In the way anything seems possible at the moment.
Could the great experiment include monitoring by social media trend for the spread of infection rather than actual sampling?
This is Cummings, he'd use the same tool kit as he did on get Brexit done.
The Eton Care Pathway seemed an outsider a few days ago but looks like it's a racing certainty for the governments plan.
I was in Sainsbury’s earlier & when some bloke coughed loudly everyone else looked round like there had been a gunshot
There have been people wandering around with dry coughs for weeks.
Molgrips, so what you’re saying is that we should listen to some psychologist on twitter and take the Nudge units word that their “behavioural psychology” models are accurate, over the concerns of other epidemiologists, virologists and statisticians.
Not in the least - I just posted a link. Not every post on an internet forum is a cock fight, please remember that.
Stop telling people who know more than you, that they should shut up and tow the line.
Never done that. I just like sharing interesting stuff, can I do that without being accused of trying to convince people they're wrong and I'm right? A few pages back I posted the same thing you just did - that on here we know cock all.
Now, back to the topic at hand - the scientific community appears split on the UK's approach. So it's not really fair to say 'scientists say X and the UK government is ignoring them' cos that's not really true. I think that Whitty and Valance aren't idiots and they aren't simply yes men either. It seems to me that they are executing a plan and whilst different from other countries it is not 'not doing anything' which the angry internet voices are keen to shout about.
From that ITV link:
Other measures already being planned include:
the forced requisitioning of hotels and other buildings as temporary hospitals;
the requisitioning of private hospitals as emergency hospitals;
temporary closure of pubs, bars and restaurants - some time after next weekend's ban on mass gatherings;
emergency manufacture by several companies of respirators that would be necessary to keep alive those who become acutely ill;
the closure of schools for perhaps a few weeks, but with skeleton staff kept on to provide childcare for key workers in the NHS and police.
People over 70 will be instructed by the government to stay in strict isolation at home or in care homes for four months.According to a senior government source, the perception that ministers are reluctant to make difficult and costly decisions to battle the virus is wrong. It is simply that the chief medical officer Chris Whitty and the chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance are waiting for the optimal time to force restrictions on our way of life that will be very painful.
Just posted this on my Facebook
The gamble (and it is a massive gamble) is that they are hoping that mass immunity through infection will continue to be effective when the virus mutates.
It could work incredibly well as it would effectively inoculate from the reinfections that will come up whenever quarantine is released.
The massive danger is viral mutation defeating the immunity, or potentially even worse we could end up with a situation like dengue fever where subsequent infections of a different strain makes the resulting infection many times worse.
Big big gamble
Seems no doubt that we have stopped containment and others havent
Big big gamble
Harry Callahan: You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?
Government now saying that going for hard immunity not part of the plan?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51892402
Which is weird because it's exactly what Vallance said the other day!
My worry is that government have looked at the numbers & figured they've got little choice
I don't quite get why social distancing & lockdown not been enforced stricter, otherwise spike will come sooner than they hope.
And NHS is in no way ready for it, so many beds have been lost in last decade (10,000), ft staff vacancies now at 100,000 !(tho many of those usually filled by temp staff)
Winter in the nhs is always desperate, this year has been better than the last 2 for itu beds (judging by no. of cancelled ops I see) but that's only thanks to mild winter.
Knock on will be huge though, itu beds used for covid, means no elective surgeries- hip replacements, knee old etc etc, but also no recovery beds for other ops, cancer, heart attacks, maternity?
This is why Johnson is gambling on herd immunity, containment phase failed quickly because NHS was overwhelmed & unable to track, trace & isolate (as WHO are saying they should be)
The real gamble is that no one really knows how many need to be infected to achieve it, R0 (which is measure of communicability) for covid is 2-3 (from what I've seen from China reports) so for a typical vaccine
That would mean 60-80% would need to be infected, (Valance says 60 & obviously he has the best data on it) but that will depend on how effective having had is at giving you immunity if you catch it again, especially if it's mutated a lot - flu jab has to be reformulated every year & doesn't always work same for everyone.
The other gamble is how the nhs copes, if mortality rate can be kept to 1% that's maybe 50,000 deaths, if it's 5% that's nearer 1/4 million deaths. Flu normally kills ~2000? every winter.
IF it's social modelling that's directing Johnson on when he should close schools etc, is a bit worrying, it was similar modelling that mispredicted people's reaction to a brexit vote.
Meanwhile cost to economy & people's finances, when we already have 2million children living in absolute poverty is **** scary
We sat here watching sars & mers & eebola, at a safe distance, honestly never thought it could happen to us
According to a virologist I was watching on German TV yesterday, he suggested that the immunization of infected people who survive the illness is only short lived ( a couple of weeks) and they can get infected again. If true would make the BoJo‘s plan even more insane.
