361–370 of 772 posts
Herd immunity is the default, and it's also being pursued by the US, despite statements to the contrary. So I'm not sure there would actually be a document, but maybe it does exist.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could think of this as the advantage of a decentralized world with every country making decisions and experimenting independently. Maybe the UK's approach is the right one, maybe it isn't. If it turns out to be more effective we'll learn something useful for future pandemics. If not then only the UK goes down the drain and we'll still learn something from it. Best of luck.
Well surely the advantage here would be for us to be able to observe and exploit the hard won knowledge of countries out ahead of us, but that doesn't appear to be what we're doing.
1) everyone (>= 60% of population) will get it
2) the modelling that’s been done by the British government is probably very good and almost certainly includes more variables than the shut it all down countries
3) we don’t know enough about how the virus operates but we might know enough by the time peak cases occurs in the UK
4) It’s very likely to come back in China et al, they think in the Far East it’s under control but it only takes one person arriving in Beijing to reignite the problem and you’re back to square one
5) they are trying to limit peak deaths including a lot of factors I have to assume that is their strategy
6) do you go with the models that give you a way to return to some normality sooner?
7) what is the best case outcome according to the best scientific models we can get? It’s very easy to just do what everyone else is doing without thinking through the best path.
8) I actually trust the people thinking about this issue, I know it’s hard to believe but I do think the UK government is going with a view that there are more factors than are immediately apparent in this equation.
9) will the UK turn out to be right that stopping this permanently will involve herd immunity. Unfortunately the American/Italian/Western society situation means stopping this virus will be impossible so you then start calculating if you want international travel to continue how can we keep our societies interconnected?
My guess is based on a lack of information and a load of assumptions about this, but I think it’ll prove to be the right decision medium term. We are going to be in this thing for some time, some countries much longer than others.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But how can anybody be sure that conservative policy (lockdown, I assume) would work for UK (or any other nation beside China)? They probably have to factor in the chance of success. They can fail in implementing conservative option (which might not be so conservative after all), and ruin the economy as a side effect. I imagine this as a choice between these: - long struggle with uncertain outcome in terms of life lo…
The economy is a tool to get people goods and services. It is less important than life & death on a mass scale. 0.1% to 1% of the population unexpectedly dying is huge . If the government was implementing a plan that they had considered and prepared over a number of years, carefully assessed the evidence and weighed the options? Costs and benefits have been weighed and it is hard to ask for more. Government has no id…
A lot of people seem to be focusing on mortality rate, but data from China and Italy show that people who get severe symptoms, but survive COVID-19 will live with lifelong scares, that make them vulnerable for say the next flu season.
So while 0.1-1% may die, we are talking about upwards of 10% of people being put out of commission. It's also wrong to say that younger people aren't hurt by this, there are plenty of young people with chronic illnesses, and limited immune systems. And even if they do survive, it may not be worth living.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stop it because it is incorrect or stop it because it is insensitive?
"Stop it because it's unimaginable that the UK government is intentionally trying to kill off it's old folks no matter how much money that may save the NHS, in no small part because that would be akin to a genocide for profit"
It's (probably) not about the NHS but more about "we kicked out so many illegal immigrants last year, aren't we great?" (not that these people are illegal immigrants, but hey, let's make burden of proof tests that are hard for them to pass), but, incredible how seemingly easy it is for the Home Office to be heartless to the point of killing people via red tape.
Isn't there a higher likelihood for the virus to mutate if a large population gets it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, if the Tory press back them up. Brexit has shown that the narrative can be spun in their favor.
The impacts of Brexit are relatively abstract; COVID-19 is piles of dead bodies and 1 in 20 families losing a grandparent. Spinning that positively is mighty challenging.
With an overwhelmed health system and shortage of ventilators, mortality can exceed 5% in the general population. If that happens, everyone will loose a loved one.
That's why italy and Germany are desperately sourcing more ventilators: https://www.ft.com/content/5a2ffc78-6550-11ea-b3f3-fe4680ea6...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Italy is almost a month ahead of most of the world in infections though, their first outbreaks were weeks ago and the source for infecting most of the rest of Europe. A lot of the UK infections can be traced to Italian holidays, for example. Even if the government does plan to lock down the UK eventually, every day must cost 10s of millions, you can understand the strategy to wait longer, and even to play it down a b…
The biggest EU countries are 1 to two weeks behind Italy: https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/1238604695700209664 (mind the log scale)
Denmark and Norway are less than a week behind Italy in terms of confirmed cases per million inhabitants, as is Switzerland. Spain moved closer the last two days as well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that while you may not deal with old people, the same is not true of all of the people that you deal with. Remember that it takes an average of no more than 6 steps in your social network to get from any person in the USA to any other person in the USA.
Mr. arcticbull has replied elsewhere that then it's the responsibility of that person (whom he might deal with, and would deal with the vulnerable as well) to quarantine themselves. To extrapolate, presumably he wouldn't feel any guilt if that vulnerable person died and he was a vector that got the virus to said person. I wonder what a valid response to this logic is. Maybe: "not all people will be responsible, so it…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with what you just wrote. But, the premise is wrong, I think; We don’t know if lockdown now vs lockdown later (in UK’s case) will result with 0.1% vs 1% of life lost, respectively.
COVID-19 is rapidly becoming the centre of attention for the entire global medical community and every government on the planet. It threatens the wealth of billionaires and the power of the powerful. I have a remarkable amount of faith that progress on treatments and medical practices will be swift and impressive. Delaying the pain by a month or two could well be an extremely good move.
I wouldn't take those odds.