UKC

It'll all be over by Chrstmas

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 TMM 17 Jul 2020

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53441912

Politicians have a habit of reassuring us that this minor level of unpleasantness will be over by Christmas. History informs us that is not always the case.

Seeing the visage of our heroic leader and the BBC headline 'Coronavirus: Boris Johnson sets out plan for 'significant normality' by Christmas' I misread it as 'significant mortality by Christmas'.

Post edited at 15:27
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 wintertree 17 Jul 2020
In reply to TMM:

If I was cynical I’d be wondering why the weekly “Surveillance Report” from PHE, which should have come out yesterday afternoon, still hasn’t been published...  Watch this space:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-covid-19-surveillance-r...

3
 compost 17 Jul 2020
In reply to TMM:

Did he say which Christmas?

He's creating wriggle room!

2
 JoshOvki 17 Jul 2020
In reply to TMM:

> Responding to comments from the Prime Minister earlier this morning, Mr Drakeford said you would have to "take a pretty sunny view of circumstances" to think that people may be reunited in time for Christmas and life will return to normal over the winter.

> He said the recent report from the Academy of Royal Colleges says the UK could face a worse experience in the winter than it did in the spring.

> He said while we are able to, we will go on unlocking lockdown measures in Wales and return us to something that looks a bit more like before the virus hit.

> But in the depths of winter, he said, "you have to take a pretty optimistic view of the advice we have had" to think that Boris Johnson's plan is "a realistic proposition".


Welsh government don't seem to agree

 Toerag 17 Jul 2020
In reply to TMM:

Looks like the 'opening of the pubs' is starting to kick in in the stats now. Bottom row is yesterday, top row 1st July. Live cases is that day's minus the number 14 days previously, so not completely accurate but a good approximation.

Post edited at 16:14

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 bouldery bits 17 Jul 2020
In reply to TMM:

Significantly normality???

Things haven't been 'normal' since '94

1
 Bacon Butty 17 Jul 2020
In reply to Toerag:

If you say so!
I notice that there have been no spikes from the various recent marches and half a million people packing out Dorset.

 ClimberEd 17 Jul 2020
In reply to JoshOvki:

> > Responding to comments from the Prime Minister earlier this morning, Mr Drakeford said you would have to "take a pretty sunny view of circumstances" to think that people may be reunited in time for Christmas and life will return to normal over the winter.

> Welsh government don't seem to agree

UK government has a vested interest in keeping the country positive and optimistic.

Devolved Welsh and Scottish governments have a vested interest in taking a different tack to the UK government, whatever that may be.

So not surprising or insightful really. 

17
 wintertree 17 Jul 2020
In reply to wintertree:

The report is out - delayed by 24 hours; things are still decreasing but the asymptote (final end state) really doesn’t look like 0 cases per week...

The London seroprevalence data is updated...  For the third time in a row the antibody prevalence has decreased; the statistical significance of this decrease is starting to come through.  So much for infection induced, antibody based herd immunity?

Post edited at 17:59

 Blunderbuss 17 Jul 2020
In reply to TMM:

Vallance and Whitty have basically said Boris is talking out of his arse during a meeting with a HoL select Committee this afternoon....no surprises there then. 

2
 jkarran 17 Jul 2020
In reply to wintertree:

That chart is pretty interesting if the methodology is solid detectable antibodies really don't stick around long! Wonder whether it actually matters?

Jk

1
 wercat 17 Jul 2020
In reply to TMM:

perhaps he is telling some of us that we will be in a 6 foot trench by Christmas. 

1
In reply to ClimberEd:

> UK government has a vested interest in keeping the country positive and optimistic.

> Devolved Welsh and Scottish governments have a vested interest in taking a different tack to the UK government, whatever that may be.

> So not surprising or insightful really. 

Everybody has a vested interest in not catching Covid.

Scotland has no deaths most days and single figure numbers of new cases most days.

England has several hundred new cases per day, far more than the difference in population would explain.

The way to get back to normal safely is to have near zero cases.  Johnson's policy of rushing just means everything will take longer and more people will get ill.  And it will make it harder for the devolved governments because of continual re-seeding of infections from England.  He is following Trump's playbook and it is stupid and irresponsible.

20
 ClimberEd 17 Jul 2020
In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

> Everybody has a vested interest in not catching Covid.

Individually.

But, as a population, you have to balance the measures to prevent virus spread with the impact of those measures, and action is not nearly as clear cut as the 'no deaths' brigade seem to think it is.

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 wintertree 17 Jul 2020
In reply to ClimberEd:

> and action is not nearly as clear cut as the 'no deaths' brigade seem to think it is.

And who would that brigade be?

I haven’t seen anyone arguing for action sufficient for “no deaths”.   A lot of people - me included - wanted swifter action so we wouldn’t end up with the worst per-capita deaths in the world and an otherwise unnecessarily long lockdown.  But nobody I have seen has ever argued that we should have aimed for zero deaths.  That would be clearly almost impossible and very societally destructive in terms of lockdown severity.  What many of us wanted was for lockdown to start 2-3 weeks earlier which could have saved perhaps 70% of the deaths and has us out of lockdown in half the time.

9
 Hat Dude 17 Jul 2020
In reply to ClimberEd:

> Individually.

> But, as a population, you have to balance the measures to prevent virus spread with the impact of those measures, and action is not nearly as clear cut as the 'no deaths' brigade seem to think it is.

And if you get it, remember you're just balancing things!

 Blunderbuss 17 Jul 2020
In reply to wintertree:

You think we should have locked down 1 week before Italy did? Certainly a week earlier but only using hindsight can an argument for 3 weeks be made... 

2
 wintertree 17 Jul 2020
In reply to Blunderbuss:

> You think we should have locked down 1 week before Italy did? Certainly a week earlier but only using hindsight can an argument for 3 weeks be made... 

My employer cancelled all face to face contact with 15,000 students 10 days before lockdown and others in almost unaffected parts of the USA did so another week before that.   I said “2-3 weeks before Italy” and 2 weeks is by no means hindsight.  Especially not for the people who were pushing for it at that point.  At that point we had community transmission and clear evidence of transmission by individuals not presenting symptoms. There is absolutely no benefit to delaying the slamming on of brakes and implementing appropriate risk control measures.  It just means everything is that much worse when you do and that it takes that much longer to unwind back to “safe” levels.  

Then again if we’d implemented a travel ban on non-residents and quarantine and testing on residents as well as pre-emptive scaling testing capability and ordering PPE from early January we might not have needed lockdown at all.  Particularly galling that the government apparently have all this planning in great detail in their Cygnus report, which they chose to bury as it showed how unprepared they were to do it.  3 years before covid-19.  Now there’s hindsight!

We already had the benefit of hindsight over a mouthy before Italy locked down - we’d seen what happened in a well developed part of China.  Then we saw it happening in northern Italy and still plodded on assuming it would be different for us; there was some mention of “genetics” on this forum...  No, no different.  Hindsight not required.

Post edited at 20:47
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 Blunderbuss 17 Jul 2020
In reply to wintertree:

You said 2-3 weeks earlier....3 weeks earlier would have been 1 week before Italy.

I don't remember anyone calling for a lockdown that early....were you honestly at the time?

 Siward 17 Jul 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Door. Horse. Bolted. Irrelevant now. Do we shut down the economy long term to save,, let's face it, a small number of excess deaths or get back to normal?

