Over the next few months we should expect people in prominent places to tell us things like 'we did all we could', 'nothing else could have been done'. There will be people in non-prominent places supporting this view by agreeing and shrugging: che sera sera and all that.
I've been looking back at my twitter feed day by day through March.
As I've posted before, on March 12 2020, Robert Peston told us that 'herd immunity' would be 'vital' for defeating Covid. On March 13 2020, three government scientists told us that 'herd immunity' was the only way in which the virus could be defeated and journalists seemed incapable of interrogating them with knowledge available to anyone who had done A-level biology.
Here is an assembly of my tweets on this day, March 14, 2020 a year ago today:
TWEETS
MARCH 14 2020
The chances are that no health system in the world will be able to cope without emergency measures. So the question is not 'if' but 'what' ones should our govt have put in place?
The issue wasn't 'prevent spread from China'. The issue always was, 'what should we do when cases start happening here?’
The spread of flu each year is known. We could all see a) the outbreak in China and b) what measures were being taken and c) the inevitability of when it would reach the UK. The 'now' decisions could have been made in Jan.
Any attempt to control the distribution of human types across a population is eugenicist. If, e.g. a regime decided that everyone over 60 should be killed, that would be in order to benefit the productivity and reproductive powers of the rest of the population.
Just remember that it only took weeks to assemble a huge military force and to invade and occupy Iraq with all the logistics, supply lines, and vast info-tech required to keep it all going. And there are people saying, 'Oh but it would be difficult to....' etc etc.
1/ Part of herd immunity and survival in the wild is produced when enough breeding individuals produce antibodies which destroy the virus or bacterium. Vaccines are artificial ways to produce that immunity. "Herds' can't mass produce antibodies and inject them.
2/ Another way that 'herds' get immunity is when a mutation in individual members' DNA provides immunity genetically and so the members without that mutation might die and the ones with it will live and reproduce. To use such terms in this instance horrify me.
So, they've had two months to prepare. Nothing about the potency and lethality of the virus was unknown by the beginning of January. It was predictable that what happened in China would happen here.
Just remember that it only took weeks to assemble a huge military force and to invade and occupy Iraq with all the logistics, supply lines, and vast info-tech required to keep it all going. And there are people saying, 'Oh but it would be difficult to....' etc etc.
Don't want to cause alarm, but I am coughing.
