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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?

#401

Post by knzhou »

rzwitserloot wrote: post #398
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…

I haven't checked too closely, but surely the age distribution of conservative voters is such that if they are so callous as to treat corona as a convenient boomer remover, they torpedo their own re-election chances. So, _even if_ you ascribe to the current UK government a conspiracy-esque, cold as nails approach to just effectively _murder whole boatloads of older folks_, it doesn't actually make sense: Who would th…

The Conservative party is fresh off one of the greatest electoral landslides in history, and is 5 years away from the next election. So perhaps they think that people will have come around to their point of view by then? I'm just grasping at straws here, it's almost incomprehensible.

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

#402

Post by asdf21 »

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...

Yeah, like, the parents of all the kids will get it and many will die. Others will infect everyone at work.

This seems like a obviously bad idea.

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

#403

Post by ash »

roenxi wrote: post #330
milansm wrote: post #313

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…

> The economy is a tool to get people goods and services. It is less important than life & death on a mass scale.

It's not as simple. GDP per capita is strongly correlated with life expectancy. In other words, people die sooner with worse economy.

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

#404

Post by yulaow »

vanniv wrote: post #400
yulaow wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify current national-level lockdown effects are expected to be seen starting twelve days from now. Some or the old red zones which covered the starting point of the infection are currently with 0 new detected cases since 3 days so it seems lockdown works IF u put them in place soon enough. [ https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&... ]

Of course, if you ever let up on the lockdown, the disease will immediately start spreading again.

Exactly, but the government hope is to manage new cases with heavy tracking and testing as south korea is doing, so to keep the future spread far more under control. That's not possible until the current situation is resolved

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

#405

Post by aurizon »

Herd theory works once you have an immunized herd(from recovery from infaction while we have no vaccine) so that infection passes only from an infected person to a vulnerable one. As we sit, the current policy will lead to an exposure to all people - more or less, and then the recovery and formation of the immune herd commences. Thus the IK government has decided to allow unfettered spread = all the casualties that involves to form the herd. This is a million or more people. An isolate into tiny herds-at-home, test symptomatics - treating positive by supportive care = formation of many immunized small herds. This second procedure will kill 50,000 or so. Laters it does not matter if the mini herds mingle as they are all immune. There will be little subsequent spread. UK is deciding to kill a large number of it's citizenry = some sort of class war???

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

#406

Post by ksec »

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…

> they're stopping the spread by just having good testing and case tracking capacity, and good hygiene

First, there is the best of them all you forgot to mention, Taiwan.

Second, To sum up the difference as I have posted elsewhere, it comes down to The East willing to do Social Distancing AND Wear Mask. The west simply refuse to wear mask.

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

#407

Post by paultopia »

Insane. Here's the key line, from one of the people in charge of that clown car:

"There’s going to be a point, assuming the epidemic flows and grows, as we think it probably will do, where you’ll want to cocoon, you’ll want to protect those at-risk groups so that they basically don’t catch the disease and by the time they come out of their cocooning, herd immunity’s been achieved in the rest of the population."[1]

Here's the thing about this: it's plainly moronic. Because this strategy only works if they can identify the point in question. And there's no universe in which a government can identify that point under incomplete information and exponential growth. It's the sort of thing that only a psychologist who has spent too much time hanging out with Cass Sunstein and other believers in the omnipotence of the administrative state could possibly come up with.

[1] Quoting a psychologist in charge of something called the "behavioral insights team" in https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/herd-immunity-...

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

#408

Post by ash »

knzhou wrote: post #227
ubercow13 wrote: post #212

Modelling disease spread seems like the kind of scientific endeavour that one can dedicate one's whole life to becoming an expert in, and many people presumably do. Considering that, why should anyone give much credence to a random medium article on the topic by a 'silicon valley tech executive'? (lol) There are 10's of thousands of scientific research papers [1], by scientists, on COVID-19 already, and this guy is j…

Because the models the government's epidemiologists are using explicitly don't account for all possible actions. Back when this was taking off in China, a bunch of epidemiologists came out and said it was completely uncontrollable there. They were wrong, because they hadn't accounted for the extreme actions the Chinese government was willing to take; it was not even a possibility in the models. The same story repeate…

We don't know yet how sustainable Chinese actions are. People are still in lockdown. Covid19 could come back when the lockdown is relaxed.

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

#409

Post by stordoff »

arcticbull wrote: post #158
aberoham wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^^^ 2000% this, a large proportion can't change their ways, is not paying attention or simply doesn't care. It's shocking to still tonight walk past a packed pub on a Saturday night

Personally, I'm 30, have no contact with folks over 65, have no co-morbid conditions and so I have no reason to keep away from folks. I'm at zero risk. In fact if I get it now and develop an immunity, all the better. I have to assume the same is true of the folks at the pub -- otherwise it's them who are being irresponsible, not me.

> have no contact with folks over 65, have no co-morbid conditions and so I have no reason to keep away from folks. I'm at zero risk.

Until you spread it to someone _with_ contact with the over-65/those at risk.

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

#410

Post by vanniv »

pubby wrote: post #93
vanniv wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very much more likely that, as it mutates, it will be to a less-deadly virus. Evolutionary pressure works that way -- as a less-deadly version will spread faster and outcompete a more-deadly version (because it won't kill as many hosts -- dead hosts cease spreading -- and because less-ill hosts are less likely to stay in bed until better, thus encountering more people and thus more spread) This is why, broadly,…

Spanish Flu mutated into a far deadlier version over time because it spread faster in hospitals and troop transports than on the streets. We may see a similar situation with corona virus if the quarantines and social distancing are too effective. Ideally, we want most cases to be transmitted from the weak cold-like corona virus cases, not the lung-infesting killer cases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Dead…

To quote that article:

In civilian life, natural selection favors a mild strain. Those who get very ill stay home, and those mildly ill continue with their lives, preferentially spreading the mild strain. In the trenches, natural selection was reversed. Soldiers with a mild strain stayed where they were, while the severely ill were sent on crowded trains to crowded field hospitals, spreading the deadlier virus.

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