What do we do when next pandemic strikes in a couple or three years time? Same again? There won't be an NHS left.

7
 Blunderbuss 17 Jul 2020
In reply to Siward:

It's not that simple is it, do you think if we let the virus get out of control again by going back to 'normal' too soon do you think the economy will grow? 

1
 wintertree 17 Jul 2020
In reply to Blunderbuss:

> You said 2-3 weeks earlier....3 weeks earlier would have been 1 week before Italy.

Italy was not hit uniformly; the northern areas that were strongly affected first started localised lockdowns on the 21st of February, which was about 4.5 weeks before we went in to lockdown.  So there was plenty of foresight long the period you are referring to.  

> I don't remember anyone calling for a lockdown that early....were you honestly at the time?

As I wrote on 6th March well after northern Italy went in to lockdown "What's special about us in the UK?  What is different?  What means we won't end up where Italy is now, and beyond?"  I went to extensive effort to make the case that unless we prepared we would end up as bad or likely worse than Northern Italy, where affected regions had already been in lockdown for 2 weeks.   There were many different ways we could have prepared, lockdown was an obvious one, there were others.  Various posters on the thread were anticipating lockdown within days.  At the start of March I was lobbying my employer to cancel all face-to-face contact with the student body as this was already recognised as a high risk group and physical environment t for transmission from individuals without symptoms.  Sufficient people did this with sufficient clarity that they cancelled all contact with the student body about 10 days before lockdown.  We were far from alone in the sector.

Post edited at 21:05
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 Blunderbuss 17 Jul 2020
In reply to wintertree:

National lockdown in Italy was the 9th March, if you were directly calling for a national UK lockdown before then....then fair play.....I heard no one calling for this at the time. 

 wintertree 17 Jul 2020
In reply to Siward:

> Door. Horse. Bolted. Irrelevant now.

Not really, because ... https://xkcd.com/386/

> What do we do when next pandemic strikes in a couple or three years time? Same again?

Hopefully: we have a PPE stockpile before the next pandemic emerges (see: Cygnus*), we  slam the doors on as much inbound travel as possible as soon as it emerges and quarantine the rest (see the recent study on the ~ 1,500 Covid importation events into the UK mainly from Europe), we ramp up testing as soon as the virus emerges in anticipation of needing to test inbound travellers and do contact tracing, we sort PHE out so that it can support local authorities in test-and-trace integrated with the health system not run by some random non-medical contractor, and don't have a baboon of a PM telling people he went round shaking hands in an infected hospital but rather messaging about things that will help, and we do a whole raft of other things it turns out we knew we'd have to do all along (see: Cynus*)

> There won't be an NHS left.

A point still missed by many; the main reason for the lockdown was not to save the lives of those vulnerable to the coronavirus but to prevent the functional collapse of the NHS; something that remains a concern as we go in to this winter.

* - well, we can't see the Cygnus report because the spineless scroats buried it.  

4
 wintertree 17 Jul 2020
In reply to Blunderbuss:

> National lockdown in Italy was the 9th March, if you were directly calling for a national UK lockdown before then....then fair play.....I heard no one calling for this at the time. 

There were several people on record on UKC on March 6th to 8th anticipating lockdown imminently, and I was making the case for a lot more preparation with the obvious connotation that we were going to end up in the same situation as Italy immensely otherwise.  Our household was ready for lockdown/isolation from the start of March and we had kids out of daycare about 1.5 weeks before lockdown - difficult as we were still expected to engage fully with our employment.  I'd have been happy not to see lockdown but to see expanded test and trace, much more aggressive distancing and so on.    Well, on the bright side, we got there in the end.

Edit: Quote from myself on March 7th "Which, when you follow it to its logical conclusion, says to me that we should shut our schools, airports, universities, football matches and so on right now to slow the inevitable as every day gained is more intensive care beds free and a slower growth rate.".  At that point it felt inevitable because it had been publicly announced that we'd inexplicably abandoned contact tracing and local transmission was established - so enough cases were "locked in" to cause merry hell.

Post edited at 21:32
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In reply to Blunderbuss:

> National lockdown in Italy was the 9th March, if you were directly calling for a national UK lockdown before then....then fair play.....I heard no one calling for this at the time. 

Certainly by 11 March they were. And a number of care homes voluntarily locked down on or around that day. As with many habitual liars, Johnson shot himself in the foot when he later claimed untruthfully that he'd ordered a lockdown for care homes on March 13, ahead of the main lockdown (when the reverse was true.). But if he thought it serious enough to have a lockdown on March 13 why did he do NOTHING for an inexplicable, inexcusable 10 further days? The general verdict now seems to be that 11 absolutely critical days were lost causing 1000s of avoidable deaths.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/15/uk-government-coronav...

Post edited at 21:25
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 Blunderbuss 17 Jul 2020
In reply to wintertree:

With respect what you proposed on the 7th March is not a lockdown....it is a series of mitigation measures to reduce the R0 but they wouldn't have suppressed the virus enough to stop exponential growth.

Anyhow I'll take you word that people on here were calling for an immediate national lockdown before even Italy had introduced this....i just didn't hear this sentiment anywhere else. 

9
 toad 17 Jul 2020
In reply to TMM:

Dear god, it's all gone Blackadder 

 wintertree 17 Jul 2020
In reply to Blunderbuss:

> With respect what you proposed on the 7th March is not a lockdown....it is a series of mitigation measures to reduce the R0 but they wouldn't have suppressed the virus enough to stop exponential growth.

Lockdown is a series of mitigation measures; my “and so on” was a bit of a catch all as well.  If we’d acted at that point to that level I wanted we perhaps wouldn’t have needed a more full on lock down - or we would at least have had some evidence to judge what level was necessary to hit R<1; we left it so late no nuance was possible.  Most of the deaths that forced us into lockdown would have been infections that happened around the time of my post.

I could have gone in to more exhaustive detail in my first post on this thread but then I tend to get called a long winded bore who is verbose to excess.

> Anyhow I'll take you word that people on here were calling for an immediate national lockdown before even Italy had introduced this....i just didn't hear this sentiment anywhere else. 

You’ll find multiple posters calling for far more up to anticipating lockdown imminently on March 7th/8th if you trawl through the UKC archives.  

1
 Blunderbuss 17 Jul 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I have better things to do than trawl UKC archives! Like I said I'll take your word for it...but I'll repeat I didn't hear calls for it anywhere else. 

13
 wintertree 17 Jul 2020
In reply to Blunderbuss:

> I have better things to do than trawl UKC archives!

You know you want to...  

>  Like I said I'll take your word for it...but I'll repeat I didn't hear calls for it anywhere else. 

Further proof UKC should have an advisory board?  I had several work colleagues who were doing household isolation as much as possible from the start of March and who were increasingly agog at the unfolding inaction during March.  General public opinion at the time was very skewed towards “what’s the problem” though.  The joke about Michael barymoor’s swimming pool being as lethal was doing the rounds at the time...

2
 ClimberEd 17 Jul 2020
In reply to Hat Dude:

> And if you get it, remember you're just balancing things!

I've had it. Partner's grandfather died of it. 

