Apparently you do want to split hairs. That’s an operational issue not the strategic level plan.
The strategic plan was herd immunity as per the video above. Now we've shown that's just a very good way to kill lots of people with no guarantee of immunity they've had to redress. I don't think they have one currently but that might not be the wrong thing as we still don't know enough about the virus yet. We have the US to watch as an experiment in reopening too early in some places and some of our European neighbours doing it in a more calculated manner. There should be good examples to base our plan on soon.
Operational issue. Too funny. If there had been anything like a plan these “operational issues” would never have arisen.
I have a strategic plan to fly. The operational issue of not having wings is proving to be an obstacle.
These are questions, not statements, so no shouting please.
Did we get the timing of the lockdown wrong?
Yes, absolutely. The whole concept of 'timing' is only relevant if you are trying to achieve herd immunity.
Despite the government claiming they abandoned this strategy after massive condemnation from around the world, they continued to crap on about getting the timing right. Essentially they wanted to get the fire started and let it burn through the population at a controlled rate within the capacity of the NHS.
I can only assume they thought there was extensive asymptomatic infection (despite the WHO saying otherwise) and therefore the mortality was a lot lower than it appeared. If they could get it through 60% of the population in a few months with only 20K deaths (similar to a bad flu year) they probably thought this was acceptable to save the economy and see the virus off.
Unfortunately we'll likely have 40K dead and only 4-5% infected after this first peak, so nowhere close to herd immunity so those 40K people will have been sacrificed in vain. Essentially we'll just be getting back to where we were end of February.
When something is doubling every 2 days, a 10 day delay in lockdown means deaths/infection will be 32x worse. The government and their advisors massively f*cked up.
Yes, absolutely. The whole concept of ‘timing’ is only relevant if you are trying to achieve herd immunity.
As if (passive) herd immunity is something that the government even does? Consider the counterfactual: "Our policy isn't herd immunity". So what? The virus doesn't care, it just goes ahead and infects everyone it can and leaves herd immunity behind (as a consequence) in its wake assuming immunity even lasts. It doesn't follow policy.
The policy was wishy-washy 'nudge' type advise and some vague notion to keep vulnerable groups at home for few weeks, premised on the assumption that coronavirus was basically a form of influenza and would fairly inconsequentially wash over the general populace who weren't immunocompromised or very old.
How are you going to know when a large number have had it
Cross sectional surveys of blood samples. There has been one published and one anecdotal. They both point to less than 5% having had it
The first exit strategy is therefore stamp on transmission to put out the fire, test any cases and contacts of cases ruthlessly, find a vaccine.
The the other exit strategy is “bring it on, herd immunity will only kill a hundred-odd thousand”. And “Get Covid done”.
Globally society has decided on the former, whilst not really advertising the latter too loudly (well for a while anyway). Both have their merits (see the FT comments). We’ll try control first. It’s not the cheap option. But ethics. If we get lots of mini epidemics, see number two.
Bike analogy, it’s like riding a tandem down a col, do you go for drag brake or apply hard deceleration before the bends? Which one stops the disc melting or tyres blowing.
Is the long term thinking still that for any societal normality, (new normal at least) a large number of us need to get this thing? Is it just a case of how and when?
Well the WHO have correctly stated that there is no evidence that infection confers immunity. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I’m hopeful after three weeks of suffering that I have something to bloody well show for it! The passive antibody technology I’m working on has worked for Ebola treatment.
The second option would also imply the unedifying prospect of seeing health care systems go past their breaking point. During the Spanish flu, there wasn't really a health care system built into the essential functioning of society like there is now.
Here's something I worry about. I read about the trenches on the western front promoting natural selection of the Spanish flu to be more lethal. Slightly ill soldiers stayed at their posts, maybe in bed, very ill got transported to central military hospitals where they spread the virus further. It's the opposite to what would have happened for centuries, especially in pre-industrial societies, were the more dangerous the strain you get the less likely you are to spread it because you go to your hovel and more or less self-isolate as your - maybe - die. So natural selection favours less lethal strains.
Now we send everyone really ill to a hospital where there is lots of intense spreading and transmission and so we favour more lethal mutations.
Another aircraft carrier https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-military-sympt-idUSKCN21Y2GB
(I think it was just the french carrier posted about a few pages back)
60% at the time of testing asymptomatic
An opportunity missed?
A former director of the WHO told the hearing that contact tracing, testing and isolation could have continued for longer across the UK and would have enabled the government to lock down London while leaving other areas of the country with fewer restrictions.
Prof Anthony Costello, the head of the Institute for Global Health at University College London, pointed out that Yorkshire had fewer than 10 cases identified in 300,000-400,000 people around the time that contact tracing and community testing were halted and, as such, could have avoided a complete lockdown.
Hancock admitted the government had discussed it. “We did consider having a London-specific lockdown and decided it was better to do it across the country as a whole.”
This was because people would be travelling between London and other parts of the UK and, he said, it was striking how the country had come together to observe the restrictions. “To separate one part of the country from another has downsides in terms of the national unity we have seen in the response.”
Would it not have been possible in the early stages of this to identify and test those who had been in contact with the small number of people who had covid19 ? Are people now dying for the sake of national unity
“To separate one part of the country from another has downsides in terms of the national unity we have seen in the response.”
Was that an actual quote?
If so, I’m off into another room to scream into a pillow.
It is a quote,full article from the Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/uk-to-start-coronavirus-contact-tracing-againl
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/uk-to-start-coronavirus-contact-tracing-again
You could take that to mean that when we finally introduced social distancing measures, doing it nation wide made more sense, which I would agree by that point it did … but the uncharitable interpretation is that London wasn’t isolated earlier, so that it could spread nationally, and then we could all go through the same measures, at the same time, to “all be in this together” rather than trying to geographically isolate the virus, as other countries have.
