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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?

#591

Post by culturestate »

usaar333 wrote: post #573
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…

HK and SK both have huge amounts of social distancing in effect (notably schools shut down). Singapore is about the only country I'd view as never having used lockdown. Taiwan did heavy school closures but is now coming back online. Hopefully, things hold up.

Singapore is gradually increasing[1] measures now as more imported cases show up - broader travel restriction, no events of more than 250 people, and enforced WFH, among others.

1. https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/additional-pr...

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

#592

Post by puranjay »

christoph wrote: post #467
majc2 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

I think there's a lot behavioural science going on with the strategy here as well. A lot of the UK public now seem to realise this is serious and have automatically changed behaviour without government mandating it. Long term, that's a big win, people are bought in (seemingly) of their own volition and there is huge value in that. The schools issue is very tricky as a lot of NHS staff will not be able to work if thei…

I'm not sure how people will react by say, week 4 of isolation. I've been cooped up indoors for a week and it's already taking a toll on my well being.

You will invariably have people breaking quarantine after a few weeks, especially if there is a sense of the threat subsiding.

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

#593

Post by ascorbic »

ajross wrote: post #415
rumanator wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 disea…

> 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…

The plan also relies on flattening the curve like other countries' plans. They're just calculating that people won't stay in lockdown for months, and that if they put one in place now people will start emerging just in time to hit the peak of the infections.

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

#594

Post by aaron695 »

chii wrote: post #555
aaron695 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Lockdown has been shown to work in wuhan and china, except for the political willingness and population willingness in western democracies.

We don't know that yet. This hasn't even begun. We have another 6 months before we'll understand anything. Wuhan might just break out again.

Following others lead is only political conservative. It's the learned behaviour of risk managers, push responsibility to others even if it's not the best action. They are there to manage internal risk.

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

#596

Post by casparz »

snowwrestler wrote: post #63
simonh wrote: post #31

I’m going to try and lay out the case in as neutral terms as I can, although to be clear I think they are probably right. They’re going to take an awful lot of stick for it though, and indeed already are. They believe that there are basically two mitigation strategies. One is to have a very drastic early lockdown that shuts down the virus before it spreads widely. The problem with that is, once you lift the lockdown…

> The problem with that is, once you lift the lockdown it will simply start all over again. Well, no, because the world at the end of the lockdown is not the same as the world before the disease started spreading. Some differences: - People now know there is a dangerous disease and how to act and sanitize to mitigate its spread. - Manufacturing and other logistics for medical providers have had the time of the lockdo…

Exactly this. I don’t have published numbers to back the following, but we expect them after the weekend. Over half of ICU admitted covid-19 patients in the Netherlands are <50 years old. I get this information from friends and colleagues working in several hospitals. If this turns out to not be a fluke, the young are much more affected by this corona virus vs normal flu.

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

#597

Post by chrisco255 »

knzhou wrote: post #250
codeulike wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But where is South Korea going with its strategy - are they going to keep doing that forever? And whats China's long term strategy? Wuhan is still locked down.

Wuhan had the great majority of cases in the entire world. The other provinces of China are more analogous to individual European countries. They locked down for a few weeks and have already come back up. The long term strategies for Korea and China are the same: carefully identify new cases as they come in from outside, find their contacts, and isolate them as soon as possible. Temporarily lock down small regions on…

What I don't understand is... Won't this just flare up again in another city the size of Wuhan at some point?

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

#598

Post by poka »

knzhou wrote: post #567
dash2 wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

Keep signing petitions from ivory towers. That's not where political pressure on decision makers comes from.

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

#599

Post by starfallg »

knzhou wrote: post #567
dash2 wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

>there is no clear consensus among UK experts for the UK government's position

Well there is a huge government drive to portray that this is the case right now.

Whenever that happens, it always arouses suspicion that something is not quite right.

As a group, it's hard to imagine that UK experts in Epidemiology and related fields deviates significantly from their peers globally.

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

#600

Post by _puk »

poka wrote: post #598
knzhou wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

Keep signing petitions from ivory towers. That's not where political pressure on decision makers comes from.

Just in case you were not aware, in the UK any official petition with more than 100,000 signatures gets discussed in parliament [0].

0: https://petition.parliament.uk/help

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