Just Follow the Bloody Science!

I'm getting a bit fed-up, as it seems to be hardly 'rocket science'! We should have learned from the experiences of countries that have successfully dealt with the Covid-19 pandemic (lockdown is clearly only an emergency action needed when things are insufficiently in place) as well as from countries where failures have been evident (e.g. the death rate in Spanish care homes). The key actions are clearly a) Have an effective test, trace, isolate (TTI) system in place; b) Don't introduce infections into settings that cannot deal with them and c) Prevent the virus re-entering the population to restart the whole operation again (when you have things under control). The advice is clearly out there (and none of it is new). For example, both David Hunter (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/11/boris-johnson-advice-coronavirus-spread-work) and Simon Wren-Lewis (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/11/britain-economy-coronavirus-deaths) have confirmed (I, a mere Biologist, have been rabbiting on about this for ages) that TTI is key for both avoiding a resurgence of infection rates and re-opening the economy. That not only means lots of accurate tests delivered quickly, it means effective and speedy tracing and people complying with the need to isolate (that would be helped by not placing financial penalties on isolaters). I am not convinced we have a working TTI system yet and share the view of the above specialists that a) a resurgence of Covid-19 infections is more than likely and b) re-opening the economy is going to be a far from smooth process. I also cannot understand, along with Polly Toynbee (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/11/care-work-nhs-pandemic-cash), why it was thought to be appropriate (even given concerns about the capacity of intense care units in NHS hospitals) to 'discharge' elderly, 'bed-blocking' folk, some already with the viral infection, into care homes. Care homes (even the best) clearly had a dearth of personal protective equipment and less medical expertise than major NHS hospitals. Because of the way they operate (even with the best of intentions), infections were likely to (and did) rip through their populations of residents and the care workers who looked after them. As the meerkats say in the advertisements "Simples"