glalt wrote: ↑October 29, 2020, 8:57 am
I think that this is going to get much worse rather than better. People are sick of being careful and restricted. I have a good friend who lives in Florida. He is depressed and bored. I should add that he knows that he is not bulletproof at age 76 but he is more than willing to take a chance and go back to living normally come what may. My friend is quite wealthy and his greatest joy in his old age is travelling. We can come back from being destroyed financially but it has a greater impact on some than others. I haven't read much about the suicide rate but I expect it has gone up a lot. Crime is certainly up. When people are destitute and hungry, they get desperate. life is no longer that important. Fortunately most of us don't have that hunger problem but many others do.
By many accounts, both crime and suicide are on the up tick. Their was a spate of in-car suicides in Thailand that made headlines about 2 months ago.
I watched a program the other night that showed cars lining up in US suburb to access a food bank. The reporter commented on the notable and unexpected prevalence of late-model, up-market SUV's in the line up. Families with both parents working but furloughed or suddenly unemployed still have car notes, mortgages and credit card bills to pay.
The bigger and more severe second wave has always been an inevitability. A third wave is also on the cards. This is based on historical evidence, notably the Spanish flu outbreak.
The lockdowns that many nations enacted when this broke out last spring were in response to the comparatively mild first wave. The jury is out on how truly effective they were due to differing timelines of individual countries relaxing the patchwork of protocols compounded by which ones were testing and who wasn't and the political benefits of not accurately reporting if at all.
Looking at the most commonly used graph, we are ramping up for the second wave so as granny said, "What's afore you will ne'er go by you."
There seems to be an increasing trend for European (not just EU) countries to reactivate their total, national lockdowns. The UK government seems to think that the regional and local lockdowns of their 3-tier system will work. In my opinion, their "post-code" lockdown is worthless without enforceable travel restrictions. The flaunting of the first lockdown travel restrictions by a few high-profile individuals, MP's and government advisors has already been allowed to be forgotten and will be nothing compared to the amount of people ignoring the rules and moving about. I think many will refuse to change their plans for family gatherings for Christmas.
The US maybe faces a double-barrel threat with Thanksgiving being their biggest national family get together being so closely followed by Christmas.
