Even if you totally reject the benefits of masks, which I don’t because it’s logical that suppressing the viral load entering the local environment or directly in your face must result in a lower exposure, then surely the fact that our social contacts were restricted ought to be enough. Never mind the 6ft rule, that was just another attempt at trying to reduce the levels reaching us in the early days. Part of a belt and braces strategy.

The PCR test was a quick and easy indicator before something more specific was available. It worked to confirm probable infection before symptoms emerged for many, including myself on 2 occasions. Armed with that knowledge I took appropriate precautions and isolated completely. Infection was then confirmed when sending away the test to the laboratory.

Why on earth are you so disparaging about a useful tool in a fight with a new disease that threatened to seriously harm us?

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There's been proper studies including one largely ignored on masks in Denmark. showing at best a small insignificant difference. Yep just pass on the 6ft rule. Lol. This was a rule that ruined many businesses. So belt and braces to that one.

The PCR test was certainly not adequate. It created panic by inflating covid cases for the asymptomatic.I suggest you watch some kacy Mullis it's inventor speak on the matter.

Edited by Mattconrov (07 Aug 2023 4.00pm)

Edited by Mattconrov (07 Aug 2023 4.04pm)

" You're not laughing now are you". Nigel Farage 2016.

Even if you totally reject the benefits of masks, which I don’t because it’s logical that suppressing the viral load entering the local environment or directly in your face must result in a lower exposure, then surely the fact that our social contacts were restricted ought to be enough. Never mind the 6ft rule, that was just another attempt at trying to reduce the levels reaching us in the early days. Part of a belt and braces strategy.

The PCR test was a quick and easy indicator before something more specific was available. It worked to confirm probable infection before symptoms emerged for many, including myself on 2 occasions. Armed with that knowledge I took appropriate precautions and isolated completely. Infection was then confirmed when sending away the test to the laboratory.

Why on earth are you so disparaging about a useful tool in a fight with a new disease that threatened to seriously harm us?

Fair points

in fairness I don't disagree that some of the methods deployed were as much about increasing compliance as efficacy from a medical perspective, however the debate should be more about how long these persisted.

Mask wearing (of the right type, of course) does decrease viral load. It also creates other behavioural effects that when combined decrease the severity of transmission or in some cases remove it from occurring entirely.

Also as has been pointed out here a few times, in the early days, there was little to go on. Going too far was therefore preferable to doing too little. What too far ended up being can only be looked at and analysed properly in hindsight.

Way off piste

Also throwing in common conspiracy tropes doesn't help me to feel that you're taking a balanced view on this topic, rather obtaining information from off piste sources and choosing to use those as your primary narrative. Your choice

PCR did a job, as to whether the information it provided was interpreted correctly then that's a different discussion. But it is, ultimately, a diagnostic

As for Koch... you're right that COVID cannot be held to Kochs 133 year old postulates. Things have moved on a bit since 1890, eg genetics, ironically enough. So hanging your hat on that is unwise. Digging around even ancient Koch recognised this at the time, and that was over 100 years ago. 'Koch himself recognised the postulates had exceptions, and they have not been established for many disease-causing microbes. Modern criteria that confirm that a virus causes a disease have been demonstrated for COVID-19.'

Essentially there are plenty of things that cause disease that can't be grown in a lab, or under 'pure' conditions.

Viruses cannot reproduce themselves, and so cannot be grown at all as a “pure culture” as Koch would have envisioned it, however it is well-established that viruses cause diseases.

Updated criteria for determining viruses that cause disease are sometimes still referred to as Koch’s postulates. These involve animals being infected with the suspect virus and viruses being grown in cells, which would not be considered a “pure culture” as Koch would have understood it and would not fulfil the purification criteria mentioned previously even though other microbes are removed.

'A genome sequence via a computer I understand' – with respect, that sentence makes it sound like you think genome sequencing is some sort of newfangled technology that came out yesterday. It's been around for a while, and is far more sophisticated and efficient than methods devised in the 1800s that even the author at the time admitted were not a catch all. Some might say it's perfectly suited to this kind of work.

Always useful to learn new things about medicine and science, and how it's all evolved over time. So thanks for that.

Ultimately the death rate was the biggest indicator above all else – and there's nothing out there that can explain such a high and sustained rate early on other than a novel virus, corona or otherwise. Certainly not flu, for the reasons already covered above.

The advice to 'stay in to save lives' was actually imposing more of a death sentence on the vulnerable.

They didn't have a clue what they were doing but presented things very differently......a large part of cashing those cheques.