So, Hands Up. Second Wave Or Not?

[flobadob]

I've remained quite skeptical of the seriousness of the coronavirus doing the rounds recently and think a lot of it was played up in order to drive through a looming recession.

Anyway, my question is, do people really believe that this is a very serious pandemic that will come in ever more serious waves until a vaccine is found?

Will it perhaps return in a less serious nature?

Or is it on the same level as Spanish Flu in which apparently many many millions were killed second time around compared to the first wave.

Or will it quietly disappear, leaving only high jobless figures and economic turmoil in its wake?

I would love to hear people's thoughts.

[Gromit]

* and has NOT peaked

[jourdain2]

I've just gone boggle-eyed over this. It seems entirely logical that it will follow most epidemics, hit a peak, drop and then follow with secondary peaks. So I can't get too excited. Spanish Flu was exceptional and this one could recur, I suppose. I incline to the last given option. Get back to work and take care seems to sum it up. I'm in a vulnerable group and Mr J2 is very vulnerable so I take care. So does he. Otherwise, living fairly normally.

Very worried about the lack of social payments due to jobless a) needing help and b) not being able to pay in.

After-thought - why is it OK to talk about Spanish Flu and yet it is racist to talk about Wuhan or Chinese Virus? Just a thought.

[jno]

the Spanish flu wasn't Spanish, but it's too late now to complain about what our grandparents called it.

[Peter Pedant]

alberto zangrillo ?

https://www.corriere.it/politica/20_giugno_01/chi-alberto-zangrillo-medico-sempre-a-berlusconi-0e842b46-a3df-11ea-b19d-c124828d4b5b.shtml?refresh_ce-cp

even his italian colleagues are saying - oo la la !
o
"mi Dio - non e cosi!" - - [eed eez not like zaat!]

[jno]

problem with L'Adblock there

[New Judge]

//The trouble is people are starting to pretty much ignore the rules anyway at the moment.//

Of course they are. I said at the outset (you can check my posts from around 23rd March) that by the beginning of June either the government will have had to have lifted the lockdown significantly or it will be widely ignored. Well here we are on June 2nd and it seems we have a bit of both. I’m not sure whether the government is easing the lockdown because they think it’s wise to do so, or they are easing it because otherwise it will be ignored. In any case it seems the public appear to be one or two steps ahead of the game and it is my belief that it is they who are driving the relaxation, not the “science”.

Whatever course the virus takes, two things are for sure:

- the lockdown must be relaxed so that people can conduct as near to a normal life as possible and that must be done soon.

- A second lockdown must never, never be contemplated for two reasons – firstly it will kill what is currently a mortally wounded economy stone dead and Covid will be the least of the country’s worries. Secondly people will not put up with it.

There are plenty of people who are scared of the virus (I know quite a few and for many of them their fears are irrational). They can stay locked in but the taxpayer cannot pay their wages. There are also plenty of people who are particularly vulnerable. They should be identified and assisted in every way practically possible. The rest will have to get on with it because the government cannot protect everybody from everything.

[Gromit]

Todays Metro
// A NORTH-SOUTH Covid-19 divide is widening, with fatalities and new infections far more common in some regions than in London.

The virus death rate is continuing to come down nationwide — with latest figures showing it dropped a third in the week to May 22. But research shows new infections are nearly twice as widespread in Yorkshire and the north-east than in London, with the north-west also seeing far more cases. //

That is why easing in London is acceptable, and madness in the North.

[10ClarionSt]

The same as everything regarding this pandemic, and as others have said, nobody knows. Nobody knew at the start, in March. Nobody knows if the figures would have been worse without a lockdown. Everyone on this site talks about CV-19 in terms of - if this, if that, maybe this, maybe that, could be this, could be that, perhaps this, perhaps that, what if this, what if that. If my aunt had been born on Monday instead of Tuesday, she maybe, could have, possibly been my uncle. Perhaps.

[ummmm]

Well then you talk to some really weird people then.

[woofgang]

"still rising and has peaked" don't you mean still rising and hasn't peaked?

[woofgang]

is anybody else seeing an issue where you look at a thread and don't see some of the answers until you have posted? I thought it was me not noticing yesterday but today I am sure.

[jim360]

// The same as everything regarding this pandemic, and as others have said, nobody knows. //

There's nothing profound about suggesting that people can't know the future. But they can make predictions, and those predictions can be based on sensible reasoning. A novel disease is known to spread quite readily and can be fatal. It is not difficult to deduce from this that if control measures aren't taken then a lot of people will die in a short space of time.

[Old_Geezer]

So, are we voting for a second wave ?

[retrocop]

Apparently the R number is the highest in the SW and Dorset are particularly concerned they may fall victim to a second wave due to the day trippers descending on their beaches and ignoring all the guidelines for lockdown. 0.9 (R). I suppose the council officials who are routinely being spat on would also have good cause for concern!!

[retrocop]

https://metro.co.uk/2020/06/02/fears-dorset-go-back-lockdown-day-trippers-flock-beaches-12794204/?ico=pushly-notifcation-small&utm_source=pushly

[flobadob]

I just wondered if people really believed in a second wave or is it not as serious as it's being made out?

[jim360]

It's not a question of "believing" though, is it? It either will show up in the coming weeks or it won't. There are good reasons to expect that relaxing the lockdown will prompt an increase in cases and deaths per day, but there is approximately a two/three week time lag between the changes in measures and their effect showing up in data, so it won't be until the middle or end of June that we start to see some sign of a second wave. Likewise, if cases/deaths continue to either fall or remain steady over the course of this month then that implies that the government got its timing right after all and was able to relax measures in a relatively safe way.

Common sense tells you that there is at least a risk that re-opening whilst the disease is still active prompts a second wave, so there is no denying that the Government has gambled in re-opening now. But that is as far as I'm prepared to go until we see the data for the coming weeks.

[fiction-factory]

flobadob- do you think it was just the UK government playing it up in order to drive through a looming recession or have all the other major nations been pulling the same trick?

[flobadob]

Fiction, almost all governments toed the line somewhat. The question is, who drew the line?

[fiction-factory]

Well for every skeptic who think it's all been deliberately overhyped by MSM and governments to push through other hidden agendas, there's one who thinks we just overreacted because we placed too much emphasis on lives over the economy, there are two who think we didn't take it seriously enough and were too slow to react, and the rest think the government is doing pretty much the right things to balance the health and economic issues in unprecedented circumstances.
I don't think the skeptic