You
are being scientifically illiterate though.
You are also missing the fact that cases, schmases.
What really counts now is Hospital admissions - people may or may not have symptoms, and they may or may not show up on a symptom tracker, and the people may or may not take a test, that may or may not say that they are or are not positive for Sars-Cov-2.
What cannot be denied are people turning up at Hospitals with what is
actually Covid-19 - ie a
Severe
Acute
Respiratory
Syndrome, that is killing 1 in 5 (only 1 in 7 in a good week) of all who have been admitted into Hospital with it.
The 'null hypothesis' with a novel pathogen is that -
- 100% of people are susceptible
- there is only prevention until there is a cure
As far as we know, the first emergence of this novel coronavirus was in November of 2019, it became a flagged potential regional problem in December 2019, it was recognised as a potential world threat in late December/January 2020.
This is something that emerged one year ago, and was recognised as a serious threat less than one year ago. And yet in that time so much more is known about it - behavioural changes have had some effect, it would be better if everyone pitched in but, you know... There are therapeutics in the form of already licenced drugs and new practices like turning folk onto their fronts to increase lung capacity that have massively increased the likelihood of coming out of ICU not in a body bag...
And now we have 2 vaccines approaching approval, with possibly 6 more waiting in the wings.
The reason we did what we did was because there really was only one sure-fire way to stop it from ripping through us. It's easy to say we should have let that happen, but that would have been not just scientifically illiterate, but criminally negligent. We already have an inordinate amount of blood on our hands. We did what we did to buy time, and we are on the verge of cashing in on that investment.
You might not be seeing chokka Hospitals, but that might be because you don't work in one.