I still find it incredible that the England death rate is down to under 10 per day by death date, if this information had been revealed sooner how much more economically confident would individuals and businesses feel? I think the PHE has cost us 2-3% of the recovery and necessitated schemes like eat out to help out, it was such a bad decision not to have an end date of the virus and their protests and trying to force a 60 day measure was awful. Glad that the DoH has stood firm and insisted on the internationally comparable measure rather than something cooked up to make everyone stay home to "protect the NHS".
" “The ideology of zero risk is dangerous,” says Yonathan Freund, a Sorbonne professor and Editor of the European Journal of Emergency Medicine "
Telegraph
The problem is that most of the lay population believes in zero risk. Too many subjects have been affected by this delusion. People no longer use sensible cost-benefit analysis (NICE does, when deciding what NHS procedures to allow).
I don't think so, but the risk of death has been massively overstated for the last 2 to 3 months which has weighed on people's confidence to go out and spend money. As I said, if it was common knowledge that only around 20 people per day were dying of COVID and not 80 as was previously reported people would have been more ready to go out. Not just that the death rate has been stuck at around 50 per day for weeks which is another signal of "this hasn't gone away, we should still stay indoors".
I'm not so sure about this. Most people are not staying indoors - they are out and about. The exception is the old and/or vulnerable who are still being cautious, and have been since mid March. But perhaps the number of deaths would have been sustained at a higher level if this group were not still being cautious.
And there's also a good chance that they'll carry on being this cautious indefinitely. Indeed, quite possibly, permanently.
The longer that some people keep on pretending that it's April, are too afraid to go out anywhere unless forced to grocery shop, and keep on sitting at home and adopting other chronic self-isolator habits like disinfecting and quarantining their parcels until they're convinced any contamination has been removed, the harder they are going to find it ever to return to life as it was previously lived.
Fast forward another year or two and there'll still be a significant cohort of the terrified, shuffling into supermarkets once a week at eight o'clock in the morning wearing masks and gloves, and spending the rest of their lives shut up at home. It will have become such an entrenched habit that they'll no longer be able to help themselves.
Well, you jest, but I am finding a significant minority of patients habituated into what seems to be Covid-19 induced agoraphobia*.
*literally true as means fear of marketplaces.
Can I ask how many have some sort of justification for that change ?
Do they already have health vulnerabilities or do they know people who have died for example ?
Phobia by its definition is an irrational fear. If they have a good justification then its not an irrational fear and therefore not a phobia
Hmm. I’m scared of flying, ergo aerophobic. I do fly because I have to with work. Now, flying is an absolute ordeal these days and some planes do occasionally crash.
Which means Biden is doing worse that any challenger than beat an incumbent, and better than any challenger who lost...
The challengers that won were - Carter (+26.6%) - Clinton (+19.3%)
So, he's a long way behind those guys. (Although '92 is a bit of a special election given Perot.)
But he's a long way ahead of people who came close - like Romney, and Kerry.
It's also interesting to note that Clinton and Carter both had much narrower wins than their position 82 days from the election would have suggested. (Although the timings of the conventions may also have distorted things somewht.)
In a way 1976 was a baffling result.
Not that Carter won but that he only won so narrowly.
After Watergate, defeat in Vietnam and the mid 70s recession it should have been as one sided as 1932 was or as 1980 would be.
Personally, I think Ford is one of the most underrated Presidents of the last decade. I'd put him alongside Truman.
Most overrated? JFK and FDR.
Yeh what?
I agree about JFK but FDR was awesome, without him we wouldn't have won WWII.
His support of us when the US was officially neutral was the game changer.
Personally admired Jerry Ford on several levels, and still do. BUT he was way more of a bumbler (in non-Chevy Chase sense) during his presidency than Truman was, at least pre-1949.
So respectfully think RCS is overrating GRF viz-a-viz HST.
For me it has to be Truman. Responsible for so many important decisions as President which really helped to define the post war world. Also amazingly unassuming and committed to the notion of public service.
Comments
By your thinking, it’s not a phobia at all.
I am convinced they're mental
They really have no ideas do they?