IOM Covid removing restrictions

[wrighty]

@Escape Artist have you thought that the reason only 20% bother to follow the rules in the uk is because they think “it’s rife anyway, why do I need to bother hiding away, and if I don’t nothing will happen to me” - even former PMs. And perhaps that’s why the UK is in the apparent mess it’s in. 
 

Over here, nobody wants to be “the one” that starts it all off again so generally behave. And particularly anyone who might be known to people, such as John Wright. So we generally behave better, despite there being little official enforcement of the rules unless you get caught out. 

[Filippo]

20 hours ago, Utah 01 said:

I suggested this last week and received nothing but 'confused' emojis from the usual COVID tin-foil brigade. I likened our situation to that of an Amzonian tribe never before exposed to western diseases - the first missionary turns up laden with (virally) whatever and the tribe is wiped out. We can either live in splendid isolation and ultimately perish or we can begin exposure to something that is not and will not go away - ever!

 

On 10/14/2020 at 10:04 PM, Gladys said:

Also, I find it difficult to get my head round the real magnitude of the figures.  X thousand have died, that's an awful lot of people, but how does that compare with deaths generally or from other causes?  Y people are positive  but of them how many will need hospitalisation/die/pass on the infection. Statistics have to be relative and within a context, without those analogues, to the average person they are bound to be interpreted as a cause for concern.

 

On 10/16/2020 at 11:07 AM, thommo2010 said:

It amazes me the amount of people I see calling for tighter restrictions to save lives but in the next breath are quite happy to see people being thrown on the scrapheap and that won't have an impact on them, as if money just magically grows on trees.

 

On 10/15/2020 at 5:15 PM, Banker said:

Well Howies press conference was probably one of the worst yet, basically a report on what’s happening in UK & Ireland, how wonderful I am & Ashie is great. No plan! Only slight controversial question was one about Rachel Glover criticism on lack of testing which was basically dismissed!

 

23 hours ago, Nom de plume said:

I think the point is, more and more medical professionals are voicing their concerns over lockdowns & the long term economic, social & health damage being done. It is becoming critical now. Things must change in the New Year.

 

On 10/14/2020 at 11:12 PM, The Dog's Dangly Bits said:

Sultan said that Sweden hadn't locked down (thereby avoiding a large chunk of the catastrophic financial mess unfolding in the uk) yet had a better death rate per million. Which they do. The point being as we head again for more financial destruction it isn't yielding better results than places like Sweden.

 

On 10/16/2020 at 12:07 PM, thesultanofsheight said:

There’s something wrong with this generation of wokes. They seem to accept any old shit pumped down the pipe at them. As I pointed out the other day - 40 years ago the streets of Liverpool were on fire as a result of social exclusion and high unemployment. But the wokes will happily accept any moves to move them onto the scrap heap as they’ve been told it’s in order to “save” other people. They’ll accept any old stupid plan, unemployment queue, repossession or displacement forced on them. Because they’re largely docile and have been scared rigid by virus stories. If this had have happened in the 80s or 90s the whole country would be on fire by now as nobody would have put up with this cynical life-wrecking shit from the political establishment.

 

On 10/16/2020 at 8:55 PM, AcousticallyChallenged said:

I don't think there's a good answer for the UK. As a rule of thumb, the brits are too individualistic these days to be able to wear a mask for anyone but themselves. Even the 'don't kill your gran' messaging isn't particularly effective at this point. A lot of compliance to arbitrary 'covid secure' rules just isn't happening. Here, the fact that Doris in Castletown knows if you fart up in Andreas is working reasonably well to maintain a sense of community responsibility.

People in England especially understandably have no faith in the restrictions as everything else has been so lackadaisically managed from the start.

The UK is arguably over the edge far beyond rescue. You can't lock down again to reset, as you'll only be back where you are, as your mates millions of pounds worth of track and trace system is useless. So it's going to get worse before it gets better. Especially with high-profile situations like Manchester and armed police rocking up at the Liverpool gym.

Realistically, here, we'd be wise to plod on as we are through this winter, we've got a lot more freedom than we could have, and businesses are better open and ticking over than shut with not enough in the coffers to support them and workers up until Christmas.

 

3 hours ago, John Wright said:

1. We don’t appear to have had the final figures from the antibody testing that finished end August. Between 5k and 10k,

3. not even with closed borders? But they beg the question of what happens when you finally open.

