By locking down hard on age groups who aren't vulnerable to the virus you're enabling the clown world that OP is referring to.
Sure lock down the elderly that's fine but making national health policy based on one demographic is full on straight clown world stuff.
With an infectious disease like this, what you want is to curb its ability to spread. That means disrupting the entire social network, because while the virus is most dangerous to the elderly, it spreads best through the young. Also lung damage, the fact that small chance of disability or death multiplied by whole country getting infected equals to more harm than inconveniencing everyone a bit and nipping the problem in the bud, yadda yadda. These are all tired points.
The main way UK (and US, and a chunk of EU) response was a "clown world" was pretending there's no problem until it was too late, and then doing too little, and then doing stupid things that nullified the effect of previous interventions.
But right now, we're eleven months in and it's illegal for me to have a single friend over for a cup of tea.
Not advised against; not something we should limit; illegal, punishable by law.
I'm at the point at which I've been told by medical health practitioners to ignore this nonsense and see people for my own wellbeing.
We have a vaccination program running in the UK and it's going fairly well. The thing that is keeping me clinging to sanity is the fact that once the vulnerable groups have been vaccinated, I'm just getting on with life.
Without that; well the news is saying 'social distancing until 2022' and the Government are telling us that maybe in a month it'll be legal to sit on a park bench with a coffee.
This is not me being hyperbolic. It is currently illegal for me to leave my house and sit on a park bench.
If I followed that stuff to the letter, I'd have already gone postal or just thrown myself in front of a train.
This is a policy that, if it works at all, works for specific types of people; nuclear families, introverts, etc.
Those might even be a majority.
But it's not viable at a population level because a significant percentage of people are either in situations whereby they need to mix households in order to function, or have brain chemistry which means that avoiding social mixing for prolonged periods (months or more) causes them to become depressed, anxious, or in extreme cases psychotic.
We're doing all of this stuff in an attempt to reduce coronavirus cases prior to vaccination, because we care about public health, not purely for the sake of it. That would be "clown world".
> But it's not viable at a population level because a significant percentage of people are either in situations whereby they need to mix households in order to function, or have brain chemistry which means that avoiding social mixing for prolonged periods (months or more) causes them to become depressed, anxious, or in extreme cases psychotic.
That's absolutely true. The long-term effects of social restrictions on public health and general morale was something somewhat unexpected, or at least not thought much about early in 2020 (and, hindsight being 20/20, only confirms that the big mistake was not doing hard but short lockdowns early on). I'm just hoping we can vaccinate our way out of this in the coming months, because even introverts are having troubles taking this much longer. Myself, I started this pandemic in a state of being burned out by interacting with other people - a year later, I now desperately crave some socialization, but I'm not sure if I'm even capable of it anymore.
I actually had to look this up in order to make sure I had the dates right, but it's absolutely correct.
It is also illegal to meet a single person in your garden or outside unless you're exercising. I don't have exact timings on that, because in order to protect my mental health I've stopped following the news.
"A tad excessive" is understating it a bit. It's inhuman. Writing it down makes me feel ill. When people talk about it as if it's normal and okay, I get an intense feeling of anger and a desire to cause them pain.
So if you want your perspective on why people are acting like "covidiots" or whatever offensive name we're applying to our brothers now - this is why.
I am done with bureaucratic despots telling me what to do, I am not a guinea pig to be experimented on.
I've felt like you for a long time, after monitoring the actual statistics instead of the news.
Do you think Covid is following an exponential growth model in the under 55 age group if in a YEAR there's still less deaths than car accidents?
Covid is way more complex than "SHUT IT ALL DOWN, EXPOENTIAL GROWTH, FLATTEN THE CURVE".
These have just become buzzwords for simple minds to cling to a simple narrative and don't model the world accurately at all.
Honk honk! Welcome to Clown world!
Anyway, my point is that the UK choose their current situation by being afraid to act back when small steps could have made a huge difference.
No no it doesn't.
What is the percentage of people who have that type of reaction? Have you even looked at that? It's miniscule.
It's argued not to be from Covid directly but by comorbidities and would happen with any illness.
The news media blew it up out of proportion to scare you and millions of other people like you who have a poor grasp ofstatistics and risk... for money and it worked!
Welcome to clown world. Honk honk!
Your leaders not taking it seriously to begin with is the reason you are in this situation now.
Where I am we took this seriously early last year, and as a result have been able to live life mostly like normal since.
Anyway, you live in a democracy, so maybe convince as many people as possible to vote someone else in at the next opportunity. And if you think they are all stupid then run yourself.
Honk honk!
IMO, the UK handled Covid exceptionally poorly by repeatedly being afraid to act until it was too late.
Here in Australia (Specifically the Northern Territory) we locked down hard early on while we had around 20 cases, I think it was for 2 months, after which no further lock downs have been required. Quarantine for travelers has prevented Covid getting in to the community. Basically due to how we have handled it life is pretty much the same as before Covid here, restaurants are open, the shopping mall is packed and the only thing we had to give up was 2 months and international holidays.