Dave:
12:43, #65284 – “14%, so far more than 0.07%?”
No, Steph worked out that the UK definition would result in 14% more deaths recorded as covid than the WHO definition but, based on ET’s figures of 88,590 and 89,243 I suspect it’s an overestimate and they’d work out pretty much the same in practice.
13:20, #65291 – “an unprecedented counter-productive response…”
1) It’s not unprecedented; many US cities imposed social restrictions during the 1918 “Spanish” ‘flu pandemic.
2) It’s not unprecedented; in fact, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and similar international instruments have exceptions to the Right of Assembly and the Right to Liberty specifically for health emergencies, so that social restrictions and quarantine can be imposed. These exceptions were written in from the start, because social restrictions and quarantine are the normal, standard public health measures for dealing with epidemics. It just that none of us has experienced an epidemic or pandemic before because they don’t happen very often.
3) It’s not counter-productive; just look at the graphs. When restrictions are imposed the infection rate turns from rising to declining, and the death rate follows the same trend after a short time. Loads of US states lifted restrictions, but the infection and death rates soared so they had to reimpose them.