out stop being able to look after themselves. Then there are the elderly whom you are so worried about despite poring scorn on them a week ago - many of them will die alone and afraid from a completely unrelated condition, having never caught the virus.

You are still only looking ahead weeks - I'm looking 6, 12, 18 months down the line - I'm thinking about the teenagers who don't get to have those early relationships and silly first kisses and the grandparents who pass away from heart attack or stroke before even seeing their grandchildren for the first time.

You're just looking at a raw number of people who might not die because they didn't catch a disease - you're not looking at the overall calculation and you're not appreciating that this is the calculation governments are making that calculation. They're looking at the degree of social distancing they enact and they're projecting how many extra suicides it will cause, how much social unrest, how much economic damage, and they're weighing that up against a number of lives they might save, and they ARE asking how many of those people are elderly and how many would live for five more years if they don't get Corvid-19.

So, respectfully, remove your own head from your own fundament - you are doing exactly what I am doing, weighing some lives against others, one type of suffering against another type of suffering.

Cummings was the political driver behind Brexit and Johnson's election ("Get Brexit done"). And now he's the driver behind the UK's medical policy on a pandemic.

You really need to post your sources.