Coronavirus precautions: Has the world gone mad?

[Enthusiast]

Because the rules aren't there (just) to force companies to keep their individual customers safe, they're part of the overall effort to prevent exponential growth of coronavirus from starting again.

So why isn't the same strategy adopted every winter to cope with the annual 'flu epidemic (which kills usually as many and often more than Covid has up to now)?

 

[AdamWW]

So why isn't the same strategy adopted every winter to cope with the annual 'flu epidemic (which kills usually as many and often more than Covid has up to now)?

Because with no mitigations the health system just about copes with a bad winter flu season, and the consensus view is that it is unlikely to be able to do the same with coronavirus.

I'm a bit mystified by people comparing the Covid deaths with lockdown with flu deaths without. What is this supposed to prove?

To me it looks like arguing that we're wasting our time putting signals on the railways because trains very rarely collide. (Though I concede that no reasonable person could doubt that we need signalling whereas the impact of the lockdown isn't so clear-cut.)

 

[Scrotnig]

There comes a point where they have to bite the bullet with schools. Six months is a long time for children to go with no proper education, and this could have serious consequences for development.

You're forgetting. No-one cares about children's education any more, because it's not the deadly killer virus.

 

[Yew]

Because with no mitigations the health system just about copes with a bad winter flu season, and the consensus view is that it is unlikely to be able to do the same with coronavirus.

I'm a bit mystified by people comparing the Covid deaths with lockdown with flu deaths without. What is this supposed to prove?

To me it looks like arguing that we're wasting our time putting signals on the railways because trains very rarely collide. (Though I concede that no reasonable person could doubt that we need signalling whereas the impact of the lockdown isn't so clear-cut.)

The thing is we've seemingly sleepwalked from "stop the NHS being overwhelmed" to "completely eliminate this thing" seemingly without any real discussions on if this is actually sensible.

 

[takno]

Because with no mitigations the health system just about copes with a bad winter flu season, and the consensus view is that it is unlikely to be able to do the same with coronavirus.

I'm a bit mystified by people comparing the Covid deaths with lockdown with flu deaths without. What is this supposed to prove?

To me it looks like arguing that we're wasting our time putting signals on the railways because trains very rarely collide. (Though I concede that no reasonable person could doubt that we need signalling whereas the impact of the lockdown isn't so clear-cut.)

The trouble is that you are making the same argument across masks and lockdown. There are things like masks and lockdown which we have tenuous or no evidence of working, and reason to suspect may actually be counterproductive. Then you have things like train signalling or indoor smoking bans which we know have a significant positive effect and either no downside, or a well-understood and quantified downside. What you can't do is say "they're all about safety and stuff, so they're all basically the same" - it's not really an argument.

 

[AdamWW]

The thing is we've seemingly sleepwalked from "stop the NHS being overwhelmed" to "completely eliminate this thing" seemingly without any real discussions on if this is actually sensible.

I don't see any evidence that the UK government is attempting to eliminate it.
Scotland does seem to be aiming for that.

But....given that infections now seem very low in Scotland, the same policy of keeping R~1 and thus locking in the infection rate could be described differently in England and Scotland, as in Scotland it's perhaps locking in a rate of near zero infections per day (of course this all breaks down if England is different and you don't do something to prevent infections from coming in from England).

But suppose we go for 'don't overwhelm the NHS' (which still appears one of the UK government aims). All values of R>1 lead to that eventually until we get a vaccine/develop sufficient immunity in the population.
So in order to avoid overwhelming the NHS we either:
1) Try to keep R<1
2) Let R go above 1 and then if the NHS starts to struggle, bring in lockdown again. Possibly many times. (Which was seriously suggested by SAGE).

 

[AdamWW]

The trouble is that you are making the same argument across masks and lockdown. There are things like masks and lockdown which we have tenuous or no evidence of working, and reason to suspect may actually be counterproductive. Then you have things like train signalling or indoor smoking bans which we know have a significant positive effect and either no downside, or a well-understood and quantified downside. What you can't do is say "they're all about safety and stuff, so they're all basically the same" - it's not really an argument.

OK. If you think that there is tenuous or no evidence that getting people to stay at home reduces the spread of coronavirus, then yes your comparison is valid and I understand your reasoning.

The consensus is that lockdown does have an effect and it doesn't occur to me that unless someone explicitly says so, they're assuming that it doesn't.

I agree that there is doubt over masks, but not only do I think the evidence suggests that lockdowns work, I can't even see a mechanism for how limiting human interaction could NOT lead to a reduction in transmission.

My argument wasn't based on the fact that the lockdown and signalling are both based on safety. It was based on the assumption that we had common ground that we agreed a lockdown reduced transmission - but I see now that we don't.

