Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

I haven't followed statistics in detail, but most of what I've seen of the 'Covid sceptic' tendency has been simplistic, e.g. monocausal. I think the following things apply generally:

1) We didn't understand what the virus does when it first became clear that there was a problem. It's easy enough to say that just letting it spread while protecting the vulnerable/susceptible would be the best strategy, but I just don't agree that we really knew who was vulnerable; we didn't know about 'long Covid', which seems to affect a lot of not particularly vulnerable-seeming people, e.g. younger people (see the thread), we didn't yet know that children don't seem to spread it much, that contact transmission isn't all that likely, how best to test for it, and so forth, not to mention the UK's general unpreparedness for it, which seems to continue seamlessly into being ill-equipped for dealing with it six/seven months on. Sure, if you already know what exactly a virus does, you can take appropriate precautions, but this one had spread far and wide by political failure to contain it, which was probably at least in part caused by the above factors.

2) I do think that measures such as lockdowns, social distancing, or face masks are undesirable policies, but ones that nonetheless became called for once the horse had bolted. I can understand people's misgivings about them, and the general atmosphere probably isn't helped by some in the Government probably enjoying bringing in measures at the wrong time, seemingly capriciously, without much notice, and unscientifically under the cloak of 'we're monitoring the situation all the time' based on poor data.

Politics at a high level had failed, so low-level measures that imposed a tremendous burden on everyone, except Dominic Cummings, had to come in. These were initially followed remarkably well by most people, but the Cummings affair was a turning-point, and since then we've seen a lot of civil disobedience and conspiracy (covidspiracy) theories seem to have multiplied.

3) Immense amounts of text have been written about testing and contact tracing and their importance. What it highlights for me is the constant contrast between theory and practice. In theory, we should implement measures based on accurate data and information, i.e. that gained from the above activities. In practice, we don't have much, and it's hard to prepare for testing (tests seem to have been created quickly, but may have been too sensitive, etc.), and contact tracing requires a lot of surveillance, which is not desirable. I think it again highlights that there needs to be a lot more investment in prevention of virus spreading if at all possible, e.g. better monitoring of symptom clusters. In China, there also seems to have been a problem of politicians, and quite possibly other doctors, not listening to whistleblowers.

4) I'm sure that effective action has also been hampered by this tendency of people to try to justify their pre-existing political interests by the arrival of the pandemic. This is not only in the seemingly totally wasteful awarding of government contracts without competition or scrutiny to Tory donors etc., but in other areas, too. That can't help and better political co-ordination is desperately needed. Obviously, having a responsible government in the first instance would help a lot.

I suspect that Sweden can only be presented as acceptable because people make poor use of statistics and because it can be contrasted favourably with the utter political failure in this country, which (not uniquely, but among only a few countries) had a lockdown and failed to protect vulnerable people, in fact in some ways endangering them more directly than I imagine was done in Sweden.

Anyway, some witterings on what I think generally, which may be nonsense, but that's where I've got to.