3. isn’t that what is practically happening with Manx uni students.

 

On 10/16/2020 at 4:52 PM, wrighty said:

Here we’ve got it pretty good. It is difficult for some not being able to freely travel, but it would be worse if we started filling up Noble’s with covid cases, and shutting down businesses again. For the time being I don’t think there’s much else to be done over here. In the UK I’m torn between the circuit-breaker idea, and just thinking they may as well crack-on. All the half-arsed measures over the past few months have got them where exactly? The paddle-free brown smelly river, that’s where. Adopt the Swedish model and go for herd immunity, but expect a deadly winter which might completely collapse the NHS. Tough choices.

 

The issues related to current border restrictions in the Isle of Man as compared to its Covid-nemesis Jersey have already been eviscerate with such comprehensive detail in this thread that there isn’t much that comes to my mind that hasn’t been said already. Nonetheless, I wish to point out that Jersey’s border policy is sustainable in the longer term, ours isn’t.

Among the cacophony of Covid restrictions and lockdowns, revised and updated on a daily basis in the main island of our archipelago (quite ridiculously); here are two focal points of a factually-based perspective:

1) Covid fatality in the world is much less than people think and than what would be implied by our draconian policies. On the 5th of October the WHO came up with the truly alarming “best estimate” that 10% of world population has been infected with virus (1st pic below). World population is 7.8 billion people and Covid deaths so far have been 1 million. The implication is that Covid fatality is 1 / 7,800 = 0.13%, in the ball park of seasonal flu fatality. And note that flu is endemic and thus its fatality is reduced by heard immunity that has built up over a very long time; a virus like influenza would kill hundred of millions in one sweep if the world had not seen it before. Covid is this bad in an absolutely virgin population and hence bound to get much less bad with time. Its long term value is little more than cold (as with the four other cold-inducing human coronaviruses).

2) Countries in which the pandemic has been less politicised and that have adopted liberal policies, relying on individual responsibility and social distancing on a voluntary basis, have fared much better than the UK. In particular, allowing (or at the least tolerating) Covid to spread among the healthy and not too-old leads to lesser overall fatality because accumulated herd immunity cocoons the vulnerable and brings the pandemic to an end sooner. There is little evidence of a meaningful second wave in the two European countries that have had the most liberal policies: Switzerland and Sweden (2nd and 3rd pics below). The case of Switzerland is a particularly remarkable example, because it is a landlocked country surrounded by countries that had crudely repressive lockdowns and that are all now experiencing second waves. Furthermore, Switzerland is the most connected country, with greater traffic of people in or out than any other country around it. Isolation doesn’t seem to work thinking long term.

The scientific case behind the 2nd point is obvious and had to be expected from what we already knew about viruses, from the experience of managing a large catalogue of infectious diseases so far. I would suggest reading this paper published on Nature last August:
                        https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02400-7

Here are summary points of above paper: (i) there is strong immune response to a natural occurring Covid infection in most people, including high antibody levels and robust T-cell response; (ii) the waning of antibody levels does not necessarily lead to loss of immunity: memory B-cells can regenerate the needed antibodies when infection re-occurs (ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_B_cell); (iii) strong T-cell immune response can endure long after infection and in some populations is more common than antibodies seroprevalence (and thus estimates of infection fatality rates from seroprevalence of antibodies are over-estimations); (iv) immunity does not necessarily prevents re-infection but it predisposes to an asymptomatic or mild re-infection in the future; and (v) some populations have robust cross-immunity from other coronaviruses.

We were told that herd immunity from natural infection cannot work, only a vaccine can give permanent sterilising immunity. But we know that there have only been a dozen of proven Covid-19 re-infections among 40 million known cases, and only one of them has been fatal. Conversely, just a few days ago the chairman of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, Kate Bingham, has admitted that, based on what evidence is available to her now, a Covid-19 vaccine is likely to be only 50% effective and not able to confer sterilising immunity (just google it).

Science books had to be rewritten to make the science agreeable to the politically correct narrative of Covid. Here is an example of the science prior to Covid:
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6841076/2006-11-Disease-Mitigation-Measures-in-the.pdf
a paper concluding that lockdowns do far more harm than good and that there is no historical evidence that lockdowns can reduce the death toll from a respiratory illness in the longer term.

