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Ask HN: Is UK government insane or genius?

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Re: Ask HN: Is UK government insane or genius?

#381

Post by majc2 »

polote wrote: post #234
knzhou wrote: post #209

Their reasoning is that if the only things you can do are China-style lockdown or nothing, then the disease will just resume exponentially growing the second lockdown ends, so it's pointless to do it at all. While that may be technically right (under some optimistic, unverified assumptions, e.g. no reinfection), it's a false dichotomy. Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea aren't under lockdown, they're stopping the…

THe strategy in Asia seems to keep the virus under control but people in those countries are much more disciplined than European, not sure the measures they take would be as much effective in Europe. The strategy of UK seems valid as long as you protect the more vulnerable, which they don't do. What is the strategy after a lock down? You go back to work? It needs only one person infected to get the virus propagating…

> The strategy of UK seems valid as long as you protect the more vulnerable, which they don't do.

The UK and devolved governments signaled on Thursday that the plan is for the vulnerable to be self-isolating for a long period; and based on the briefings to UK jornos on twitter - it'll be 16 weeks of self isolation for over 70s and those with underlying health conditions (they've not said what conditions yet) - I've seen it referred to as 'cocooning' by some.

I think the UK was doing a really good job, and has been doing a good job with this - I do think they've really misspoken when they've talked about herd immunity and have been trying to walk the term back.

You've got to bare in mind, that they aren't doing the politically easy things here. It would be easy to close the schools. Based on people I've spoken to, its going to happen soon - but I suspect they want this to happen after the over 70s and the vulnerables are into self-isolationg, and not shouldering childcare responsibilities. None of this is easy, we can't magic this virus away.

Re: Ask HN: Is UK government insane or genius?

#382

Post by kortex »

Svip wrote: post #364
roenxi wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 0.1% to 1% of the population unexpectedly dying is huge. 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 tha…

This is pretty scary. Not only do SARS cause scarring which decrease quality of life, we are on our 3rd ARDS-causing outbreak in the past 2 decades. So potentially tens of millions worldwide with lifelong lung damage and huge risk of getting taken out in the next round.

Re: Ask HN: Is UK government insane or genius?

#383

Post by lotsofpulp »

saalweachter wrote: post #373
milansm wrote: post #346

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.

Let's do math! I'll use US numbers, because I know them. The current worst case scenarios on the table are between 1% and 5% of the individuals catching the disease dying (there are better numbers, but we're worst casing it). For achieving herd immunity, numbers like 40-70% of the population infected and recovered are bandied about. So worst case, you're looking at 1.3-11.6 million deaths in the US. Now, the US gover…

I don’t understand how we can have reliable mortality/morbidity statistics when it’s only been out for a few months, and many people that get it don’t even get diagnosed with it and so aren’t counted in the survivors. How can there be a representative sample of data available yet?

Re: Ask HN: Is UK government insane or genius?

#384

Post by ComputerGuru »

m0zg wrote: post #179
patrec wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you kinda missed the part where the UK is trying very hard to infect the majority of the population and China is trying very hard to stop more infections from taking place. Successfully it seems. > So no, there won't be "millions of deaths" or anything close to that I showed you some simple arithmetic, based on official figures from the UK government. Can you come up with better numbers or point out an obviou…

There are no reliable estimates of overall fatality of the virus. Only the estimates of how many people _who required treatment_ have died, which the press deliberately misinterprets as the overall fatality rates most of the time, because higher numbers drive more clicks. Watch epidemiologists speak about this: they will go out of their way to point out that we don't know these percentages, and we won't know them for…

The reason why Covid-19 is scarier than SARS is precisely because it has a lower fatality rate, allowing it to spread instead of killing its host before they can spread it.

Re: Ask HN: Is UK government insane or genius?

#385

Post by robryk »

dharma1 wrote: post #213
mantap wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is the risk of needing hospitalisation if you are young? Does anybody know?

It's too early to say with reliable data. We will definitely know in 2-3 weeks with data from many European countries. In Italy, it looks like the percentage of younger hospitalised people is 12%, but growing. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-...

