Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is UK government insane or genius?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 772 posts

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

#101

Post by mantap »

vanniv wrote: post #65
stefano wrote: post #33

One region of Italy is close to their ICU beds limit, despite a full lockdown. And they have more beds per person than the UK. Without a full lockdown, won't they run out of beds very quickly, thus increasing the death rate a lot?

The average age of a fatal case is still north on 80 years. The UK plan is effectively to get as many people as possible that are young, and thus at a super low risk of needing hospitalization to get infected, so that they can recover and then be immune, thus making it hard for the virus to sweep through again. If 30% or more of the population were immune, it would be much harder to get a new outbreak started. With a…

What exactly is the risk of needing hospitalisation if you are young? Does anybody know?

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

#102

Post by amiga_500 »

beaunative wrote: post #85

It looks like to me just a comfort pill for the public. They basically acknowledged that they can't handle the crisis already. So what they gonna do? They want it to appear to be an advice from expert, to persuade the public, rationalize a forced decision. The uncomfortable truth is, the British government have weighted cost and benefit, and they have decided, the death of thousands or more is not worth the cost of n…

Our establishment are very detached from the hoi polloi. One need only look at WWI unarmed charges from trenches. Not sure much has changed since this time on their side. On the pleb side I think the assumption that the upper crust are competent has changed.

We've just had years and years of austerity in the UK, imposing a huge toll on the most vulnerable in society. The government repeatedly said there was no money. Then they turn the taps on when it effects them. They clearly do not care about the bulk of people.

Put those two together and you have the ingredients for a big uproar.

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

#103

Post by janoc »

allears wrote: post #5

There are already some reports of re-infection. It may be that immunity isn't so easy to build for this virus. Not enough is known about it yet. This is a huge gamble.

There are a few suspicious cases but given how human immunity system works, it is very very unlikely that it is due to reinfection (i.e. a cured patient getting infected again).

A far more likely explanation is either poor testing that gave a false "all clear" while the patient was still sick. The tests are not 100%, that you don't detect the virus in the sample doesn't mean that the patient is not infected - it only means your sample didn't contain the virus. Which could happen for all sorts of reasons. That's why multiple tests are usually required - commonly two, in some cases up to eight consecutive tests had to be clean before the patient was discharged.

Or the patient has not been completely treated and the virus became dormant for a while, reappearing again later. This is known to happen with other diseases as well - e.g. ebola virus could stay dormant for weeks in the eyes and cause the disease to return again.

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

#105

Post by ksec »

knzhou wrote: post #15
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…

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.

There are quite a few difference.

HK, Taiwan and Singapore all acted extremely early on, to the point where HK knew before the news broke out in China. And the culture allows you to wear mask, which seems to be something most western nation are completely against.

Most part of Europe and UK reacted very late in the cycle. Since the Virus has an extremely long stable period before any symptoms appeared or to the point where you could be infected but showing no symptoms at all. It highly likely they are already in wide spread. 500 people each inflecting two, do that 11 times and we have 1 million infected.

Then there is the death rate, at least so far it seems to be extremely mild for anyone below 50.

Not saying I totally agree with Herd Immunity, but judging from the current data and situation it is possibly the best route to go.

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

#106

Post by listsfrin »

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…

Do you have some links with reliable reports of young people getting sick and other cases you told?

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

#107

Post by ookblah »

lol it sounds more on the insane side to me. you have to have a thought out plan to protect the vulnerable and do exposure in "phases", but has that ever been done ever?

and even if you are young and healthy why would you knowingly expose yourself to something that, while wouldn't kill you could put you in a life threatening situation, regardless. i know there are probably way more statistical higher ways to die, but there's a reason i don't go rubbing my face in a sick co-workers hand. even the flu symptoms are no joke.

i've heard that there's a chance of re-infection, but not sure how accurate that is.

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

#108

Post by new2628 »

mattmanser wrote: post #74
mnl wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it does, you don't wait a week to put out a fire, it gets worse. China has essentially contained it already. Maybe alternating lockdowns and releases we might be able to keep it manageable until there's a vaccine. This is not hard to model once there are a few cases in a population, again IMO.

How much does every day in lockdown hurt the economy? Flattening out the infection curve too much means increasing the economic harm by a much larger degree. Calling a lockdown a week too early, means continuing it a week extra on the other end or you risk a sudden, unmanageable peak. I don't envy any politician the decision, but pandering to panic and locking down too soon will cause a lot of harm too.

At a larger level, "hurting the economy" may be the best thing to happen in a long time for (1) the environment, e.g. clean air, (2) family time, (3) cutting out some useless activities that go on due to sheer inertia, like formula-1, olympics, auto shows, most conventions, etc., (4) give people and societies a chance to slow down, think through things and refactor a system that was running full speed towards the wall anyway.

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

#110

Post by ubercow13 »

beaunative wrote: post #85

It looks like to me just a comfort pill for the public. They basically acknowledged that they can't handle the crisis already. So what they gonna do? They want it to appear to be an advice from expert, to persuade the public, rationalize a forced decision. The uncomfortable truth is, the British government have weighted cost and benefit, and they have decided, the death of thousands or more is not worth the cost of n…

>Under the assumption everyone will get infected anyway

Under that assumption you presumably have no choice? The question is whether that is a good assumption

Post reply on HN