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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?

#441

Post by henrikschroder »

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…

> 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.

Yes, those numbers apply if it spreads indiscriminately throughout your entire population.

But we know the virus is here, we know who is in the risk group, which means that if you isolate and self-quarantine people in the risk group, and let the virus slowly roll through the rest of the population, you will get a much lower death rate.

There's a ton of variables that determine the death rate, and yet everyone is just staring themselves blind at the first best numbers we have. No. Come on. It depends on the quality of the care available, it depends on the knowledge of doctors who have experience with it, but most importantly it depends on the demographics of the people who get infected.

> shutting down the entire US economy for a year makes sense

Except "the economy" is made up of millions of individuals. Some will still have an ok quality of life, but many people won't. They'll be fired, or their companies will have gone bankrupt, they'll have no money, no food.. Then what? Do you think hungry people won't food riot just because there's a quarantine? Or go stir crazy? Or ignore it? Or spread propaganda that the entire thing is a hoax so that the New World Order can take over?

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

#442

Post by bcrosby95 »

OJFord wrote: post #388
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...

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 wel…

> such as presumably a majority of those advising the government

Why? Politicians have shown several times that they prefer to listen to a minority of scientists that tell them what they want to hear, rather than a majority that doesn't.

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

#443

Post by dathinab »

henrikschroder wrote: post #436
wyclif wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a smart observation. The UK is now taking the conservative view because it's the long term view, that this will likely become a recurring seasonal virus (or a one-time virus that keeps knocking on your door until you get it), and therefore there's not much point in a national "lockdown" to "stop" the virus, because as soon as a nation relaxes its lockdown the virus will simply pick up right where it left off.…

> therefore there's not much point in a national "lockdown" to "stop" the virus, because as soon as a nation relaxes its lockdown the virus will simply pick up right where it left off. I haven't seen anyone address this concern among the people who think the UK's strategy is insane. Yes, if you lock down society, you will halt the spread of the virus dramatically. But for how long? When do you lift the lock down? Whe…

But no lock down strategy is about halting the virus!

They are about slowing it, so that the load on the health care system isn't too grade.

Current data show that dath ratio in case of slow spread can be reduced to 1%, potential even less. While with overload it's more like 5% and with collapsing overload even potentially more.

Also work slowing the number of total infected people without usable medicine against it can potentially be drastically reduced. Especially if we find some usable but imperfect medicine in the near time which reduces ICU cases.

Also let's remember 1918:

The first wave killed the old, the second wave killed the young, the third wave killed without discrimination.

I.e. we are still in the first wave, it's not impossible that a mutation occurred which makes it especially deadly against the young (through maybe quite unlike). Just consider what happens if that overlaps with the UK plans and they notice it to late. It would be a lost generation.

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

#444

Post by hedora »

rumanator wrote: post #423
ajross wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the thing you fail to understand No no, I understand that. But the thinking is, and it seems to be backed by data, that the health system will be able to cope with a full-population maximal pandemic, as long as it is limited to the much less vulnerable segments of the population . The ICUs in Italy and Hubei were filled, for the most part, with elderly patients. The math, such as it is, checks out. The risk man…

> No no, I understand that. But the thinking is, and it seems to be backed by data, that the health system will be able to cope with a full-population maximal pandemic, as long as it is limited to the much less vulnerable segments of the population. It really doesn't seem that you're getting it, because the whole point of this exercise is that it's quite patently obvious that no health care service in the world is ab…

> 10 to 15% of their population in intensive care

Estimates are closer to 10% of the infected getting severe cases, and some small-ish fraction of those requiring intensive care. (The higher percentage numbers are usually an artifact of low testing rates of infected people.)

Also, epidemiology suggests that 20-70% will get it. So, we’re looking at ~1% of the population in the hospital at once.

The rest of your points stand; we don’t have nearly enough hospital capacity for 1% of the population.

Note that with a two week active phase, the pandemic would have to drag on for 20 weeks to get that number to 0.1%. I doubt there is capacity for that either.

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

#445

Post by wtvanhest »

RealityVoid wrote: post #375
wtvanhest wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like the exact gamble. IMO, the US has taken the right approach. Keep things going until it starts to replicate in the community, then get aggressive before the hospitals are overrun. Some communities will have too many cases, but most will hopefully be ok. And we will have a first step of Hurd immunity, concentrated on people most likely to transmit later like package delivery, restaurant workers, drivers…

> Keep things going until it starts to replicate in the community, then get aggressive before the hospitals are overrun. How is that not a bad strategy? By this point the disease will have some sort of transmission inertia, so establishing containment just before hospitals are overrun pretty much guarantees they will be overrun.

We won’t know for 2 weeks. If the hospitals are overrun, that is a massive policy problem. If they aren’t, it’s a massive policy success.

Math was known and the results fall on our politicians

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

#446

Post by CPLX »

dathinab wrote: post #428
OJFord wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wel…

It's basically: Throw 2 or 3 hounded thousand lives away to have less economical impact next year. I.e. pure evil IMHO. especially because there is a non small chance that it will be more like 1-1.5 Million more death then necessary.

That’s a misconception though. Economic depression and deprivation also causes death, and staggering amounts of human misery.

Evil is reserved as a description for gross failures of moral duty. Choosing pragmatically between several terrible options with highly unpredictable outcomes does not meet that standard.

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

#447

Post by kspacewalk2 »

dathinab wrote: post #428
OJFord wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wel…

It's basically: Throw 2 or 3 hounded thousand lives away to have less economical impact next year. I.e. pure evil IMHO. especially because there is a non small chance that it will be more like 1-1.5 Million more death then necessary.

It is basically nothing like that in any way. If it works, it will not be at the expense of extra "sacrificed" lives, that's nonsense. The basic idea is to isolate the vulnerable and eventually protect them with herd immunity. You are allowed to opine that this will fail dismally, but you're not allowed to just make shit up and accuse people of sacrificing lives. Have an ounce of shame.

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

#448

Post by aaron695 »

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…

This is NOT a creative experiment.

It's exactly the same as everything that's being done, no one knows what's best, they are all creative or none are.

We have no idea what the downsides are for massive lockdowns. Look at the deaths that happened over summer in Britain when the heatwave struck. What will happen to the elderly in a lockdown?

Lockdowns are not conservative. They are what the rest of the world's doing so they are politically conservative for weak governments.

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

#449

Post by tim333 »

Silhouette wrote: post #119
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of which have tiny populations compared to the UK. Is 66 million really that qualitatively different than 24 million?

The honest answer is that I don't know. Perhaps I generalised too readily before, given Taiwan is quite a bit closer to the UK in population than the other two. Even so, assuming that strategies that appear to have been relatively successful in a smaller, more densely populated country will necessarily also work in a larger and less densely populated one seems to be dubious. We know that we don't have the resources w…

China doesn't have a small population and has it under control. I don't think it's a population size thing.
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