THIS IS A KEY MISUNDERSTANDING THAT THESE PEOPLE DON'T GET - NAMELY THAT IT'S NOT ABOUT THE DEATH RATE - IT'S ABOUT THE SPEED THAT PEOPLE GET SICK AND THE SPEED PEOPLE DIE.

The R-naught, also called the "R-Number" or the "R-Value" is a calculation of how many people get infected by 1 person. For the seasonal flu, the r-naught is usually between 1.2 and 1.4. That means that for every 1 person that gets it, they pass the flu to 1.4 people.

A better way to say that (because it's a part number) is that for every two people who get it, one will give it to another person, and the other will give it to two people.

1.2-1.4 is about the norm and over the year there might be 30,000 deaths from the seasonal flu. COVID 19 however, has an r-nought between 2.2 and 2.8. That means that for every person that gets it, they pass it to between 2 and 3 other people.

To demonstrate to you why COVID is so dangerous, I'm going to do a tiny spreadsheet. Now, to be fair to the COVID deniers (to prove my point without completely pummeling them) I am going to lay COVID next to the seasonal flu....

...but that's not all, I am going to assume that the seasonal flu in this scenario is at the higher end of the scale at 1.4 and that COVID is at the low end of the scale at 2.28. But remember, the r-naught of COVID can be between 2.28 and 2.8!

So! The spreadsheet starts off with one patient infected on day 1 of a virus. Each day, we multiple the seasonal flu patients by 1.4 and the COVID patients by 2.28 and for ease of reading, the decimal places will be removed for easy reading.

Here's the result. If you allow the virus to go unchecked for a 28 day period, the seasonal flu will have infected 8820 people in that 28 day period. COVID, however, has the potential to infect 4615735021 people - or to put it another way - MORE THAN HALF THE PLANET!

THIS IS THE PROBLEM! It's nothing to do with the fact that COVID kills more people percentage-wise than the flu, it's the fact it infects so many people so quickly. If just 1% end up in hospital. The ENTIRE NHS could be over-run in terms of beds and resources in only 3 weeks!

Imagine having a heart attack, or being run over by a car, or chopping a finger off accidentally, or having a stroke, or one of a thousand serious life-threatening medical issues and picking up the phone, dialling 999 and hearing "sorry, we are unable to help".

Because that's what we are talking about here!.

Is lockdown shitty? Yes! Yes it is! But how much destruction to you think there would be if the entire GDP of the UK was being spent on COVID treatment every week.

Imagine calling for help and nobody being able to respond. Every emergency service overwhelmed.

You think "lockdown" is bad now? You can't even begin comprehend what would happen if COVID really took a hold!

The current measures are designed for only one thing - to take the strain off the NHS to allow them to be able to treat COVID patients at a much lower rate they can handle, without destroying all other emergency care.

Fighting a severe reaction to COVID 19 in an emergency setting is a very resource-intensive thing. Heart monitors, respirators, mass quantities of drugs and equipment, multiple doctors and nurses. Resources that's not available to treat other patients.

This isn't about just who has covid and who doesn't. It's not even about who covid kills and who it doesn't. It's about how many people would die as a result of COVID - and a huge chunk of them would not be covid patients.

Imagine doctors having to make decisions like "Do I give the respiratory to the 30 years old guy who was in a car crash - or the 30 year old guy who has COVID 19. Imagine a choice between the 65 year old with 12 grandkids, or the 45 year old mother of two.....

....we don't have to imagine it, because it's exactly what is happening around the world where covid has hit countries hard.

Let me put it this way - have you ever seen the movies in a mass casualty situation in a hospital when they put green, yellow, red and black tags on patients. Green being "fine to wait", red being "deal with as emergency" and black being "this person's a goner!"?

Well imagine that in every single hospital in the country, only the greens, except the yellows end up red and the reds end up as black tags, all because there wasn't enough resources to treat them!