Unless you get to the position of the healthcare system being overwhelmed? Unless? Like front-line medical staff not having PPE? NHS staff are, in fact, people too even when they're forced to choose who gets oxygen It's harder, but not hard to calculate at all, and is a direct reflection on government mandated mitigation strategies. Had the government enforced a lockdown earlier, the death rate wouldn't be what it is right now.
Don't know about you, but I've just worked 19 days straight --most of them 12-hour shifts-- and I'm just one of the guys supporting the medical and nursing staff. We're definitely feeling a wee bit stretched, here. Nationwide there is a significant PPE supply problem, a ventilator supply problem, an ICU beds shortage and 25% of staff going off sick. And we're just at the beginning; we haven't reached peak illness yet. This is against a backdrop of an NHS that has failed to meet basic targets in cancer treatment and A&E treatment times for the last few years and which now habitually experiences "winter pressures" from August onward. Kiddo, we were stretched before COVID-19 happened.
When did you think there should have been a full lockdown? If we look at Ireland they shut schools long before the UK but the UK moved on shielding the old and at risk rather earlier which worried me.
On schools yes but on the elderly and the nationwide lockdown rather later. Was worried as my mother lives there, but she is OK so far. We certainly will be able to tell in the long run. But if you scroll back, the point I was getting to it that if we expect most unsheilded population in Europe to get it over the next six months, then a lot of the difference in death rates will be demographics and health levels (the irony being if you have greater life expectancies and thus more elderly people the death rate would tend to be higher).
Ireland closed schools and banned large gatherings. Which is where large-scale infection happens. Again, half the death rates of the UK. Tweet— Twitter API (@user) date Even if deaths happen mostly amongst the sick and elderly (and given the fact that young, apparently healthy people die from this disease while some elderly recover just fine, that's not a given), the UK has one of the most unhealthy populations in Europe.
Slovakia locked down when we had 21 cases total. UK lockdown came in three phases, when your tested infected/total deaths were at 2626 / 218 (18th March), 3983 / 371 (20th March) and 5683 / 766 (23rd March). While UK has 12x the population, similar measures would have meant locking down more or less at similar time as us - we locked down on March 12 with 21 cases, which would be equal to UK's 250 cases. That is 8th March in UK. The 12th March "self-isolation" measures to protect vulnerable came when you had double the official cases of the 8th March. And there is also the issue of testing - when UK had official 580 cases, it was more likely to be 5k cases, UK had 21 dead by then. Slovakia has 2 dead at 750 confirmed cases and 27k tests (equal to 324k UK tests). So yes, UK was very, very late at any form of measures. Even the "shielding" measures came days too late. It should came at the moment you got more than single digits of infected - which was pretty much at 1st March. So UK government pretty much left virus to spread for 3 weeks.
So, ironically the problem was following in the scientific advice (before the Imperial College model came out and changed that advice) rather than just doing what everyone else seemed to be doing and only wheeling out the scientists if they agreed with you. E.g. the Swedes are wrong to follow their scientific advisors at the moment because other countries are doing something different.
We should always be guided by the science. Yes, that guidance will change, because in science the evidence will change and hypotheses will become better understood.
Well, Sweden is on same death trajectory as China was according to their official numbers (see https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest ). Which is rather bad result considering the normal self distancing nature of Scandinavian nations. Also i do not consider Sweden's 10.5k cases and 899 dead as a good result for a nation which has just twice the population size of Slovakia.
Completely agree. And I can't point to the stage in the current crisis at which the UK government overruled the scientific advice. But that they didn't is the criticism at the moment.
The UK was on par with most other large European countries in when measures were implemented versus death count. There's obviously the argument that, seeing the spread in Italy and given the new data, the Govt could have chosen to implement measures sooner. But on the whole, it doesn't look like the UK's response is a particular outlier. I don't have much faith in Bojo to do the 'right thing', but their response to this pandemic has been boringly mundane. It's worth bearing in mind that what we're seeing now is only the start of something that will continue to go on possibly well into 2021. The phrase "herd immunity" has been turned into a bogeyman, but ultimately herd immunity is the only way out, either through natural progression, or via vaccine. Either way, we're still in the early stages; how govts around the world handle the next 6-12 months is going to be the bigger discriminator. What are you basing this on? Most of what I've read has suggested that the modeling says large gatherings (i.e. football matches) and schools have a relatively minor impact.
I think the biggest criticism is the timing and the messaging. The messaging should have been stronger earlier. Boris Johnson sure as hell shouldn't have been shaking hands with people in hospitals; not only is that bad in epidemiological terms - i.e. the potential to spread a novel virus through the heart of the UK government - but it's bad in terms of the message you're trying to portray to the public. "If the Prime Minister isn't concerned, why should I be?" The problem is that we don't know at this point whether you can be re-infected. We don't know whether SARS-COV-2 will become endemic like influenza. Herd immunity, whether through a vaccine or "natural" spread, may not be a COVID-19 panacea. It's too early to say, we just don't have that data.
Herd immunity tactics instead of non-existing vaccine is a good choice, when you have options to lessen the impact on vulnerable people - that is, once you tested antiviral drugs against said virus and found them effective. That is what is going to happen until there is vaccine - we might find out that a specific drug of "cocktail of them" will help to lessen the impact of the virus (like we manage HIV these days) in a month or two, and then we can return to semi-normal life. But betting on herd immunity before you can treat most of the worst cases is just bad idea.
I've not really been following Bojo's antics so I can't really comment directly, but it sounds like a fair point. Certainly the initial messaging was all over the place. True, although the prospect of even a vaccine failing to prevent the spread is pretty mortifying. But there's not much that can be done other than plan with the currently available data.
"Herd immunity" was a scientifically misapplied term. No scientist endorsed it. The phrase "herd immunity" was a misnomer. What the government was talking about is correctly called "natural selection". Which is, objectively, a valid approach, if you accept that some people will just die. See above post.
I'm not sure that answered it I don't think you can attribute a lower number of deaths at this point per thousand to locking schools and banning mass gatherings weeks before pubs and shielding older people even later. As I said earlier I was concerned when I talked to my mother after we asked older people to shield and found that they hadn't asked for that there but closed schools instead. I think there phrase may or may not have been misquoted, but there was talk of "building up immunity in the population at large" etc. Try Sir Patrick Valance om Mar 12th This seems to back up what was being done at that time.
I think that half the death rate is a pretty significant ratio. If you stop the disease from spreading, the elderly are logically at less risk of being exposed, no? It is still, in the scientifically correct definition, natural selection.
