Thoughts From The Lockdown Update #2

Original post: Thoughts From The Lockdown

First update: Thoughts From The Lockdown Update

The lockdown is just about over in Queensland. We are allowed to travel all over the state (interstate travel is banned until at least the end of June) and most businesses are open. Cinemas open on Friday 5th and pubs and restaurants will be opening on 12th June.

As the world returns to normal – whatever that is – I’d like to ask, was the lockdown actually worth it?

The following figures come from a report from Public Health England…

* Working age men are twice as likely to die as women;

* 60-69 year olds are 27 times more likely to die than the under 40s, 70-79 year olds 50 times more likely and the over 80s, 70 times more likely;

* 45% of Covid19 deaths mentioned heart disease as an underlying condition, 21% mentioned diabetes, 26% dementia and 20% high blood pressure;

* Obese adults are 27% more likely to die than the non-obese, rising to 56% for the severely obese and 250%(!) for the morbidly obese;

* People of Bangladeshi descent are twice as likely to die as white Britons, Pakistanis 50% and black Caribbean 30%;

* Overall, the death rate was three times higher in London than in the SouthWest and more than twice as high in the most deprived households.

You can see the report on these figures from that hotbed of Nazis, Ukippers and white supremacists at Jimmy Savile House here.

In these day’s of knee-jerk hypersensitivity over identity issues, the higher number of deaths among BAME Britons has been manna from Heaven for some of the usual suspects. However, Professor John Newton, Director of Health Improvement at PHE, suggests that although the virus is having a worse impact on black and minority ethnic people “that is not necessarily because of their ethnicity.” He also suggested that these findings needed to be “widely discussed before deciding exactly what needs to be done” and emphasised the complexity of the data, “urging people not to jump to conclusions.”

Not jumping to conclusions? This is sound advice as the protests/riots* (*delete to taste) over the death of George Floyd continue into a second week after his encounter with a police officer who has been charged, but not yet convicted, with murder.

I wonder how we will look back at our collective behaviour over the past three months in a year, five years or ten years. Will some people feel the same embarrassment they felt over their ludicrous overreaction to the death of Diana Spencer back in 1997?