The response to Covid 19 will prove to be a huge blunder. The only accomplishment has been the slowing of heard immunity and in the process put more elderly people at risk.
They should have locked down the elderly but locked down the children instead.
James,
Thats simplistic yet humorous, akin to saying to the starving French citizens, who had no bread, “Let them eat cake!”
Each country and community has different risk factors and ease of spread depending on:
- Mobility of population beyond family group
- Hospital resources
- Technical resources for mapping & tracing
- Inter regional travel
- Large gatherings: prayer, funerals or sports
- Age of population
- Health of population
Here in the USA we allowed flights from Europe and wasted 6 weeks in getting organized. We have 85,000 deaths and by years end could be 300,000!
in Israel, most infections were in the ultra religious communities attending Torah study day and night, weddings and funerals with thousands of people and prayers 3 times a day with at least 10 men!
The government closed all flights, quarantined those Israelis returning from travel and came down heavily forcing compliance and used the Mossad intelligence services to trace, track, treat isolate anyone infected.
As a result the infection is crushed. Thousands of lives have been saved. That level of responsibility in the USA might have prevented many of the avalanche of deaths we experience now! some 30,000 to 60,000 a month!
A population with few arriving travelers, little mobility and population mixing or congregational practices, will have little spread!
But when governments take a simplistic happy attitude and write off colored folk and the elderly as “it happens” and “dispensable”, then we degrade ourselves as civilized societies putting wealth over life.
In the USA, all we have to do is guaranty to buy all the farmers produce and supply entire population for free for two years and introduce the controls used in Asia and Israel. In the latter case, 10% of the population were convinced Hod had nothing more important to do than save them from Covid-19. Even then, sound administrative policy from the top, crushes the out of control infection.
So, James, humor is great for quips and a laugh. But for this pandemic, we can’t protect the elderly and the people of color who produce and deliver essential services unless we use a more granular rational and expert approach!
Asher
