I've just come into this discussion and get the impression that the anti-lockdown position is regarded as right-wing, libertarian, and know-nothing. Is it just possible, however, that the non-general lockdown approach of Sweden might prove to have been the most sensible approach, based on the science, of course?
I'm not sure what a "non general lockdown" is. Sweden closed schools (though left primary schools open for children of care workers), home working where possible, put in an early ban on groups over 50, and issued a series of recommendations that are expected to be followed. Though, instructions issued by the public health agency rather than government. I'd expect most people in Sweden are in a similar state of being at home as everywhere else. They've still managed almost 4000 deaths with confirmed Covid, probably a lot more when the data are available, from a population of 10million which is a rate similar to the UK.
The restrictions are not as severe as the UK, but Sweden also had a prepared response plan that swung into action with testing for the virus from the end of January. That plan and preparation, and the early start of testing, probably made up for the slightly relaxed restrictions compared to other European nations preventing that relaxed approach leading to much higher death rates. Do you fancy going back a couple of years and putting in a plan, and practising it, for a respiratory disease pandemic so the UK would be able to run extensive testing from the end of January? Without that in place, the much more restrictive lockdown we have is the only option we have.
Fair question, Arethosemyfeet, to which we don't know the answer. My reply would be to ask how that compares with Sweden. I should also point out that while the Black Death was 30%-40% of the population covid-19 has removed 0.05 per cent of UK inhabitants thus far. Sweden, by the way, seems to be mid-range.
Why on earth are you comparing Sweden only with the UK? Do you seriously think the UK, one of the worst affected countries on the planet, is a good argument for saying that lockdowns don't work?
The lockdowns that don't work are the ones that happened slowly after initially toying with ideas like herd immunity.
EARLY lockdowns work. So does early testing. If you want to see what a lockdown is supposed to do, don't look at the UK. Look at Vietnam. Taiwan. South Korea. Australia. New Zealand.
Sweden's death rate might be better than the UK's but it's also worse than... nearly every other country besides the UK. It's not mid-range. It's 8th in the world. It's worse than the rest of Scandinavia for starters.
And can you please not compare just a couple of months of covid-19 to several years of the Black Death? That's really basic stuff. Come back in 5 years and then tell me how many people died, despite several centuries worth of medical advances. Jesus.
Not many skeptics are totally skeptical, that is, let it rip. One of the issues is unpredictability, thus, we can calculate 500 000 deaths (UK), but we are in Clint Eastwood territory, do you feel lucky, etc. It might be 1000000.
The point also is that it gets out of control, hospitals are jammed, you can't get home treatment, not even morphine. Not quite bodies in the street, but certainly bodies in beds at home, and the mortuary is full. People said in northern Italy, it verged on this.
Another point is that hospital workers start seeing multiple deaths per day, this is not good, and may lead to PTSD.
So then you accept some restrictions. Now I'm not sure what criteria skeptics would use, libertarian, economic, or what. Many object to not leaving home, or cops telling you not to sunbathe
And then you have the issue of timing. The irony is, if you lock down early and hard, you may be be able to release, given contract tracing. This is the NZ claim, don't know how accurate.
Alan:
I don't want to deny your facts but would appreciate references. The latest article I have accessed (with the title: Why Sweden’s Approach To Coronavirus May Not Be What You Think (Forbes Mag 14 May) which aims to explode the myth that Sweden is just going on it's merry way unhindered, still states
While universities and high school (gymnasium) are closed, with students studying online, all other schools and day-care centers have remained open. Didrikson’s partner works full time, so he welcomes that, admitting he doesn’t know how working parents with no childcare manage.
Which is what I understood, and is apparently also true in Iceland. SFAIK England has done what you suggest, namely keeping schools open to children of essential workers, and all the kids I've seen interviewed were mightily glad that they were still at school. Mind you I accept they probably pre-screen kids to make sure they follow the official line.
In my book, a "general lockdown" means that people are confined to their places of residence except for the few exceptions allowed by the Government. So the right of free movement is withdrawn for all. This is not true of Sweden.
How better prepared Sweden was, is something I do not know. I believe they have fewer ICU beds per head of population than the UK, and Sweden is quite a lot below the UK is testing, just behind France and just above Peru.
You may have access to information I do not, and maybe this illustrates how hard it is to get at the facts.
They have a problem with Care Homes, as does the UK and other countries, though the UK Gov does seem to have made a spectacular balls-up of this.
Sweden's death rate might be better than the UK's but it's also worse than... nearly every other country besides the UK. It's not mid-range. It's 8th in the world. It's worse than the rest of Scandinavia for starters.
This. @Anteater@KwesiSWEDEN. IS. A. FAILURE. When comparing apples to apples, Sweden's choice didn't work. Their approach would in the UK would make the death rate even worse, because of the culture being different.
I'd quite like to see the overlap between the "sacrifice the old" restart-the-economy brigade and the "every life is sacred" anti-abortion crowd. I suspect there's a correlation...
Funny thing is they're also usually the anti-assisted dying crowd.
Forgive me if I question their consistency somewhat.
People are not dropping like flies now. They are betting that people will not be dropping like flies in the future. It is not about whether a lot of people will die, but whether a lot of people will see a lot of other people dies.
Hope you don't mind me jumping in, but this is a really important point, and something that keeps me awake at night.
A little background: I'm married to a conspiracy-believing super-Trumper, who is certain that this whole thing is just a plot to keep Donnie from getting reelected in November, as do many of our family members and friends.
My concern is that the reason so many of these folks are not accepting this virus as a real danger is because they haven't seen it hitting anyone they know. And because it isn't affecting *them,* it simply can't be a real thing.
