Yesterday UK had highest number of new covid cases of any country.

[HDQQ]

The public silence on this one is actually deafening. That is because the hospitalisations are falling, the daily deaths are falling, and the average positive rate is about 3% of all tests.
People can see that the people dying are average age 82-84ish, have had their lives and are dying with Covid instead of some other flu or viral pneumonia. If this were not so there would be a public outcry.

The threat has been greatly reduced. Look at NZ where Zero Covid is trying to be achieved. One pointless lockdown after another. Is that what you want Ducky?

Just as an aside, the UK population have had an average of 4.4 tests per person.
The same figure for the USA is 1.9.
That accounts for the skewing of figures, more tests = more detected cases, which is what we are talking about. Not actual cases.

I know that the statistics can't be compared exactly like-for-like and that the USA statistics are more 'bundled' than ours, so they vary widely from one day to the next.
I also know hospitalisations and daily deaths are declining slowly but around 100 deaths a day from covid is still a national disaster.

New Zealand has been very successful at containing covid but they've realised it's not going to be possible for one country to completely eradicate it without the rest of the world doing the same.

With vaccinations and now the start of booster jabs there's a real possibility that covid can soon be relegated to being a health nuisance, a bit like 'flu, although that too has a small number of serious and even fatal cases. What I think is wrong is that now we're within sight of being able to 'live with covid', risks are being taken now with the health of people that who would probably be safe in a few months' time.

[cromwell]

Well Covid has been unleashed onto humanity. It is not going anywhere. It is just going to be another thing that goes around making people feel like shit for a bit, and occasionally killing a few people - mostly but not iexclusively older or more vulnerable people - just like the flu and even bad colds have traditionally done.

We have long had flu jobs for older or otherwise more vulnerable people. Now that similar vaccines have been developed for covid which - like the flu - cannot wipe it out but which do reduce it's harmfulness, we have done the best we can.

We are just going to have to learn to live with it now and forever more, just like we have with colds and flu.

One permanent outcome is that even though they cease to be compulsory, most peple still choose to wear masks in shops and suchlike. I do myself. Not only does mask wearing reduce my chances of catching covid at least a little, it does the same with colds and flu. And there is the added advantage when I am working on a checkout that I can mutter what an arsehole my customer is being without him knowing, .

We are in fact luckier than we realise, and that the mortality rate was so relatively low and vaccines were able to be developed so relatively quickly. The nightmare scenario which could one day happen is that something much more lethal and just as transmissable gets loose. Covid at it's worst took out no no than 1 to 2 percent of those it infected, though it left other victims with debilitating long term problems. But what if the next pandemic starts taking out 1 in 3 of everyone it infects? No health system anywhere in the world could even begin to cope with that, most people would be left to die or pull through either alone or at home with their loved ones. Every street would have dead people having to be collected every day. Services would collapse. We would see bodies being disposed of in mass graves or funeral pyres, the morgues would not have the ability to cope. All of us would lose many friends and loved ones. Statistically it is likely that quite a few of us on this very forum would ourselves lose our lives to it. It will strike high and low. MPs themselves would be dropping like flies.

That is how bad it could have been. We got off lightly with this one.

Service without a smile

[T00ts]

Spanish flu killed between 25 and 50 million out of a world population of less than 2 billion.
Say it was 35 million, that would have killed 1.75% of the population.
Covid so far has killed 4.8 million out of a world population of 7.7 billion.
That is 0.06% which means for every person dying of covid, about 30 died of Spanish flu proportionately.

Ooh thanks for the correction. 

[Barry]

I read I think it was yesterday that deaths have gone over the 5million mark worldwide. I think it was the Spanish flu that was reported to have killed 6million and some were saying back at the beginning of Covid that it wasn't as bad as that. Perhaps it isn't yet finished.

Spanish flu killed between 25 and 50 million out of a world population of less than 2 billion.
Say it was 35 million, that would have killed 1.75% of the population.
Covid so far has killed 4.8 million out of a world population of 7.7 billion.
That is 0.06% which means for every person dying of covid, about 30 died of Spanish flu proportionately.

[Barry]

The public silence on this one is actually deafening. That is because the hospitalisations are falling, the daily deaths are falling, and the average positive rate is about 3% of all tests.
People can see that the people dying are average age 82-84ish, have had their lives and are dying with Covid instead of some other flu or viral pneumonia. If this were not so there would be a public outcry.

The threat has been greatly reduced. Look at NZ where Zero Covid is trying to be achieved. One pointless lockdown after another. Is that what you want Ducky?

Just as an aside, the UK population have had an average of 4.4 tests per person.
The same figure for the USA is 1.9.
That accounts for the skewing of figures, more tests = more detected cases, which is what we are talking about. Not actual cases.

