Learning to live with tigers

[zico]

Remember last March when we had that huge influx of tigers to the UK. Most of us didn't get attacked at all and a lot of us struggled to see what all the fuss was about. However, millions of us were attacked and nobody enjoyed the experience. Most people just escaped with a few nasty bites that healed pretty quickly, but hundreds of thousands got mauled quite badly and still haven't recovered, and many thousands died - mostly the elderly and unhealthy who couldn't cope so well with being attacked by a tiger.

So we all hid inside for a couple of months and the tigers went away as quickly as they'd arrived. Some doomsters and gloomsters warned us not to drop our guard, because if we started going out again, the tigers would come back. But it all looked OK, so we loosened up a lot - but the tigers came back, just a few at first, but then the trickle became a flood as the word got out amongst the tiger community.

We hid inside again. The tigers went away. Then we got bored and went out again. The tigers came back. We hid inside again. We were slowly beginning to catch on to the pattern. But we caught a lucky break when our clever scientists developed a "vac suit" - just wear one and the tigers will be much less likely to attack you, and it's 30 times less likely that they'll kill you.

We're opening up again now, and the tigers are started to come back using their favourite exponential growth migration pattern.
But we've had enough of this now, it's time to "live with tigers" now we have our "vac suits". In fact, we're feeling "pretty comfortable" about it.

Of course, if we wanted to, we could take other precautions.
Wait until we've given "vac suits" to all adults.
Make it mandatory for all adults to wear the vac suits.
Give "vac suits" to people aged under 18, starting with teenagers who are pretty much like adults (except more annoying).
Put up proper fences to stop the tigers coming in, not just the current bits of chicken-wire netting that tigers can easily get through.
Support vulnerable people to help them stay away from tigers.
Check for the presence of tigers, and warn local areas to stay inside if there are tiger attacks in their area.
Avoid large gatherings which are very attractive to tigers looking for easy meals.
Encourage everyone to look out for tigers and warn others when they see them.
Trap and shoot the tigers, destroy their habitat and force them out of our country.

If we did all the above, the tigers would quickly get very discouraged and leave our country, then we wouldn't have to worry about them anymore, apart from keeping our fences well maintained and guarded to stop them coming back.

But all that just seems like too much trouble. Why should we have to live life differently from before, just because there are tigers roaming everywhere. Most healthy people are very unlikely to die from tiger attacks, it'll just be the old and unhealthy, and in smaller numbers than before (well, we hope so anyway - just like we hoped things would be better back in December). As for kids, why bother protecting them at all? Sure, without any precautions, lots of kids will get attacked by tigers, but usually not that badly, which would just teach them to be more careful in future around tigers. That's a lot cheaper than giving them all "vac suits". OK, every other country in the world with the capacity to give "vac suits" to kids is handing them out pretty sharpish, but what do these other countries know anyway?

So just don't worry about the tigers. We'll be seeing lots more of them around for the next few months, but they'll only kill 100 people or so every day (maybe a lot more, who knows) and maim a few hundred more (assuming they don't interbreed and evolve to become a lot more dangerous). Surely that's not anything to worry about?

In fact, why stop at living with tigers? Wolves only kill 10 humans worldwide per year, lions and elephants 100 per year each, hippos 500 per year and crocodiles 1,000 per year. If we introduced all these to the UK in big numbers, we'd probably have well under 1,000 deaths per year - that's just 3 deaths per day - a very small price to pay for all that increased wildlife diversity.

[neversay]

Did you write that dross or copy and paste it from the internet?

[zico]

Did you write that dross or copy and paste it from the internet?

All my own dross!

[XFool]

Did you write that dross or copy and paste it from the internet?

All my own dross!

Seems to have touched a raw nerve...

[neversay]

Did you write that dross or copy and paste it from the internet?

All my own dross!

Seems to have touched a raw nerve...

Yeah, my visits to this site are few and far between these days due to it descending into largely Twitter IQ political posts rather than the supportive investment community of old. What a shame.

[terminal7]

The name on the tin is Coronavirus Discussions and when you open it up you are surprised that it does not contain investment discussions. You must often be disappointed.

T7

As to whether Zico's musings are a pile of tiger poo - I could not possibly comment.

[Mike4]

The name on the tin is Coronavirus Discussions and when you open it up you are surprised that it does not contain investment discussions. You must often be disappointed.

T7

As to whether Zico's musings are a pile of tiger poo - I could not possibly comment.