If it had been the other way around, why do I think they'd have been fine with locking London down to protect it.
You look to both Italy & Spain. Both declared local lockdown (Madrid & Lombardy), and started a stampede for freedom. An announcement we were locking London would have seen Gridlock non the motorways as people fled for the country, whatever the govt said.
The nationwide lock down had people fleeing to Wales, Cornwall, the Lakes etc anyway. Your example is of countries that poorly implemented geographical isolation. There are other countries that used it, with testing and contact tracing, effectively, to save thousands of lives.
The first thing that happened was all the people in the nasty virus areas flew back to the UK.
Durr.
Viruses can't fly.
We spread it around the globe because we are human and in this instance, stupidly so.
Yorkshire had fewer than 10 cases identified in 300,000-400,000 people
Aye, we're an unsociable lot.
If you'd locked down London first, every bugger with a second home or family outside the M25 would have taken themselves and the virus round the country in 48 hours.
They did anyway.
[well, not “every” bugger, but then you just meant “lots”, rather than “all” I’d like to think]
So what would’ve been the point?
The lack of PPE is horrendous. I assume we are ordering enough, but we can’t get our hands on it?
Looks like we know why we're in this mess
https://twitter.com/thesundaytimes/status/1251563504118771712?s=20
https://twitter.com/thesundaytimes/status/1251563506140405760?s=20
Boris was dealing with "personal matters"
Edit remember this rumour around that time black eye
I remember way back in the beginning of either the Brexit thread or the US election thread (no I can't be arsed to get it to quote...) that someone joked that we could end up with the US run by Donald and us by Boris, throw in an international emergency and we'd all be screwed. Everyone laughed it off.
Oh how wrong we were. Satirists must be crapping themselves as real life is doing them out of a job.
The Times article really does not paint Johnson in a good light
It's been obvious from.the stream of ND from the government that they knew they were on the back foot.
I’d advise you to be wary of criticising the government and how it’s handled the crisis otherwise you’ll incur the wrath of kryton, he’ll demand to know what you’ve done to improve the situation.
Perhaps we need a “what car for” thread?
Even tomorrow's Torygraph are sticking the boot in
A detailed chronology of our government’s ineptitude ....
The Times article really does not paint Johnson in a good light
meanwhile in another arm of the murdoch news empire (the scum)....
'I'LL UNLOCK BRITAIN' PM tells colleagues he will return to lead UK out of lockdown – and he could be back as early as next week
Formally refused an FOI request for the info about the 2016 pandemic drill? That is extremely dodgy and will surely be beaten in court.
The Times article (with no paywall)
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/coronavirus-38-days-when-britain-sleepwalked-into-disaster-hq3b9tlg h"> https://archive.is/20200418182037/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/coronavirus-38-days-when-britain-sleepwalked-into-disaster-hq3b9tlgh
No new stuff in there, I don’t think, we knew Johnson was absent, and then when he finally did get involved he just made stupid jokes about it. The country seems to have chosen to forget all that for now. Once he has recovered, attitudes may change.
kelvin
Subscriber
No new stuff in there,
I know a lot of it was obvious, but hopefully it might stop people trotting out the ' unprecendted' & 'government doing their best' lines
especially the points about not shutting down when the science showed it was going to kill many 1000s and, not activating the plans they did have in place & not talking to firms about planning for lockdown, and confirms they left finding alternative supplies of PPE far too late
all of that was obvious from the panicked lies of hancock & co, but people have been claiming it was all part of a plan to ease us into lockdown, this article says it really was a screeching u-turn
The country seems to have chosen to forget all that for now. Once he has recovered, attitudes may change.
Well reading the internet this morning, it appears what we are witnessing is the start of a Gove power play for the top job.
I predict the country will carry on being lied to, and enjoying it, as usual.
Formally refused an FOI request for the info about the 2016 pandemic drill? That is extremely dodgy and will surely be beaten in court
I doubt it, national security defence I'd imagine.
@scotroutes that link triggers a security warning on Chrome and then goes to a broken page.
Why is everyone blaming Boris? I thought we’d decided it was all somafunk’s fault?
Surprise, surprise Gove has popped up to do the media rounds today.
What a coincidence
He's not doing a good job of denying the Sunday times allegations, either
https://twitter.com/joepike/status/1251782333574852613?s=19
Well reading the internet this morning, it appears what we are witnessing is the start of a Gove power play for the top job.
Hmm can’t see that it’s not like he’s got prior form for backstabbing. 🙂
Why is everyone blaming Boris? I thought we’d decided it was all somafunk’s fault?
Apparently he misinterpreted what cobra was and drank it when he should have been going to it.
Could happen to anyone.
On Marr, Gove said that it wasn't uncommon for PM to not go to or chair COBRA and that it would be chaired by the relevant Minister (eg: as Enviro he did the floods) - and then the relevant chair would brief the PM.
I'm no fan of BoJo and can see that for a matter of this importance you can argue that he should have played a hands on role but this isn't in itself a smoking gun, if anything the failure is the inability to understand the severity and to leave it to (in this case) Hancock.
But in that respect - if the 2016 simulation exercise outcomes were as people seem to think they are then they did have the knowledge of severity and that's then a problem. But then this lot do seem to have a recent history of ignoring experts when the advice they give is inconvenient to the program......
the daily fail are running with.... their/someones traffic light plan 😕
though most of these don't apply to their readership as they will be in lookdown for 18 months