[T00ts]

Well Covid has been unleashed onto humanity. It is not going anywhere. It is just going to be another thing that goes around making people feel like shit for a bit, and occasionally killing a few people - mostly but not iexclusively older or more vulnerable people - just like the flu and even bad colds have traditionally done.

We have long had flu jobs for older or otherwise more vulnerable people. Now that similar vaccines have been developed for covid which - like the flu - cannot wipe it out but which do reduce it's harmfulness, we have done the best we can.

We are just going to have to learn to live with it now and forever more, just like we have with colds and flu.

One permanent outcome is that even though they cease to be compulsory, most peple still choose to wear masks in shops and suchlike. I do myself. Not only does mask wearing reduce my chances of catching covid at least a little, it does the same with colds and flu. And there is the added advantage when I am working on a checkout that I can mutter what an arsehole my customer is being without him knowing, .

We are in fact luckier than we realise, and that the mortality rate was so relatively low and vaccines were able to be developed so relatively quickly. The nightmare scenario which could one day happen is that something much more lethal and just as transmissable gets loose. Covid at it's worst took out no no than 1 to 2 percent of those it infected, though it left other victims with debilitating long term problems. But what if the next pandemic starts taking out 1 in 3 of everyone it infects? No health system anywhere in the world could even begin to cope with that, most people would be left to die or pull through either alone or at home with their loved ones. Every street would have dead people having to be collected every day. Services would collapse. We would see bodies being disposed of in mass graves or funeral pyres, the morgues would not have the ability to cope. All of us would lose many friends and loved ones. Statistically it is likely that quite a few of us on this very forum would ourselves lose our lives to it. It will strike high and low. MPs themselves would be dropping like flies.

That is how bad it could have been. We got off lightly with this one.

I read I think it was yesterday that deaths have gone over the 5million mark worldwide. I think it was the Spanish flu that was reported to have killed 6million and some were saying back at the beginning of Covid that it wasn't as bad as that. Perhaps it isn't yet finished.

[srb7677]

Well Covid has been unleashed onto humanity. It is not going anywhere. It is just going to be another thing that goes around making people feel like shit for a bit, and occasionally killing a few people - mostly but not iexclusively older or more vulnerable people - just like the flu and even bad colds have traditionally done.

We have long had flu jobs for older or otherwise more vulnerable people. Now that similar vaccines have been developed for covid which - like the flu - cannot wipe it out but which do reduce it's harmfulness, we have done the best we can.

We are just going to have to learn to live with it now and forever more, just like we have with colds and flu.

One permanent outcome is that even though they cease to be compulsory, most peple still choose to wear masks in shops and suchlike. I do myself. Not only does mask wearing reduce my chances of catching covid at least a little, it does the same with colds and flu. And there is the added advantage when I am working on a checkout that I can mutter what an arsehole my customer is being without him knowing, .

We are in fact luckier than we realise, and that the mortality rate was so relatively low and vaccines were able to be developed so relatively quickly. The nightmare scenario which could one day happen is that something much more lethal and just as transmissable gets loose. Covid at it's worst took out no no than 1 to 2 percent of those it infected, though it left other victims with debilitating long term problems. But what if the next pandemic starts taking out 1 in 3 of everyone it infects? No health system anywhere in the world could even begin to cope with that, most people would be left to die or pull through either alone or at home with their loved ones. Every street would have dead people having to be collected every day. Services would collapse. We would see bodies being disposed of in mass graves or funeral pyres, the morgues would not have the ability to cope. All of us would lose many friends and loved ones. Statistically it is likely that quite a few of us on this very forum would ourselves lose our lives to it. It will strike high and low. MPs themselves would be dropping like flies.

That is how bad it could have been. We got off lightly with this one.

[Borchester]

Yesterday UK had highest number of new covid cases of any country in the world and yet there seems to be a huge amount of complacency.

I was talking to some friends about this and we we wondering if we should not run around like blue bummed flies. But the general feelings was that it was all a bit undignified, so we didn't.

[HDQQ]

Yesterday UK had highest number of new covid cases of any country in the world and yet there seems to be a huge amount of complacency.
On average the USA still has the highest number of daily cases but it's not unusual for the UK to take the unenviable top spot. The UK is usually the second highest, above Brazil and India. So some will blame the Delta variant which started in India, but that got a hold in lots of countries which seem to have got it under control better than we have

Compared to roughly similar sized European countries, UK is getting close to 10 times the number of daily cases and 5 times the number of daily deaths. This can't all be dismissed as 'we're doing a lot more tests'.

The vaccination programme here has been a success story but all other covid policies have been flawed. What's going on now is like the fire brigade packing up and going away when they've put out 80% of a fire at an explosives factory.

The government needs to be more pro-active in safety measures. The relaxation of social distancing advice and mask-wearing was wrong. But the people must take some of the blame. Too many people aren't observing precautions, which haven't become irrelevant just because Boris says we don't need them any more.