More recently the Lancet published a report on the Covid policies of some 50 countries:
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2589-5370(20)30208-X
and it concludes that lockdowns have not been associated with decreased mortality from the virus.

We are seeing acceptance of reality among many US states. Florida, a state regarded by some as vulnerable to Covid because of its large senior population, has determined that it will no longer attempt to control the spread of Covid-19 and has removed nearly all remaining Covid-19 restrictions:
Florida Governor Removes COVID-19 Restrictions on Restaurants, Bars
https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2020-09-25/florida-restaurants-can-now-operate-with-no-restrictions-governor-says
With the exception of some coastal states with left-wing administrations (New York, California etc) the US is doing a Sweden by stealth.

The left has concocted an alternative reality version of Covid, Covid immunity and Covid vaccines (Covid vaccines don’t exist yet so it is easy to fancy them as convenient); to justify the lockdown and consequent policies of heavy government intervention in the economy; which, it hopes, will be difficult to reverse when the pandemic subsides (it is actually hoped that the pandemic will last indefinitely).

As concerns the strange case of the Isle of Man, I would not accuse Tynwald of malefic intent, nor intent ideological motivated in a meaningful extent, nor intent calculated as an equilibrium of conflicting forces as observed in Westminster. There has hardly been any public debate among MHKs about trade-offs and underlying assumptions of the whole policy; they have debated it nearly all of it behind closed doors; the public debate we have seen (in those Manx Radio interviews for instance) has been at the most simplistic level and focusing on specific aspects of the overall policy, such as the repatriation of residents excluded by the border closure or the consistency (or lack thereof) of IOM courts sentencing; rather than questioning the sanity of the main policy aim of virus eradication by mean of isolation.

The alternative reality underpinning IOM Covid response has two pillars: the first pillar is that it is so great that we are a separate jurisdiction (a nation actually...) so that we have the option of controlling our border and shunning the dangers of the outside world, the horrible virus threatening our community; and the second pillar is, quite obviously, islander’s basic instinct: a civilised version of, as an extreme example, the Sentinelese throwing spears and arrows at any outsider approaching their beloved island, to express rejection of any alien contact (4th pic below). Guess what, just to stay on topic, the Sentinelese tribe is regarded by the WHO as extremely vulnerable for having no resistance to such common diseases as flu or measles, which would immediately decimate their population if contact with outsiders were made. If our border policy strongly discourages travel and outsiders indefinitely, we are heading precisely in that direction, of sickening inbreeding and vulnerability to pretty much anything alien, thus begetting even more isolation.

And the crassest expression of the above described alternative reality: that thickheaded constable (which I won’t mention by name) declaring on Manx Radio his “surprise” at the level of enforcement needed to discourage violations of Covid regulations in the isle; with his other pathetic subconscious elaborations to justify the enforcement of policies that have thrown personal values and individual consent into the sewers: “We didn’t really want to do it...”

Those are the dunces who are leading and controlling us. I have one proposal: let’s exile Howard Quayle and David Ashford to our alter ego island North Sentinel Island among the uncorrupted Sentinelese: the duo would find its most “natural” constituency; and we would be free to crack on with our lives.
 

 

 

[AcousticallyChallenged]

33 minutes ago, Escape Artist said:

And those who support the border restrictions on this island don't seem to have an idea how long they will need to continue.

The governments of Australia and New Zealand have tacitly admitted that they own borders are not likely to reopen until the end of 2021.

The difference is that Australia and New Zealand are "countries", while on this island we have the population of a medium size town... I don't need to explain the implications of that.

 

Well, the  big problem is, at the rate it would spread unchecked over here, we'd have to implement measures like WFH, masks, social distancing, limits on gatherings to allow it to circulate at any level here. If there's suitable compliance, it'd die out again as R would be low enough it can't spread that well.

If we let it go mad, let's make some ballpark estimates based on PHE figures for hospitalizations and Manx census data

Hospital beds

For 18-64: 123.4 per 100k
For 65-84: 603.9 per 100k

For 85+, 1,997 per 100k

Manx census data from 2016:

People aged between 65 and 84: 14,937

People aged over 85: 2268

18-64: Approx 47,974

So we can broadly work out that:

For 85+, we'd need approximately 45 beds

For 65-84, we'd need 3 beds

For the rest, we'd need another 59 beds

Now of  course, mortality figures might be vastly different, but unfortunately, the data for that won't load.

