The level of fear about the pandemic needs to be proportionate to its dangers. Some people have become too scared to even leave their houses, whilst hundreds have died in hospitals or care homes without being able to say goodbye to their friends and family, due to blanket bans on visitors for fear of infection. The risk to children and young people is extremely low and even in older age groups many people infected survive and return to normal or near normal health. Long periods of convalescence and healing are common with many, many infections and not only limited to covid-19. Viral hepatitis, glandular fever and even flu.. With all the improvements in clinical management and better understanding of the need for physical distancing we are undoubtedly in a better situation than when all this started.
Continuous government u-turns and contradictory advice also undermine confidence. “Eat Out to Help Out” and ”go back to work” were both adopted slogans. Now as cases are rising—as was inevitable—the government has decided blaming people for not sticking to the rules is the way to go.
If the public do not trust the governments’ approach, or understand the rules, then they will be much less likely to adhere to them.
Public health interventions and strategies should never include striking fear into the minds of the people or punishing them. This would not be advocated in any public health strategy. The government should be talking about the obvious long-term nature of this and the difficulties ahead. Instead, we get told there will be a vaccine by the autumn, everything will be sorted by Christmas, and we will get to no new cases or new deaths, which is misleading at best.
Any infection that is transmitted asymptomatically, and there are many, eradication is not possible without a vaccine. Without one, this strategy of lockdowns will be required to last years, undoubtedly doing more damage than the virus. I suspect we’ve already passed the tipping point when the costs of our efforts to contain the pandemic exceed the benefits, for the majority of population groups.
The risks need to be set into context, compared to the risks of everyday life. There are about 12,000 deaths in the UK every week, many of them from causes a lot easier to prevent than covid-19. We need to strike a better balance and we must counter fear by providing objective, quantitative data that sets this pandemic into context.
