Yes, absolutely agree.
I suspect that one fly in the ointment is lack of sufficiently granular data.
In Manchester, too, areas were shut down that had no spike so as to not make it look like HMG were picking on Muslims (where the spikes were located).
And then we are not actualy policing lockdowns are we?
Sorry, also, I wasn't trying to assert the supremacy of my knowledge. Rather it struck me that we were being fed absolute twaddle by membesr of HMG and the media conflating issues and making fasle inferences.
Anyway....
All the best
I'll post this on the numbers thread as it is about numbers.
I have commented on the limited value of R (when the sample is small) before. I'd like to comment on the absurd plan to keep R down, if it starts to go up when schools open, by closing pubs.
If R goes up nationally when schools open, it means that kids at school are swapping and spreading the virus. If you close down pubs, this would be useful only if people are swapping and spreading the virus also in pubs. So why not shut pubs and schools? Because the government wants to open schools and figure one can calculate the relative contribution to R of spread in pubs and spread in schools.
OK, let us imagine that you can actually calculate the relative contribution to R from schools and from pubs. Shutting pubs will not have any effect on the spread of the virus caused by schools. R, nationally, will not go up so much over a couple of weeks if pubs are shut to offset the increase in R from the opening of schools.
BUT, after a couple of weeks, the increase in R will get bigger and bigger from the effect of the open schools, and R nationally will increase. Of course it will.
Let us imagine I am bleeding from a cut in my right arm. I then get another bigger cut on my left arm. In order to reduce total blood loss I put a tournequet on my right arm. I have shut the pubs. Then, over the following hours, I bleed to death from the new cut on my left arm (I left the schools open). If you don't deal with the spread of virus in schools we will have a spread of virus in schools. The virus will not, however, remain in the schools unless the children are prevented from going home at the end of the school day. Perhaps the members of government who favour this plan are familiar only with boarding schools and assume that all kids are boarders?
Likewise, wearing a mask in London where Covid has almost vanished will not reduce the spread of Covid in Darwen, even if wearing a mask in London keeps the national R value a bit lower than it would be for a week or so by eeducing spread in London.
I remember having a meal with a couple of fat lasses in a university 30 years ago. They piled up their plates with about 3000 calories of nosh, chips, fat, creamy deserts, and washed it down with diet Coke. Yes, I agree, that there are fewer calories in diet Coke than in ordinary coke. But I do not agree that the fat lasses were on course to achieve their hearts' desire (to be less fat).
Are we following all this?
I am quite convinced that the government is populated by innumerate charlatans who either don't understand or don't want to understand anything other than their own hubris.
