Hi clo,
I happened to watch Channel 4 news last night, which is a relentless critic of the government. Its story was that people hadn't been bad except in a few hotspots. So you certainly can go to hotspots and paint a picture. But the broad picture seems to be that people were mostly responsible. However, I certainly don't have more than anecdotal evidence via a television news show.
Of course, reopening pubs is not without risk. Some people who went out will end up catching the virus.
To me the question is not, have you entirely eliminated that risk? It's "is the risk small enough that an outbreak is manageable", "can you pickup and respond to local flare-ups," and "is the risk small enough that you can leave it to people to make their own decisions without taking the decision on behalf of everyone"?
The whole UK had 500 or so new cases today and that is a lagging indicator. That's less than several counties in Texas in a country with a population of nearly 70 million. Or put another way, you have a chance of 1 in 135,000 or so that you will catch the virus on any particular day. Or put another way, in a city of 135,000, one person will catch the virus on any particular day, and that one person has a 10% chance of dying from it (one in 1.35 million). So today, there's a very, very small viral population out of which infections will happen and an even smaller risk of death from catching it.
We are testing nationwide at a higher rate per capita than the US (needless to say, Trump lies), so we will identify local flare-ups.
For those place in which the virus reappears in two weeks, we will reisolate them. Meanwhile, other than pub-going risktakers, we all wear masks and wash hands.
I don't think you can lock down an entire country because the risk of exposure is not zero. We put up with higher risk from the flu annually. We put up with a higher risk from driving a car. At these levels, I see why he made the decision.
We are also allowing people to get in planes to go on holiday because the risk is low enough to allow it.
Same goes for the US. If it can get its new cases per day to 2,500 or so (equivalent to our 500), I don't see why it shouldn't transition to managing cases and local flare-ups instead of a one size fits all lockdown. The mistake was to reopen before it got there. And so, predictably, it got out of control again.
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