Turn it round the other away then:
It’s rational of the employer to sack an employee who refuses to attend work, and give their job to someone who will turn up when required. And that is what will happen.
What the employee thinks is neither here nor there.
So, what we've established is that 'rational action' is different for different people. Shocking discovery. It still doesn't mean that your first claim about irrationality is anything other than pants.
Isn't it only a minority of the scientists who are questioning the judgement? I'm sure I read that the majority of the scientists were in favour but some were dissenting, which is exactly what you'd want.
Where did you read that?
In favour of what?
Unless there's a vaccine, I think the public transport problems will be long term. It may well mean that London-centric employers will have to go back to how it used to be for many of them and open regional/local offices. It's the ease and availability of public transport that has facilitated London becoming what it currently is. If the firms find it difficult to attract staff or staff refuse to go to work due to public transport, then they may have no choice but to wind the clock back a bit and provide office facilities outside London. Personally, I think that would be a brilliant side-effect of the pandemic. For far too long there've been far too few "good jobs" out in the regions.
Not even a vaccine, more that there's an effective track & trace programme. If we're able to do that, then we can "control the virus". The government was saying that said programme was the most important step to being able to come out of lockdown. We're coming out of lockdown, and there's not an effective track and trace programme. And yet, we're supposed to believe what the government says today rather than what it said 3 days ago.
Because the risk of this virus to the general public has been massively overestimated by members of the public due to initial messaging being too aggressive and based on fear.
If the virus had a high death rate, say 5% or more, then of course it would be completely necessary to follow the scientific evidence to get the disease suppressed completely before being able to ever consider returning to work, as the risk posed would be far too high.
However with this virus, the death rate is 0.5%, and much lower for under 55's which is the considerable majority of the UK workforce.
Leaving aside the platitudes about messaging based on fear, I'll look at your 0.5% figure.
That figure is the lowest end of any of the figures coming from reputible sources. UK scientists are quoted as saying that
they believe it lies between 0.5 and 1%. (
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51674743). Basically, this is another thing that we don't really know.
It is flawed to compare the number of people who tested positive and number who died, because the number who tested positive is contingent on testing. The UK is failing, as are a number of other countries.
But, it is also flawed to use the death figures, because that too relies on testing people who are dead/dying. The number of excess deaths during the current pandemic is an awful lot higher than the official death toll. What explains this descrepency?
The death rate has been quoted as anything from 0.18% (but that's from
The Daily Mail) to 4.5%.
TLDR: We don't know the death rate.
The risk of getting killed in a car crash on the way to work is considerably higher than the risk of dying from this infection for most of the UK workforce, would you say it's justified for someone who phones in to work everyday saying they 'can't come in because I could die in a car crash' was justified? No, and the risk of dying from the virus is much lower than that for the vast majority, hence why it's important to look beyond the virus and start to see the bigger picture.
(
@43066 - It might be worth you reading this bit: )
1870 people died in the UK in a car crash last year (
https://assets.publishing.service.g...485/road-casualties-year-ending-june-2019.pdf). That's slightly up from the rolling average (+1.4%).
~38,500 people have died in the UK in 5 months from COVID-19.
OK, so let's add in serious injuries from road traffic accidents. That brings us to almost 30,000 in a year. Remember, we've had 38,500 from COVID-19 in 5 months.
Even if we take your 0.5% figure, we're still way higher than road traffic accidents. That carries a risk of just under 3 in 100000, or 0.003%. Um...
The government messaging needs to change from 'we need to get rid of the big, bad deadly virus' to 'we need to get back to normal again whilst not overwhelming hospitals'...
My emphasis.
I agree there.
...as the risk levels have been hugely over perceived by 95% of the public, meaning that it could cause economic collapse if we don't move fast enough, which would be, much, much worse than the effects of the virus and would affect literally everyone.
And yet you've compared COVID-19 to road traffic accidents, and have either over-estimated the latter, or vastly underestimated the former. What gives you the right to tell everyone else how they perceive risks?
It's my fear that by the time the wellbeing and economic factors are considered, it'll be too late and the damage will be done. The government really do have their eyes set on suppressing this virus clearly, and whilst I of course recognise that we cannot overwhelm the health board as that would be disastrous, is it really worth completely destroying the economy in the way we're going to if we proceed with the current attitude? I don't think so, and I think it's time for the emphasis of the messaging from both the government and media to change to the protection of the economy over 'control the virus'.
Actually, they haven't. The government is coming out of lockdown well before* other countries. They also went into lockdown far later than other countries, and that lockdown was weak in comparison. The government botched the early response to the virus which means that we're far behind other countries.
*In terms of infection rate and death rate, not in terms of time.