Based on my risk profile I reckon I should be ok, as should my wife and son.
mother - less so sadly
If true would make the BoJo‘s plan even more insane.
There have been cases of what looks like re-infection, but might just be that the original infection was not really gone. Either way, this is exactly the kind of thing that needs to be investigated and understood before moving away from the containment stage. Slowing this thing down buys time to find out more… rather than risking some reckless natural herd immunity policy ignorant of how this virus is actually going about its business.
Several posters have mentioned school closures, when this happens I think it will hit home to alot of people including the 'im alright' brigade.
Under current guidelines approx 12 teachers will have to go into self isolation if one student is confirmed with covid 19, 2 sudenst is up to 24 teachers! Most small secondary schools wont cope with one case and the larger schools may manage three. The end of next week may well see a lot of schools closing followed by the knock on effect of childcare arrangements.
First case in our family by the way (tested positive). Not in our household though, thank…
On the basis most people are likely to catch it at some point would it make sense to go round now, rather than find out if you were one who needed medical attention in peak time April May? Just a thought.
See, that’s what this “herd immunity” line from the government has got people thinking. Jebus.
The other gamble is how the nhs copes, if mortality rate can be kept to 1% that’s maybe 50,000 deaths, if it’s 5% that’s nearer 1/4 million deaths. Flu normally kills ~2000? every winter.
It’s bigger but lower on a good year 🙂
Public Health England estimates that on average 17,000 people have died from the flu in England annually between 2014/15 and 2018/19. However, the yearly deaths vary widely¾from a high of 28,330 in 2014/15 to a low of 1,692 in 2018/19. Public Health England does not publish a mortality rate for the flu.
So out of the people who ticked enough boxes to warrant testing, only 3% even had the disease at all.
That's consistent with what we were told in work today, that 97% of those tested were found negative.
the closure of schools for perhaps a few weeks, but with skeleton staff kept on to provide childcare for key workers in the NHS and police.
Now that annoys me. There are far more essential workers beyond NHS and police, such as the rest of the emergency services, utilities and logistics.
I’ve been waiting for the sequel all my life 🙂
I was really happy at that ending watching it as a kid in the cinema as it looked like another flash film was going to be made.
Paywall lifted on that Telegraph page now.
We have a plan, based on the expertise of world-leading scientists. Herd immunity is not a part of it. That is a scientific concept, not a goal or a strategy. Our goal is to protect life from this virus, our strategy is to protect the most vulnerable and protect the NHS through contain, delay, research and mitigate.
My predictions based on cumulative data to date from ecdc. Will analyse again tomorrow.
Sadly nothing special about the U.K. yet. I hope we see a deviation from the expected trend. Downwards. The doubling today is in the prediction interval. Give it a week and see where we are then. I also used a model based on past cases, but we’ve stopped testing so those numbers won’t be helpful for future predictions.
So huge backtrack this weekend by Johnson on how this is being dealt with as posted up post about:
-Increased social distancing
-Requisition of hospital space
-Quarantine of elderly
-And just today the emergancy manufacture of additional ventilators
Has this REALLY just been decided this weekend??? What a f****** idiot.
So huge backtrack this weekend by Johnson
No we are being drip-fed to create appetite for the measures. We'll be locked down by next week I think.
Hmmm interesting obs Molgrips
Edit: no I dont accept this. I have worked on a few major organisational and behavioral change projects down the years and the successful ones were all based on honesty, good comms and getting everyone to feel part of the journey and supporting whats happening. Not seeing that here, and dont believe some of what I listed was even planned earlier. Otherwise it would have had more value to share them earlier.
Sure it's possible, I am only speculating. But I think that they haven't been open with us because of what they think our reaction would have been. They have to wait til we're ready to accept the measures.
It's just a waiting game for them, seeing how long they can delay making the unpopular decisions in the hope that the rest of the world sets the tone with draconian measures. We've reached that point.
Quick, but no doubt complicated, question
Ignoring the US, are most/all other countries following pretty much the same thought process and actions, and the UK is a massive outlier?
Maybe. What would have happened do you think if they'd just told us to lock everything down straight away for an indefinite period?
What would have happened do you think if they’d just told us to lock everything down straight away for an indefinite period
Million Dollar question.
How come other countries can do it?(ignoring china and how they enforce it)
Sweden's approach is pretty similar to ours according to a Swedish friend, her Norwegian partner said Norway is now a police state so little change there, according to him.
Social buy in. Either through compliance, trust or nature. We don't really have any of those attributes seen in other countries, as pointed out its not really working in France at the moment either.
Sweden’s approach is not like ours. PM calling for people not to travel abroad. Gatherings of more than 500 people banned.
Edit: pretty close to Scotland.
