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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?

#191

Post by richk449 »

happierlook wrote: post #154
richk449 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worded it that way because I think that even if he had done everything right, his re-election would still be in trouble because of factors outside of his control.

The job is literally to be prepared for the future on behalf of the country. If you take active steps that make us less prepared for something and we therefore suffer greater consequences when it happens, I have a really hard time describing that as being something outside of your control. Under normal circumstances, an exigent crisis such as war would make a President significantly more likely to be re-elected. He t…

If you want to argue about Trump, please find someone else to do it with (or somewhere else to do it).

My comment was not about Trump's response, and I regret even including mention of him, since that one offhand comment has generated uninteresting political arguments, without anybody engaging with what I was actually writing about.

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

#192

Post by d2p »

OJFord wrote: post #172
throwaway936482 wrote: post #94

This strategy is not insane only if there is also a concerted effort to protect those who are vulnerable while the virus spreads. The problem is there isn't one. At all. None. Zip. Zero. Some care homes are, off their own back, banning visitors but apart from that the old and the vulnerable are not being asked to self isolate or engage in social distancing, only those who have symptoms themselves are being told to se…

> only those who have symptoms [...] Where 'symptoms' includes 'a cough'; not just definitely-COVID-19 symptoms. > [...] themselves are being told to self isolate, and not members of their households. That's not true.

> That's not true.

How so? Everything I've seen from them, including the Gov't site only say to self-isolate. They said that in the near future they may tell households to isolate, but right now only the person with symptoms.

> "people with confirmed or possible coronavirus (COVID-19) infection"

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-stay-at-...

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

#193

Post by progre »

sgt101 wrote: post #168
amiga_500 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

>One need only look at WWI unarmed charges from trenches. when did that happen?

It didn't. Maybe poster was thinking of the Crimean war 60 years earlier where bayonet charges where tried on well defended russian positions.

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

#194

Post by beaunative »

m0zg wrote: post #179
patrec wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you kinda missed the part where the UK is trying very hard to infect the majority of the population and China is trying very hard to stop more infections from taking place. Successfully it seems. > So no, there won't be "millions of deaths" or anything close to that I showed you some simple arithmetic, based on official figures from the UK government. Can you come up with better numbers or point out an obviou…

There are no reliable estimates of overall fatality of the virus. Only the estimates of how many people _who required treatment_ have died, which the press deliberately misinterprets as the overall fatality rates most of the time, because higher numbers drive more clicks. Watch epidemiologists speak about this: they will go out of their way to point out that we don't know these percentages, and we won't know them for…

Not true. These estimates are of overall fatality based on number of people diagnoised. Not based on those who required intensive treatment. That means we have crude estimate on death rate for people showing some symptoms. Crude in a way not everyone in the pool is recovered, or dead for that matter, so it's not possible to be that accurate yet, but it will only be higher not lower.

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

#195

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

mkl wrote: post #174
jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the deaths of thousands or more More like a million deaths assuming 50% UK infected and 2% death rate.

50%×2% = 1%. 1%×67.5 million = 675,000.

Which is "like a million".

Both the 50% and the 2% are very conservative.

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

#196

Post by [deleted] »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #152
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…

Why would operating as normal and mostly ignoring the problem cause a "slower initial burn"? It won't. This is nonsense of the most obvious kind, because we're already past the stage where the virus is spreading quickly. In fact the reverse is likely to be true. Lockdown minimises the number with the disease, but that number is not zero. Which means that if immunity is possible (questionable for a CV, but let's prete…

[deleted]

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

#197

Post by patrec »

m0zg wrote: post #179
patrec wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you kinda missed the part where the UK is trying very hard to infect the majority of the population and China is trying very hard to stop more infections from taking place. Successfully it seems. > So no, there won't be "millions of deaths" or anything close to that I showed you some simple arithmetic, based on official figures from the UK government. Can you come up with better numbers or point out an obviou…

There are no reliable estimates of overall fatality of the virus. Only the estimates of how many people _who required treatment_ have died, which the press deliberately misinterprets as the overall fatality rates most of the time, because higher numbers drive more clicks. Watch epidemiologists speak about this: they will go out of their way to point out that we don't know these percentages, and we won't know them for…

Nope, SARS and MERS are way deadlier than Covid-19, not just in initial estimates. South Korea tested hundreds of thousands of people and we have the Diamond Princess. That makes it unlikely that we are overestimating CFR by an order of magnitude due to uncounted mild cases. If you have someone reputable who thinks true CFR could be as low as 0.1%, please share! As far as I can tell no one believes it can be significantly below 1% for a country with similar demographics as the UK.

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

#198

Post by tmnvix »

haunter wrote: post #133
mattmanser wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This clip of the political sitcom Yes Minister from the 1980s is making the rounds on our social media, as it explains that thought process succinctly, and hilariously: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qNjFIwRYEIo

What's the title of the show? :D

'Yes Minister'. There is also a follow up series called 'Yes Prime Minister'. Very funny stuff - especially if you have any insight into the public service bureaucracy.

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

#199

Post by kgwgk »

arcticbull wrote: post #186
enraged_camel wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very wrong. While you yourself may not have contact with old people, you can still act as a vector and spread it to someone who does.

Indeed, which is why it's on them not to go out. So long as nobody who has contact with old folks goes out, we're basically doing the UK plan ad-hoc. The rule shouldn't be "nobody go out" the rule should be "nobody with exposure to the vulnerable should go out" -- and if they do, they're being totally irresponsible. I, however, am not, and I'm supporting the local economy.

Is the pub the only place where you get in contact with other people?

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

#200

Post by lultimouomo »

mattmanser wrote: post #64
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?

Italy is almost a month ahead of most of the world in infections though, their first outbreaks were weeks ago and the source for infecting most of the rest of Europe. A lot of the UK infections can be traced to Italian holidays, for example. Even if the government does plan to lock down the UK eventually, every day must cost 10s of millions, you can understand the strategy to wait longer, and even to play it down a b…

The biggest EU countries are 1 to two weeks behind Italy:

https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/1238604695700209664

(mind the log scale)

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