I'm very aware of its impact. 

 neilh 18 Jul 2020
In reply to wintertree:

You and I have disagreed on this before. Those weeks where we did not lockdown were used by the NHS to prepare for the lockdown imho. They were spent  reconfiguring the nhs so that it was not overwhelmed.It took them about 2 weeks to do this. This included rewriting medical protocols , retraining of staff, switching theatres to being Covid proof.I was having an urgent cancer operation a few days before lockdown , and the consultant explained this to me, and I also witnessed it.

Yes they could have locked down earlier,but they would not have been so well organised, and as we know the NHS was not overwhelmed..

It also meant that me thousands like me got their urgent operations done.

So whilst I understand what you are saying, I think it fails to recognise that those “ earlier “ weeks were used to adjust the NHS.

So a comparison between your Uni and the NHS actions for example does not really stack up.Getting the NHS right was far more critical.

15
 john arran 18 Jul 2020
In reply to neilh:

That doesn't make a lot of sense. If the NHS and patients had really been the overriding concern, what would have been the problem with locking down everybody except critical workers, NHS contractor and scheduled patients? Not quite as effective, virus-wise, as a fuller lockdown but surely much better than the no lockdown we actually got. And the NHS would have been just as well prepared.

It clearly wasn't the overriding concern because at the time the government talk was largely about herd immunity and limiting economic damage. That went well.

2
 Blunderbuss 18 Jul 2020
In reply to neilh:

Your argument makes no sense, we still had to deal with all the covid patients in the time before lockdown....lockdown basically meant introducing strict social distancing, it didn't mean the NHS had to immediately flip to COVID mode, preparations could still continue.....the longer we left it the greater the impact on the NHS and the more resource had to be devoted to COVID at the expense of other treatments. 

2
 wintertree 18 Jul 2020
In reply to neilh:

I get what you’re saying and I agree that those two weeks were used.  But, but, but...

But, if we’d locked down earlier, there would have been far fewer cases and so the NHS wouldn’t have needed such a dramatic reorganisation.  As much was said in early March.  Fewer (but different) urgent operations might have been cancelled as the NHS wouldn’t have been taken so close to the brink, nor would it have had so many covid patients to treat - so it would have gone back to normal much sooner.

If we had stopped all leisure events and non-resident travel some weeks before March 23rd we would have had fewer cases, fewer deaths and a shorter lockdown.  You might have had your operation postponed which undoubtedly sucks for you, but the net sum of people with disrupted operations would be lower.

Post edited at 07:32
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 LeeWood 18 Jul 2020
In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

> England has several hundred new cases per day, far more than the difference in population would explain.

As per The Pub thread on PHE data:

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/why-no-one-can-ever-recover-from-covid-19-in-...

 neilh 18 Jul 2020
In reply to wintertree:

The priority , naturally was the NHS, if that had failed and been overwhelmed then the death figures would have been far higher. 

Those weeks without the lockdown gave the Gov and the NHS a very valuable breathing space  to get their act together. 

In these type of crises big organisations  and structures need time as it is a very valuable  commodity. 

10
 wintertree 18 Jul 2020
In reply to neilh:

> Those weeks without the lockdown gave the Gov and the NHS a very valuable breathing space  to get their act together. 

> In these type of crises big organisations  and structures need time as it is a very valuable  commodity. 

Sports, universities, schools, nightclubs, non-resident leisure travel - all these could have been shut (excepting schools to key workers) weeks before lockdown without disrupting the NHS or taking away its reorganisation time.  Other businesses could have been put on notice to prepare for lockdown back in February when it became obvious that level of response was needed *if* we let the virus get out of control.  However had we started a mass wave of closures in early March, the number of cases could have been so much lower that the NHS wouldn’t have to have done such a rushed mass reorganisation, and wouldn’t have had to forcibly discharge many people back in to care homes; the action that seems to have driven a lot of the death in the UK as the discharged weren’t routinely tested for the virus...

The cases were a result of our actions, not some immovable object fixed at a point in time.

1
 Siward 18 Jul 2020
In reply to wintertree:

The future. Looking back to March is interesting (perhaps), but irrelevant now.

Lockdown is set to continue (certainly in the sense that work and economic activity will continue to be severely disrupted) or be re-imposed following the second wave that must inevitably occur given the precicted relaxations.

There is a balance to be struck between closing down the economy and following a 'counsel of perfection' course that takes account ONLY of the dangers of Covid and ignores the repercussions such a policy has.

Millions are without work, livelihoods are going down the drain, tax revenue is plummeting. The young will pay for all this in the long term. All very well if one is being paid and/or is wealthy but very real otherwise.

I just don't think a recurring lockdown every 5 years, or however frequently a new pandemic comes along (probably very, given human incursions into what's left of the natural world), is a realistic prospect. We need a new model.

1
 wintertree 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Siward:

> The future. Looking back to March is interesting (perhaps), but irrelevant now.

Its highly relevant to the future, because we need to learn from every single mistake made in January, February and March so that the next virus that you fear doesn’t turn into a total shitshow.

> I just don't think a recurring lockdown every 5 years, or however frequently a new pandemic comes along (probably very, given human incursions into what's left of the natural world), is a realistic prospect. We need a new model.

We know the new model - rapid testing, effective contact tracing, appropriate risk control measures, selective local lockdown, quarantine and test on all inbound travellers.  We knew all this before covid hit but were caught with our pants down.  The government need to publish the results of Cygnus so that we know exactly how much of their planning they failed to do - or worse acted agains - in the first 3 months of 2020, then we need to make sure they are held to account so that future governments think twice before deciding to ignore the playbook and wing it during the emerging phases of a pandemic.

This lesson needs to be learnt fast as the winter respiratory disease season is coming and there’s a good chance it’ll bring a rebound in covid cases and more lockdown with it - unless we can eliminate it from local transmission by September/October which looks increasingly unlikely 

1
 Siward 18 Jul 2020
In reply to wintertree:

We SHOULD have a benefit in being an island (cf. New Zealand) but people are so wedded to flying and unrestricted travel that governments-- of all stripes I think - will always be slow to react. One can hope. 

1
 wintertree 18 Jul 2020
In reply to jkarran:

> That chart is pretty interesting if the methodology is solid detectable antibodies really don't stick around long! Wonder whether it actually matters?

You wouldn’t be the only person to wonder about their methodology. Still we have to consider what data we can get, and this is one of the few relatively hard sources of data.

Some of UKC’s resident biologists/former immunologists have commented that antibody immunity is likely not a major source of defence, and the “failure” rate of antibody tests has long pointed to many people not developing antibodies.

A good article just came out on Ars summarising a fascinating paper on exposure induced T-cell immunity - https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/beyond-antib... - These specialise to protein fragments not whole proteins; both SARS and some currently unknown pathogen have given some people T-cell immunity against covid.  Which suggests a T-cell targeted vaccine is possible...

 Blunderbuss 18 Jul 2020
In reply to neilh:

> The priority , naturally was the NHS, if that had failed and been overwhelmed then the death figures would have been far higher. 

> Those weeks without the lockdown gave the Gov and the NHS a very valuable breathing space  to get their act together. 

> In these type of crises big organisations  and structures need time as it is a very valuable  commodity. 

