…how would you play this out ?

What would be your strategy plan ?

Try and keep politics out of this ( if that’s possible!)

I’m intrigued to hear different views

From a country/society context or from my own personal context ?

Mass testing to find out how many have had the virus. Difficult to make a decision until you know the numbers.

Testing, so we can quarantine the sick
Isolate high risk groups for a bit longer
French style regional traffic light system
Transparent stats on hospital capacity (these may exist already)
Hang people buying more than one bag of flour a week in my area

Assuming I’m a maniacal dictator.

Build up herd immunity as quickly as possible, actively seek to infect people to get the virus over and done with, the quicker the better.

Accept that a million dead is the price of getting out ahead of the disease before anyone else.

Once herd immunity is established, invade France while they are all hiding in their homes.

At this stage. I’d resign after admitting that I’d made a complete mess of what I’d done so far.

At this stage. I’d resign

Political – reported

The thing is at the start..
– you don’t know if a vaccine is even possible (like the common cold for instance)
– you don’t know if reinfection is possible, so antibody tests might not be viable
– you don’t know if herd immunity is possible (with or without a vaccine)

So I would
– give vulnerable people a legal right to isolate by demanding working from home, or get government support otherwise, and making essentials available (foods medicine etc)

Thats it, everyone else can carry on. If they want to meet others and risk death, fine, thats what we did before lockdown with the millions of other things that could kill us.

We might just need to live with a greater risk of dying.

Agreed, sadly

Lock down and test test test. But is locking down just delaying the inevitable ? who knows, but err on the side of caution certainly.

Thats it, everyone else can carry on. If they want to meet others and risk death, fine, thats what we did before lockdown with the millions of other things that could kill us.

Agree but the issue is that they are not just risking themselves. If millions of people accepting the risk and just carried on as normal but then blew up hospital capacity they are putting others with others illnesses as risk due to lack of capacity to deal with them. The capacity is based around past scenarios and one illness such as this can throw all that out.

Now I am starting to understand how this country has **** it up so badly!!!

What we should have done is stolen Angela Merkles homework and copied it, what we do now is anyones guess.

I cannot see that this virus will just simply die out with time on account if, even if we are over the first peak other countries simply are not so there will always be the treat that the virus will still travel from country to country meaning that there will always be some level of infection present in the UK. A vaccine ultimately is the only way out of this.

Other countries that have seen their rate of infection and death fall and who have subsequently relaxed restrictions are now, in some cases, reporting increasing rates of infection again. Surely this is inevitable – if you ease restrictions the R can only go one way. it seems to me that the government is hoping to be able to proactively encourage and manage a second peak of infection, then a third, then a fourth and so on and so on until there is a vaccine. The number of persons in the UK affected is still such a small proportion of the overall population. I am beginning to see the sense of the herd immunity approach to this and I am beginning to suspect that this is what the government has in mind for us but is perhaps to afraid to publicly admit.

Assuming I have no interest in being re-elected i would have instigated a complete lockdown about a week prior to when BoZo did for 1 month, making it a strict as possible and being policed in a draconian manner by the military as well as police.
Then reduce lockdown to where we are now with strong track and trace measures. Develop an area segregated approach with roadblocks between areas to enable variable lockdown for regions.
Well organised quarentine for anyone entering country

have instigated a complete lockdown about a week prior to when BoZo did for 1 month, making it a strict as possible and being policed in a draconian manner by the military as well as police.

This approach would probably be popular on facebook!

However this only works when the county’s borders are totally sealed with no cross border movement at all or enforced 14 day quarantine / imprisonment for all travellers. Otherwise the first plane to land has Covid back in the population and you restart the month lockdown.

Effective testing, effective track and trace, then look at more schools and businesses opening, but accept greater risk of death pending a vaccine for the foreseeable.

And 14 days, or whatever the expert opinion is – quarantine for anyone coming into the country. No point trying to control it internally but letting it stroll in off the Eurostar or whatever.

Which actually is broadly what the government seems to think it’s plan is, but they wouldn’t be the party planners I’d want at my brewery.