And even if they *do* see bodies in the streets, they'll find some way to dismiss them. They were just the homeless; they had underlying conditions; they weren't anyone we know. Like Pauline Kael, the movie critic who famously said she was shocked when Nixon was reelected in a landslide, because "no one I know voted for him."
So why do they think the world *outside* the US is locking down ? What do they think the Italians were dying of ?
If logic and reason were part of their thinking, Trump and his horde of fools would not be where they are.
We've had 35 000+ deaths with the lockdown. How many do you imagine we would have had without it?
OK good question and of course nobody knows. So I just knocked up a model in Excel which came out with the answer: 50,000.
So that leads to an interesting question. Would that number close down the discussion with you? Or would you be prepared to put that number into a comparison, as against the lockdown related deaths, the mental/abuse distress, the loss of education and the downturn of the economy which will itself result in deaths, although these will never be classed as COVID deaths by the Government. Not to mentions the loss of liberty which seems not at all to bother most people.
My suspicion is that for many, the prospect of a further 15,000 deaths of mainly very old people with multiple health problems already, settles the issue. And emphatically no discussion of QALY's as opposed to individual lives would be countenanced.
In the end we will have different ethical intuitions and little point is served by trying to persuade others.
I'm sure we all have our deep prejudices, and I believe that many, especially in the midst of (yet another) Government induced panic, desperately want to believe that there are wise adults who are in charge and will make sure nothing bad happens. And the suspicion that they really don't have a fucking clue is not nice.
Equally, I am one of those who on principle is suspicious of politicians and elites and coteries, and that has a lot to do with northern working-class chippiness. And to me, to quote Susan Hill (in the Spectator which I admit I read every week), the idea that any policies should be more concerned with those whose lives are before them than with those who have already lived a long life, is just common sense. To others is verges on blasphemy.
Sweden's death rate might be better than the UK's but it's also worse than... nearly every other country besides the UK. It's not mid-range. It's 8th in the world. It's worse than the rest of Scandinavia for starters.
This. @Anteater@KwesiSWEDEN. IS. A. FAILURE. When comparing apples to apples, Sweden's choice didn't work. Their approach would in the UK would make the death rate even worse, because of the culture being different.
Yes, I missed orfeo's post, when I wrote mine. I don't get this obsession with Sweden.
We've had 35 000+ deaths with the lockdown. How many do you imagine we would have had without it?
OK good question and of course nobody knows. So I just knocked up a model in Excel which came out with the answer: 50,000.
So that leads to an interesting question. Would that number close down the discussion with you? Or would you be prepared to put that number into a comparison, as against the lockdown related deaths, the mental/abuse distress, the loss of education and the downturn of the economy which will itself result in deaths, although these will never be classed as COVID deaths by the Government. Not to mentions the loss of liberty which seems not at all to bother most people.
My suspicion is that for many, the prospect of a further 15,000 deaths of mainly very old people with multiple health problems already, settles the issue. And emphatically no discussion of QALY's as opposed to individual lives would be countenanced.
In the end we will have different ethical intuitions and little point is served by trying to persuade others.
I'm sure we all have our deep prejudices, and I believe that many, especially in the midst of (yet another) Government induced panic, desperately want to believe that there are wise adults who are in charge and will make sure nothing bad happens. And the suspicion that they really don't have a fucking clue is not nice.
Equally, I am one of those who on principle is suspicious of politicians and elites and coteries, and that has a lot to do with northern working-class chippiness. And to me, to quote Susan Hill (in the Spectator which I admit I read every week), the idea that any policies should be more concerned with those whose lives are before them than with those who have already lived a long life, is just common sense. To others is verges on blasphemy.
LY is one thing, the QA can go and get in the sea. It's bullshit and it's ableist.
Your 50 000 has almost certainly already been passed, and is absurdly low in any case. Losses due to the economic downturn are a political choice (as we've seen over the last 10 years) not an inevitability.
You're suspicious of elites yet you like the Spectator? This isn't a panic, and it's not government induced it's induced by a disease that is killing 10s of thousands of people and maiming 10s of thousands more. Do you think if the government had said "keep calm and carry on" the economic results would be less devastating. The economic hit is going to happen regardless, but it will ultimately be worse the more people are ill. Left to run rampant we'd have seen 20% of the population ill at once, and death rates skyrocketing as the NHS was overwhelmed.
Sweden's death rate might be better than the UK's but it's also worse than... nearly every other country besides the UK. It's not mid-range. It's 8th in the world. It's worse than the rest of Scandinavia for starters.
This. @Anteater@KwesiSWEDEN. IS. A. FAILURE. When comparing apples to apples, Sweden's choice didn't work. Their approach would in the UK would make the death rate even worse, because of the culture being different.
Yes, I missed orfeo's post, when I wrote mine. I don't get this obsession with Sweden.
Because it gives deniers something to point to. "Look, they did it"
Which would be stupid even if Sweden were successful. Their culture and size allow for behaviours that would not work in countries like the UK or US. But given that their approach is less successful than more direct comparators like Norway means that they are even less a good counter example.
Sweden had a better chance of a non-lockdown approach working, and it still failed.
One point about the lockdown is that certainly in my area, people were voting with their feet , before the official one. Schools were becoming deserted, streets were quiet, football seemed impossible after Arteta's illness. Boris followed suit.
We've had 35 000+ deaths with the lockdown. How many do you imagine we would have had without it?
OK good question and of course nobody knows. So I just knocked up a model in Excel which came out with the answer: 50,000.
You do realise that there are people who have actually modelled this?
With rather more rigour than announcing in social media that "I've just knocked up a model in Excel".
Seriously. There are people who model this stuff professionally. The number that modellers in the UK came up with for the UK was over half a million. They were from Imperial College London.