How would locking down a week or two earlier have stopped the NHS preparing for an increase in Covid patients, which would have been much reduced? I must be missing something here because I don't see how a lock stops this happening. 

 abr1966 18 Jul 2020
In reply to neilh:

> You and I have disagreed on this before. Those weeks where we did not lockdown were used by the NHS to prepare for the lockdown imho. They were spent  reconfiguring the nhs so that it was not overwhelmed.It took them about 2 weeks to do this. 

Not sure about that....if it was the case where you were treated that sounds very efficient (hope your op and outcome is ok) but I think it wasn't like that everywhere.....

The NHS Trust where I work organised an emergency covid management group, a control room and supplies dept. were very busy trying to procure PPE....which we got hold of in decent volume a few weeks in to lockdown. Most of the pre lockdown period we were waiting guidance from the dept.of health which was scarce to say the least. Luckily we had modelled this kind of thing as part of our civil contingency plans but frankly for a lot of it we were making daily reactive decisions about keeping the wards staffed and arranging other community based staff as backup. I think we have protected staff well overall but in saying all that it's a Trust with no A&E so we weren't receiving acute cases......we converted 2 wards in to overspill wards from the local much larger acute trust. I was part of the group.....we have learned a lot as we've gone on but initially we were stabbing in the dark pretty much.

 Blunderbuss 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Siward:

> The future. Looking back to March is interesting (perhaps), but irrelevant now.

> Lockdown is set to continue (certainly in the sense that work and economic activity will continue to be severely disrupted) or be re-imposed following the second wave that must inevitably occur given the precicted relaxations.

> There is a balance to be struck between closing down the economy and following a 'counsel of perfection' course that takes account ONLY of the dangers of Covid and ignores the repercussions such a policy has.

> Millions are without work, livelihoods are going down the drain, tax revenue is plummeting. The young will pay for all this in the long term. All very well if one is being paid and/or is wealthy but very real otherwise.

> I just don't think a recurring lockdown every 5 years, or however frequently a new pandemic comes along (probably very, given human incursions into what's left of the natural world), is a realistic prospect. We need a new model.

The only good thing to come out of this whole debacle is that we will never let any future pandemic get out of control like it did in March, the fact we had an estimated 1.5m infections and completely inadequate testing capacity by the time we locked down is what screwed us.....we learnt a very harsh lesson that won't be repeated. 

Post edited at 09:17
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 groovejunkie 18 Jul 2020
In reply to john arran:

> That doesn't make a lot of sense. If the NHS and patients had really been the overriding concern, what would have been the problem with locking down everybody except critical workers, NHS contractor and scheduled patients? Not quite as effective, virus-wise, as a fuller lockdown but surely much better than the no lockdown we actually got. And the NHS would have been just as well prepared.

> It clearly wasn't the overriding concern because at the time the government talk was largely about herd immunity and limiting economic damage. That went well.

I agree, as the Govt and the NHS don't close during a lockdown anyway they could have got their act together while the rest of the country locked down and stamped on the spread of the virus (and saved at least 10 000 lives if Dr Ferguson is to be believed). 

1
 groovejunkie 18 Jul 2020
In reply to neilh:

> Yes they could have locked down earlier,but they would not have been so well organised, and as we know the NHS was not overwhelmed..

> It also meant that me thousands like me got their urgent operations done.

I don't understand this at all, if society at large had locked down earlier wouldn't this have given the NHS even more breathing space to get it's act together? The NHS and the key workers around it (suppliers/delivery etc) all worked throughout the lockdown anyway. They could have carried on doing the urgent operations (and I am sincerely pleased yours happened) and had we locked down earlier you could also argue there would have been less strain on the hospitals due to Covid and even less urgent operations/cancer treatments etc would have been subsequently cancelled. 

If we'd locked down harder and earlier we would have unlocked much earlier as well (even less cancelled operations). I think our difference of opinion is that you think "Matty" and the gang are doing a good job and I think they are talentless charlatans. 

1
 Bob Kemp 18 Jul 2020
In reply to TMM:

Marina Hyde in the Guardian-

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/17/christmas-johnson-slo...

"Over by Christmas – another interesting slogan, there, from a government not even clever enough to realise it’s not clever enough."

The Dunning-Kruger government. 

1
 groovejunkie 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Bob Kemp:

and as Johnson doesn't work weekends and parliament trot off on their six week holiday from next Wednesday (after all there's not much going on with the country right now FFS) I guess that's the last slogan he'll spaff out for a while anyway. 

1
 SDM 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Blunderbuss:

> The only good thing to come out of this whole debacle is that we will never let any future pandemic get out of control like it did in March, the fact we had an estimated 1.5m infections and completely inadequate testing capacity by the time we locked down is what screwed us.....we learnt a very harsh lesson that won't be repeated. 

What lessons do you think have been learned?

Ultimately, we still have a government in charge whose primary concern is still manipulation of the truth to avoid any scrutiny or blame.

- They talk of our great success in our response to the virus. An insult to the families who have lost love ones due to one of the worst responses to the virus worldwide.

- We have a prime minister telling everyone to return to the office, a direct contradiction of the current advice of the chief scientific advisor.

- We have the health secretary lying about when they implemented lockdown so they can try to avoid blame for the thousands of deaths that their initial inaction caused.

- They tell us they protected the NHS and put a protective ring around care homes when in reality they protected the NHS by sacrificing the lives of the people in the care homes. 

- They talk of their latest target of 500,000 tests per day when we still aren't regularly hitting April's target of 100,000 by any reasonable definition.

-  They talk of a world class test and trace system. For every positive test, fewer than 6 people have been contacted. With the number of people back in work, public transport, shops etc etc, 6 people is a drop in the ocean. I know somebody who has been working as a tracer since the scheme began and has still yet to have a single case or make a single phone call.

They are still in charge. They are showing no signs of even acknowledging any of the above failures (or the countless other ones not mentioned) so how can you expect them to learn from them?

1
 Rob Exile Ward 18 Jul 2020
In reply to TMM:

I still don't feel I have a handle on this pandemic - I can't help thinking we're missing something, but I am not sure what it is. 

Is it something that will pass and disappear? Is it something that will eventually mutate into something ever more deadly - I've heard people who should know better say that won't happen because viruses need their victims too survive but of course the virus doesn't know that. Is it something we just going to have to live with - adapt day to day living to minimise fatalties? I don't want to spend the rest of my life keeping 2m from people and wearing facemasks (though I'm happy to sanitise my hands more frequently and be more careful about sneezing and using tissues.)

Maybe a low level of CV fatalities as part of the 'standard' mortality mix, significant investment in care for the elderly and vulnerable and improved personal hygiene is the best we can hope for?

 Blunderbuss 18 Jul 2020
In reply to SDM:

The willingness to publicly admit mistakes doesn't mean they dont know they happened and tbh I'm not expecting another global pandemic to hit us in the next few years by which time Boris and his bunch of sycophants will be long gone....

It isn't just that but the mindset of the nation towards the threat of pandemics has been changed forever....there is no way on earth the country would have accepted a lockdown in the first week of March...something similar kicks off in 10 years time and we would. 

In reply to Blunderbuss:

> we learnt a very harsh lesson that won't be repeated. 

I admire your optimism...

 Blunderbuss 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

> I still don't feel I have a handle on this pandemic - I can't help thinking we're missing something, but I am not sure what it is. 

