Babies are safe from coronavirus. If the actual, as opposed to perceived, risk of coronavirus to a baby was enough to keep you at home, then you would never be able to leave the house because of the vastly greater risk to babies from flu.
Not in all cases. Being told to return to the office by an employee is not an individual risk assessment. That has been taken away
"Safe" in the sense that they don't die or get seriously ill from it. It's like if you ask "is a minor cold safe for a healthy adult" - if you define "safe" to mean you can't catch it, then obviously a minor cold is not safe. If you define "safe" to mean you won't be seriously ill from it, then it's safe.
Another week and a half. I'm up here at the minute visiting the in laws and have been on a few days out. Masks almost completely indoors and required by pretty much every business we've used. There's been some flak about the having to wear masks in nightclubs which, to be fair, isn't going to be manageable.
I’m sure there’ll be some fascinating social research over the next decade about how the ceaseless coverage of this virus has warped people’s perception of risk.
Many people are going to have fear of this for years to come. I went to cricket at Southampton yesterday. On the way up literally no one on my train carriage wore a mask although to be fair it was pretty quiet. On the bus to the ground about 50% wore masks. At the ground there were probably about 3,000 there in a ground that holds 20,000, all out in the open air and sunshine and still there were plenty of people wearing masks when walking about - up to them I suppose but there is no need for it in that environment.
I'm not blasé DJ, I just honestly think its an interesting social impact. In the same way that, if every car accident was the top story on the news for 18 months, the roads would probably be a lot quieter. If every death from lung cancer was the top story smoking would have been banned decades ago. The more we hear about something the more seriously we seem to take it despite the comparative risk.
We (and I am as guilty as anyone) seem to have developed an almost morbid addiction to the daily routine of numbers of cases, deaths, hospitalisations, graphs, trends, etc. We seem addicted to waiting with bated breath for the next bizarrely and totally inaccurate prediction from the likes of so called experts like Ferguson. We await the relisting of countries for travel and wonder if they will move on Grant Shapps whim from red to amber plus to amber to green then back to red again.
It's called news, keeping the public aware of the situation.
I noticed an interesting trend this last fortnight. When the daily Covid numbers were falling it was tough to find beyond the raw numbers on the BBC & Guardian sites. As soon as it ticked back up, despite not recovering to previous levels, it was top story again. Very odd but as you say they love the negative side of the story.
The papers etc were full of articles asking if this wave was receding. Lots of caution but plenty of stories about it.