Of course, these figures don't take into account a bunch of the manx population being ill and isolating etc and the impacts of that, or the impacts of businesses having to close, whether the local population are more or less likely to be susceptible to illness than those across etc.

 

 

[Nom de plume]

5 minutes ago, AcousticallyChallenged said:

Well, the  big problem is, at the rate it would spread unchecked over here, we'd have to implement measures like WFH, masks, social distancing, limits on gatherings to allow it to circulate at any level here. If there's suitable compliance, it'd die out again as R would be low enough it can't spread that well.

If we let it go mad, let's make some ballpark estimates based on PHE figures for hospitalizations and Manx census data

Hospital beds

For 18-64: 123.4 per 100k
For 65-84: 603.9 per 100k

For 85+, 1,997 per 100k

Manx census data from 2016:

People aged between 65 and 84: 14,937

People aged over 85: 2268

18-64: Approx 47,974

So we can broadly work out that:

For 85+, we'd need approximately 45 beds

For 65-84, we'd need 3 beds

For the rest, we'd need another 59 beds

Now of  course, mortality figures might be vastly different, but unfortunately, the data for that won't load.

Of course, these figures don't take into account a bunch of the manx population being ill and isolating etc and the impacts of that, or the impacts of businesses having to close, whether the local population are more or less likely to be susceptible to illness than those across etc.

 

 

Your figures are based on an all at once moment.

Jersey are dealing nicely with treating / isolating people & allowing them to recover 

Our policy is bollocks.

[Nom de plume]

8 minutes ago, Filippo said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The issues related to current border restrictions in the Isle of Man as compared to its Covid-nemesis Jersey have already been eviscerate with such comprehensive detail in this thread that there isn’t much that comes to my mind that hasn’t been said already. Nonetheless, I wish to point out that Jersey’s border policy is sustainable in the longer term, ours isn’t.

Among the cacophony of Covid restrictions and lockdowns, revised and updated on a daily basis in the main island of our archipelago (quite ridiculously); here are two focal points of a factually-based perspective:

1) Covid fatality in the world is much less than people think and than what would be implied by our draconian policies. On the 5th of October the WHO came up with the truly alarming “best estimate” that 10% of world population has been infected with virus (1st pic below). World population is 7.8 billion people and Covid deaths so far have been 1 million. The implication is that Covid fatality is 1 / 7,800 = 0.13%, in the ball park of seasonal flu fatality. And note that flu is endemic and thus its fatality is reduced by heard immunity that has built up over a very long time; a virus like influenza would kill hundred of millions in one sweep if the world had not seen it before. Covid is this bad in an absolutely virgin population and hence bound to get much less bad with time. Its long term value is little more than cold (as with the four other cold-inducing human coronaviruses).

2) Countries in which the pandemic has been less politicised and that have adopted liberal policies, relying on individual responsibility and social distancing on a voluntary basis, have fared much better than the UK. In particular, allowing (or at the least tolerating) Covid to spread among the healthy and not too-old leads to lesser overall fatality because accumulated herd immunity cocoons the vulnerable and brings the pandemic to an end sooner. There is little evidence of a meaningful second wave in the two European countries that have had the most liberal policies: Switzerland and Sweden (2nd and 3rd pics below). The case of Switzerland is a particularly remarkable example, because it is a landlocked country surrounded by countries that had crudely repressive lockdowns and that are all now experiencing second waves. Furthermore, Switzerland is the most connected country, with greater traffic of people in or out than any other country around it. Isolation doesn’t seem to work thinking long term.

The scientific case behind the 2nd point is obvious and had to be expected from what we already knew about viruses, from the experience of managing a large catalogue of infectious diseases so far. I would suggest reading this paper published on Nature last August:
                        https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02400-7

Here are summary points of above paper: (i) there is strong immune response to a natural occurring Covid infection in most people, including high antibody levels and robust T-cell response; (ii) the waning of antibody levels does not necessarily lead to loss of immunity: memory B-cells can regenerate the needed antibodies when infection re-occurs (ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_B_cell); (iii) strong T-cell immune response can endure long after infection and in some populations is more common than antibodies seroprevalence (and thus estimates of infection fatality rates from seroprevalence of antibodies are over-estimations); (iv) immunity does not necessarily prevents re-infection but it predisposes to an asymptomatic or mild re-infection in the future; and (v) some populations have robust cross-immunity from other coronaviruses.

