As at the start of the epidemic, I think the most dangerous thing here is a casual attitude. If we'd have locked down earlier, there's a pretty solid body of evidence that a large number of lives could have been saved.
Similarly, it's not unreasonable to consider that if we unwind lock-down too quickly, we're going to put a lot more lives at risk.
There's a balance to be had, but conspiracy theories about the numbers who have died and the impact that the virus has had, are frankly daft and deserved to be challenged. It's not quite on a par with anti-vaxxers, but anyone trivialising this and ignoring the science isn't thinking straight.
At the moment, in terms of deaths alone we're heading towards what the total civilian casualties were for the UK in WWII. We are nowhere near herd immunity, we don't know if we can get a working vaccine, let alone deliver it in the numbers of doses required, and we don't know how long immunity lasts once exposed.
It's not scaremongering to point this out - those are cold, hard facts, and to ignore them is to bury your head in the sand and hope it will all go away. It won't - life is going to have to change for a while and we're going to have to get used to it.
All politics aside, what we really need, right now, is a rock solid trace and test process that can reliably nip outbreaks in the bud, and for everyone to buy into the idea that we're all responsible for each others health. At the moment, I'm not confident that either of those things are really in place.
