Speak up!

As for COVID-19, it’s about time the boffins spoke to us about what’s going on. We know that the infection rate is on the rise and we know that certain towns and cities are taking different types of action. But what those of us who are not scientific experts – which means pretty well everyone who isn’t a scientist – want to know is this: why is the death rate not going up and why are so few people in hospital?

As someone who always prefers to support the views of a scientist instead of a conspiracist fruitcake like David Icke or Piers Corbyn, even I am finding it hard to square the circle. if it is true that is it mainly just younger people who are spreading the virus to each other, then why aren’t they infecting older people? Is there a time lag or is it harder to catch the virus from young people? People need answers to this, otherwise they may believe people who give alternative answers by way of alternative facts, or lies as they are otherwise known.

I went into town yesterday aboard a busy bus and drank in some busy pubs. Bristol, which is way down the death list, was if not rammed, then quite well populated. In one pub, a group of six young men stood literally a few inches from where we were sitting. When we walked along the harbourside, people were making no efforts to social distance and when we were on the bus it was younger people were not bothering to wear masks. Yet today I hear that Bristol’s hospitals are all but COVID-19 free. I look at social networks and people are saying it’s all a government conspiracy. Why are we having restrictions when no one is getting ill?

It’s hard for people like me to answer this question when I don’t know the answer. When Professor Chris Whitty says something, I sit up and listen. But he isn’t saying anything and neither is Sir Patrick Vallance. From time to time an expert pops up to warn us things are likely to get bleak this winter with a second wave, but then the sun comes out and we carry on as if the virus has gone altogether. And it hasn’t, has it? But if we can’t currently see the effects, you can understand why people are confused. I know I am.

If there really was nothing to the virus, this right wing government and our even more right wing press would surely be saying so? The madcap conspiracists are almost always from the far right so you would think if they had anything to say to a confused audience looking for answers, they’d say it. They’d go further. They’d literally be telling us that the virus had gone and we could now pick up where we were before 70,000 people died? But in truth, no one, apart from the extreme cranks of the right is saying anything at all.

In the end, science is all we have to explain what is and what isn’t happening. And we need those who understand the science to explain the apparent contradiction between lots of new infections and hardly any hospitalisations and deaths. The longer the experts stay silent, the more David Icke and co will fill in the gaps. This is the same David Icke who thinks the moon is a hologram and the world is controlled by lizards. He’s not someone I’d like to see appointed the Chief Scientific or Medical Officer, that’s for sure. But I’d like to hear from the real ones.