Let me start by admitting I am a lockdown skeptic. However, I hope that does not prevent me from seeing both sides.
I'd say your hope is not being fulfilled. Not when you're generating magical spreadsheets to persuade yourself that a lockdown doesn't impact the number of deaths that much.
I'm sure you've heard before how you're not entitled to your own facts, and quite frankly you're not entitled to your own self-invented models whipped up on an Excel spreadsheet either. You don't get to conduct this conversation on the basis of an extra 15,000 deaths. Try conducting it on the basis of an extra 475,000 instead.
And with those words Anteater's argument was irretrievably and utterly lost.
Note to self: Avoid irony. Of course I didn't knock up a model. It was a pure guess for the sole purpose of asking: If that IS the figure, what follows from that?
It is also implying that the models being used are not much more than pure guesses.
lilBuddha:
But given that their approach is less successful than more direct comparators like Norway means that they are even less a good counter example.
Sweden had a better chance of a non-lockdown approach working, and it still failed.
The fascination with Sweden is simply that it is a counter example with very roughly the same sort of country as other European ones, as opposed to S. Korea which prepared well because of their experience in recent years.
And of course: we will see. If, in the long term, it is seen that Sweden's approach was a failure, all things considered, then of course, my doubts are simply a mistake, and I will be the first to admit that, because broadly, Sweden's approach (not let rip!) is what I would have liked to have seen in the UK.
ISTM much of the discussion rests on modelling. It would be instructive to know what data was entered into the models to test them and make their various predictions. One notes that the government have been reluctant to release the scientific reports which have led their decision-making, making it difficult for independent statisticians to comment on their homework. For what it's worth, I'm following the precautionary principle and staying within the spirit of the restrictions, but that doesn't mean I can't exclude the possibility that the science is resting on weak foundations. What do we know? And how do we know it?
ps. I was unaware that the Swedish approach had been as demonstrably wrong as some of the shipmates' posts have pointed out. Sorry to have been so far behind the curve. Anyhow, now I stand corrected. Thanks.
Alan:
I don't want to deny your facts but would appreciate references.
I admit that the folk I know in Sweden aren't the most chatty on Facebook so what I know through that route is limited. Mostly I was going on a combination of what people I know in Sweden have said plus some personal experience of how Sweden generally handles emergencies (including the constitutional provisions which puts decisions in the hands of public agencies rather than politicians, resulting in "advice" rather than "directives" without the force of law, and how the public tend to respond to this advice - almost universally following the advice given by relevant experts whereas they'd be more likely to ignore directives from politicians). Then a quick check on Wikipedia to confirm my experience and the little people I know have said (plus check the actual numbers). The advice given by the public health agency has, generally, been less restrictive than the directives of most European governments but there also hasn't been wide-spread disregard of this advice like parties in parks or hordes of people at the beach.
So, on schools my understanding is that secondary schools and universities have closed completely, but that it was recognised that extending that to primary schools would create a lot of problems that would prevent front line health and care staff to work, and hence primary schools were not closed (but many parents kept their children at home anyway).
For most businesses, the advice has been to work at home wherever possible, and for those employees who need to be at work to practice social distancing and be present on site for the shortest possible time. Plus, to stagger travel to minimise congestion on public transport. Which is very similar to the UK, as very few businesses here have been told that they must close (pubs, restaurants, non-essential retail are among the few businesses areas told they must close - all of which rely on direct service to the public).
The Swedish advice for the elderly was a "general lockdown" in your definition of "people confined to their places of residence except for a few exceptions", but for the majority of the population people have been out and about quite a lot - exercise, visits to grocery stores, a small number in what in the UK wouldn't be classified as key jobs. Again, very similar to the UK where only the most vulnerable have received sheltering instructions and put under a "general lockdown". Sweden put in much stricter restrictions on visiting care homes, but though the advice there is stricter than the UK there's still a massive problem that when the virus gets into these homes it runs largely unchecked through residents and staff.
In summary, the differences between the approach in Sweden and the UK are minor. And, both countries are paying the price in high infection rates, fatalities and people with longer-term medical conditions. Sweden, along with most countries, made mistakes in their approach - it's probably safe to say they made some different mistakes from other countries. But, if the Swedish approach had been followed in the UK we'd be in basically the same position as we're in now. No one I know of has praised the Swedish approach as being better than the UK, French, Italian etc approach ... even Donald Trump acknowledged that Sweden is paying a heavy price for deciding not to lockdown quite as severely as other nations.
And with those words Anteater's argument was irretrievably and utterly lost.
OK, I'm going to pop in and defend knocking up models in Excel (though, in this case, I suspect it'll be easier to use a scripting environment like Python or R). With the proviso that the resulting models do not in any way trump those produced by professionals who really know what they are doing.
The advantage of knocking up a model in something simple like Excel or Python is that it's a brilliant way to learn about the impact of how different variables influence the outcome. In a different field as an undergraduate learning about nuclear reactor dynamics we were set problems to model concentrations of fission products within a reactor, at the time solved by writing equations on a piece of paper and solving differential equations, and thus understanding the effects of reactor poisons. In a computational environment you can model more than just one fission product at a time, and also include other factors (generally those differential equations included production by fission and decay - but adding in the effects of neutron capture would make an analytical solution impossible). In fact, I've done that myself. And, I'm about to supervise a Masters student who will be doing something similar for her project (this was something we could set which didn't require the student to spend time in a lab).
In relation to the spread of coronavirus, setting up a simple model would be an effective way to understand the importance of R, gain some understanding of how the experts manage to determine R from limited testing data and why those values carry such large uncertainties, how that uncertainty in R leads to massively different model outcomes etc. I would say that's a perfectly good thing for someone to do. But, I wouldn't post the numbers that such models produce on the internet ... I might be OK with saying something about the proportion of the total number of cases the simple model predicts if we have an R of 0.7 cf an R of 1.1.
