(05-04-2020 11:15 )Rake Wrote:  {snip}

Tom Jefferson, an epidemiologist and honorary research fellow at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, said the findings were “very, very important.” He told The BMJ, “The sample is small, and more data will become available. Also, it’s not clear exactly how these cases were identified. But let’s just say they are generalisable. And even if they are 10% out, then this suggests the virus is everywhere. If—and I stress, if—the results are representative, then we have to ask, ‘What the hell are we locking down for?’”

Jefferson said that it was quite likely that the virus had been circulating for longer than generally believed and that large swathes of the population had already been exposed.

(05-04-2020 12:45 )schvall Wrote:  Jefferson's view is obviously not prevailing at the moment. He asks what the hell are we locking down for and the answer is that we're locking down because the government's health advisors say that it's the only viable way to deal with Covid-19 and that 250,000 Britons would have died if the government had stuck to its herd immunity strategy.

There is only one way to find out the truth and that is to test a randomised sample of the UK population for antibodies to see how many of us have already had the virus. Until then it's all speculation with no real evidence either way and Jefferson's view has not only been contradicted by the UK government's advisors but also by the WHO.

(05-04-2020 19:14 )snookered Wrote:  Generally I don't watch broadcasts from Her Majesty The Queen. I did tonight though.
She struck exactly the right tone.
A classy speech with a classy ending.