(As for passive smoking, I'm not sure how good the evidence is that it's a significant health problem).

 

[MikeWM]

The consensus is that lockdown does have an effect and it doesn't occur to me that unless someone explicitly says so, they're assuming that it doesn't.

The consensus would appear to be ill-founded as there is a simple counter-example. Here's a graph of deaths in the UK and Sweden



And yes, Sweden did take some measures, but a long way short of a lockdown, and many people carried on more-or-less as normal, as this graph shows

 

[AdamWW]

The consensus would appear to be ill-founded as there is a simple counter-example. Here's a graph of deaths in the UK and Sweden

View attachment 80548

And yes, Sweden did take some measures, but a long way short of a lockdown, and many people carried on more-or-less as normal, as this graph shows

View attachment 80552

Yes what's happening in Sweden is very interesting.

But if you think that graph proves that lockdowns achieve nothing then I think we have insufficient common ground to continue discussing this.

 

[Mag_seven]

Yes what's happening in Sweden is very interesting.

But if you think that graph proves that lockdowns achieve nothing then I think we have insufficient common ground to continue discussing this.

Yes it its difficult to know if we hadn't locked down what would have happened i.e. would the curve have just been the same?

All we had was that Professor Ferguson model that predicted 500000 deaths if we didn't lock down and that model has apparently been discredited.

 

[MikeWM]

Yes what's happening in Sweden is very interesting.

But if you think that graph proves that lockdowns achieve nothing then I think we have insufficient common ground to continue discussing this.

I'd agree that it makes intuitive sense that a lockdown should reduce transmission, so it is a fascinating question why it doesn't appear to have had an effect in this case.

My opinion in March was that lockdown in this case was wrong, *even though I expected it would reduce transmission*, because you have to take the hit eventually, and lockdown just drags out the economic and social side-effects.

So I thought Sweden was doing the right thing in trying to 'get on with it' as quickly as possible, but remain surprised (and pleased) that as a result they haven't fared worse than us *at this point*. The only explanation I can see is that we hit herd immunity at a much lower % than was originally speculated.

 

[trebor79]

Aren't we effectively doing a Sweden now? Life pretty much as normal, but working from home if possible and no large gatherings like football matches and nightclubs?
I suspect that will be enough to keep case numbers very low. Of course it's unfortunate for people who enjoy such activities, but the government has said they will remain shut for the forseeable future.

 

[LAX54]

I see John Lewis are closing 8 stores is big towns, with 1300+ job losses, Burger King have also said they are closing stores 1600 jobs going , 3,000 jobs going at Rolls Royce, 1,700 at Airbus. Easyjet closing thier bases at Stansted, just the tip of the iceberg......

 

[takno]

Yes what's happening in Sweden is very interesting.

But if you think that graph proves that lockdowns achieve nothing then I think we have insufficient common ground to continue discussing this.

It's less the case that lockdowns achieve nothing and more that lockdowns are very blunt and destructive instruments, and almost all of the value of a lockdown can be achieved through much less dramatic interventions.

I'm not at all sure that there was a consensus view in favour of a lockdown beyond the initial three weeks, either on SAGE or in the wider scientific community. It has certainly been the loudest-trumpeted view in the popular press, but the view across more specialised science sources has been rather more nuanced. At the end of the day it's not like there's been a big old conference and a vote.

 

[MikeWM]

Aren't we effectively doing a Sweden now? Life pretty much as normal, but working from home if possible and no large gatherings like football matches and nightclubs?
I suspect that will be enough to keep case numbers very low. Of course it's unfortunate for people who enjoy such activities, but the government has said they will remain shut for the forseeable future.

As of last weekend, yes, we're in a fairly similar position to where Sweden have been all along.

 

[birchesgreen]

I see John Lewis are closing 8 stores is big towns, with 1300+ job losses, Burger King have also said they are closing stores 1600 jobs going , 3,000 jobs going at Rolls Royce, 1,700 at Airbus. Easyjet closing thier bases at Stansted, just the tip of the iceberg......

Yes but don't worry as we can get 10 quid off Harvester via the government

 

[Mag_seven]

I see John Lewis are closing 8 stores is big towns, with 1300+ job losses, Burger King have also said they are closing stores 1600 jobs going , 3,000 jobs going at Rolls Royce, 1,700 at Airbus. Easyjet closing thier bases at Stansted, just the tip of the iceberg......

I find that far more frightening than some virus that's going around. Next year when we have mass unemployment and are in the middle of an economic depression we will be asking ourselves "Why on earth did we do this? Was it worth it?"

 

[MikeWM]

I see John Lewis are closing 8 stores is big towns, with 1300+ job losses, Burger King have also said they are closing stores 1600 jobs going , 3,000 jobs going at Rolls Royce, 1,700 at Airbus. Easyjet closing thier bases at Stansted, just the tip of the iceberg......

