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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?

#561

Post by madaxe_again »

cirrus-clouds wrote: post #135

Here is a discussion on Channel 4 on the approach taken by the UK government. https://youtu.be/C98FmoZVbjs?t=590 Debating are: - John Edmunds: a professor in the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine - Tomas Pueyo: his modelling of the pandemic has gone viral on the web: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop... During the debate,…

> But there is something cold, clinical and unemotional about the UK's strategy to tackle this pandemic.

You say that as though that’s a good thing. The coldest, most rational view is that the virus will eliminate the weak and elderly, and therefore be of benefit to society.

Given that the current U.K. government have enthusiastically spoken about eugenics, this is essentially the mindset you’re supporting.

So. Would you really still say that cold, clinical, and unemotional is the best way for us to act?

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

#562

Post by madaxe_again »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #149
cirrus-clouds wrote: post #135

Here is a discussion on Channel 4 on the approach taken by the UK government. https://youtu.be/C98FmoZVbjs?t=590 Debating are: - John Edmunds: a professor in the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine - Tomas Pueyo: his modelling of the pandemic has gone viral on the web: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop... During the debate,…

> there is something cold, clinical and unemotional about the UK's strategy to tackle this pandemic I don't see that this is a criticism. This kind of decision-making should be based on expertise, not emotion. It seems unlikely that they're unconcerned with the harm done. Minimising harm is the entire point of responding to the pandemic, after all. > you can't "nudge" people to adopt certain behaviours in one country…

Harm to what? The populace, or the bank balances of the cabinet?

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

#563

Post by philwelch »

cirrus-clouds wrote: post #135

Here is a discussion on Channel 4 on the approach taken by the UK government. https://youtu.be/C98FmoZVbjs?t=590 Debating are: - John Edmunds: a professor in the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine - Tomas Pueyo: his modelling of the pandemic has gone viral on the web: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop... During the debate,…

> Listening to them both, I honestly don't know who is right.

Well, I suppose we'll find out.

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

#564

Post by madaxe_again »

freehunter wrote: post #203
pmontra wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more cynical question: can a PM win the next elections or politically survive the next weeks if a lot of people die and he just shrugged his shoulders, when the rest of the world did their best to keep people alive, successfully or not? I bet he'll have to change course pretty soon.

And that’s the real calculus here: how will this be perceived after the dust settles? If the population doesn’t think their leaders did enough, there’s risk of reprisals. If the government does the wrong thing but people think it was right, everything is fine. But if the govt did the right thing and people think it was wrong, correctly or incorrectly, there may be reprisals.

Irrelevant. All that matters is the editorials and vox pops in the months immediately prior to an election. Voters don’t remember where they left their keys, never mind last year - and if the current U.K. gov have shown anything, it is that they can and will win every election until the end of time - they’ve presided over a decade of unmitigated disaster, and their approval just keeps growing.

No, we’ll be talking about how Jeremy Corbyn singlehandedly introduced covid to the U.K. It won’t be “true”, but that is... irrelevant.

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

#565

Post by nprateem »

This "strategy" is rebranded "do nothing". The journalist running the country (with his "everyone's had enough of experts" and "fuck business" attitudes) is simply displaying his usual contempt for all the non-privately educated, and is miles out of his depth. This is in a similar vein to how they're also rebranding a no-deal Brexit as an "Australia-style" deal. I don't believe they have a strategy at all - and "herd immunity" means hope for the best (a la "sunlit uplands").

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

#566

Post by johndoe42377 »

Lockdowns are just to decrease the rate of spreading (and avoid high concentration of virus particles) not to eliminate the virus, so everyone should prepare oneself to face it and get through. Just this.

Some small percentage of population in isolated regions have chances never meet the virus, but hiding is not the stable strategy.

Getting through and become immune is. This is what UK government is saying. Let's face it.

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

#567

Post by knzhou »

dash2 wrote: post #542
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…

About those hundreds of academics: about 90% seem to be mathematicians. I checked two at random and none of their top publications were about epidemiology. You can be a scientist, yet know effectively nothing on a specific topic.

In the UK, "maths" is a very broad category. It includes my field of theoretical particle physics, as well as mathematical disease modelling. All of us would be called mathematicians.

Yes, not everybody signing is a specialist in epidemiology, but so what? The point is that a good number are -- there is no clear consensus among UK experts for the UK government's position. And among global experts, there is a clear consensus against their position.

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

#568

Post by cameldrv »

reddog wrote: post #538
cameldrv wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are going to isolate the vulnerable population? They also neglect that the vulnerable population clusters. Old people socialize with other old people. A bunch of immune school kids don’t provide much herd immunity to a nursing home.

They might if they were the kids of people working at the nursing home. I am not sure if this strategy will work either but I get it -- every infected and recovered individual is another control rod pushed into the out-of-control atomic pile.

The problem is that most of the people in the nursing home are the residents. If none of them get the disease, The R0 in the nursing home is still going to be well above one. The minute one person who is infected shows up at the nursing home, it races through the whole place.

Meanwhile, in the schools, the intention is to get the rate of kids that are immune as close to 100% as possible. That will be difficult without deliberately inoculating them, because they will develop herd immunity at about 66% in their population and it won't spread in that population anymore.

In the nuclear reactor analogy, it's as if you put in half the control rods, but only the ones on the left side of the reactor. That might make the left side strongly subcritical, but the right side might still be critical, even if with an even distribution of the same number of rods, the whole reactor would be subcritical.

This plan is not going to work and it will kill millions of people in Britain unless Chloroquine or something else ends up being a silver bullet for treatment.

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

#569

Post by anoncareer0212 »

klenwell wrote: post #549
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…

Interestingly, to my surprise, social distancing appear more effective than lockdown (in part because full lockdowns are impossible). At least according to this simulation: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-si... The success of Hong Kong and Taiwan look like extensions of the social distancing paradigm to me. Of course, maybe UK government recognizes that the its citizens are equally incapable…

The labelling in the demo is vapid, insomuch as "social distancing" is merely identifying a percentage of the population to lock down.

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

#570

Post by droopyEyelids »

johndoe42377 wrote: post #566

Lockdowns are just to decrease the rate of spreading (and avoid high concentration of virus particles) not to eliminate the virus, so everyone should prepare oneself to face it and get through. Just this. Some small percentage of population in isolated regions have chances never meet the virus, but hiding is not the stable strategy. Getting through and become immune is. This is what UK government is saying. Let's fac…

Sounds like you may not have heard about the importance of "flattening the curve" yet

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/11/flattening-curve-coronav...

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