I don't think the protests have had enough time for the infection to gestate long enough to show in the figures yet. Soon, yes, but for the time being we can't really pin any rise on that (yet) if that's what you mean there about thousands being praised for going out?
What has massively peeved me all the way through this from my own countries response to the crisis, is that there has been no attempt at precautions. At all. In any way. They took three months to agree covering your face might help. "But if your mask gets virus on it you might get it from the mask" You dumbasses if your mask has virus on it you would have got the freakin' virus without on anyway and the mask stops you chucking the virus out if you are asymptomatic. I think a lot of research will have to be conducted after this in to Pandemics and the best way to approach a new virus no one has any info on. Precautions that reduce the transmission rate. Distancing. Face coverings. Earlier lockdowns when it is present and spreading in the country. Until you know what it is, you need to use some catch-all measures to... well, catch all. And then once the understanding arrives modify the approach going forward.
It's the reliance on "We are following the science" well with a new virus there is no science to follow until its researched and discovered so following the science is following jolly bob-all. Did everyone jump off buildings until Newton dreamed up the theory of gravity because there was no science to follow? No they all took the precaution of making sure they did not fall to their deaths.
Yeah I dont think they have either. And you're right, there is no... idk how to put this, scientific standard? It's how I've been approaching this from the beginning. I knew they were saying don't wear masks in the beginning because they wanted to preserve them for hospital workers. From what I understand from my medical training, unless those masks are sealed, you're just putting a barrier up between your mouth and the rest of the world. Its more to keep your junk in you than everyone elses out. Studies showing how long it lasts in the air have been inconsistent (I'll admit, I havent seen anything lately so idk where were at now) and I've seen conflicting reports about the WHO saying asymptomatic transmission is really rare. Then, as soon as that was said, it seemed to upset people so they retracted that. That's not scientific, that's politics.
I have every reason to call into question the accuracy of data due to the known incentives hospitals have to mark patients as having or dying from COVID. Having worked in an ER I believe I have a good perspective from when this starts, either calling 911 or walking into the ER / urgent care or being referred to the ER by a primary care provider.
I know this is going off on a tangent but I want to try and paint a picture of what I see.
Say you're a 65 year old lady with a history of COPD who starts having more trouble breathing than usual, starts sweating and feeling dizzy. You're too sick to drive to the ER so you call an ambulance. The 911 operator asks you a few questions and determines you are at risk for having covid. The call comes in as a virus alert and they head to your house in full PPE. (this literally just happened with my aunt, similar symptoms, no copd, same process). They check your lungs and hear fluid gurgling at the base of them, and they check your O2 saturation and its lower than normal (COPD sats arent great to begin with). You get to the hospital and everyone comes out in full PPE as well and you are taken to a special area for covid isolation. At some hospitals you might already be labeled as a covid patient until tests show otherwise.
To shorten this up, it could very well be the COPD exacerbated by covid. It's a comorbidity.
Okay, so what? Well now you're either dead or being discharged and the hospital has to determine whether or not you were a "COVID patient" or a COPD patient. They have every incentive to label you as a COVID patient because the government will pick up the tab (or are supposed to as far as they know) and It's almost guaranteed. Since it's almost guaranteed they can charge whatever they want for your treatment and will most likely get it. Its why you see stuff like that million dollar itemization of care, because they know they can get most of that.
Now, its the hospitals turn to collect everyone's data and figure out who they can mark as covid and who they cannot. If the guidelines are loose, the system is open for exploitation and you bet your ass they will try to get as much money as possible considering im hearing about hospitals laying staff off because a lack of patients (lots of services were halted, elective surgery, outpatient care, etc...). We saw this happen with a hospital who supposedly used staff to fill a line for supposed covid patients. It was reported it was staged by CBS but they denied such things. I think the staff of the hospital were the ones that admitted to it.
So then you are presented with the possibility of error in the data collection or a mismanaging of the data collection process because these hospitals most likely had no idea how to even begin. So then the hospitals have to give this data to the county or state health department, and we know its not going to be 100% accurate. We saw spikes every weekend, and it was explained to me that instead of correlating it to people being off work and mingling as usual on the weekends, it was actually due to the data being reported at weeks end instead of daily.
Then you get accusations that the state health departments may be fudging numbers one way or the other or that a rise in positive cases is just due to more testing.
I'm not the type of person who would be able to make decisions with data that looks like swiss cheese.
Then you have the socioeconomic fallout from the lockdowns to contend with, which has now become a left right political issue. We still don't know how well they worked even though it was the most straight forward and simple answer to everything. The psychological impacts are showing their teeth and will only get worse.
With all that said, my personal view on this is that the virus is never going away, current guidelines and suggestions help but we have yet to fully understand their effectiveness. I don't know which direction we need to go in to save the most lives, because the threat of global conflict is added into my equations and I don't think that's really on too many peoples radar atm. I get that im paranoid but I like to believe I've had my finger on most of this from the beginning. I have a hard time articulating all of this because its a lot of pieces of the puzzle im looking at and I really don't know how to explain every perspective I have.
