What can I say I think our approach has been wrong. I've been pretty consistent about my contention that the Swedish model was the correct one.

What I can say is that it's a difficult decision for anyone. I also recognise that taking the 'herd immunity' pathway would have come under huge and constant criticism. A political party that cares about how it is portrayed wasn't seriously going to stick with herd immunity. The Tories are obsessed with keeping their newly obtained northern labour voters and and it all factors in and so are hyper sensitive to the lame 'uncaring' charge.

The way British culture works, a desperate feminized 'save lives' mantra is basically the default message. The reasoning that life is risk management and always has been is thrown out the window in place of a modern individualistic form of hysteria....a pandemic of panic if you will....something akin to the salem witch trial reactions where parties all convince each other that their perceptions are accurate.

Yet all these officialdom reactions....from my point of view, appear to be based upon covering their own arses. Initially they were going with herd immunity....until they get a model suggesting a huge death toll, a model that presented a very unlikely outcome. Then, just as with extinction rebellion...this very unlikely worst case scenario is taken as realistic with nothing more than the inputs into a statistical model as evidence.

So the result is we have spent billions and wrecked economies on what amounts to guesswork.

So the way society is now, this 'save lives', 'save the NHS' message can be maintained for a long time with very little discussion or pushback in the mainstream media. Perhaps by the time a more rational and balanced analysis is published the public will have moved on so much that it'll be ignored.....Indeed, it won't be in the media's interest to focus on a message that directly attacks its behaviour during this period.....I've already noted the media self consciously defending itself under the guise that no other position was realistic....well yeah...but that's partly because of the media itself and the societal culture it endorses.

Shouldn't that be the other way around?

Herd immunity (a term I dislike because 'immunity' doesn't exist) is the default way nature deals with viruses. I keep hearing people cast doubts however they don't cite anything, it's all anecdotal.

If you're on your last legs and your immune system is weakened then of course your ability to fight off a virus is reduced even with anti bodies depending upon just how much infection load is around you....from how I understand it....it's like a really good defence not an infallible one.....swarm it enough for long enough and you're going to get through eventually.

If indeed the Kung flu ignores the anti bodies from a previous infection or partially ignores them....I'd wager that the claims for it being a 'natural virus' would be weakened. I wager what is far more likely in cases like this is reinfection from a different strain in a weakened system....not that common.

My current position....subject to evidence otherwise....is that this virus is natural in nature, though the accidental release theory is plausible.

If this was a designed virus deliberately released to wreck havoc why would its kill ratio be so low and why would it be released in China itself.....Yeah, we can state that the CCP are incredibly heartless even to their own people but there's simply no need to self harm first.

That said, the reality that designed viruses are being worked on is just a no brainer....of course they are.

Edited by Stirlingsays (25 Apr 2020 5.23am)

Turns out jokes is on everyone else, actually Trump just said a really painfully idiotic thing to see what would happen and how the press would respond by pointing out the painfully idiotic thing... as being painfully idiotic.

The man is playing 4D chess...

[Tweet Link]

Would almost be funny if there weren’t thousands of people dying in his country and he wasn’t almost certainly going to win re-election in November.

I'll repost the link to this very funny video for all people who think that Trump is an idiot

[Link]