msg wrote:

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As a supposedly vulnerable person, I would like to know the risks associated with mixing freely in the community, and how bad it really is or not.   Is the risk of catching the virus worse than the risk of catching the flu? It would seem the consequences are worse, but are they?

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 The following is my take on trying to answer what are reasonable questions without reasonable answers IMO. I have no doubt others will see things differently. 

The stats which Dorian linked to show a huge difference in death rates between here & the US which suggests (to me) that Covid was far better managed here with lockdowns etc than in the US, but of course stats today are less comprehensively collected & thus less reliable. We know what helped earlier on, now we have less to go on.  Without facts we are left with opinions. Some far better informed than others.  Those stats fall into that category I believe, but of course not everyone wants to believe that. We are in a world environment today when even the most solid facts can & often are dismissed as 'incorrect opinion' by folk who simply want to believe something else, frequently with little to no basis, something I call 'magical thinking'.  So what hope do statistics have. 

Since the stats largely stopped being collected here the answer to your questions is everybody now knows less & that what you as an individual does is up to to you to decide in the absence of solid information ie The individual's assessment is based upon their personal outlook on life, influenced by a whole range of  opinions vying for support & with a wide range of competing agendas making it very difficult & in such circumstances individuals frequently fall back upon 'group allegiances'.  That many of those beliefs & allegiances are to groups/belief systems who/which are directly responsible for muddying the waters allows conspiracy theories to germinate & grow, providing fertility to the gamut of anti authority/anarchic dissension which sprouts in times of uncertainty, & weak or uncaring leadership.  Blame & hatred  holds sway. The downward spiral of blame only leads to ever increasing uncertainty. 

Those who argued for individual freedoms over what they saw as the 'nanny state' (& which some saw as caring & decisive leadership in a time of need) are now reaping what they sowed. ie. Not a lot to go on other than we know that for many catching Covid is a mild illness & for others it's a death sentence. (Unless of course you are someone who 'knows' that Covid is not real & then you have nothing to worry about). Co-morbidities help to predict whether some folk are more or less vulnerable to severe illness or death, but it's only a prediction & some unexpectedly suffer far more than others without any co-morbidities.  Some notice nothing, some a few days feeling under the weather, some many weeks of a slow recovery & some worse.

If you believe you are more vulnerable then obviously you will take more precautions, if you don't believe that then you wont. 

Personally I don't believe it should be like this, but the authorities were going to be criticised if they kept everything locked down tight & able to maintain the best gathering of evidence/statistics that they could, but having kowtowed to public opinion & 'let go' it seems that the inevitable uncertainty about risk which 'letting go' has brought us is now being criticised by the same bodies of people. 

"Can't have cake & eat it" comes to mind.

It's a conundrum for the 'freedom/anti-authority/ anti-expertise brigade'. They got what they wanted & now feel less safe because the risks are less well known.

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Since writing the above, we lost satellite connectivity for the 'net - a common occurrence here but worse than usual today with no weather to explain it.

Whilst waiting for it to re-connect PT has posted an interesting (to me) link. I hadn't seen this before & it seems to hold promise. Not sure how far the research has progressed since it was published in '21, but if nothing else it displays how much is still to be learned about covid, & demonstrates how science, which so many dismiss,  progresses knowledge one tiny step at a time.

Not so long ago there would have been universal support for such scientific endeavour. Today it is all too common for science to be dismissed as part of whichever conspiracy theory is popular at the time. Sometimes I wonder if modern dismissive attitudes toward science are a response from 'magical thinkers' angry that the science community which has alerted us to modern problems the world  faces but has not also provided a solution for. - shooting the messenger ...................actually I think science has gone quite a long way to providing many solutions but, surprise surprise, has not provided the means for building political will, & acceptance for needed changes to be implemented. That's our job, which  we're not very good at collectively.