Get on with liviing

“Get On With Your Lives!” – Oxford Professor Says “People Have Become Overly Frightened” Of COVID-19

a Guest column by Carl Heneghan, courtesy of Ruth King

No. 2,571

Even though BoJo’s (Boris Johnson's)  system of localized COVID-19 measures seems to be working, the unrelenting hysteria peddled by the British press has left millions of Britons traumatized.

Now, Carl Heneghan, a professor of Evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, is calling for the government to intervene and “proactively reassure” his young students that the coronavirus won’t kill them if they contract it.

He said exaggerated fears of the virus have led to “people going about their daily lives misunderstanding and overestimating their risk,” something with which many Americans can probably empathize.

And as parts of north Manchester remain on ‘partial lockdown’, the professor said introducing local lockdowns could do more harm than good by forcing people into their homes, potentially infecting other vulnerable people who live with them, especially as the temperature drops.

Professor Heneghan’s work has led to a lowering of the official death toll after he revealed COVID-19 deaths were being counted even if someone had subsequently died of other causes.

As we learn more about the virus, the pandemic could end up no worse than a bad flu season, the professor said, with a touch of hyperbole.

The UK’s large death toll may hint at a larger number of cases left undiscovered, some have argued. Others have blamed failures in protecting the vulnerable populations living in care homes.

Heneghan’s work ‘reframing’ how COVID-19 deaths are counted could eventually lead to the world seeing far fewer deaths than were actually reported (while many still went uncounted). But as we’ve come to understand how to treat COVID-19 more effectively, society hasn’t recalibrated its fear of the virus.

“We reset how we calculate the death rates. We now need to reset how we communicate the risks of the virus.”

“I am concerned people have become overly frightened and throughout this pandemic, the fear instilled in people has been a real problem.”

“Many people misunderstand and overestimate their risk of Covid. This uncertainty is leaving them highly anxious and affecting schools, offices and how we go about our daily lives. The government needs to intervene to explain to people their true risks.”

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Blogger's Note: The government will do little to alleviate the anxiety. It has a vested interest in continuing the anxiety for political reasons, mainly to increase control of the populace.  What Heneghan discusses also is the restructuring of people's  personal and distant relationships, and condemning them to isolation, loneliness, and an atomization of one to a calculated psychological  distress, and exploiting even one's perceived epistemological insignificance or superfluence.