> Is it something that will pass and disappear? Is it something that will eventually mutate into something ever more deadly - I've heard people who should know better say that won't happen because viruses need their victims too survive but of course the virus doesn't know that. Is it something we just going to have to live with - adapt day to day living to minimise fatalties? I don't want to spend the rest of my life keeping 2m from people and wearing facemasks (though I'm happy to sanitise my hands more frequently and be more careful about sneezing and using tissues.)

> Maybe a low level of CV fatalities as part of the 'standard' mortality mix, significant investment in care for the elderly and vulnerable and improved personal hygiene is the best we can hope for?

My view is a combination of better therapeutics and a partially effective vaccine will reduce the IFR to something similar to the flu and we just learn to live with it....one benefit is that flu infections may reduce as people now have better hygiene and self isolate more when ill. 

 Rob Parsons 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

> I still don't feel I have a handle on this pandemic ...

Nobody does. However, the good news is that science is moving quickly.

Quite a good recent interview on the subject: https://www.wired.com/story/larry-brilliant-on-how-well-are-we-fighting-cov...

 LeeWood 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Siward:

> We need a new model.

We should have used that from Sunetra Gupta ? 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/05/the-costs-are-too-high-the-sc...

1
 Blunderbuss 18 Jul 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

She is full of shit... 

2
 LeeWood 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Blunderbuss:

would you care to be a little more scientific ? or are you a born pessimist ?

 Blunderbuss 18 Jul 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

I'm seem to remember her claiming 50% of the country had been infected in March and that the IFR was less than the flu.....i stopped listening to anything she had to say after that. 

 timjones 18 Jul 2020
In reply to TMM:

The moral to the tale is that the utter bollocks that the public spout on social media this week will be a government policy or soundbite next week.

Anyone who thinks it would be any different under another political party is deluded.

10
 Toerag 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Taylor's Landlord:

> If you say so!

> I notice that there have been no spikes from the various recent marches and half a million people packing out Dorset.


Those things involved relatively few people. The general relaxation of restrictions have involved more people, and indoors.  There is no other explanation.

1
 Toerag 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Siward:

>  Lockdown is set to continue (certainly in the sense that work and economic activity will continue to be severely disrupted) or be re-imposed following the second wave that must inevitably occur given the precicted relaxations.

^^This.  Yet still governments don't get it.  When the virus is in the community you simply cannot come all the way out of lockdown or you get a second wave. (actually, a resumption of the first wave in the UK's case). So if you don't aim for elimination you end up in the no-man's land of permanent social distancing and local lockdowns which prevents the economy from recovering.

> Millions are without work, livelihoods are going down the drain, tax revenue is plummeting. The young will pay for all this in the long term. All very well if one is being paid and/or is wealthy but very real otherwise.

...which is why elimination within a jurisdiction combined with tight borders is the best way forward at present. That way your whole economy can get back to work bar parts of tourism. As other jurisdictions become covid-free you build air bridges to them and expand the safe bubble. 79 days covid-free here. Air bridged with the IoM. Investigating air bridge with Iceland. Going out for curry, beers, and clubbing tonight.

Roadrunner6 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Siward:

The last pandemic like this was 100 years ago.

tbh we’ve a vaccine coming out shortly and we know what to do to slow it’s spread.

the problem is we are useless selfish pricks who won’t get a vaccine, won’t wear masks and won’t socially distanced. So we’ll be like this for another few years.

we can have a pretty normal life now if we just do what the rest of the world do. Instead the US and U.K. are the laughing stock of the world.

1
Roadrunner6 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Toerag:

You can’t eliminate a virus this widespread in a country like the U.K. or US. Compliance is too low.

Roadrunner6 18 Jul 2020
In reply to timjones:

> The moral to the tale is that the utter bollocks that the public spout on social media this week will be a government policy or soundbite next week.

> Anyone who thinks it would be any different under another political party is deluded.

Absolute rubbish Tim.

My dog would have the USA in a vastly different situation to the one we now find ourselves in because of the total lack of governance and leadership at the top. They are actively fighting efforts to stop it.

the Georgia governor is taking to court mayors trying to impose mask regulations. The are actively fighting containment. 
 

im not sure the U.K. is much better with their cherry picking of science.

1
 Blunderbuss 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Roadrunner6:

I think the UK is in a far better position than the USA to be honest.....yes its been bad here but its far better than it was in April ...the USA seems to be heading for a disaster and I can't see that changing with Trump in charge. 

 Blunderbuss 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Toerag:

With all due respect it is far easier to eliminate it on a tiny island than the USA and UK....

Roadrunner6 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Blunderbuss:

It’s regional.

mass is pretty compliant. I’m now in Maine which is much more libertarian. Maybe 1/3rd of shoppers won’t wear masks. Despite it being law. Shops won’t enforce it. But we’re a more spaced population. New York has done incredible to recover as much as they have.

i ran past a house last night, maybe 10-15 cars, big party on the deck. Thankfully we’ve 100 days left but vaccine uptake will be poor. I’ve a meeting with our head of school this week to discuss this. I want strong leadership from local leaders like our school on vaccine uptake.  
 

sadly watching areas like NYC get hammered was just a liberal hoax so now the south has to. As people die around them they will change their mind but sadly we have to go through this to make them take it seriously
 

the anti science in the US is strong. Lots of pseudo science. Conservative medics forming quack fake groups Giving out bad advice people can cling to.

however I just saw jonno (if UKC years ago) posting on Facebook that those who don’t wear masks are the ones with their heads screwed on.

Post edited at 16:12
Roadrunner6 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Siward:

NZ is 4 hours from Australia. International travel is incomparable to Europe. Goods are shipped in over days. Within Europe it’s trucks rolling in and out hourly. Incomparable.

even after Brexit international travel and exchange of goods will be massive. Johnson assured everyone that. Look at the massive lorry parks being proposed.

Post edited at 16:17
In reply to Blunderbuss:

What you say would be entirely true if it wasn't for Brexshut

 timjones 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Roadrunner6:

> Absolute rubbish Tim.

> My dog would have the USA in a vastly different situation to the one we now find ourselves in because of the total lack of governance and leadership at the top. They are actively fighting efforts to stop it.

> the Georgia governor is taking to court mayors trying to impose mask regulations. The are actively fighting containment. 

> im not sure the U.K. is much better with their cherry picking of science.

Maybe it's a shame that your dog isn't on social media

It's because of the lack of leadership that politicians courting popularity and votes follow some of the utter drivel that people post on social media. Where do you think the UK governement got their "normality by Christams line" from?

 

 George Ormerod 18 Jul 2020
In reply to TMM:

I think it will be over by Christmas in the way that Brexit has proved to be a “Titanic success”. 

 Bacon Butty 18 Jul 2020
In reply to Blunderbuss:

> With all due respect it is far easier to eliminate it on a tiny island than the USA and UK....


I just compared the population of Guernsey to a random small Northern town, Rochdale.
It's a third of Rochdale, f*ck knows what difference in per capita wealth is?!?!?!
Can't be bothered looking up the population density, but I'm sure we can imagine who it favours>
As you say, a tiny island with a tiny population.

Toerag's living in a little fantasy world.

Post edited at 19:15
 Rob Exile Ward 18 Jul 2020
In reply to George Ormerod:

It'll be over by Christmas just like WW 1 was.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

We'll have Johnson quoting 'dulce et decorum est' next...

Or singing "it's a long way to Tipperary".