I could, and I enjoyed Zico's story enormously. Clearly very off topic though, given this is the coronavirus board. Nothing at all to do with coronavirus obviously, someone should report it...

[tjh290633]

Trap and shoot the tigers, destroy their habitat and force them out of our country.

That surely is what vaccination is doing. If you don't want to be eaten by a tiger, or even badly mauled by him, get vaccinated.

TJH

[Mike4]

Trap and shoot the tigers, destroy their habitat and force them out of our country.

That surely is what vaccination is doing. If you don't want to be eaten by a tiger, or even badly mauled by him, get vaccinated.

TJH

Does your advice extend to the under-18s?

[88V8]

Trap and shoot the tigers, destroy their habitat and force them out of our country.

That surely is what vaccination is doing. If you don't want to be eaten by a tiger, or even badly mauled by him, get vaccinated.

Does your advice extend to the under-18s?

Sure, why not?

V8

[zico]

Trap and shoot the tigers, destroy their habitat and force them out of our country.

That surely is what vaccination is doing. If you don't want to be eaten by a tiger, or even badly mauled by him, get vaccinated.
TJH

You're right, in that our vaccination programme should be doing that, but the government simply isn't finishing the job before opening up.
Government's current stated position is that lots more tigers aren't a problem as long as they don't kill too many people. (Obviously they won't define "too many" people, although there must be a (very secret) figure.) The problem, time and again, has been the insistence that things will be OK, and by the time it's acknowledged that things aren't OK, it's far too late to stop the inevitable wave of deaths.

There's lots of talk about the "wall of vaccinations" but the wall is only half-built because only around 50% of our population has had a 2nd jab for at least 2 weeks. The virus doesn't look at someone's birth certificate before deciding about infecting them, so the media's focus on the adult population is misleading.

If we waited until all adults were vaccinated and started to vaccinate teenage children (if not all children), we could open up from very low levels, and avoid a tiger influx. We can at least give the government some credit for not opening up back on 21st June, which would have been much worse.

To switch from tigers to Cineworld (there's a connection honest!) I went to Cineworld last week only to find they are doing their own version of "living with Covid" which can best be described as "ignoring Covid". There's a few hand-gels and posters about mask-wearing scattered around, lots of people without masks, the cinema staff (and manager) don't care about even suggesting people should wear their masks, and absolutely nothing has been done to improve ventilation.

Usually when people talk about "living with....." they talk about the adaptions they've made to their lives to cope with a problem, not just "getting back to normal" as if the problem didn't exist.

[Sorcery]

Trap and shoot the tigers, destroy their habitat and force them out of our country.

That surely is what vaccination is doing. If you don't want to be eaten by a tiger, or even badly mauled by him, get vaccinated.
TJH

You're right, in that our vaccination programme should be doing that, but the government simply isn't finishing the job before opening up.
Government's current stated position is that lots more tigers aren't a problem as long as they don't kill too many people. (Obviously they won't define "too many" people, although there must be a (very secret) figure.) The problem, time and again, has been the insistence that things will be OK, and by the time it's acknowledged that things aren't OK, it's far too late to stop the inevitable wave of deaths.

There's lots of talk about the "wall of vaccinations" but the wall is only half-built because only around 50% of our population has had a 2nd jab for at least 2 weeks. The virus doesn't look at someone's birth certificate before deciding about infecting them, so the media's focus on the adult population is misleading.

If we waited until all adults were vaccinated and started to vaccinate teenage children (if not all children), we could open up from very low levels, and avoid a tiger influx. We can at least give the government some credit for not opening up back on 21st June, which would have been much worse.

To switch from tigers to Cineworld (there's a connection honest!) I went to Cineworld last week only to find they are doing their own version of "living with Covid" which can best be described as "ignoring Covid". There's a few hand-gels and posters about mask-wearing scattered around, lots of people without masks, the cinema staff (and manager) don't care about even suggesting people should wear their masks, and absolutely nothing has been done to improve ventilation.

Usually when people talk about "living with....." they talk about the adaptions they've made to their lives to cope with a problem, not just "getting back to normal" as if the problem didn't exist.

Your tiger analogy fails for me because it ignores what & how we eat (earn money) while hiding from tigers. Many small business particularly in hospitality are on a knife edge. For many tigers are less of a threat.
When lockdown was first introduced, I was utterly flabergasted that this was considered the best option. I accepted it eventually but with 86% having had at least one vaccination, to me now is the time to try to relax restrictions.

