Boating During Lockdown?

[JumbleDuck]

Sadly, what you consider to be "drivel" is actually factual. Don't you read any of the serious newspapers?

The serious newspapers are not into COVID denial.

 

[Babylon]

Driving to your boat and spending a day on it is not "no danger". It may be low danger, but low danger multiplied by an awful lot of of people can be significant. Hence the significance of the Tragedy of the Commons.

I spent yesterday on my boat on the Hamble: there were a few 'low-danger' people afloat but not 'an awful lot', and certainly a great deal less in terms of both numbers and proximity to others than the many more 'low danger' people out walking, food-shopping, on the beach, etc.

 

[JumbleDuck]

Your assertion that anybody who has been with 100m of my front door within the last six hours can infect me means that the greater risk is attached to activities such as visiting local shops or going for a walk.

If your criterion is "no danger" (it was pvb's, remember) then yes, being anywhere that people have recently been is a risk. It's not a very high individual risk, but when millions of people do it daily, the risk can be significant.

It really all comes down to how many old people you think it is worth allowing to die in order to spare others from some personal inconvenience.

 

[JumbleDuck]

I spent yesterday on my boat on the Hamble: there were a few 'low-danger' people afloat but not 'an awful lot', and certainly a great deal less in terms of both numbers and proximity to others than the many more 'low danger' people out walking, food-shopping, on the beach, etc.

And yet every one of those people walking, food-shopping, on the beach and so on was individually low danger.

 

[Lucky Duck]

If your criterion is "no danger" (it was pvb's, remember) then yes, being anywhere that people have recently been is a risk. It's not a very high individual risk, but when millions of people do it daily, the risk can be significant.

It really all comes down to how many old people you think it is worth allowing to die in order to spare others from some personal inconvenience.

I work on the simple assumption that the less contact with others the better.

On that metric yesterday's sail was an unqualified sucess.

Alternatively we could have gone for a walk or perhaps visited a national trust property and bought something from their cafe.

Which of those is likely to have the higher risk of transmission?

 

[Babylon]

And yet every one of those people walking, food-shopping, on the beach and so on was individually low danger.

Yes, low danger - as I would have been had I stayed and slept aboard and driven home the next day. (I didn't.)

I have no problem with necessary lockdowns. The problem however is how to enable most people to sensibly and relatively safely go about their lives for a still indefinite duration, while curtailing behaviour that significantly accelerates the spread of Covid.

I don't have an answer as to how to achieve this with any finesse, but its surely a balance between real-world freedoms (and health and the economy) versus theoretical absolutes.

I'm certainly aware that a significant proportion of the population do need firm direction, but when the large segment of sensible people are presented with absolutes that are functionally unreasonable and damaging, they will baulk.

 

[pvb]

The serious newspapers are not into COVID denial.

So you don't read them, obviously.

 

[Babylon]

So you don't read them, obviously.

This is an asinine response.

 

[pvb]

It really all comes down to how many old people you think it is worth allowing to die in order to spare others from some personal inconvenience.

Rubbish again! For many years, the NHS has operated a cost/benefit equation based on the notional value of healthy years remaining. It's called "QALY", the quality-adjusted life year. It's what drives the decisions by NICE on which expensive drugs the NHS will pay for, based on how much longer the patients might live. It's a well-established concept which nobody has really questioned. But the government's response to coronavirus has been bizarrely undertaken with absolutely no regard to cost/benefit. Money has just been hurled at it. The much-vaunted Nightingale hospitals apparently cost £1 million for every patient treated during the initial phase of coronavirus - this is massive compared with the £30K or so which the NHS values a QALY. And, you also have to remember that the median age of those dying from coronavirus is 82, a little higher than their average life expectancy.

 

[pvb]

This is an asinine response.

Not at all. The serious press has been raising big question marks over the government's handling of coronavirus for some weeks now. And as the government's use of false statistics is being revealed, more searching questions are being asked.

 

[Babylon]

Define the "serious press" please, explicitly.

 

[SailingDog]

Lockdown skeptics who want to keep the economy going and keep their freedoms should lobby government to reduce covid deaths and bed blocking by allowing widespread "euthanasia" now for the old and frail .

Why stop there, what about collecting up all your family members and like thinking associates and test the process.

 

[RJJ]

It's perfactly good wiki link. In case you didn't read it, or couldn't understand it, a tragedy of the commons occurs when people behave in a self-centred way which is individually reasonable, but results in a serious loss to society as a whole when everyone does it.

So know, it doesn't matter in the least if one person drives a couple of hundred miles for a weekend in their boat. It matters a lot if everyone does it.

An incorrect reading of the tragedy of the commons, which does not apply here and is not relevant.

 

[NotBirdseye]

Define the "serious press" please, explicitly.

The Guardian, The Times... tbf they've both been concerned about whether lockdown was/is ending too early.

 

[Babylon]

And The Telegraph...? What is that 'concerned' about?

 

[Hallberg-Rassy]

Define the "serious press" please, explicitly.

Broadsheet versus tabloid, surely?

The Telegraph seems to be behind a paywall these days, so I can't tell.

I used to read it for the sake of balance but ever since the internet cut into papers being able to afford journalism & journalists, and focus lifestyle & opinions pieces instead, it seemed employ an increasing number of snarky 'student union Tories' and went downhill.

I think there's a serious decline of proper journalism across the board, and a huge increase in increasingly bizarre popularist/conspiracy theory etc.

 

[NotBirdseye]

And The Telegraph...? What is that 'concerned' about?

No one cares about tabloids.