Yesterday I sat in the park

Yesterday I sat on a bench in the park.  Apparently we're allowed to do this now. Although when I suggested on facebook that I was involved in such decadance a great number of people were widely concerned.

However, it seems that according to PoPo guidelines if we go out for a walk we are now allowed to sit on a bench.

Actually what happened is this ...I went over to Bromley to get the car serviced to retain my warranty.  I would have got it serviced in Croydon but all the Vauxhall dealers are shut.  However, W J King in Bromley - for it was they - were not shut.  It's a bit of a trek from Croydon to Bromley so they said they'd do it while I wait if I booked far enough ahead.  This I did.  Due to social distancing I couldn't wait in the showroom so I wandered the streets of Bromley for two and half hours and being slightly tired I sat in the park for half an hour.

I noticed quite a number of other older late middle aged to elderly people plonked on park benches.  Nobody moved us on.  The world didn't end.  And one has to ask is it really a great idea to keep people all locked up inside all the time and only allow them an hour of exercise a day if they dont have immune system issues?  The chance of any of us infecting each other is small.   Of course if everybody utilised the park at the same time that might mean there were more problems but actually the chances of picking up Covid-19 in the park are minimal so long as you don't touch the bench.

Eventually the garage rang and said there was an issue with the brakes and they'd take another hour and a half to fix it.  So in the end I wandered the streets for 4 hours and it would have been easier to simply walk home and back out... However, it's probably good that I went rather than be driving round with dodgy brakes.  Actually apart from operating with less staff the showroom didn't seem to have any problem at all in running the servicing side of the business.  I wound my windows down and made sure the car fan was switched off and they put the keys through a disinfectant machine and the risk of transmission was thus pretty near zero.

It made me wonder why so many other garages are almost completely closed but this one is open.  It doesn't seem to make any sense.  People still need to go to work so their cars still need to be serviced.  I took mine in because at the MOT they said there might be a brake problem.  I missed the cut off for the MOT amnesty.  But how many people are driving round with dodgy brakes?

What bothers me about the government furlough scheme is long term there's no incentive for many businesses to even try to keep working.  I get the feeling that some businesses are furloughing people en masse simply because they can ...rather than because they couldn't figure out a way to change their operations to accomodate customers.  A notable example is Primark who rather than launching a web portal is happy to sit it out with £0 sales at the government's expense.

Note this video keeps being taken down by YouTube for violating it's TOC - Google Dr Eriksson press conference and I'm sure you'll find it somewhere....

Lewis Schaffer - who has been postulating the theorm that nobody at all will die since the virus broke out - sent me this video ... and though I wouldn't agree with everything in it the explanation of how the human immune system is supposed to work and why it's not a good idea to have masks and gloves everywhere is very well explained here.  I'm not an anti-vaxxer but I would hesitate to take the flu vaccine because I don't think it's a good idea to not give your immune system a work out from time to time unless you have real immune system problems.  Covid-19 maybe.  But many vaccines have side effects.  Nobody needs it anymore fortunately but if we look at, for example, the Smallpox vaccine ... according to the WHO "1 and 2 people out of every 1 million people vaccinated may die as a result of life-threatening reactions to the [Smallpox] vaccine" ...vaccines aren't and have never been a magic bullet.  Of course 300,000 of every 1000000 smallpox infections ended in death.  But there's still a risk the vaccine could kill you...  If we look at the last smallpox outbreak in the UK in 1962 (see here)...

"Unfortunately smallpox vaccination does have unpleasant side-effects, ranging from transient fever and local discomfort to fatal encephalitis. In 1960 in England and Wales 408 699 persons received primary vaccination, 8 developed encephalitis and 3 died."

The idea that if a vaccine is found its going to be completely side effect free straight out of the box is unrealistic... Particularly since animal trials are being skipped.

There are a number of other problems with isolating everyone and dissenfecting everything ... for example that it lowers the immune response of healthy people which actually decreases the herd immunity effect.  Herd immunity is a controversial term these days but it is important to stress - and I do this using my B in GCSE biology - that it shouldn't really be an either/or matter of herd immunity or Quarantine but a mixture of the two.  For example ... despite 4 weeks of Quarantine we're still seeing an infection rate of 4000-5000 a day.  Why is this?

Well, if you quarantine an individual it would take up to 14 days for them to show any symptoms and at least 7 days for their immune system to defeat the virus (minimum).  That means that in 21 days they will be clear of infection.  However, if you quarantine a family of 4 and 1 is ill ... they can be infectious for about 14 days and leave virus residue in the house that exists for up to 3 days.  This means that if each infects the other it can take 14 + 14 + 14 + 14 = 56 days to say for sure that there is no remaining infection threat from within that dwelling.  This is why during plagues they used to seal up houses - because it's effective... No, I'm not talking about sealing people up to die but if you could separate the household of 4 you'd reduce the time you need to quarantine them for.  Sooner or later the government is going to have to look at new solutions that don't involve a vaccine.  Even if a vaccine is found ...Well, flu evolves every year.  Covid-19 could be with us for decades to come.