@nvk "If you said to me that short of a curfew you had to put more hours of restrictions on when you could get food, I would be perfectly comfortable with that,” he said"

WTF is this unscientific nonsense? How is making stores more crowded going to help?

They just can't admit that nothing they have the power to do will change much of anything.

@pete @nvk

> WTF is this unscientific nonsense? How is making stores more crowded going to help?

This has been grinding my gears so much when I hear about govs limiting opening hours or even introducing curfews... In some places they *extended* opening times to allow people to spread out when they were coming, that's the right idea! I can even respect places where they dedicated the first few hours of grocery stores opening hours to the elderly and immunocompromised.

@kekcoin @nvk Around here as far as I can tell they've literally released zero evidence or scientific explanations backing up what they're doing. The UK government actually did really early on - the initial herd immunity stuff. It's like that soured governments on doing that so they stopped.

@pete @nvk To be fair that came at a time when it was key to take more aggressive measures and slow the spread, and look where the UK is now. Govs in general (from China to Europe to the Americas) waited too long to take action, so now we are stuck with way more invasive measures that aren't nearly as effective.

@kekcoin @nvk That's just dumb. The scientific response was to _flatten_, not _crush_ the curve. ~Everyone is getting it eventually. The trick is to slow that rate enough to be sustainable. That's why Florida is doing so much better than California, in spite of having a much older population.

@pete Not sure what you are calling dumb, but I agree with that - what I remember from the UK's herd immunity stance was not to take any, or take way too little action to flatten the curve, rather let it just run wild instead.

@kekcoin To be clear, you're criticising that?

Because that plan was the right idea. At this point a double digit % of the UK have certainly been infected. The only question was how to get there. Delaying herd immunity back in March just made the final dramatic rise overhelm hospitals in some areas. Had they spread that out over more time by not locking down early they'd have been better off. That's just the reality of the science.

@pete It's not entirely clear to me how much of their current surge is caused by the new variant, how much of it is caused by different weather conditions, etc. But mutations are chance based - the more people have the virus, the higher the chance a new strain emerges. It's like people are the miners for the virus.

@kekcoin The variant was most likely caused by antibody therapy. Quite likely more than once. The obvious, sane, strategy of protecting vulnerable and allowing youth to get infected wouldn't have caused that problem. It's also not clear that it's actually any different, as it isn't consistently spreading faster. Post-hoc analysis will find outliers by random chance.

Again, were getting to herd immunity whether you like it or not.