[Mike4]

When lockdown was first introduced, I was utterly flabergasted that this was considered the best option. I accepted it eventually but with 86% having had at least one vaccination, to me now is the time to try to relax restrictions.

86% of who? 86% of over 18s presumably.

You hold that under-18s neither get infected nor spread it, presumably.

[Sorcery]

When lockdown was first introduced, I was utterly flabergasted that this was considered the best option. I accepted it eventually but with 86% having had at least one vaccination, to me now is the time to try to relax restrictions.

86% of who? 86% of over 18s presumably.

You hold that under-18s neither get infected nor spread it, presumably.

That's what it says here : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55274833 (or at least the regional %s are consistent with that 86%.
As I understand it there are no vaccines yet approved for the under 18s.

[onthemove]

When lockdown was first introduced, I was utterly flabergasted that this was considered the best option. I accepted it eventually but with 86% having had at least one vaccination, to me now is the time to try to relax restrictions.

86% of who? 86% of over 18s presumably.

You hold that under-18s neither get infected nor spread it, presumably.

" "Covid will never go away," says Prof Paul Hunter, from the University of East Anglia. "It's inevitable that we're going to catch it repeatedly for the rest of our lives, whether we have had the vaccine or not." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57678942

I've seen it said a number of times that the vaccines reduce the covid risk (of serious illness) in the elderly to roughly the same risk as that of a 50 year old.

When you combine that consideration with the fact that scientists admit we're going to be catching it repeatedly going forwards, I cannot see any justification for insisting that 20yrs should be fully vaccinated before we open up.

The risk for an unvaccinated 20y old (of serious illness) is already less than that of a fully vaccinated elderly person.

And before you say ... "but, but, but the unvaccinated 20yr old could pass it on to the elderly people"... I say, yes, but please look again at what the scientists are saying... we're going to be catching covid repeatedly anyway. The is the 'new' normal that we will have to live with.

Even the BBC are now changing their tune... from the same article as above...

"Flu alone killed more than 20,000 people in England in the winter of 2017-18. There was no talk of the need to introduce restrictions or curtail freedoms then."

12 months ago, anyone using the flu analogy was being pilloried as a Trump supporting, anti-vaxxer, 5g conspiracist fruit and nut loop.

And speaking of flu analogies, we don't offer the flu vaccine to everyone, every winter either. Even though 20yr olds can catch and transmit the flu.

[XFool]

" "Covid will never go away," says Prof Paul Hunter, from the University of East Anglia. "It's inevitable that we're going to catch it repeatedly for the rest of our lives, whether we have had the vaccine or not." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57678942

I've seen it said a number of times that the vaccines reduce the covid risk (of serious illness) in the elderly to roughly the same risk as that of a 50 year old.

When you combine that consideration with the fact that scientists admit we're going to be catching it repeatedly going forwards, I cannot see any justification for insisting that 20yrs should be fully vaccinated before we open up.

The risk for an unvaccinated 20y old (of serious illness) is already less than that of a fully vaccinated elderly person.

And before you say ... "but, but, but the unvaccinated 20yr old could pass it on to the elderly people"... I say, yes, but please look again at what the scientists are saying... we're going to be catching covid repeatedly anyway. The is the 'new' normal that we will have to live with.

Even the BBC are now changing their tune... from the same article as above...

You mean the BBC are reporting the news and the views of various medics and scientists in light of a dynamically changing situation?

12 months ago, anyone using the flu analogy was being pilloried as a Trump supporting, anti-vaxxer, 5g conspiracist fruit and nut loop.

Could that be because, 12 months ago, many "using the flu analogy" were actually saying COVID-19 WAS "just flu"? Plus many were indeed "Trump supporting, anti-vaxxer, 5g conspiracist fruit and nut loop."? (Many of those likely still are.)

[1nvest]

In a bad flu year there are 45,000 excess deaths.

Covid is here to stay, hide away for as long as you like, sooner or later you'll be caught. Presently, 28,000/day contractions, 400 hospitalised (1.4% of those contracting it), 25 dying (0.09% of those contracting it).

Scale to 1M contractions/day during summer months, 14,000/day hospitalised, 900/day deaths and after 40 days (36,000 deaths) ... and it will be well past the peak and that wont coincide with a bad winter flu year that could see 45,000+ deaths.

Better to have hospitalisations spread out across both the summer (Covid) and winter (flu) than all concentrated into the winter months when the NHS just couldn't scale/cope.

In addition to flu/Covid, 600,000 deaths naturally occur each year. So with Covid and bad flu year it will be a above average deaths year, similar to the proportions seen in 1976 the year of a heat wave.

