In January, when SAGE said the risk of Covid was “Very low” I was writing to politicians telling them it was coming and we should be looking at getting hospitals and ventilators ready
In February I was writing saying that that doctors needed PPE
In March the figures looked grim with an 80% infection rate meaning there would be a tsunami of cases which could overwhelm the low-capacity of intensive care beds in the UK. So I was in favour of a short lockdown for one to two weeks on 23rd March when it finally came.
But when a couple of weeks later at the beginning of April we started to see dancing nurses in empty hospitals, something was very wrong. There was absolutely no need to “save the NHS” and the huge cost of lockup and the very low chance it would actually save lives meant we should have returned to normal.
Mid April, the evidence that lockup was pointless came when Sweden, with a very mild lockup which only reduced meetings of over 50 people, started to peak and then fall. This showed that the 80% infection rate that had been predicted based on a “novel” virus, was a fiction. It was actually closer to only 20% who were being infected. This changed the lockup from a “the cost benefit does not warrant it”, to “It is F£&King insane”.
Sweden is now back to normal. Sweden has the same sized main cities as Scotland. They have the same urban density. We are at the same latitude. We have similar nordic cultures (much of Scotland was settled by norse). In contrast the two countries that are often compared to Sweden are very different. Denmark is very flat, Norway the settlements are squeezed between sea and mountains. Scotland is the nearest comparable country in the world to Sweden, and with a slightly higher death rate (probably due to sending infected people into care homes), we are so close to community immunity that it is insane that we are still locked up. Yes, there are still infections, but those infections are in the young and health which lock up stopped getting infected. But being young and healthy, they do not add to the deaths. In contrast, the grim reaper has already had her crop of the elderly with multiple conditions close to death (the average age of death with covid is nearly the same as that from normal deaths).
And because Scotland (despite the rantings of the SNP) had the same policies applied as the UK, and because the UK followed the same epidemic curve as Scotland. What is true for Sweden, which is true for Scotland is also very much true for the UK. The whole UK is also so close to community immunity, the only sane policy is to go back to normal (whilst providing voluntary protection the vulnerable)
