Last week an article I can’t find right now, noticing that pneumonia illnesses in the UK (iirc) were down and arguing that we should keep going with anti-Covid measures until “at least 2024”. OMG, I thought, please no… 2024 means pretty much forever.
Now we have a report of a study from Guangdong:
“Our study suggests that some [intervention measures], such as border restrictions, quarantine and isolation, community management, social distancing, face mask usage, and personal hygiene encouragement, would be very effective measures for the prevention and control of infectious diseases in the future,” the researchers wrote.
That would be especially for respiratory infections like influenza, vector-borne diseases like dengue, and intestinal illnesses, like hand-foot-and-mouth disease, they said.
Yikes!
I’m not saying intervention measures (NPIs) wouldn’t be effective. Of course they would, at least to some degree. I’m asking, “is it worth it?” I don’t recall that pre-Covid we were especially worried about the annual flu (there are jabs!), let alone dengue fever (!?) or hand-foot-mouth disease. “Intestinal diseases”, aka “Delhi belly”, or the “Nile runs”? We still went to Delhi and sailed the Nile. We accepted the risks, pretty much unconsciously. Now, not. Now we are told “one death is too many”. NPIs mitigate disease; therefore NPIs must stay.
Are we about to see the end of a Golden Era of travel, that lasted, in the end just 30 years, from 1970 (the first Jumbo) to mid 2020?