Extensive testing and screening, the government are making it up as they go along because they have not enough data and don’t seem interested in what has worked in other countries. Making slogans and talking about being in this together was never going to be especially effective long term.

No point trying to control it internally but letting it stroll in off the Eurostar or whatever.

According to Radio 4 this morning, Oh no, you won’t need to be quarantined if coming from France. Or the Republic of Ireland. I bet by the time the full guidance is issued this afternoon, there will be a long list of exceptions. Truck drivers, pilots and flight crew doing freight, other European countries, diplomats, their families and staff……

My view would have been a more draconian lockdown, (not Lockdown Lite like we had) until proper test, track and trace is implemented.

Effective lock down about 10 days before Govt actually did, test as much as possible and keep on targeting testing as much as possible.  At the same time close borders as tightly as possible and quarantine passengers.

A bit like New Zealand did in fact.

Interesting read on what happens next

Just to point out the thread is about going forward from here, not what we would have done in March

Ban aviation

People have to be employed within 30 miles of their home

People must do one form of exercise everyday.

Ban all unnecessary travel by car

Using the info from HERE, I’d research a vaccine.

And that’s it

Flu has a death rate of 23 per 100,000 cases

C-19 (by my rough maths using the above data) has a death rate of around 15 per 100.000 cases

C-19 cases are probably hugely under estimated, due to some people having very mild symptoms and not getting reported. Thus reducing what the death rate actually is

From now, I’d ease lockdown on a 2 or 3 weekly basis and aim to be back to normal by September.
There will be huge investment in transport infrastructure to increase capacity for both road, rail and cycling.
Schools will go back and parents will be heavily punished for keeping kids out of school.
Businesses will en encouraged to keep some WFH and flex in working hours.
The elderly will be encouraged to stay isolated but this will not be enforced, it’ll be their decision to make.
There’s no science in this, like a few above I think that we are going to have to live with this virus and accept it’s not going anywhere. But I also think if you just lift everything tomorrow you’ll have too many difficult questions to answer, so you do it gradually and pretend you’re following the science.
If you leave restrictions in place to much longer we have to accept that the economy is stuffed and that you’ll lose a huge amount of people from other illnesses and health problems.

From where we were yesterday, the main thing was to cut the number of infections. Not the R number, that’s just how you achieve the reduction- we needed to get it well and reliably under one. And then, we needed for that to take effect, bringing the infected population down over time to the point where it was more managable.

The thing about the UK compared to, say, Germany is that while we’d beaten the exponential curve, we’d done so with a much higher incidence of the disease. That means with the same R number, more people get infected, hospitals get more stressed, more people die. That’s what our current step should be, to fix that. The current level of new cases isn’t sustainable- it’s just about managable, because of lockdown and because of the retooling of the NHS to deal with it. But that can’t continue for long at all, it needs to be much lower.

SO basically, we should be doubling down, for … a while. IIRC it works out more or less like for each 3 days of mishandling at the start we need to add an extra week on the end, and we’re more or less at that point.

People talk about economics but the way to sort out the economy, is to manage the disease. Only by reducing incidence and transmission a long way can we be in a place where a normal economy can function. Trying to restart it where we are now will fail- hospitals will be overrun again, deaths will rise again, and everything will have to shut down again, for weeks or months again.

What’s best for the economy is what’s best for the people because it’s the people that make the economy go. Basically that simple. The late lockdown has proven beyond doubt to be more expensive than an early one. Early relaxing will too.

C-19 (by my rough maths using the above data) has a death rate of around 15 per 100.000 cases

Please show your working out…

Your link states 4.1m cases and 282k deaths. That’s coming out at about 6,800 deaths per 100,000 cases.

We know that cases reported doesn’t equal total actual cases. But your figure of mortality @ ~0.015% would mean the true case number is ~500 fold bigger than recorded.

I’m not sure what you mean by “Plays Out” But I’ll assume you mean short-term “how we get out of this current mess” and, longer term “how society is affected”…

In the short term, by which I mean ~18 months, I’d like to see a minimal number of deaths occur R=/<0.01 and dropping and a vaccine either available or in the final stages of testing.

