C'mon SOPS... Lots of virus strains can leave very long lasting and nasty effects! Don't fall for the long-Covid gag here:D

Just for comparison 1.4 million people died from TB in 2019... Where were the lockdowns then?

How do masks lead to undiagnosed cancers, heart disease and diabetes? Masks and lockdowns are not the same.

And if you are trying to peddle the argument that lockdowns lead to an increase in undiagnosed illnesses - what a barrowload of dried donkey's testicles. With COVID rife through a community, healthy people (or those who are not sure they are well -the undiagnosed in your argument) are going to stay far and wide from any medical clinic / hospital as it will be likely overflowing with coughing and spluttering patients and asymptomatic infected health care workers. PPE shortages, no elective surgeries to relieve the burden, I could go on.

By contrast a society with no community transmission will see people wander along to their local clinic as they always did. Rates of diagnoses will be largely the same as always. A good outcome n'est-ce pas?

And the flu argument - well, people are washing their hands and sanitising for a start, and socialising less. And staying at home if they feel feverish. Didn't happen much before, sadly. And surprise surprise there is less flu transmission. But it's not nil. And getting the flu and COVID simultaneously (they are not the same thing!) means an almost certain lengthy hospital stay at best.

Yes, there are some reports of mental illness increased. Undoubtedly some has, but interestingly some jurisdictions have data showing that there has not been an uptick in suicide rates. And even if there was, it is a hell of a lot less than the numbers killed by COVID and the numbers of those with developing mental illness may mirror those with long term illnesses from COVID, so not much of an argument to be made there.

TB? Really? Remind us how many people died from TB in the USA on average? How many has COVID killed this year? I'll save you the math, about 500 times fewer.

All that said, because of poor response and denial (people and media outlets peddling the misinformation like yours emboldening people with a sense of "me" over "us") the virus is here and in many parts of the world it is uncontrollable. It affects almost all of us and I am guessing you, given your location and presumed profession by virtue of being on this site.

Where to from the quagmire we're in, well the first step is to keep the spread from continuing to go nuts, mask up mandatory (easy in an autocratic country) and put a limit on the spread.

Re: dutch mink farms

All mink farms are being shut down, this process started in june. There will be zero mink farms left in NL from march 2021. The only minks left will be those living in the wild.
Since june, the minks are tested for corona virus. Sometimes it is found in a remaining farm. Up to now, no coronavirus 2.0 has been found in those minks. Because Holland is not located in Denmark.

Singapore took a very heavy hand to the problem and locked the country down in May and June. Regulations were enforced and people not complying were fined or jailed. Opening up has been a prolonged process done in stages.

However, this approach worked. The country is virtually COVID free with 1 or 2 new cases a day and a total of 60 active ones left.

The UK wasted the first lockdown by not thoroughly enforcing it and going back to normal almost straight away. Now a second one is coming up which will be even more costly and damaging to the economy.

At the moment there is a light at the end of the tunnel with the prospect of a vaccine being approved soon. What we don’t need is a variant of the the original virus that needs a new vaccine. Meanwhile good old Ryanair, which is as predictable as Trump claiming fraud, urged Mr Shapps to reverse the decision and called the new restrictions bizarre and baseless

Compressor stall wrote:
I've been reading and re-reading this, and trying to work out how the subsequent argument makes the point.
I have had 2 close relatives die this year. One through disease that could have at least been treated (rather than cured) more successfully with an early diagnosis. Not to mention the isolation they went through while in hospital.
Its always awkward to use personal experience in a wider setting but this is clearly a common enough situation for the sample size to be statistically significant.

As for TB, yes the USA has done very well with keeping it under control, so let's look instead at India:
79,000 TB deaths in 2019 vs 126,000 covid deaths.
You hardly hear about it.

The stats in the UK say that, of the total number of deaths with Covid19, only just over 300 (less than 1% of the total) did not have other conditions usually referred to as comorbidities.

This virus is not often a killer on its own, it requires people to be a combination of old and already ill. Just like flu in that respect.

Here is the math
Deaths from TB in the US 2019 were 515
https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom...the-US-508.pdf
and in 2020 Deaths
238K to date from the virus.

I should point out that TB is caused by bacteria and not a virus. Not comparing like with like....

UK road traffic fatalities have declined notably in recent decades, they now average around 5 a day, and it's quite common now to get one or several days without any. This is a 75% reduction in how it was 50 years ago. Aviation of course has sustained an even better reduction. There's a considerable belief in the transport statistics world that the road figures also conceal a notable number of suicides. The railway also gets these, but they are excluded from the rail accident figures, not so with road traffic.

Some are a tart weaker than others. Nothing new about that.

That's a frankly pathetic comment to make about someone suffering long-term consequences of Covid.

Down 'ere in Devon it came as a zurprize that such things as mink farms exist.

So off to Wiki, who tell me that I'm sorry, maybe, for the farmers who will lose their livelihood. About as much as I'm sorry for people smugglers who get arrested.

Apart from that I don't think that the world will suffer much from the loss of mink fur and mink oil.

That strain has been reported about 5 month ago and it is already found in at least 6 countries ...

I feel that the net effect of Covid 19 to cause sickness is often overlooked , focusing on fatality rates is vital of course. However , using the military analogy that a wounded combatant causes a greater drain on resources, fatality rates are only part of the overall picture.