And with those words Anteater's argument was irretrievably and utterly lost.
Note to self: Avoid irony. Of course I didn't knock up a model. It was a pure guess for the sole purpose of asking: If that IS the figure, what follows from that?
It is also implying that the models being used are not much more than pure guesses.
lilBuddha:
But given that their approach is less successful than more direct comparators like Norway means that they are even less a good counter example.
Sweden had a better chance of a non-lockdown approach working, and it still failed.
The fascination with Sweden is simply that it is a counter example with very roughly the same sort of country as other European ones, as opposed to S. Korea which prepared well because of their experience in recent years.
And of course: we will see. If, in the long term, it is seen that Sweden's approach was a failure, all things considered, then of course, my doubts are simply a mistake, and I will be the first to admit that, because broadly, Sweden's approach (not let rip!) is what I would have liked to have seen in the UK.
IT.IS.ALREADY.A. FAILURE.Go here. The other Scandies (as in the direct comparators) have dropped infection rates whereas Sweden has not.
And with those words Anteater's argument was irretrievably and utterly lost.
OK, I'm going to pop in and defend knocking up models in Excel (though, in this case, I suspect it'll be easier to use a scripting environment like Python or R). With the proviso that the resulting models do not in any way trump those produced by professionals who really know what they are doing.
The advantage of knocking up a model in something simple like Excel or Python is that it's a brilliant way to learn about the impact of how different variables influence the outcome. In a different field as an undergraduate learning about nuclear reactor dynamics we were set problems to model concentrations of fission products within a reactor, at the time solved by writing equations on a piece of paper and solving differential equations, and thus understanding the effects of reactor poisons. In a computational environment you can model more than just one fission product at a time, and also include other factors (generally those differential equations included production by fission and decay - but adding in the effects of neutron capture would make an analytical solution impossible). In fact, I've done that myself. And, I'm about to supervise a Masters student who will be doing something similar for her project (this was something we could set which didn't require the student to spend time in a lab).
In relation to the spread of coronavirus, setting up a simple model would be an effective way to understand the importance of R, gain some understanding of how the experts manage to determine R from limited testing data and why those values carry such large uncertainties, how that uncertainty in R leads to massively different model outcomes etc. I would say that's a perfectly good thing for someone to do. But, I wouldn't post the numbers that such models produce on the internet ... I might be OK with saying something about the proportion of the total number of cases the simple model predicts if we have an R of 0.7 cf an R of 1.1.
Yeah, I think the point was that Anteater was claiming to have a better model than, I don't know, real epidemiologists.
I don't see the point of discussing his 15,000 which apparently actually came somewhere only a doctor with rubber gloves and a very small camera could explore.
And can you please not compare just a couple of months of covid-19 to several years of the Black Death? That's really basic stuff. Come back in 5 years and then tell me how many people died, despite several centuries worth of medical advances. Jesus.
When on earth did "the black death was worse" become an argument for ending lockdown?
(On modelling, it's not that hard to knock up a simple SEIR model, and see how it responds to manipulation of its parameters. You don't even have to knock your own model up - here is one that someone prepared earlier.)
Several days ago, I remember seeing an article that said the government of Sweden does not technically have the constitutional power to lock down its citizens, but that the citizens of Sweden will generally follow the government's suggestions more readily than citizens of other nations because, well, that's who they are. I think the article indicated there was 80% compliance with the suggestions. Unfortunately, I cannot find the article now.
AreThoseMyFeet:
OK good question and of course nobody knows. So I just knocked up a model in Excel which came out with the answer: 50,000.
I'm intrigued as how you got that answer, you must have made some 'interesting' assumptions. I like models too, but if that wasn't made up for the purposes of the follow on.
As for putting 15,000 lives against 15,000 other lives (aside from the death-panel, Caiaphas aspects), that's been discussed. And I think broadly we'd much rather cheat the system so it wasn't an either or choice, but that it was something to be taken into account (sadly the US&UK are about to find out at least some of the difference, and the odd's of it being less than 15,000 are rather long, so the whole question is doubly hypothetical)
As for lives for cake, well again in reality we do already kind of make that deal. We do have 2,000 road deaths a year. Again we probably ought to discuss it. But if we go for the 15,000 you were offering (as though that were actually the deal). Is it worth it to watch football live, that strikes me as already rather a shit deal.
LY is one thing, the QA can go and get in the sea. It's bullshit and it's ableist.
I assume that you respect any persons own views on this which may include not having treatment, but believe nobody else has the right to determine life quality.
Generally I agree, and we may only differ when it comes to keeping people alive in a near vegetative state as opposed to letting them die. I would distinguish Life Quality and Survival Probability and so accept e.g. deprioritising patients for ICU treatment with lower chances of survival. Would you accept that? And I can see that the belief that the young have a greater claim than those of us who have had a life is ageist. Maybe I justify it because I apply it to myself and think that makes it ok.
Your 50 000 has almost certainly already been passed
OK so my "model" misfired. But the aim was just to put any figure down so we could debate whether any number of avoidable deaths can be set against lockdown related negatives in a benefits comparison.
I can well understand anyone taking the view that common-sense dictates that the lockdown downside is bound to be worse that the lockdown upside. And the problem there is we don't have facts. I certainly don't. But a lot depends on what you value, and how you make judgements on minimal data. I place a high value on freedom of movement, whereas others easily accept being confined to their house. I fear government overreach, whereas probably most people assume government to be benign.
I suppose the main disagreements are over things like shutting down all schools. And since I have no school age children maybe I can't put myself in the place of parents. My wife's niece with two small kiddies can't wait for them to be back. There are no provable answers to these things.