Longer term for the UK I would like to see a re-evaluation of our national priorities, ideally resulting in a move away from consumer driven, acquisitive capitalism, constantly pushing everyone to be productive little economic units. I’d like us to place a greater emphasis put on quality of life for all, reducing the various gaps in opportunity/attainment between different groups, ensuring everyone has the free time and opportunities to appreciate family, friends and personal passions, while of course reducing our overall environmental impact.
I’d love to see the UK no longer measuring the success of the country by GDP, but by citizens mental health, physical wellbeing and the quality of the air we breath.
Not sure you can do that without “Getting Political” TBH, especially as the status quo seems quite well defended by right-wing, libertarian types, and hippy crap like I just spouted above tends to get shouted down…

For the wider world? I’d like to see organisations like WHO given more resources and wider ranging, international powers, to give them a better chance when dealing with the next pandemic…

Eyes wide open when it kicked off in China.
Uk air and sea borders closed as soon as it kicked off in Europe.
Immediate Uk lockdown at that time.
Mass testing of full population or as close as
Possible.
Isolate positives plus contacts in secure locations.
Keep monitoring and testing until we know exactly where it is.

When cases are low enough and we know exactly where they are start lifting domestic restrictions and keep monitoring.

It’s nature curbing a vastly overpopulated species, let it take its course.

Most of those dying have had their lives artificially extended through health care and the human race’s desire to preserve all human life for as long as possible.

How many those getting excited about this virus have been bothered about the extinction of other species which we’ve been causing?

 A vaccine ultimately is the only way out of this.

Theres a lot of assumptions from a lot of people that this’ll happen.

There is no guarantee there will be a vaccine, ever. Look at the SARS outbreak as an example…

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/sars/

What would I do right now? Hard one as so much to balance as Covid isnt the only killer out there.

You try and starve out the infection, that’ll need prolonged 100% lockdown but we’ll kill each other before that happens or die of other things.

You try and starve out the infection, that’ll need prolonged 100% lockdown but we’ll kill each other before that happens or die of other things.

Absolutely this.
We have to accept this thing isn’t going anywhere and that we need to learn to live with it.
I think those saying that we have to wait for the r number to be very low or there to be no more cases or there to be a vaccine are being very ambitious or very naive.
Unless we want to live with closed borders and huge restrictions of movement indefinitely then we’re going to have to deal with some degree of risk.

Please show your working out…

Your link states 4.1m cases and 282k deaths. That’s coming out at about 6,800 deaths per 100,000 cases.

We know that cases reported doesn’t equal total actual cases. But your figure of mortality @ ~0.015% would mean the true case number is ~500 fold bigger than recorded.

You’re right. I can’t, for the life of me, remember how I got those figures. I do remember doing the sums several times, for both C-19 and the Flu, to make sure they worked out OK…….. and they did…….. and now they don’t. I’m as confused as you.

I’ll put it down to  a brain fart for now

Unless we want to live with closed borders and huge restrictions of movement indefinitely then we’re going to have to deal with some degree of risk.

This. Either be very poor with most of the population partially locked down or live with it. The additional risk from Covid is just another dose of the annual risk we all live with. Hopefully decreasing as there is partial or full immunity after infection. The only justification for lockdown is to stop ICU beds being overwhelmed. Job Done. Bar a vaccine, Covid is here to stay. Have we eliminated flu or the common cold? Get the UK Covid free and it will come back from elsewhere.

So, roughly speaking, we might say that getting COVID-19 is like packing a year’s worth of risk into a week or two. Which is why it’s important to spread out the infections to avoid the NHS being overwhelmed.

https://medium.com/wintoncentre/how-much-normal-risk-does-covid-represent-4539118e1196

You try and starve out the infection, that’ll need prolonged 100% lockdown but we’ll kill each other before that happens or die of other things.

Agreed.

I wrote a fairly massive version of ‘my plan’ but I couldn’t do it, I just don’t know.

We just don’t know enough about the virus, on the face of it we’ve got 200k ish confirmed cases in the UK, but we don’t really know how many people have had it and just never got ill. They conservatively think it’s 80%, but it’s probably higher.

