Originally Posted by
missingblade
It's simple boys. The politicians massively overreacted based on bad science and a snowball effect. Wuhan locked down because at that point right at the beginning they didn't know how serious and dangerous this virus may be. Which in a way is actually a credit to them.
Unfortunately then the next stop was Bergamo/ Northern Italy - practically the old age home of Europe - so plenty old folks get infected and die and the whole thing looks super dangerous and snowballs from there. Politicians panic since they figure they won't get re elected if granny dies and thus they blindly follow the example of Wuhan and Italy and the rest is history....
I am willing to bet the cx half of my provident fund that in the next few months we will get the data to prove that this was the over reaction of the century by elected idiots, compromised government funded scientists and histerical media. All combined to lead to the ultimate demonstration of the idiocy of crowds in this era of Facebook and fake news.
And all of this makes no difference to the fact that most of the planet will be back in business once the penny drops while HKG is still locked down and taxi drivers here still pump their accelerators like mad to an empty airport of cluelessness and despair.
Yup....although the initial reaction was somewhat understandable because no one knew what they had, everything out of China is a lie, and the Chinese would certainly exploit a virus that kills the old and sick to cull their population. The subsequent follow ons have been a bunch of Wesley Mouches trying to outdo each other to use the situation for power and control (and foster their agenda). Same as for masks; properly fitted sterilized single use protective gear can certainly have benefit. When it comes to reused constantly touched (between surface and everything else in the world) cloth providing an ideal breeding ground for pathogens in a warm moist environment you're dealing with propaganda (and potentially making the situation worse). But faceless mask laden droids help foster the illusion of control.
Now, that the science supports going back to school and restarting things, it's ignored as the goalposts have shifted towards an unattainable bubble wrapped world paradigm of 'safety' -- when such an approach actually makes things less safe (rather than fly people now drive increasing their risk and making other skewed decisions; the OTHER risks in life have not gone away and everything is a trade off).
I cannot imagine the deleterious psychological effects this is having on smaller children who are unable to see facial expressions and experience basic human contact -- instead being handled by scary faceless robots. Can't be good for the whole human race either.
Now that we DO have data we find we have a pathogen which exploits certain health conditions and has a strong gradient towards mortality particularly among older individuals (as might ANY flu or additional health condition). The marginal effect of the WuFlu is disregarded and IT becomes the primary cause. None of that data support either mask wearing by the general public or lockdowns have worked to do really anything. And the numbers get skewed to reflect just about any death as WuFlu related; whether that was the primary cause or not. The propaganda around this is frightening; it's not so much the pathogen but the constant propaganda driving bad decisions. No flu should be trivialized but at the same time there's significant opportunity cost to everything AND this WuFlu isn't the only game in town health-wise.
So most of the governments of the world have made panic based decisions and royally stepped on their schlong. Those who've been more rational deserve great credit. But I don't see things as changing anytime soon. And there's a huge aftermath to deal with in terms of lost economics (that 'free' money HAS to come from somewhere).