We were told that herd immunity from natural infection cannot work, only a vaccine can give permanent sterilising immunity. But we know that there have only been a dozen of proven Covid-19 re-infections among 40 million known cases, and only one of them has been fatal. Conversely, just a few days ago the chairman of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, Kate Bingham, has admitted that, based on what evidence is available to her now, a Covid-19 vaccine is likely to be only 50% effective and not able to confer sterilising immunity (just google it).

Science books had to be rewritten to make the science agreeable to the politically correct narrative of Covid. Here is an example of the science prior to Covid:
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6841076/2006-11-Disease-Mitigation-Measures-in-the.pdf
a paper concluding that lockdowns do far more harm than good and that there is no historical evidence that lockdowns can reduce the death toll from a respiratory illness in the longer term.

More recently the Lancet published a report on the Covid policies of some 50 countries:
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2589-5370(20)30208-X
and it concludes that lockdowns have not been associated with decreased mortality from the virus.

We are seeing acceptance of reality among many US states. Florida, a state regarded by some as vulnerable to Covid because of its large senior population, has determined that it will no longer attempt to control the spread of Covid-19 and has removed nearly all remaining Covid-19 restrictions:
Florida Governor Removes COVID-19 Restrictions on Restaurants, Bars
https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2020-09-25/florida-restaurants-can-now-operate-with-no-restrictions-governor-says
With the exception of some coastal states with left-wing administrations (New York, California etc) the US is doing a Sweden by stealth.

The left has concocted an alternative reality version of Covid, Covid immunity and Covid vaccines (Covid vaccines don’t exist yet so it is easy to fancy them as convenient); to justify the lockdown and consequent policies of heavy government intervention in the economy; which, it hopes, will be difficult to reverse when the pandemic subsides (it is actually hoped that the pandemic will last indefinitely).

As concerns the strange case of the Isle of Man, I would not accuse Tynwald of malefic intent, nor intent ideological motivated in a meaningful extent, nor intent calculated as an equilibrium of conflicting forces as observed in Westminster. There has hardly been any public debate among MHKs about trade-offs and underlying assumptions of the whole policy; they have debated it nearly all of it behind closed doors; the public debate we have seen (in those Manx Radio interviews for instance) has been at the most simplistic level and focusing on specific aspects of the overall policy, such as the repatriation of residents excluded by the border closure or the consistency (or lack thereof) of IOM courts sentencing; rather than questioning the sanity of the main policy aim of virus eradication by mean of isolation.

The alternative reality underpinning IOM Covid response has two pillars: the first pillar is that it is so great that we are a separate jurisdiction (a nation actually...) so that we have the option of controlling our border and shunning the dangers of the outside world, the horrible virus threatening our community; and the second pillar is, quite obviously, islander’s basic instinct: a civilised version of, as an extreme example, the Sentinelese throwing spears and arrows at any outsider approaching their beloved island, to express rejection of any alien contact (4th pic below). Guess what, just to stay on topic, the Sentinelese tribe is regarded by the WHO as extremely vulnerable for having no resistance to such common diseases as flu or measles, which would immediately decimate their population if contact with outsiders were made. If our border policy strongly discourages travel and outsiders indefinitely, we are heading precisely in that direction, of sickening inbreeding and vulnerability to pretty much anything alien, thus begetting even more isolation.

And the crassest expression of the above described alternative reality: that thickheaded constable (which I won’t mention by name) declaring on Manx Radio his “surprise” at the level of enforcement needed to discourage violations of Covid regulations in the isle; with his other pathetic subconscious elaborations to justify the enforcement of policies that have thrown personal values and individual consent into the sewers: “We didn’t really want to do it...”

Those are the dunces who are leading and controlling us. I have one proposal: let’s exile Howard Quayle and David Ashford to our alter ego island North Sentinel Island among the uncorrupted Sentinelese: the duo would find its most “natural” constituency; and we would be free to crack on with our lives.
 

 

 

Awesome post!

[TheTeapot]

Here's some IOM economic data for people to have a look at

https://covid19.gov.im/media/1424/2020-erg-dashboard-2-october-2020-published-v2.pdf

 

[AcousticallyChallenged]

Fab, the death data loaded, so again using the previous figures we get

18-64 deaths: 229.1 per 100k, so 109 deaths

65-84 deaths: 2115 per 100k, so 315 deaths

85+ deaths: 4989 per 100k, so 113 deaths

So, COVID would kill off as many 18-64 year olds here as it would 85+ year olds, that's food for thought...

