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Not happy to be living in the UK if that's really the plan.
The aim is to flatten the curve, any herd immunity is a by-product but not the aim.
Important to remember that this person doesn't know what the policy is. They're just tweeting their opinion.
Here is an interesting follow up interview with the chief scientific advisor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XRc389TvG8
My personal opinion, after watching the interview, is that the UK government is not doing anything that radical. They will follow the reactions of other countries but want to time the reaction so that it is most effective.
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…
So let's assume that building immunity is even a possibility even though there is no evidence to support this while there exists substantial evidence to the contrary (people getting reinfected)? Not happy to be living in the UK if that's really the plan.
No. There are instances of people testing negative and then testing positive again, but the strong consensus is that this probably results from faulty testing and/or changes in how viral material manifests at different stages in a person's infection. The chance is very small that people are truly getting re-infected.
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…
But there's a third strategy that works better than either: don't lockdown, but do effective testing, case tracking, and treatment, well enough so that exponential growth can't happen in the first place. That's the policy of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, who are doing great.
Take London. We could introduce a system of tracking and isolation within the M25, and that might work to lock down community transmission within the London population, but millions of people flow into and out of London each week so it would be completely pointless and ineffective. Meanwhile that level of tracking and isolation simply can’t work across the whole British isles. It’s administratively and logistically impractical.
This might work. But how many people will die in the process? There are many cases of young people, with seemingly no prior health issues, dying after getting severe issues as a result of the virus. On top of that, you can't guarantee that young people will only get it. With no travel restrictions, it can easily spread to the elderly.
It kills maybe 1% to 2% of people under 50 with no comorbitities. If we assume everyone in the UK is under 50 and there are 60m people and we want to infect 60% of them that's 36m people infected, and 1% of that is 360,000 dead. That's ignoring all the people who do have comorbitieis (diabetes, high blood pressure, etc), and all the people over 50. It's also ignoring all the people who eg get into road traffic accide…
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...
and causing the deaths of >80 year olds, thus reducing the costs of dependency on the health system? #consipracy :)
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…
But there's a third strategy that works better than either: don't lockdown, but do effective testing, case tracking, and treatment, well enough so that exponential growth can't happen in the first place. That's the policy of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, who are doing great.
All of which have tiny populations compared to the UK.
For larger nations, there simply aren't enough tests available, nor enough treatment facilities for those who are likely to become very sick if the virus spreads rapidly through the population.