IF we’ve got 2m people with it in the UK at the moment That’s a number I’ve read based on our low level of testing and high level of public health) which is a big IF and IF we have an ‘R’ rate of .6 which is a bigger IF and infection time is about 3 weeks, then by the end of October we’ll be down to 4k cases or so, which might be low enough (coupled with near 5m people who’ve either had it and recovered or died) to stop it, but that’s only about 7% of the population. We’d have 65m potential hosts left for it to spread. They say you need at least 80% of the population to achieve herd immunity.

If I’m nearly half right then there seems little point in carrying on with current lock-down rules until it’s eradicated, it would take a year at a guess and we’d only be in the same situation as NZ, no where near herd immunity and facing closing borders indefinitely until there’s a vaccine.

I don’t think there’s a single solution to this, there’s no point carrying on with the current lock-down rules, hence the loosening them in England, there’s a reason why they’re allowing exercise as well as work, a fit Cardiovascular system is a good defence. We’ve got 10k beds ready in the various Nightingale / Dragon Heart centres, I think we have to learn to accept that most of us are going to have to take our turn with COVID. Let’s hope the 80% symptom free number is really might higher.

Get loads of testing up and running. Ideally aim for some sort of mail order testing. Map results.

Quick testing at ports and airports. Can it be done in 3hr? A 3 hour delay would be ok for many.

Buy loads of ventilators, PPE etc.

Train up non nursing healthcare professionals to operate ventilators to (the type bought obviously). A quick specialist course. Have nurses oversee n of these staff allowing them to effectively multiple how many in patients in they can deal with. This is to cope with the spike that will follow. Bonus scheme for workers.

Any worthwhile business should have been thinking how can they carry on operating with the virus not just waiting it out. We have to come up with ways of living with the virus.

People back to work and school if you can’t WFH. Social distancing to be enforced or PPE and in consistent teams where not possible (I.e. not rotating staff through different teams, small circle etc). Regular testing for those not able to social distance.

Pub, restaurants open with reduced capacity, screened of tables, maybe waiter only or electronic ordering of drinks and you go to bar when ready. Max group size of 4.

Recommended at risk groups to stay isolated but their choice. Offer weekly testing for vulnerable.

All on a timeline, not tomorrow.

There are only two things to do from here, and apologies but they’re both a little political (and have little to do with the disease itself).

1) Fix it so that everyone is financially capable of making the right decision for their health. There are too many people who can’t do the right thing because they’ll starve or be evicted.

2) Learn as much as we can about the spread of the disease so we can do better when SARS4 or Covid-2n arrive. We’re all carrying geolocation beacons round with us 24:7. With a little enrichment about what we’re doing (masks, religiously hand-washing) it shouldn’t be too difficult to work out what actions have the worst transmissions.

I’m in Sweden and they started with ‘what evidence do we have that X will make a difference’. For the next time they’ll know that elderly care needs to be treated properly and that going outside makes not a stuff of a difference. There’s still time to learn an awful lot about Covid-19 transmission and control.

Lastly, make it clear that you won’t put the blame on the public after your strategy goes to shit. Fast forward a month and I can already hear someone making a ministerial statement that people weren’t Alert enough.

Fix it so that everyone is financially capable of making the right decision for their health

That’s a much bigger thing than just Corona virus.

Larry_Lamb
Member

You try and starve out the infection, that’ll need prolonged 100% lockdown but we’ll kill each other before that happens or die of other things.

Yup. But every day of lockdown now, reduces that risk. Again the difference between the R number, and the amount of infected population. For us, the latter is still pretty damn big, and getting it down gets all of the consequences down.

At its simplest, if we have 10000 infected people and the rate doubles, we can deal with that. If we have 20000, maybe we can’t. But the things that cause the doubling are the same, it’s just that the consequences are far worse.

The obvious plan to keep everyone happy would be to put together a team of experienced scientists to help lead decision, I would then stick’em on tellybox regularly to talk openly and honestly about death and the complexity of a pandemic.