We criticise China becasue we believe they have not shared the whole data set, and now it seems our own government can be tarred with the same brush.
I continue to advocate that we are still in a situation where no one really knows all the necessary facts about C19, so there is no fool proof road map to tell how to deal with it.
However we do know a bit more about the virus, in particular its life cycle, and when hosts are infectious. This is why lock-down's were successful in bringing infection rates down. but that is far from the whole story.
We still don't know exactly where and how the outbreak started. The recent rise in infections in Germany seem to point to a meat processing plant, much like the suspicions of the wet markets in Wuhan, but its still not conclusive, becasue its not yet known if the German source was the meat they were processing, of it the infection was brought in by an employee.
If it was imported in the meat, then that is a very worrying, as it suggests C19 may have jumped to a wider range of food stock animals than was first thought, and of course it might start to reappear at other food processing plants. It also raises the question of how long the virus will survive in infected products. Could chilling of freezing extend its life cycle?
The success of the lock down does point to the methods of transmission being close contact with infected people, and pick up form surfaces, so continuing social distancing, and personal hygiene will be necessary, and that is going to be a huge ongoing task.
Consider:-
The UK has a population of approx. 66.7M people. So far Government figures suggest about 320,000 UK residents have been infected with C19, Infection disease experts suggest the figure could actually be as high as 800000. That still leaves about 65.9M potential victims just in the UK.
I totally agree we do need to begin to reduce the lock-down measures, not just to restart the economy, but to reduce the hardship (financial and social) it has been inflicting. However I'm sure we can each think of alternative ways and areas that might be released first.
In all of this there has to be a realistic expectation, If the infections start to rise quickly, then it the area and or activity that is fuelling the infection rate will need to be curtailed to bring the infection rate down.
With the social distancing measures in place, the risk of becoming infected is somewhat reduced, but it still leaves the majority of the population at risk of being infected. That risk will not be reduced until there is an effective vaccine, or medications that render the effects of the virus far less severe.
And all the work to reduce infections will wasted when irresponsible people ignore and put themselves and others at risk. The sun and sand seekers were a classic example the other weekend, as were the other mass gatherings were social distancing was not followed - mainly by the criminals who decided to go for a punch up, and looting.
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