[thesultanofsheight]

52 minutes ago, Debbie said:

What I find unsettling is that the debate among MHKs has mostly append being closed doors. They must have debated the implications of cutting off the outside world for so long. We haven't heard much of it. When we heard something, it was only regarding specific and quite minor aspects of the policy.

I doubt there’s been much debate at that level. I’ve said before that the main justification seems to be being driven by Treasury and is based on the principle of economic entrapment. Keeping as many people as possible here for as long as possible to drive internal domestic spend. Whether that’s actually worked we won’t know until the books are published. But it’s certainly a big part of what is being done and the overriding strategy being adopted. They aren’t taking the border closure issue that seriously when you look at it otherwise they’d be more actively checking compliance with self isolation and not relying on snitchers as the primary defense mechanism and they would not be shipping in key workers for any completely pathetic reason under the sun and not keeping tabs on them. The main driver for the 14 days up until very recently has been to trap people here spending when they would normally be off island spending somewhere else. 

Edited October 18, 2020 by thesultanofsheight

[thesultanofsheight]

3 minutes ago, TheTeapot said:

Here's some IOM economic data for people to have a look at

https://covid19.gov.im/media/1424/2020-erg-dashboard-2-october-2020-published-v2.pdf

 

Fuck me that hurts my eyes. Style over substance or sure. 

[TheTeapot]

Just now, thesultanofsheight said:

Fuck me that hurts my eyes. Style over substance or sure. 

Could be the hangover?

Seriously though, it is a bit shit the way its done. Someone probably thinks it's pretty.

Anyway, to my mostly untrained economic mind it doesn't actually look terrible, with the obvious caveat that these are official government statistics and what that means.

[b4mbi]

13 minutes ago, Nom de plume said:

Your figures are based on an all at once moment.

Jersey are dealing nicely with treating / isolating people & allowing them to recover 

Our policy is bollocks.

I spoke to someone in Jersey on Friday. 60+ cases and virus circulating in the community.

Dealing nicely?

[thesultanofsheight]

10 minutes ago, TheTeapot said:

Could be the hangover?

Seriously though, it is a bit shit the way its done. Someone probably thinks it's pretty.

Anyway, to my mostly untrained economic mind it doesn't actually look terrible, with the obvious caveat that these are official government statistics and what that means.

To be honest half of it is meaningless. Not too sure what planning applications / approvals have to do with anything. Or quarry royalties. And the net VAT chart is the most confusing thing I’ve seen in ages. Not many comparisons with the same periods in previous years either. Lots of fancy colours to try to make it look good though! 

Edited October 18, 2020 by thesultanofsheight

[The Dog's Dangly Bits]

8 minutes ago, TheTeapot said:

Could be the hangover?

Seriously though, it is a bit shit the way its done. Someone probably thinks it's pretty.

Anyway, to my mostly untrained economic mind it doesn't actually look terrible, with the obvious caveat that these are official government statistics and what that means.

I agree.  Looks OK.

Still a bit more to play out here from a figures perspective but kn the whole it isnt as bad as it maybe was first feared.

[Nom de plume]

7 minutes ago, b4mbi said:

I spoke to someone in Jersey on Friday. 60+ cases and virus circulating in the community.

Dealing nicely?

It’s exactly what’s needed.

Protect those that need it. FFS.

You can’t eradicate it, you have to live with it - I despair, really.

Edited October 18, 2020 by Nom de plume

[AcousticallyChallenged]

5 minutes ago, Nom de plume said:

It’s exactly what’s needed.

Protect those that need it. FFS.

You can’t eradicate it, you have to live with it - I despair, really.

I think you're not accounting for the rate at which it spreads, versus the rate at which it spreads as a proportion of the population.

Jersey have it in the community, but still have only had 500 cases out of 97,000 people. So, assuming that, they get 50 cases a day, they'd still need several years for it to spread throughout the population for it to be at the point where there is herd immunity. 3 and a half years if they're aiming for about 60% of people having it at that rate of spread. So, what do they do? Have everything at half capacity until then? That's just as unsustainable for tourism etc.

Bear in mind, the whole world is estimated to be at about 10% infection rate, and that's in the best part of a year.