Post edited at 20:45
 LeeWood 19 Jul 2020
In reply to Blunderbuss:

> I'm seem to remember her claiming 50% of the country had been infected in March and that the IFR was less than the flu.....i stopped listening to anything she had to say after that. 

I take your point - she made some striking assumptions. However, so did Ferguson !

Q: The Oxford paper was criticised on the grounds that many of the assumptions made by Professor Gupta were “speculative” and had no “empirical justification”, but the same is true of the Imperial model. The FT’s Jemima Kelly said Oxford’s research should be taken with a large dose of salt because it was “not yet peer reviewed”, but Imperial’s paper hasn’t been peer reviewed either.

https://lockdownsceptics.org/what-percentage-of-the-population-have-been-in...

It's a bit old now but this discussion (above) shows what very different results come from a different method / model - with different assumptions. Quite apart from the 'science' of what she proposed it's clear she has a different ideology - or rather that she has a broader perspective. Back to the Guardian: 

Q: Lockdown inflicts damage in more insidious ways than the virus, but the result can be the same, Gupta believes. Those in comfortable jobs who can work from home are largely insulated against the financial and mental stress of life in a pandemic. “My primary concern is that the lockdown is affecting a lot of people very adversely and it is causing deaths and will cause more deaths,” she says.

Mark Woolhouse from the SAGE group adds this input:

Q: In the UK, the over-75s are 10,000 times more likely to die from Covid-19 than the under-15s, he points out. “That is a massive, massive difference. When you see something like that as a public health scientist, you don’t think of a blanket lockdown. This disease is massively concentrated in the older age group. We need to concentrate efforts where they are needed most and where we really need attention is in the care homes.”

In reply to captain paranoia:

> We'll have Johnson quoting 'dulce et decorum est' next...

> Or singing "it's a long way to Tipperary".

Now he's saying the threat of a second lockdown, that he's wanting to avoid at all costs, is 'like a nuclear deterrent' that will frighten the timid little Corona virus away. 

 Rob Exile Ward 19 Jul 2020
In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

There is a recognised pyschological condition where someone can create grammatical sentences but not understand what they mean. I think Johnson has a version of this - he has a knack for a phrase, but those phrases are disconnected from any coherent thinking or plan.

1
Alyson30 19 Jul 2020
In reply to Blunderbuss:

> With all due respect it is far easier to eliminate it on a tiny island than the USA and UK....

Why ?

4
In reply to neilh:

> Those weeks without the lockdown gave the Gov and the NHS a very valuable breathing space  to get their act together. 

When something is growing exponentially you do not let it keep growing exponentially for another two weeks so you can 'prepare'.  That's like delaying opening your parachute so you can 'prepare' for the impact when you hit the ground.  You open your parachute and stop the acceleration *immediately* because every second you wait means you are moving faster.

There is no 'breathing space' for the NHS from not locking down, the 'breathing space' happens after you lock down and stop the exponential growth.

1
 Billhook 19 Jul 2020
In reply to TMM:

Didn't they say WWI would be over by christmas.  Whose kidding who?

 LeeWood 19 Jul 2020
In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

> When something is growing exponentially you do not let it keep growing exponentially for another two weeks so you can 'prepare'.  That's like delaying opening your parachute so you can 'prepare' for the impact when you hit the ground.  You open your parachute and stop the acceleration *immediately* because every second you wait means you are moving faster.

> There is no 'breathing space' for the NHS from not locking down, the 'breathing space' happens after you lock down and stop the exponential growth.

I'm amazed that these arguments self propagate perpetually. Exponential growth was the result of not stopping the virus arriving in the UK on multiple occasions - 1,300 by count. Thats where the effort was needed ie. air travel - not by punishing the public with a blanket lockdown - after - this mistake was made. 

The age group >75 years old is 10,000x  more vulnerable to onset of covid-19 - so protecting them is all that was needed. The rest has just produced more damage than it was worth.

6
 Toerag 19 Jul 2020
In reply to Taylor's Landlord:

> I just compared the population of Guernsey to a random small Northern town, Rochdale.

> It's a third of Rochdale, f*ck knows what difference in per capita wealth is?!?!?!

> Can't be bothered looking up the population density, but I'm sure we can imagine who it favours>

> As you say, a tiny island with a tiny population.

> Toerag's living in a little fantasy world.

Actually, the population density is one of the highest in the world.   However,  it doesn't matter how big a population is, what matters is the steps taken to deal with the virus. We locked down harder than the UK did, thus eliminated the virus before people got fed up of being locked down.

1
 Toerag 19 Jul 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

> I'm amazed that these arguments self propagate perpetually. Exponential growth was the result of not stopping the virus arriving in the UK on multiple occasions - 1,300 by count. Thats where the effort was needed ie. air travel - not by punishing the public with a blanket lockdown - after - this mistake was made. 

No, exponential growth occurs regardless of 'seed size' if you don't get R below 1.

> The age group >75 years old is 10,000x  more vulnerable to onset of covid-19 - so protecting them is all that was needed. The rest has just produced more damage than it was worth.

The thing is you cannot protect the vulnerable whilst letting the virus loose in the rest of the population.  The capacity of the NHS is so low compared to the size of the population even the small percentage of the non-vulnerable requiring hospital treatment would overwhelm it.

1
 climbingbadger 19 Jul 2020
In reply to Billhook:

Well nobody ever specified which Christmas…

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

>>> Those weeks without the lockdown gave the Gov and the NHS a very valuable breathing space  to get their act together. 

> When something is growing exponentially you do not let it keep growing exponentially for another two weeks so you can 'prepare'.  That's like delaying opening your parachute so you can 'prepare' for the impact when you hit the ground.  You open your parachute and stop the acceleration *immediately* because every second you wait means you are moving faster.

> There is no 'breathing space' for the NHS from not locking down, the 'breathing space' happens after you lock down and stop the exponential growth.

That comment by neilh is just so barmy that I wonder what he'd been drinking when he wrote it. If he was pissed, fine, but if he was sober it's deeply disturbing. I'm sure others, like me, are getting absolutely FED up with all this extreme irrationality, bullshit, distortion of the truth, and blatant lying, day after day after day after day after day. Almost all rational and scientific voices are being drowned out now, particularly as the pandemic becomes more rather than less serious (with already one worrying mutation).

PS. What an extraordinarily unfortunate metaphor he chose (funny in a sick and very ironic way) with 'valuable breathing space', given that the virus is mostly spread by particles in people's breath. To use that tired old expression yet again, you couldn't make it up.

Post edited at 23:34
2
 Offwidth 20 Jul 2020
In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Every week back then led to at least a factor of 4 increase on deaths. To stack that against scheduled operations that most likely would have happened anyway outside the critically affected areas is hideous, but people get stuck in their narratives and I don't see Neil having any genuine nasty intent in that. The same applies to preparation time that was only really needed in a few hospitals that were hit hard early. In the end it's a discussion that goes nowhere as what happened when can't be changed.

2
 jkarran 20 Jul 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

> I'm amazed that these arguments self propagate perpetually. Exponential growth was the result of not stopping the virus arriving in the UK on multiple occasions - 1,300 by count. Thats where the effort was needed ie. air travel - not by punishing the public with a blanket lockdown - after - this mistake was made. 