And wait for the furlough to unwind... (though the Chancellor has now delayed some of the pain by using taxpayer money to bribe companies into taking furloughed staff off-furlough!)

The September quarter-day rent payment is going to send many retail companies over the edge, if they survive until then.

 

[LAX54]

I find that far more frightening than some virus that's going around. Next year when we have mass unemployment and are in the middle of an economic depression we will be asking ourselves "Why on earth did we do this? Was it worth it?"

But what can the Government do ? they are backed into a corner, they can't just say go back to normal ! plus some of the population are too scared to say boo to a mouse !

 

[AdamWW]

I'd agree that it makes intuitive sense that a lockdown should reduce transmission, so it is a fascinating question why it doesn't appear to have had an effect in this case.

My opinion in March was that lockdown in this case was wrong, *even though I expected it would reduce transmission*, because you have to take the hit eventually, and lockdown just drags out the economic and social side-effects.

So I thought Sweden was doing the right thing in trying to 'get on with it' as quickly as possible, but remain surprised (and pleased) that as a result they haven't fared worse than us *at this point*. The only explanation I can see is that we hit herd immunity at a much lower % than was originally speculated.

Right that's a very good point - does a lockdown do anything for you in the long run? The advice the government was getting was that a lockdown is a poor strategy because once you release it, infections just rise again so in the long run you've gained nothing. In other words there's no exit strategy.

It looks as if they were forced into it because of concerns that without it the NHS would be overwhelmed, though it's also where the public mood was heading.

Now the Imperial paper with the nice graphs showing that after a lockdown infections came back almost as badly as if you'd never bothered made the assumption that nothing had changed by then. A lockdown makes sense if it buys you time and you use it well. Ideally you'd have a vaccine (that was never going to happen in an acceptable timescale) or a decent treatment (could have happened) or you build a track and trace system that can keep infections down. For some reason we decided to wait quite a while before setting that up, for reasons that I don't understand, unless it was because there wouldn't have been enough tests available for it to work. But none was made much of in the Imperial paper. There was a brief mention of track-and-trace but no more. My cynical view is that as the existing (flu) model didn't have track and trace in it, they couldn't generate nice graphs for that scenario and so excluded it.

It does feel as if the strategy has quietly moved from "don't overwhelm the NHS" to "try to get rid of it", but I'm not sure that really is the case - either way you want R<1.

It's interesting that every time England opens up, R still seems to hover a little below 1.

I suspect that what this shows (and Sweden) is that while we can't afford to go back to normal, we can loosen things up quite a bit without getting ourselves into trouble (and that in hindsight the English approach will turn out to be right and the more cautious approach in Wales and Scotland overly restrictive).

It's hard not to imagine that we have quite a bit more immunity than it looks, particuarly given Sweden.

I do think though that by the time we locked down, we needed to do what we did, because by the time we started there were so many people infected we needed R well below 1. (The idea that we had a sudden increase driven by people returning from half-term trips abroad, rather than by transmission in the UK, seems very plausible to me).

We seem to be keeping R~1 with the current restrictions, which is pretty good evidence that had we started them early enough, they would be sufficient (probably alongside an earlier travel ban, or quarantine on return).

Things can change very fast in an epidemic, and a delay of a week can have huge consequences.

So to summarise a long post: I have no doubt that lockdowns reduce transmission, and my view is that we did need to do what we did but had we taken action earlier we could almost certiainly have got away with Sweden's approach. And even then I think we are a lot closer to herd immunity than testing suggests.

 

[kylemore]

So why isn't the same strategy adopted every winter to cope with the annual 'flu epidemic (which kills usually as many and often more than Covid has up to now)?

Exactly.

The most sensible policy was not even attempted - isolate the care homes and throw medical resources at them and assist over 70s and other identified vulnerable persons to self isolate if they wished (no compulsion) whilst allowing those at little or no risk to get on with life with sensible voluntary precautions. The vast majority of deaths was down to this neglect, both north and south of the border.

We now have the situation where the health of millions is being ruined - and economic hardship and misery is the biggest ruin to health both physical and mental - to "save" penny numbers from the residual effects of this winter virus.

I'm afraid that if you are broadly in favour of what is being done just now then you are (hopefully unwittingly) in favour of doing more harm to people than good.

 

[MikeWM]

But what can the Government do ? they are backed into a corner, they can't just say go back to normal ! plus some of the population are too scared to say boo to a mouse !

They won't of course, but the correct thing to do would be to do another address to the nation like on March 23rd, admit they got things wrong (eg. care homes), over-estimated the danger, tell us to carry on looking after the vulnerable, stick with basic hygeine (eg. washing our hands regularly), and strongly emphasise that for the under-70s this is no more dangerous than seasonal flu and we should get back to our normal lives as soon as possible.

