Hi Radgirl,
Thanks for whatever your efforts and involvement have been, everyone apreciates this, It sounds like you are quite immersed in it.
Maybe too much to be objective.
"The incidence has been 1 in 850 in the UK but varies between regions. The death rate depends on age but is 1-2%. The chance of catching it in an enclosed space, inches apart for an hour, approaches 1"
Incidence rate. To say is "has been" isn't now. Now its much less. The Oxford team testing vaccines on a sample of 10000 can't get results at that small sample size, because not enough people will be 'exposed'.
Most people who have it know they have it and they are self isolating, not taking helicopter lessons.
So the 1 in 5000 is a pessimistic estimate for now.
That can be reduced a little by asking a few questions, like
How do you feel?
Do you know anyone that has or has had Covid?
Have you had it?
My estimate of probability that a helicopter student who has been asked these questions is a live asyptomatic carrier is less than 1 in 10,000 right now. Possibly as little as 3 in 100,000.
Death rate 1%-2%. that's a little naughty too. Very few obese, 80 year old, asthmatic, immuno supressed Bangladeshis are training in helicopters. T'aint right to use the figure that includes them.
For sub 30 year olds its more like 1 in 1000 almost certainly less that that because death rates are against reported and tested positive, many will have symptoms so mild that they will not appear in the denominator.
There is certainly no case at all for preventing one person who has had it teaching another that has had it, is there?
Now I understand that there is an occasional strategy to minimise R0 and that exaggerating the risk is part of that campaign. So perhaps exaggeration is useful for that. I understand the idea that preventing spread is to protect vulnerables.
I am not criticising anybody's attempts at strategy.
But in aviation we have to 'stay grounded' in the fact based world, avoid hysteria, stay alert and go flying!