That simply isn't true, you've misunderstood. One seed case would have lead to exponential growth if left unchecked. Crudely 1300 seed cases lead to 1300 exponentially growing clusters. Had we not imported those 1300 cases and given the rate of infection in an unprepared/unwary population was doubling every 3 days we'd have been at 1300 cases from that hypothetical one in a month.

Day 0: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048 @ day 33

Importing cases to seed new clusters and failing to restrict public mobility meant we had it everywhere rapidly but exponential growth does not require new imports.

> The age group >75 years old is 10,000x  more vulnerable to onset of covid-19 - so protecting them is all that was needed. The rest has just produced more damage than it was worth.

But that proved devastatingly impossible despite valiant efforts on the ground in care settings with even just 1-2% of the population infectious at any given time. Vulnerable people don't and can't live in bubbles, they need care and carers have lives in the outside world. If that world is rife with virus the virus will find the vulnerable, to protect them properly we need little virus and extra care (the situation we have now and we're still dying in the 100's daily!).

jk

Post edited at 10:13
1
 LeeWood 20 Jul 2020
In reply to jkarran:

> (the situation we have now and we're still dying in the 100's daily!)

as judged by dodgy PHE data ?

Whatever decisions are made from this point onwards, we must not get obsessed with covid-19 deaths alone. The other impacts of lockdown are massive - unemployment, stagnation of the economy, suicides, domestic violence etc etc;

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/14/the-past-three-months-have...

And let no-one be fooled by government proposals 'based on science' - even Real Science gets too focused on minutiae. We need decisions based on compassion and human values for necessary interaction - all viewed through a very wide-angle holistic lens. 

Q: For a start, it has become clear that there is no such thing as “the science” when it comes to Covid-19. Immunologists have different views about infection rates and possible mortality outcomes in the same way that monetarists and Keynesians differ over economics.

1
In reply to LeeWood:

>  ... we must not get obsessed with covid-19 deaths alone. The other impacts of lockdown are massive - unemployment, stagnation of the economy, suicides, domestic violence etc etc;

No, we mustn't get obsessed with these death figures – 180 full jumbo jets, more than the number of U.S. combat deaths in the Vietnam War, etc., because other related disasters and conflicts are going on.

One would almost think, from the way you're talking, that the higher the number of deaths the more relaxed you get about it. 

When some local maniac attacked someone with a hammer last week in my normally very quiet street, 'I didn't get too bothered because I knew that other violent crimes are going on all over Britain' ...

PURLEASE !!!

PS. When it comes to your sneering at the science research that's going on now, you almost come across as a publicity agent for Covid. You'd be very good at it.

PS2. Looking at your post again more closely, I think what you're saying covertly is that deaths don't matter as much as economic hardship, which is controversial to say the least.

Post edited at 23:22
4
In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

> I'm sure others, like me, are getting absolutely FED up with all this extreme irrationality, bullshit, distortion of the truth, and blatant lying, day after day after day after day after day. 

Stop listening to the daily government briefings...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/53443161

Post edited at 23:20
1
In reply to captain paranoia:

I haven't listened to a government briefing for at least 10 days, because they were so vague and dishonest. Are they really still doing them?

1
 LeeWood 21 Jul 2020
In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

> PS2. Looking at your post again more closely, I think what you're saying covertly is that deaths don't matter as much as economic hardship, which is controversial to say the least.

The only reason I'm posting is *because* lives matter; overall mortality and the quality of life left for the survivors. But you have to step back to see where the real damage is being done. From the Telegraph yesterday - the latest of many studies into lockdown collateral, which shows clearly that lockdown has it's own cost on lives.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/19/lockdown-may-cost-200k-lives-go...

Q: It comes amid debate over the easing of lockdown restrictions, with some arguing it is both too early to lift the measures and that they should have been imposed earlier, while other politicians have questioned whether the cure is worse than the disease.

Q : The UK's National Statistician, Prof Sir Ian Diamond also said on Sunday that there had been no uptick in cases since lockdown measures had been eased but warned the nation would need to be vigilant come the autumn. 

Post edited at 07:15
1
 Offwidth 21 Jul 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

Such reports are often guilty of gross exaggeration. Excess deaths are currently below normal so the worst predictions warning of significant increased deaths now because of the lockdown were certainly unfounded, albeit some people have been terribly affected due to late diagnosed conditions. There are some health positives as well..... I suspect on average people were walking more. As for the government overstating covid deaths, the way some deaths that turn out to be unrelated, due to the weird PHE system, will be dwarved by those UK 10,000+ non hospital deaths where the person tested positive and died with covid symptoms. Plus another 10,000+ where covid may have been a factor but due to a lack of tests we will never know. We had 65,000+ excess deaths in the period.

https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441

Post edited at 07:26
 Richard Horn 21 Jul 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

> Such reports are often guilty of gross exaggeration. Excess deaths are currently below normal so the worst predictions warning of significant increased deaths now because of the lockdown were certainly unfounded

Wait and see... excess deaths from undiagnosed cancer will not show in the figures now, it will be many months before the full impact is felt....

 wintertree 21 Jul 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

Not locking down may have cost 500,000 lives by this date, and seen the effective functional destruction of the NHS and an even harder, less planned lockdown as the public and government went in to total panic mode.

This would have had fearful consequences to the national economy, mental health and to anyone with unrelated physical health problems.  

That is one realistic possible alternative the “deaths from lockdown” brigade should be comparing their rather less grounded numbers to, and as I said to various posters a few months ago, most of the deaths hypothesised to result from lockdown are in a future not yet written in stone, for reasons that are entirely avoidable by compassionate government policy.  Unlike the virus deaths which are set in stone.

As Richard Horn says, cancer treatment is one area that was massively hit and for some fraction of suffers its timeliness is critical.  If we’d locked down two weeks sooner there wouldn’t have needed to be a rush to free up so many critical care beds and hospital sites could have been better split keeping more regular capacity, but it’s clear now we didn’t have anywhere near the testing capability nor PPE supply to allow that to work.  It seems that failure to prepare generically for a pandemic (Cygnus) left us with nothing but really bad options.

Post edited at 08:43
3
 Blunderbuss 21 Jul 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

The problem the anti-lockdown brigade have is that they invariably fail to acknowledge the relationship between public health and the economy....there seems to be some very strange idea peddled that if we hadn't locked down that the economy would have just carried on as normal or certainly near normality.

This idea is preposterous as the virus would have been far more prevalant and if by some miracle the health system didn't collapse do you think people would have been out spending cash and carrying on as normal with thousands of deaths every day for weeks on end?

2
 Robert Durran 21 Jul 2020
In reply to Blunderbuss:

> This idea is preposterous as the virus would have been far more prevalant and if by some miracle the health system didn't collapse do you think people would have been out spending cash and carrying on as normal with thousands of deaths every day for weeks on end?

I suspect we would have reached an equilibrium where the level of activity sustained a death rate which produced enough fear to keep activity at that level.

 jkarran 21 Jul 2020
In reply to Robert Durran:

> I suspect we would have reached an equilibrium where the level of activity sustained a death rate which produced enough fear to keep activity at that level.