ONS figures from today (Reuters link), the Tuesday figures that in the care home and home deaths a week in arrears are now stating over 44,000 deaths in the UK, an additional 11,000 added in from care homes.
Also, this BBC article about the Swedish deaths from Covid-19 are at least half in care homes there.
I suppose the main disagreements are over things like shutting down all schools. And since I have no school age children maybe I can't put myself in the place of parents. My wife's niece with two small kiddies can't wait for them to be back. There are no provable answers to these things.
This lockdown has been very bad for some of my family. We are desperate to be able to get out and meet people again. In the current situation, that will kill people. It's not the responsible thing to do. So we stay home and endure.
And with those words Anteater's argument was irretrievably and utterly lost.
Note to self: Avoid irony. Of course I didn't knock up a model. It was a pure guess for the sole purpose of asking: If that IS the figure, what follows from that?
It is also implying that the models being used are not much more than pure guesses.
But that implication is complete bullshit. You have to make a random guess and then think that means that people who have studied infectious diseases for their entire career also have to make a random guess.
ISTM much of the discussion rests on modelling. It would be instructive to know what data was entered into the models to test them and make their various predictions. One notes that the government have been reluctant to release the scientific reports which have led their decision-making, making it difficult for independent statisticians to comment on their homework.
Or you could, you know, actually read the PDF I linked to.
If there's one thing that you and @anteater have in common right now, it's that you're both assuming your own complete lack of knowledge is shared by everyone else.
ISTM that gov'ts often don't tell the truth--for good reasons, bad reasons, and understandable reasons. And I don't just mean during this pandemic.
Sometimes, they don't know the truth, or can't/won't accept it, or it's a CYA (covering your *ss) move, or it's politics, or they really think it's best for their people.
So it may be...self-defeating...counter-productive...to expect that gov'ts will tell the truth and that they will get things right.
Your 50 000 has almost certainly already been passed, and is absurdly low in any case. Losses due to the economic downturn are a political choice (as we've seen over the last 10 years) not an inevitability.
OK so my "model" misfired. But the aim was just to put any figure down so we could debate whether any number of avoidable deaths can be set against lockdown related negatives in a benefits comparison.
I can well understand anyone taking the view that common-sense dictates that the lockdown downside is bound to be worse that the lockdown upside. And the problem there is we don't have facts. I certainly don't. But a lot depends on what you value, and how you make judgements on minimal data. I place a high value on freedom of movement, whereas others easily accept being confined to their house. I fear government overreach, whereas probably most people assume government to be benign.
Interestingly we have a parallel situation going on right now. The Indian and Bangladeshi governments are evacuating people from coastal areas in advance of Cyclone Amphan. @Anteater would seem to be willing to argue that the loss of "freedom of movement" in such involuntary evacuations is worse than the anticipated loss of life involved in leaving people in place and that this kind of "government overreach" is probably undertaken for malign reasons. Others would probably regard this as paranoid conspiracy-mongering. Who's to say who's right?
Can't you make the same kind of argument about almost any kind of government regulation?
I mean, governments frequently cramp our style by restricting our ability to buy dangerous things, or sell dangerous things. They demand that we drive at a speed that enables us to react to hazards and follow 'road rules' and even pass a test before we can driver unsupervised. And tell us we can only set up business as a doctor if we've got some medical qualifications.
These are all restrictions on freedom. Laws** are basically nothing BUT restrictions on freedom.
Of course, what happens is that people only ever focus on the restrictions on freedom that are currently inconveniencing them personally, and don't talk about all the restrictions that are working quite nicely for them.
**And rules that we don't call 'laws'. The rules of tennis are a restriction on how and where I whack a ball.
I place a high value on freedom of movement, whereas others easily accept being confined to their house. I fear government overreach, whereas probably most people assume government to be benign.
I think the other thing you place a high value on is individual 'rights' as opposed to the general good.
Few people enjoy actually being confined or believe their governments to be wholly benign, but I think more than a few are willing to accept restrictions for the common good. Fortunately.
As I understand it there have been two or three coronavirus deaths among the under 18s, and the likelihood of dying for those under 50 or even 60 is still pretty remote. Out of a total of 65 million people in the UK there have been around 35,000 coronavirus deaths. Of those deaths around 40 per cent have been in care homes. To address the problem we have had a lockdown that is trashing the economy and creating a collateral of people dying of other conditions and suffering mental health problems.
With a population of about 25 million, we've had 100 deaths. Rates in NZ and Taiwan are even lower. There has been a very strict lockdown here with many workplaces closed, along with pubs, restaurants and cafés. Next to no-one on trains - the other day we saw a morning peak train, 7 passengers in 8 carriages of a train which by our station would be half full or so, say 450 passengers. OTOH, most shops have remained open.
We are all part of a larger whole whether we like it or not. It is simply indomitable stupidity not to allow events like this to teach this and to allow that lesson to take effect.
Interestingly we have a parallel situation going on right now. The Indian and Bangladeshi governments are evacuating people from coastal areas in advance of Cyclone Amphan. @Anteater would seem to be willing to argue that the loss of "freedom of movement" in such involuntary evacuations is worse than the anticipated loss of life involved in leaving people in place and that this kind of "government overreach" is probably undertaken for malign reasons.
Fair point although I cannot find out whether people who, for whatever reason, choose to stay knowing the risk, are being forcibly removed. Again you only posit two cases: 1. Leave them in place. 2. Arrest anybody who prefers to stay. Why not Evacuate but allow people to stay in place once the risk has been explained. OK they may be foolish to stay, but why is it not their right?
