Quote Originally Posted by Fellbeast View Post
I'm all for anything that looks like good news or optimism about covid, don't get me wrong. I just don't think that suddenly opening up the flood gates by unleashing the young is a particularly good idea, especially right now and especially given that there are still so many unknowns about covid. It would just be a massive roll of the dice and, given the government's track record so far, they've surely learned by now that rolling the dice again could potentially be catastrophic.

On a positive note, despite increasing positive tests, death and hospital admissions still remain low. If that's still the case in say 3 or 4 weeks, that would be fantastic news. There was an article a couple of weeks ago or so (either in the Times or the Guardian) that talked about the effect of covid diminishing but, at the same time, they could only speculate that this might be happening and further speculate about possible reasons. Some of the reasons though make sense:

1. That the virus has already picked off the most susceptible 'low hanging fruit'
2. That the virus was evolving to diminish in its virulence so as to survive
3. That, due to social distancing and mask wearing, people might only be picking up 'glancing blow' infections that were of lower effect (rather than the previously 15 or more minutes close exposure to those infected without any protection)
4. That perhaps more people have picked up some form of covid already without knowing (although outbreaks in more confined poorer communities and work places, such as food preparation, seem to fly in the face of that)
5.That the most susceptical are especially hunkering down and keeping themselves isolated
6. That its mainly the young now picking up the current version of covid and they are not, in the main, becoming seriously ill with it

Anyway I'm optimistic that this will all sort itself out in some way or other (ideally a vaccine) and that hanging in there with the current version of opening the economy as far as possible, while controlling the spread with local lockdowns and restrictions and whatnot, is the best way to go about things now.

And definitely not just telling the young to just crack on regardless
I don't think anyone is talking of flood gates.

The case of Leicester was discussed this morning and Dr Rashid was part of the debate.

How come Leicester had this spike but no increase in hospitalisation and deaths? Could it due to the Govt and Local authority response?

He thought that unlikely. His opinion was that as the response was after the event (the positive cases when detected had been developing and there for the previous 2-4 weeks) then based on the previous history of the virus we should have expected an increase of hospital admissions for up to two weeks before the additional measures kicked in.
But no - there was nothing.

You can add that to the Northern towns as well.