So now saying trying to get herd immunity no longer the plan?
Funnily enough torygraph journos still parroting it from when it was the government plan a few hours ago.
https://twitter.com/allisonpearson/status/1238580673147011072?s=20
The government really need to get their act together & communicate a lot better
So.. the UK has had a 3 month heads up on covid-19.
The best strategy we have is just let everyone get it.. oh except maybe the old people should stay inside now. In the next year Hundreds of thousands are going to die drowning in their sputum.
I have zero confidence in the current government to make the correct moral decisions rather than base their decision on money and the economy.
The best strategy we have is just let everyone get it.. oh except maybe the old people should stay inside now. In the next year Hundreds of thousands are going to die drowning in their sputum.
In the next year thousands are going to die from corona virus yes, some will drown in the extreame antibody reaction , some will have heart attacks, strokes, dementia , COPD , diabetes all potentially treatable but the hospitals will be full to overflowing ( not demntia thats unfixable ) and the virus will bring on , and make their conditons leathal
" No, the idea is to protect the vulnerable and let the low-risk get it and recover to create population immunity. Quarantining everyone raises many serious questions.
… which won’t work."
Well it did to some extent. It was after al the diseases Europeans were to some extent immune to that killed most of the original inhabitants of the Americas.
Though for Convid 19 we just don't know what immunity will be after one dose. As it is likely to spread throughout most of the population one way or the other (lockdowns work but a population without immunity will suffered repeated outbreaks) a strategy to get a herd immunity rate among the young and healthy seems worth trying.
Under current guidelines approx 12 teachers will have to go into self isolation if one student is confirmed with covid 19, 2 sudenst is up to 24 teachers!
If you dont test those with mild symptoms we won't need to isolate teachers.
As it is likely to spread throughout most of the population one way or the other (lockdowns work but a population without immunity will suffered repeated outbreaks) a strategy to get a herd immunity rate among the young and healthy seems worth trying.
The thing more terrifying than a global virus is how quickly this "herd immunity" bollocks has managed to spread.
Hey everyone, there's a new and largely unknown virus in town, why don't you all run out into the streets and play with it?!
Under current guidelines approx 12 teachers will have to go into self isolation if one student is confirmed with covid 19, 2 sudenst is up to 24 teachers!
What guidelines?
If you follow an entirely logic based argument, no-one's being tested now and so there are no confirmed cases, unless you need hospitalization at which point you're professionally isolated anyway.
Everyone else goes on symptoms; if you show them, you self-isolate for 7 days until they're gone. If they don't go, then you get advice and depending on severity continue to isolate or get taken in.
At this stage - and yes, advice is changing daily - even if one of my family is assumed to have caught it and goes into our isolation room (which we spent yesterday preparing, cleaning it all down and moving out associated detritus in there) I'm not reading that as everyone goes into lockdown. The rest of us keep isolating from them, wash hands, don't share utensils and so on, but I don't see anywhere that says we also isolate from the rest of society.
- it might not be Covid19
- we might not catch it if isolation works
- even if we do, the 'strategy' seems to rely on a bit of leakage here and there so that infections happen but on a flat sombrero model
- and if we do being out in the community for those few days before symptoms show don't necessarily mean we pass it on if we are socially distancing, washing hands, catch-and-binning sneezes and all that.
I admit the bit about not isolating because of assumed contact seems to be risky, but is it really or is it just because that's different to what others are doing. As a scientist myself, I'm watching the argument closely and with interest. I don't think Whitty and Vallance are yes men just doing what Cummings says, and they both have impressive credentials.
At this stage – and yes, advice is changing daily – even if one of my family is assumed to have caught it and goes into our isolation room (which we spent yesterday preparing, cleaning it all down and moving out associated detritus in there) I’m not reading that as everyone goes into lockdown.
If one of my household has to isolate due to symptoms we are all doing it, you approach may be the advice but it would seem like the wrong thing to do imo.
In the unlikely event that my parents agree to quarantine for 4 months, they'll have killed each other after 1!
The other gamble is how the nhs copes, if mortality rate can be kept to 1% that’s maybe 50,000 deaths, if it’s 5% that’s nearer 1/4 million deaths. Flu normally kills ~2000? every winter.
Sorry, your calcs are out by 10X. I assume you are basing on 50M being infected? If so...
1% = 500,000
5% = 2.5M
WHO say 5% need ventilating in ICU (2.5M). We have 4K ICU beds, 3k already occupied.
We would likely need 200k+ ICU beds to tackle this, so sadly the death rate will be 5%+ if they go for 40-50M infections.
Sorry, your calcs are out by 10X. I assume you are basing on 50M being infected? If so…
1% = 500,000
5% = 2.5M
Now I'm really depressed !