As already explained, I had withdrawn from potentially dangerous situations, mainly amateur orchestras/bands before being told to, and in one case whilst others were still going. Because I do not actually intend to get infected by COVID or infect others.
Whether the dangers faced in India are comparable with me, illegally, sitting down on a park bench with nobody within sight, I tend to doubt. Or buying what some puritan may think of as non-essential, or even going for a drive in the country. I have never believed that Government prohibitions are unjustifiable per se. And there are plenty of those in Sweden, whose approach I do prefer. That is not at issue.
Two things are at issue with me. The first is transparency. So I would like to know the scientific basis for the decisions. It shouldn't be allowed to be done with no scrutiny. The second is proportionality. Once people realise they can make rules, they tend to like it, and once the police know they can boss people around, they also like it. Especially when they can do what they want (they routinely violate social distancing). So where ruling are evidently disproportionate, they are in more need of being challenged and enforcers need to know they are accountable to prevent plain bullying for the hell of it.
It's easy to say that since the things I object to are relatively minor and anyhow many soon got revised, I am making a mountain out of a molehill. Fair enough - I don't expect everyone to have my (arguably over-)sensibility to being pushed around. Or to the creation of a snooper culture. Fine.
You're not making a mountain of a molehill, but what you're doing is assuming that rulemakers have the time and resources to consider your individual park bench, your individual purchases and your individual drive in the country.
They don't.
They have to make a rule for millions of people. They have to make it simple and straightforward and easy to enforce. They have to make it so there aren't going to be hundreds of thousands of consultations of the rule book every day to check which side of the dividing line a particular park bench/purchase/drive is going to fall on.
Do you understand what I'm saying here? I spend my career watching people swing between complaining that a simple rule is too blunt of an instrument and doesn't take into account enough factors, and complaining that a detailed rule that takes into account lots of things is too difficult to read or understand or apply.
Before we got to lockdown stage here, and were watching some of what was happening overseas, one of my cleverer Facebook friends started reasoning about how he could justify going to a more remote picnic spot because there was never anyone else there. I pointed out to him what would happen: all the other clever people in town would similarly justify how they could go to a remote picnic spot, and all the more remote picnic spots would suddenly become heavily occupied.
And that's pretty much what happened when shutdowns started happening here. The first weekend, a nature reserve a bit out of town had a massive influx of visitors. They had to close it.
Rulemakers do not have the time and resources to tailor the rules to your arguments about why your out of the way park bench is fine, and they certainly don't want to spend the resources involved in tracing all of the clever people who all concluded that the same park bench was sufficiently out of the way.
The rules are blunt because that's the only practical option. Suck it up.
I mean, there have been plenty of times when I've been sitting in my car at an intersection thinking how no-one is moving, and how I could safely go through the intersection despite having a red light.
Which only remains true so long as no-one else has the same thought.
Your isolated park bench only remains isolated so long as you're the only smart-arse lockdown skeptic in the neighbourhood looking for an isolated park bench.
We are all part of a larger whole whether we like it or not. It is simply indomitable stupidity not to allow events like this to teach this and to allow that lesson to take effect.
Don't get me wrong, shipmates. I've no problem with the lock-down and find the civil liberties angle unconvincing, largely because in these matters I lean towards the precautionary principle and the lock-down works not because of state coercion but because the public overwhelmingly have thought it a good idea. (Problems are arising, of course, as that consensus begins the fray). I also recognise that the best outcomes seem to be in lock-down states: Norway as against Sweden. It still remains the case, however, that lock-down UK has not performed well, which suggests that other factors are critical to explaining the variance: track, test and trace, being an obvious one, and the degree of isolation of care homes another, in which Sweden, amongst others, seems to have been amiss. In the UK the destruction of public health structures ISTM has greatly reduced the options arising from 'the science', leaving lock-down perhaps the only option. It would be helpful to this discussion to have some sort of multivariate analysis, indicating the relative influence of different factors, would it not?
It would be helpful to this discussion to have some sort of multivariate analysis, indicating the relative influence of different factors, would it not?
Yes, but this sort of thing is going to be quite hard to do because you only have a limited number of counterfactuals - the fact that the UK lagged the rest of Europe in implementing the lock-down may also be why the lock-down 'didn't work so well' (compared to what? the places that locked down sooner rather than the UK without any lockdown).
Comparing the UK's lockdown to the one we have here in France, I notice a couple of things: a) it was implemented a week too late, allowing the virus a massive running head start, and b) while most people are complying with the rules, a significant number aren't. AFAICT in the UK this gets you a slap on the wrist and being told you've been a naughty boy or girl. In France it would have got you a €135 fine on the spot, which I suspect is why we have been more compliant.
(Tangent, sort of: in his most recent address, the President of the Republic thanked us all for complying with the rules and buttered us up by saying that the French are said to be indisciplined but we've proved that to be untrue. Nah. We are that indisciplined. We just didn't fancy the fines.)
I thought that some analyses show that a week's delay in lockdown could cost 10 000 lives. You could also argue that the UK govt followed public opinion, and didn't lead it. 12 March is etched in my mind as the day Arteta fell ill, 11 days before the official lockdown, this was like a big klaxon going off . In the salubrious suburbs of London, we had already locked, more or less.
Yes, timing of the lockdown is important. But I think testing might be even more important. As I understand it, the UK was somewhat slow at really getting the testing regime going (and the US testing in the early stages was a total shambles).
Whereas South Korea did a spectacular job of slamming the breaks on what was initially quite a large outbreak, and they did it with a huge effort on testing and tracing as well as isolation. Which they were well set up for after an outbreak of MERS in 2015.
Comments
(and contrary to Kwesi's post that number doesn't include all the deaths in care homes).