Well, I can dream

 

[Bantamzen]

I find that far more frightening than some virus that's going around. Next year when we have mass unemployment and are in the middle of an economic depression we will be asking ourselves "Why on earth did we do this? Was it worth it?"

Indeed, and these figures are just the headline makers. Jobs are falling off left, right and centre without barely a mention. And a lot more will go when furloughing starts to ramp back, this is when we will really see how many locktivists are still as keen on staying at home when the 80% wages disappear & the choice becomes work or go onto Universal Credit, although many won't have a choice.

But what can the Government do ? they are backed into a corner, they can't just say go back to normal ! plus some of the population are too scared to say boo to a mouse !

But it was the government that backed themselves there in the first place, mainly because they swung from one approach to another. Put bluntly the future decisions have been made all the harder, contemplate another lockdown and the guaranteed economic meltdown that will cause, or spent a considerable amount more getting permanent additional capacity into the NHS & associated agencies to keep ahead of any future spikes.

 

[LAX54]

They won't of course, but the correct thing to do would be to do another address to the nation like on March 23rd, admit they got things wrong (eg. care homes), over-estimated the danger, tell us to carry on looking after the vulnerable, stick with basic hygeine (eg. washing our hands regularly), and strongly emphasise that for the under-70s this is no more dangerous than seasonal flu and we should get back to our normal lives as soon as possible.

Well, I can dream

And I think there are more that agree with that statement than you think ! also is the NHS not overwhelmed EVERY YEAR, I seem to recall the media being full of reports that Hospitals were full to bursting, with Ambulances being 'stacked' outside for hours on end, and patients on trolleys in corridors ? Is that any different to the current issue ?

 

[HSTEd]

Indeed, and these figures are just the headline makers. Jobs are falling off left, right and centre without barely a mention. And a lot more will go when furloughing starts to ramp back, this is when we will really see how many locktivists are still as keen on staying at home when the 80% wages disappear & the choice becomes work or go onto Universal Credit, although many won't have a choice.

They would never blame the lockdown though.
They would claim that an earlier lockdown would have let us be New Zealand or something idiotic, nevermind that running things with closed borders was never going to be practical.

 

[bramling]

But what can the Government do ? they are backed into a corner, they can't just say go back to normal ! plus some of the population are too scared to say boo to a mouse !

I don’t have an issue with people choosing to stay at home, so long as they don’t expect the taxpayer to subsidise this.

 

[talldave]

Going back to the "don't overload the NHS" approach (which I agreed with, even though it cost me my job and I slip into the unsupported self employed category), I wonder if a second wave, if it happens, would be as bad because a lot of the vulnerable (elderly, obese, who knows what) have already died. I don't know the numbers of vulnerable so it's hard to guesstimate.

It feels like after we prevented NHS overload, we lost our way and forgot what it was we were trying to achieve. Meanwhile, the coronaphobes assumed we had switched to a (impossible to achieve) strategy of total virus elimination.

It will be interesting to see how many coronaphobes are miraculously cured by having their furlough removed.

 

[LAX54]

I see John Lewis are closing 8 stores is big towns, with 1300+ job losses, Burger King have also said they are closing stores 1600 jobs going , 3,000 jobs going at Rolls Royce, 1,700 at Airbus. Easyjet closing thier bases at Stansted, just the tip of the iceberg......

Add to this I see just announced 4000 jobs at Boots in the dustbin ! plua previously announced 200 at Easyjet, 5000 at Upper Crust / SSP Group, 1000 at Pret-a-Manger, 12,000 at B.A, 550 at the Daily Mirror...... and this is only the start !

 

[furlong]

From The Spectator:
The fatal mistakes which led to lockdown

Its fatality rate was estimated by the World Health Organisation at 3.4 per cent. Then from various sources, we heard 0.9 per cent, followed by 0.6 per cent. It could yet settle closer to 0.1 per cent — similar to seasonal flu — once we get a better understanding of milder, undetected cases and how many deaths it actually caused (rather than deaths where the virus was present).
...
The whole Covid drama has really been a crisis of awareness of what viruses normally do, rather than a crisis caused by an abnormally lethal new bug.
...
An early maintained but exaggerated belief in the lethality of the virus reinforced by modelling that was almost data-free, then amplified by further modelling with no proven predictive value. All summed up by recommendations from a committee based on qualitative data that hasn’t even been peer-reviewed.

 

[LAX54]

It will be interesting to see how many coronaphobes are miraculously cured by having their furlough removed.

Ahhh, staying at home and getting 80% of your pay, with no stess of work, and no travel expenses !