I remember listening to the problems some African countries had getting access to radiation sources for cancer therapy. Some of the stories were horrific. I find it hard to talk about them. The stories I heard about one African country and the suffering of some women with cancer still haunt me.
People were really worried about that incredibly dangerous radioactive material moving. Especially the people that were making their name by preventing terrorist attacks. So what is the risk. Well, if you were really determined you might contrive to kill a few tens of people. And what is the benefit – well every one of these trips saves 7000 lives. So even if 9 out of 10 of these shipments went wrong you would still, on balance, save more lives than you would lose.
Adding extra safety will actually result in more deaths.
Today we see the death rate in Scotland from COVID is higher than in England. But hang on – hasn’t Scotland been tougher than England – they have had much tighter restrictions and applied them earlier. Hmm.
And now Christmas. People are starting to say it is a mistake to lower out standards of restrictions at Christmas.
My take.
If the strict rules had applied over Christmas then a lot of people would have rebelled and broken the rule. Having broken that rule – stepping outside the law – they would be much more likely to break the laws again.
So the government relax the laws at Christmas even though they know it is bad news virus wise. But it means they are more likely to get people to fall in line after New Year. Don’t believe it? Remember what I said in the last lockdown – that the lockdown would only last as long as people could endure it, not the length of time to get the infections down to a low enough level. And with beach madness and BLM protests came the release from restrictions.
This is how we work in the UK – we police by consensus. This might well be why more authoritarian states have
And this might well be the cause of the Scottish deaths – the restrictions have been so severe that people have rebelled.
The problem is that you cannot apply lockdown rules for long enough to save everybody – we would all go mad, starve, freeze or worse. So you use your restrictions carefully 0ly using them when it makes most difference. And if you use them too much you end up with disobedience – and virus spread.