The restrictions are not as severe as the UK, but Sweden also had a prepared response plan that swung into action with testing for the virus from the end of January. That plan and preparation, and the early start of testing, probably made up for the slightly relaxed restrictions compared to other European nations preventing that relaxed approach leading to much higher death rates. Do you fancy going back a couple of years and putting in a plan, and practising it, for a respiratory disease pandemic so the UK would be able to run extensive testing from the end of January? Without that in place, the much more restrictive lockdown we have is the only option we have.
The lockdowns that don't work are the ones that happened slowly after initially toying with ideas like herd immunity.
EARLY lockdowns work. So does early testing. If you want to see what a lockdown is supposed to do, don't look at the UK. Look at Vietnam. Taiwan. South Korea. Australia. New Zealand.
Sweden's death rate might be better than the UK's but it's also worse than... nearly every other country besides the UK. It's not mid-range. It's 8th in the world. It's worse than the rest of Scandinavia for starters.
And can you please not compare just a couple of months of covid-19 to several years of the Black Death? That's really basic stuff. Come back in 5 years and then tell me how many people died, despite several centuries worth of medical advances. Jesus.
The point also is that it gets out of control, hospitals are jammed, you can't get home treatment, not even morphine. Not quite bodies in the street, but certainly bodies in beds at home, and the mortuary is full. People said in northern Italy, it verged on this.
Another point is that hospital workers start seeing multiple deaths per day, this is not good, and may lead to PTSD.
So then you accept some restrictions. Now I'm not sure what criteria skeptics would use, libertarian, economic, or what. Many object to not leaving home, or cops telling you not to sunbathe
And then you have the issue of timing. The irony is, if you lock down early and hard, you may be be able to release, given contract tracing. This is the NZ claim, don't know how accurate.
I don't want to deny your facts but would appreciate references. The latest article I have accessed (with the title: Why Sweden’s Approach To Coronavirus May Not Be What You Think (Forbes Mag 14 May) which aims to explode the myth that Sweden is just going on it's merry way unhindered, still states Which is what I understood, and is apparently also true in Iceland. SFAIK England has done what you suggest, namely keeping schools open to children of essential workers, and all the kids I've seen interviewed were mightily glad that they were still at school. Mind you I accept they probably pre-screen kids to make sure they follow the official line.
In my book, a "general lockdown" means that people are confined to their places of residence except for the few exceptions allowed by the Government. So the right of free movement is withdrawn for all. This is not true of Sweden.
How better prepared Sweden was, is something I do not know. I believe they have fewer ICU beds per head of population than the UK, and Sweden is quite a lot below the UK is testing, just behind France and just above Peru.
You may have access to information I do not, and maybe this illustrates how hard it is to get at the facts.
They have a problem with Care Homes, as does the UK and other countries, though the UK Gov does seem to have made a spectacular balls-up of this.
So that leads to an interesting question. Would that number close down the discussion with you? Or would you be prepared to put that number into a comparison, as against the lockdown related deaths, the mental/abuse distress, the loss of education and the downturn of the economy which will itself result in deaths, although these will never be classed as COVID deaths by the Government. Not to mentions the loss of liberty which seems not at all to bother most people.
My suspicion is that for many, the prospect of a further 15,000 deaths of mainly very old people with multiple health problems already, settles the issue. And emphatically no discussion of QALY's as opposed to individual lives would be countenanced.
In the end we will have different ethical intuitions and little point is served by trying to persuade others.
I'm sure we all have our deep prejudices, and I believe that many, especially in the midst of (yet another) Government induced panic, desperately want to believe that there are wise adults who are in charge and will make sure nothing bad happens. And the suspicion that they really don't have a fucking clue is not nice.
Equally, I am one of those who on principle is suspicious of politicians and elites and coteries, and that has a lot to do with northern working-class chippiness. And to me, to quote Susan Hill (in the Spectator which I admit I read every week), the idea that any policies should be more concerned with those whose lives are before them than with those who have already lived a long life, is just common sense. To others is verges on blasphemy.
Yes, I missed orfeo's post, when I wrote mine. I don't get this obsession with Sweden.
LY is one thing, the QA can go and get in the sea. It's bullshit and it's ableist.
Your 50 000 has almost certainly already been passed, and is absurdly low in any case. Losses due to the economic downturn are a political choice (as we've seen over the last 10 years) not an inevitability.
You're suspicious of elites yet you like the Spectator? This isn't a panic, and it's not government induced it's induced by a disease that is killing 10s of thousands of people and maiming 10s of thousands more. Do you think if the government had said "keep calm and carry on" the economic results would be less devastating. The economic hit is going to happen regardless, but it will ultimately be worse the more people are ill. Left to run rampant we'd have seen 20% of the population ill at once, and death rates skyrocketing as the NHS was overwhelmed.
Which would be stupid even if Sweden were successful. Their culture and size allow for behaviours that would not work in countries like the UK or US. But given that their approach is less successful than more direct comparators like Norway means that they are even less a good counter example.
Sweden had a better chance of a non-lockdown approach working, and it still failed.
You do realise that there are people who have actually modelled this?
With rather more rigour than announcing in social media that "I've just knocked up a model in Excel".
Seriously. There are people who model this stuff professionally. The number that modellers in the UK came up with for the UK was over half a million. They were from Imperial College London.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf
What's the basis of your Excel spreadsheet?
I'd say your hope is not being fulfilled. Not when you're generating magical spreadsheets to persuade yourself that a lockdown doesn't impact the number of deaths that much.
I'm sure you've heard before how you're not entitled to your own facts, and quite frankly you're not entitled to your own self-invented models whipped up on an Excel spreadsheet either. You don't get to conduct this conversation on the basis of an extra 15,000 deaths. Try conducting it on the basis of an extra 475,000 instead.