For many, nearly 99% Covid is a non-issue. For those for who it is a issue hospitalisations will tend to be shorter as care/treatment is now better understood. For the small number for whom it is fatal, well it was going to get them sooner or later anyway.

If sooner or later you're going to contract it anyway then perhaps sooner rather than later might be better. Winter flu combined with Covid at the same time, or just Covid where you're hospitalised into a massively overloaded NHS winter system ... not a good situation.

[zico]

Your tiger analogy fails for me because it ignores what & how we eat (earn money) while hiding from tigers. Many small business particularly in hospitality are on a knife edge. For many tigers are less of a threat.
When lockdown was first introduced, I was utterly flabergasted that this was considered the best option. I accepted it eventually but with 86% having had at least one vaccination, to me now is the time to try to relax restrictions.

You're right that lockdowns are definitely not the best option.
The best option is to be alert to the coming threat of tigers, by learning from what's happening in other countries, then quickly build very high and very secure fences to keep the tigers out, and have the fences well patrolled so the tigers can't ever enter your country. That way, nobody needs to hide away in lockdowns, and the economy can carry on virtually as normal. Win-win all round.
That's what countries like New Zealand and Vietnam did. Very secure borders, so very limited lockdowns, and life goes on as normal for people within the country.

Lockdowns are an admission of failure to act early and decisively. Delaying lockdowns when that's the only option left demonstrates failure to accept the realities of exponential growth.

[servodude]

Your tiger analogy fails for me because it ignores what & how we eat (earn money) while hiding from tigers. Many small business particularly in hospitality are on a knife edge. For many tigers are less of a threat.
When lockdown was first introduced, I was utterly flabergasted that this was considered the best option. I accepted it eventually but with 86% having had at least one vaccination, to me now is the time to try to relax restrictions.

You're right that lockdowns are definitely not the best option.
The best option is to be alert to the coming threat of tigers, by learning from what's happening in other countries, then quickly build very high and very secure fences to keep the tigers out, and have the fences well patrolled so the tigers can't ever enter your country. That way, nobody needs to hide away in lockdowns, and the economy can carry on virtually as normal. Win-win all round.
That's what countries like New Zealand and Vietnam did. Very secure borders, so very limited lockdowns, and life goes on as normal for people within the country.

Lockdowns are an admission of failure to act early and decisively. Delaying lockdowns when that's the only option left demonstrates failure to accept the realities of exponential growth.

Doesn't your analogy fail unless your tigers spontaneously evolve through exposure to humans in to tigers that are better at defeating your defences
- and does this mean the Bengal tiger originated there or was that only where it was first identified

- sd

[1nvest]

Your tiger analogy fails for me because it ignores what & how we eat (earn money) while hiding from tigers. Many small business particularly in hospitality are on a knife edge. For many tigers are less of a threat.
When lockdown was first introduced, I was utterly flabergasted that this was considered the best option. I accepted it eventually but with 86% having had at least one vaccination, to me now is the time to try to relax restrictions.

You're right that lockdowns are definitely not the best option.
The best option is to be alert to the coming threat of tigers, by learning from what's happening in other countries, then quickly build very high and very secure fences to keep the tigers out, and have the fences well patrolled so the tigers can't ever enter your country. That way, nobody needs to hide away in lockdowns, and the economy can carry on virtually as normal. Win-win all round.
That's what countries like New Zealand and Vietnam did. Very secure borders, so very limited lockdowns, and life goes on as normal for people within the country.

Lockdowns are an admission of failure to act early and decisively. Delaying lockdowns when that's the only option left demonstrates failure to accept the realities of exponential growth.

Doesn't your analogy fail unless your tigers spontaneously evolve through exposure to humans in to tigers that are better at defeating your defences
- and does this mean the Bengal tiger originated there or was that only where it was first identified

- sd

Sooner or later a single global village will see nature fighting back to severely reduce the global virus that mankind has become upon the Earth. In times of old physical separation provided a barrier, where distance between villages might see one being wiped out by a virus ... no longer is there such protection in a single global village. Given that as a nation of islands the political preference was not to quarantine/distance but to instead opt for 'herd immunity' then the genocide of mankind sees a virus as being that more likely the cause over that of a meteorite or nuclear holocaust.

The second wave of the Spanish flu a little over a century ago that had similar to Covid first wave death rates, saw around a third of those contracting it dying in the mutated second wave. Only Australia who isolated managed to escape.