Its been announced that the police are to get access to NHS data on Test and Trace so as to bang up people deemed not to have been complying with the rules. That shows a number of things. First that the amount of compliance with the rules is pretty low, requiring them to try to police it more harshly, and secondly, that they really do not have a clue, and could not organise a piss up in a brewery, because the obvious response of individuals is now going to be not to download the NHS app, if you were going to, or to delete it from your phone if you have it, so that the cops can't be spying on you, and can't use it to bang you up!
The truth is that, currently, hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions are going about their business carrying the virus, and spreading it to others. They are doing so, because 80% of people have no or only minor symptoms from the virus, whilst a number of other people may have worse symptoms, but not enough to seek medical treatment. So, around 90% of people with the virus would have no reason to get tested. If the current number of new infections per day is recorded at around 20,000, that means that the real figure is 200,000. The virus remains active in people for around 2-3 weeks, during which time it can be transmitted to others. That means even during a 2 week period that is 2.8 million additional people who have the virus and are spreading it to others. This is one reason why the estimate of there being only around 6-10 million people who have developed immunity, is likely to be massively wide of the mark, given the length of time the virus has been circulating now in the population. Its why the only form of testing that makes sense is antibody testing, but its that which is not being done.
In Sweden, the official figures for the extent of herd immunity after all also estimate a similar figure, as elsewhere. But, the simple facts on the ground suggest that something is wrong with the way that figure is being calculated. Sweden has never implemented a lockdown. Like elsewhere it suffered significant deaths in care homes at the start of the epidemic. But, it essentially eradicated new deaths from the virus months ago. The implication must be that with no change in public policy, the fact that new deaths have more or less disappeared reflects the fact that a) the problems in care homes and hospitals have been addressed, which is where nearly all the early deaths occurred, but also b) fewer people are being infected. The only reason there can be for fewer people being infected, is that a sufficient degree of herd immunity has developed in the country, so that the virus is finding it harder and harder to find people it can infect, thereby reducing the infection rate, so that it begins to die out. Either the means of calculating the actual level of immunity is wrong, or else the calculations about the proportion of the population required for effective herd immunity are wrong, or both.
So, the fact is that huge numbers of people are currently walking the streets, going on public transport, going to work, going to homes, who have the virus, and are, thereby infecting others. But, because the virus does not affect the vast majority of the population it is unseen. The test and trace mantra was always a fiction and diversion for that reason, besides the fact that it was never going to be able to be implemented widely enough or effectively enough to be meaningful. So, its no wonder that anyone who is tested, and found to have the virus, or else who has downloaded the app and is contacted to be told that they might have been in contact with someone who is infected, are going to be loathe to actually self-isolate for two weeks.
2 comments:
And of course they can't make the app mandatory because not everyone has a smartphone!
Including me, indeed, no mobile phone at all!
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