What was the weirdest year of your life? I already know what mine was even if I lived to be one hundred. It was this year.
Covid is a through the looking glass sort of illness. One person catches it, but has no symptoms, his neighbour catches it and dies. Japan has fewer deaths than Ireland. Sweden with no lockdown does better than some places that lockdown strictly. We still don’t know exactly what the Case Fatality Rate is (how many people have caught Covid versus how many have died), because we can only estimate how many have been infected and impossible to know the real cause of death in all cases. We don’t know for sure if full lockdown was necessary or if a different approach such as locking down only the vulnerable might have worked just as well, nor do we know if the decline in Covid cases in Britain will continue until it is eliminated or rise again in the Autumn and Winter.
What we don’t know may be greater than what we do know about Covid, but there are some things that we do know about this looney tunes year.
The British people are no longer willing to do what they are told. I remember back in March watching a discussion about whether to introduce lockdown now or later and the experts suggested people would only be willing to stay locked down for so long. So, it has proved. We have had mass demonstrations about Black Lives Matter and also counter demonstrations. We have had huge crowds of people going to Bournemouth beach. These people were not scared of catching Covid.
At this point I realised that the mood of British people was hugely different from the politicians telling them what to do. As we went through various easings of lockdown (now you can go within one metre of someone else so long as you wear a mask etc), it became clear that ordinary people were deciding for themselves what was safe and what wasn’t.
[Interesting Read]
See Also:
(1) Germany’s Continuing Anti-Semitism Problem
(2) Nicola Sturgeon’s independence dream would reduce Scotland to a ‘dot on the map’
(3) Michel Barnier panic: Brexit chief ‘losing French charm’ as crushing reality derails EU
(4) AT LAST! Priti Patel to overhaul Tony Blair’s ‘soft’ UK asylum laws
(5) MEP admits member states could follow Brexit Britain’s lead – European Union ‘struggling’