12% of _COVID ICU patients_ in Italy are below 50 years old. Note that this doesn't let us answer the question of how common are ICU cases among young infected people.

Re: Ask HN: Is UK government insane or genius?

#386

Post by jimbokun »

saalweachter wrote: post #373
milansm wrote: post #346

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.

Let's do math! I'll use US numbers, because I know them. The current worst case scenarios on the table are between 1% and 5% of the individuals catching the disease dying (there are better numbers, but we're worst casing it). For achieving herd immunity, numbers like 40-70% of the population infected and recovered are bandied about. So worst case, you're looking at 1.3-11.6 million deaths in the US. Now, the US gover…

> Now, the US government values the lives of its citizens at $7-9 million dollars a piece.

Wait, where does that figure come from?

Re: Ask HN: Is UK government insane or genius?

#387

Post by jennyyang »

You can't do this without adequate testing. If you can do tens of thousands of tests per day, and you're testing everyone, then you can potentially control the rate of infection by opening and closing public places and schools, etc. But without testing you won't know and the goal of not putting strain on the NHS will fail.

Places like the US are completely in the dark because of incompetence, but once we have the visibility as to who is sick, and having widespread testing, then I think this might make sense. Heck, if I knew I would have access to a critical care bed if things got bad, I would probably volunteer to get infected now.

Re: Ask HN: Is UK government insane or genius?

#388

Post by OJFord »

foobarbazetc wrote: post #297
edouard-harris wrote: post #239

Here is a rule of thumb that will be familiar to many who manage risk in a professional capacity: The time to get creative is when you face a capped downside on the one hand, and an uncapped upside on the other. The time to get conservative is when you face the opposite condition. The reason for this rule is that creative policies almost never work; but when they work, they have a much higher chance of working extrao…

It’s already too late. They’re on the Italy path. This “herd immunity” thing is nonsense. So much so that doctors and scientists are warning against it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/14/coronavirus-nh...

Some are against it, others (such as presumably a majority of those advising the government) are for it. That's just good debate.

> It’s already too late. They’re on the Italy path.

Well, that's pretty much the point of the policy. 'Already screwed this year, let's try to cope, and be less screwed next year'.

I was very critical at first, but I'm more interested/satisfied with the response now, it does seem to be well thought through, even if there are also arguments against (of course there are).

Re: Ask HN: Is UK government insane or genius?

#389

Post by rumanator »

ajross wrote: post #372
foobarbazetc wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s already too late. They’re on the Italy path. This “herd immunity” thing is nonsense. So much so that doctors and scientists are warning against it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/14/coronavirus-nh...

It's not "nonsense". It's real. It works for almost every other virus out there (even colds and flu, even though it's imperfect: new seasonal cold and flu strains don't become pandemics, because many people have some immunity from previous infections). If you let a large enough fraction of the UK contract and recover from COVID-19, we have every reason to suspect that the society will develop good enough herd immunit…

> It's not "nonsense". It's real. It works for almost every other virus out there (e

You're failing to take in consideration that the virus incubation period is on average 1 to 2 weeks, and those who manage to recover from the disease take about 2 weeks from diagnosis to confirmed cure.

This means that you're comparing 4 weeks of exponential growth with 2 weeks of constant recovery.

Sure, those who survived the disease will be immune afterwards. That's great for herd imunity. But the thing you fail to understand is that as the disease increases exponentially, when that time arrives the whole nation has already become infected, and it's too late by then because health services will be unable to cope with the demand and a lot of people will die due to lack of basic medical care.

Re: Ask HN: Is UK government insane or genius?

#390

Post by saalweachter »

jimbokun wrote: post #386
saalweachter wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's do math! I'll use US numbers, because I know them. The current worst case scenarios on the table are between 1% and 5% of the individuals catching the disease dying (there are better numbers, but we're worst casing it). For achieving herd immunity, numbers like 40-70% of the population infected and recovered are bandied about. So worst case, you're looking at 1.3-11.6 million deaths in the US. Now, the US gover…

> Now, the US government values the lives of its citizens at $7-9 million dollars a piece. Wait, where does that figure come from?

I mean, honestly it varies department to department, and when you start talking "lives" versus "YoQL": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#United_States
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