THE POSITIVE PROFESSOR
SOCIAL media’s voice of calm Karol Sikora has been signed up by the Daily Express. Readers can now enjoy his soothing advice in these troubled times that have won him hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. If you need reassuring everything’s going to be all right read Professor Positivity.
THROUGHOUT this pandemic, it has always felt as if our Government is being too aggressive with some measures but not going far enough on others.
I know it’s difficult, and it must be so frustrating for ministers who have little scientific background.
But a little bit of transparency goes an awfully long way.
With this new Spanish quarantine, for example, we all understand that some form of action had to be taken but what are the metrics?
Surely some sort of traffic light system would work, so people can see which countries the Government is keeping a close eye on.
Let people weigh up the risks for themselves. Is it just the infection rate it is looking at, or is it more complicated? I honestly don’t know.
Spain is a curious example. It transpires that it is including positive antibody test results in its new case numbers. This seems silly to me as the actual infection may be long past.
We have seen headlines showing thousands of new infections in Spain, but in reality the numbers of actual new infections are nowhere near so bad.
Why the Spanish government chose to do that is beyond me. I only hope our people were aware of it when they imposed quarantine on travellers from the whole country.
We have to start thinking a bit more imaginatively. Sometimes I get the feeling the Government is so scared of failing that it won’t try anything new.
Testing on arrival, for example, isn’t perfect but we can at least see how the trial goes.
We have huge spare capacity for tests in this country. Why wasn’t it being worked on earlier?
Rapid saliva tests are likely to be validated within weeks – much less invasive for screening.
There can be no certainty in the middle of a global pandemic. We all understand that.
But if the Government at least tried to be a little more open and honest with us, I feel that would help enormously.