I found this article from September last year interesting and persuasive. With hindsight, also prophetic, regarding the aftermath of the US election. https://www.noemamag.com/welcome-to-the ... -twenties/ I think the historical examples of the Corn Laws-Peterloo-Whig reform and FDR’s New Deal are powerful because they will evoke positive responses across the political spectrum. I think the point about some liberal priorities being important (to liberals at least) and legitimate, but not really offering a solution to the underlying problems is fair. Not that you can’t have both greater social justice and economic reforms, but we do have to talk about both to get there.

I found this article from September last year interesting and persuasive. With hindsight, also prophetic, regarding the aftermath of the US election. https://www.noemamag.com/welcome-to-the ... -twenties/ I think the historical examples of the Corn Laws-Peterloo-Whig reform and FDR’s New Deal are powerful because they will evoke positive responses across the political spectrum. I think the point about some liberal priorities being important (to liberals at least) and legitimate, but not really offering a solution to the underlying problems is fair. Not that you can’t have both greater social justice and economic reforms, but we do have to talk about both to get there.

There are vast distances between these cities: Toronto to Montreal is c350 miles, Toronto to Vancouver c2,700 miles so infection can be contained a lot more easily in large communities with plenty of distance between large conurbations rather than England where there are very small distances between concentrated conurbations?

How do you explain why Belgium has had such a bad time of it - population is c1,000 sq mile - there has to be a correlation?

My 14 year old son has a better understanding than you seem to



density in South Korea is 1,366 people per mile yet they have not had a bad a time as the UK plus being closer to China and with more links to the pandemic starting.

In Brazil it is 68.57 per mile but they have a huge number of deaths


That above should suggest that Other factors other than population density comes into it. One of the key factors in determine how bad Covid has struck has been political decisions on how best to deal with it ( although there are many other factors )

But in the top 10 worst affected countries the correlation between Covid is who is running the country ie politicians who denying it, refusing lockdowns, promoting herd immunity , effective dictatorships etc are big factors ie Brazil bolsonaro, Us Trump, Uk Boris, Russia Putin etc etc


Yes Canada may have big differences in distance between cities and maybe 200 years ago before people had Aeroplanes or Trains or Cars that might have made a difference BUT now people travel large distances very quickly . They don’t just travel on dog sled and horses . If you are in a pub in a big city in Belgium or Canada the virus spreads the same way

I don't have anything to add to what DG says.
I don't understand why you can't get your head around what aren't terribly complicated concepts. Of course there is a correlation between how tightly packed people are at a very, very localised level - i.e. inside a supermarket or a pub. But that simply doesn't translate upwards to population density over a city, let alone a county/state or country. There are far more important variables than that random metric.

I didn't say population density was the only cause but it will have been a contributory factor. Whilst you might get movement of people it will not be as prevalent as say movement between Leeds and Manchester - easy to go 30 miles in a car not so easy to do 300 or 2,000 Ottawa to Edmonton? Are you saying it is all political decisions that caused such a bad outcome?

How do you explain the huge increases in York and Harrogate - Mr. know-it-all?

The more people are tested, the more cases there will be.

So you are saying the cases were the same/thousand but not showing any symptoms - but all of a sudden they all started showing symptoms and the rate when up - are you for real?

Indeed. A lot of "amateur epidemiologists" have been giving us the benefit of their opinion on daytime TV recently, including talking about "just shielding the over 80's as they are the only ones dying and letting the rest of us live normally" . Well, look at the numbers - around 50% of all deaths are in the 40-80 age bracket. No suggestions on how you would do that obviously.
There is absolutely no doubt that countries who have acted to initially effect a strong lockdown, and followed that with quarantine procedures to prevent re-entrance of infection and swift, decisive action when infection re-appears are currently way better off than those who have dragged their feet every time measures are needed.

I get it. People are really suffering now, both with and without the disease and wishing there was a better way. I do think that had this disease been awkward and a vaccine was going to take much longer then we would be faced with some very tough decisions and strategy may have been different. You must get business (small business's in particular) and the economy working again at some point or we all suffer more (eventually). But it happens that Covid 19 is not a particularly difficult one to create a vaccine for (it's all relative of course). I have heard it described by the people who first characterized it in the West as "clumsy". I have known since about June that we would have a vaccine deployed around end of November - beginning of December. In fact if the FDA hadn't been so worried about US public opinion on vaccines the AZ vaccine would have been with us before the Pfizer vaccine. If I knew that then the government knew that, so that's had a big bearing on strategy so far.

There will be other global pandemics of this nature, it's inevitable, but if we do not learn the lessons of what worked and what didn't and if we listen to those who think there is a radical approach that we didn't try that would have worked brilliantly (herd immunity, selective shielding etc) then we will have a disaster of even greater proportions than we have now. This isn't the first pandemic we've had and it's not the first highly infectious disease to spread through a region of the world. There are people who study this stuff and are "experts" in what works and what doesn't. We should listen to them.

An interesting post - this issue is so many experts with very differing opinions - who is right? Ferguson is an interesting expert - never got a prediction even close.

You quote 50% between - my understanding is 80%+ of the death are occurring in the over 75's

Are we saying those that have had the virus also have a degree of protection - we have c3.5m positive cases so if you add that to the 4m already vaccinated that should give c8m with a degree of protection. If the current continues at c40k a day you will have c5m positives plus 16.5m vaccinated that is c22m if you take off the c10m under 15's you should have 40% of the population with some form of protection by mid Feb?

The problem is now even with a vaccine there doesn't seem to be clarity about what they can achieve - do they stop the spread - doesn't appear so - does it stop people getting ill - doesn't appear so - it will prevent the most vulnerable from death if they get it. Does this really offer a way back to normality? I will definitely have the jab I am not in denial.

The government keep changing the goal posts about removing restrictions - first it was R number, then it was pressure on the NHS, then it was number of infections, then was the vaccine role out - there is surely a limit as to how long this can continue without the medicine being worse than the illness? What are the chances of schools going back before Easter?