Which looks to be where we're heading, the worst of both worlds having paid the lockdown price we're now living with enough disease to restrict the lives of the vulnerable, depress and deform the economy while still accepting excess deaths in the hundreds every week (if not daily) for the foreseeable future.

jk

3
 groovejunkie 21 Jul 2020
In reply to wintertree:

> Not locking down may have cost 500,000 lives by this date, and seen the effective functional destruction of the NHS and an even harder, less planned lockdown as the public and government went in to total panic mode.

Absolutely, remember when the chief clown spaffed out his washy washy "don't go to the pub, unless you do go to the pub" bullshit around the 16th March - it was clearly obvious that the shit was hitting the fan, going to busy pubs was a very bad idea..........the pubs were packed. 

Lockdown was necessary to save people from their own selfish lack of common sense,  sounds familiar doesn't it? 

But yes, the lockdown was massively damaging in many others ways, all the more so because we left it too late. 

 Offwidth 21 Jul 2020
In reply to Robert Durran:

That's very naive Robert. The problem is we ended up on the limit of hospital capacity in some places and the public were not really getting scared until the government did. According to Ferguson it cost us 20,000 lives more than if we locked down a week earlier. That was a time when too many of the public were grasping at last freedoms and behaving irresponsibility. Also at the time we didn't know that things could have been even worse than they actually turned out.

In reply to Richard Horn

I agree significant excess deaths will occur due to impacted cancer services but an earlier lockdown could have enabled all of that to function alongside any covid resource allocation (as it is, I know people who's treatment continued almost seamlessly as their hospital trust took intelligent action). My point was about some dire predictions of excess deaths right now from some anti lockdowners that simply haven't happened (just the opposite).

The Telegraph numbers are silly and I will lay odds that the numbers will turn out lower than more sensible predictions of around 18,000.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/29/extra-18000-cancer-patients...

Post edited at 10:20
1
 Blunderbuss 21 Jul 2020
In reply to Robert Durran:

> I suspect we would have reached an equilibrium where the level of activity sustained a death rate which produced enough fear to keep activity at that level.

I am not entirely sure what you mean here.....but anyone who thinks not locking down would not have severely damaged the economy is living in cloud cuckoo land.

 LeeWood 21 Jul 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

> My point was about some dire predictions of excess deaths right now from some anti lockdowners that simply haven't happened (just the opposite).

But the Telegraph already published research on 'avoidable' deaths - Edge Health 25/04/2020

In which the figures given were NOT predictions - but historic analysis. At that date, already 10k and running at 2k per week. Now 3 months later, if we count 12 weeks, this checks in at 10k + 24k == 34k deaths from lockdown  collateral.

1
 LeeWood 21 Jul 2020
In reply to Blunderbuss:

> I am not entirely sure what you mean here.....but anyone who thinks not locking down would not have severely damaged the economy is living in cloud cuckoo land.

I know nobody who argues against lockdown per se, but I do know many who argue against blanket lockdown. Regional and selective vulnerable group lockdowns are reasonable and well managed in other countries.

The problem for the UK was failure to shut the air corridors - back to jk's '2048' calcs. Of course no, we don't need 1300 '1st cases' to initiate exponential (or indeed - whatever it was) virus spread. But because there were 1300 entry points spread around the country, it became impossible to identify 'a region' - the clusters were popping out everywhere - and it thus became reasonable to order blanket lockdown.

The knowledge of the 1300+ entry points will forever stand as damnation to the governments inaction on airway closure.

1
 wintertree 21 Jul 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

> But because there were 1300 entry points spread around the country, it became impossible to identify 'a region' - the clusters were popping out everywhere - and it thus became reasonable to order blanket lockdown.

With what is now known about PHE/NHS test and trace capability back in Feb/March, half a dozen entry points leading to local transmission would have overwhelmed our ability to do targeted local lockdown and test/trace.  We just didn’t have the infrastructure for any sort of coordinated, selective response.  I doubt you’ll find anyone arguing that what you wanted to have happened wasn’t much better, just that it couldn’t in practice have happened.

I totally agree we should have slammed air travel down hard - only allowing residents to return and quarantining them for 2 weeks.  This would have bought us a few more weeks to prepare test/trace systems for when the inevitable happened.

Post edited at 13:27
 Blunderbuss 21 Jul 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

> I know nobody who argues against lockdown per se, but I do know many who argue against blanket lockdown. Regional and selective vulnerable group lockdowns are reasonable and well managed in other countries.

Which countries?

 Toerag 21 Jul 2020
In reply to Taylor's Landlord:

> I just compared the population of Guernsey to a random small Northern town, Rochdale.

> It's a third of Rochdale, f*ck knows what difference in per capita wealth is?!?!?!

> Can't be bothered looking up the population density, but I'm sure we can imagine who it favours>

> As you say, a tiny island with a tiny population.

Hmm, yet somehow New Zealand and Cuba have managed it with their much larger populations. Cuba is a poor country, so wealth is no measure.  What matters is a desired path and leadership.

1
 Offwidth 21 Jul 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

That doesn't sound like it can be true as it exceeds the gap between known covid deaths and the total excess.  Where is the scientific reference?

 Robert Durran 21 Jul 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

> That's very naive Robert. The problem is we ended up on the limit of hospital capacity in some places and the public were not really getting scared until the government did.

I'm not saying the equilibrium would be arrived at without some wild fluctuation first or that it would be an at all desirable equilibrium; effectively leaving every individual's behaviour up to their own perception of personal risk would almost certainly not (a bit like a prisoners'dilemma situation) lead to the best situation for the common good - this is why an imposed lockdown was necessary. Unfortunately I now see people increasingly making decisions by considering personal risk rather than the common good, and I fear it is not going to end well.

Post edited at 16:58
 LeeWood 22 Jul 2020
In reply to Blunderbuss:

> Which countries?

The 3 exemplar countries are named as germany vietnam & S Korea

https://ourworldindata.org/identify-covid-exemplars

 LeeWood 22 Jul 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

> That doesn't sound like it can be true as it exceeds the gap between known covid deaths and the total excess.  Where is the scientific reference?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/two-new-waves...

 Blunderbuss 22 Jul 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

Germany locked down, I know nothing about Vietnam but we didn't have the testing resource or contact tracing laws to follow the South Korean model. 

 Offwidth 22 Jul 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

That's not a scientific reference it's a heath company exaggerating and being given oxygen by a newspaper that favours the UK opening up sooner and more extensively than expert advice.

Currently reported UK excess deaths are below average, despite average deaths from the census period being near 100 covid deaths day and the expected increases in secondary cause deaths (especially from unrelated heart problems) anecdotally being reported. All the cancer patients I know barely had their treatment affected at all (my local trusts have been really well organised) so the service impacts on that are clearly on a grey continuum. On cancer deaths we can't change anything more than getting the service back up to speed as quickly as possible,  so we will have to wait for the stats next year.

1
 Tiggs 22 Jul 2020
In reply to TMM:

Ooooooh No it won’t 😊

 LastBoyScout 22 Jul 2020
In reply to Tiggs:

Have just seen that elsewhere.

I normally wouldn't, but I'm seriously considering getting the 'flu jab this year, if offered.

 Tiggs 23 Jul 2020
In reply to LastBoyScout: I’m going to get the flu & the Pneumonia jab, even though I’m not in the nhs eligible category for the freebie jabs.   You can have covid & pneumonia at the same time & it’s best to avoid flu anyway.  It would be pretty s**t to get all 3 @ the same time.....


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