And with those words Anteater's argument was irretrievably and utterly lost.
It is also implying that the models being used are not much more than pure guesses.
lilBuddha: The fascination with Sweden is simply that it is a counter example with very roughly the same sort of country as other European ones, as opposed to S. Korea which prepared well because of their experience in recent years.
And of course: we will see. If, in the long term, it is seen that Sweden's approach was a failure, all things considered, then of course, my doubts are simply a mistake, and I will be the first to admit that, because broadly, Sweden's approach (not let rip!) is what I would have liked to have seen in the UK.
ps. I was unaware that the Swedish approach had been as demonstrably wrong as some of the shipmates' posts have pointed out. Sorry to have been so far behind the curve. Anyhow, now I stand corrected. Thanks.
So, on schools my understanding is that secondary schools and universities have closed completely, but that it was recognised that extending that to primary schools would create a lot of problems that would prevent front line health and care staff to work, and hence primary schools were not closed (but many parents kept their children at home anyway).
For most businesses, the advice has been to work at home wherever possible, and for those employees who need to be at work to practice social distancing and be present on site for the shortest possible time. Plus, to stagger travel to minimise congestion on public transport. Which is very similar to the UK, as very few businesses here have been told that they must close (pubs, restaurants, non-essential retail are among the few businesses areas told they must close - all of which rely on direct service to the public).
The Swedish advice for the elderly was a "general lockdown" in your definition of "people confined to their places of residence except for a few exceptions", but for the majority of the population people have been out and about quite a lot - exercise, visits to grocery stores, a small number in what in the UK wouldn't be classified as key jobs. Again, very similar to the UK where only the most vulnerable have received sheltering instructions and put under a "general lockdown". Sweden put in much stricter restrictions on visiting care homes, but though the advice there is stricter than the UK there's still a massive problem that when the virus gets into these homes it runs largely unchecked through residents and staff.
In summary, the differences between the approach in Sweden and the UK are minor. And, both countries are paying the price in high infection rates, fatalities and people with longer-term medical conditions. Sweden, along with most countries, made mistakes in their approach - it's probably safe to say they made some different mistakes from other countries. But, if the Swedish approach had been followed in the UK we'd be in basically the same position as we're in now. No one I know of has praised the Swedish approach as being better than the UK, French, Italian etc approach ... even Donald Trump acknowledged that Sweden is paying a heavy price for deciding not to lockdown quite as severely as other nations.
The advantage of knocking up a model in something simple like Excel or Python is that it's a brilliant way to learn about the impact of how different variables influence the outcome. In a different field as an undergraduate learning about nuclear reactor dynamics we were set problems to model concentrations of fission products within a reactor, at the time solved by writing equations on a piece of paper and solving differential equations, and thus understanding the effects of reactor poisons. In a computational environment you can model more than just one fission product at a time, and also include other factors (generally those differential equations included production by fission and decay - but adding in the effects of neutron capture would make an analytical solution impossible). In fact, I've done that myself. And, I'm about to supervise a Masters student who will be doing something similar for her project (this was something we could set which didn't require the student to spend time in a lab).
In relation to the spread of coronavirus, setting up a simple model would be an effective way to understand the importance of R, gain some understanding of how the experts manage to determine R from limited testing data and why those values carry such large uncertainties, how that uncertainty in R leads to massively different model outcomes etc. I would say that's a perfectly good thing for someone to do. But, I wouldn't post the numbers that such models produce on the internet ... I might be OK with saying something about the proportion of the total number of cases the simple model predicts if we have an R of 0.7 cf an R of 1.1.
Yeah, I think the point was that Anteater was claiming to have a better model than, I don't know, real epidemiologists.
I don't see the point of discussing his 15,000 which apparently actually came somewhere only a doctor with rubber gloves and a very small camera could explore.
When on earth did "the black death was worse" become an argument for ending lockdown?
(On modelling, it's not that hard to knock up a simple SEIR model, and see how it responds to manipulation of its parameters. You don't even have to knock your own model up - here is one that someone prepared earlier.)
As for putting 15,000 lives against 15,000 other lives (aside from the death-panel, Caiaphas aspects), that's been discussed. And I think broadly we'd much rather cheat the system so it wasn't an either or choice, but that it was something to be taken into account (sadly the US&UK are about to find out at least some of the difference, and the odd's of it being less than 15,000 are rather long, so the whole question is doubly hypothetical)
As for lives for cake, well again in reality we do already kind of make that deal. We do have 2,000 road deaths a year. Again we probably ought to discuss it. But if we go for the 15,000 you were offering (as though that were actually the deal). Is it worth it to watch football live, that strikes me as already rather a shit deal.
There are some issues here.
I assume that you respect any persons own views on this which may include not having treatment, but believe nobody else has the right to determine life quality.
Generally I agree, and we may only differ when it comes to keeping people alive in a near vegetative state as opposed to letting them die. I would distinguish Life Quality and Survival Probability and so accept e.g. deprioritising patients for ICU treatment with lower chances of survival. Would you accept that? And I can see that the belief that the young have a greater claim than those of us who have had a life is ageist. Maybe I justify it because I apply it to myself and think that makes it ok.
OK so my "model" misfired. But the aim was just to put any figure down so we could debate whether any number of avoidable deaths can be set against lockdown related negatives in a benefits comparison.
I can well understand anyone taking the view that common-sense dictates that the lockdown downside is bound to be worse that the lockdown upside. And the problem there is we don't have facts. I certainly don't. But a lot depends on what you value, and how you make judgements on minimal data. I place a high value on freedom of movement, whereas others easily accept being confined to their house. I fear government overreach, whereas probably most people assume government to be benign.
I suppose the main disagreements are over things like shutting down all schools. And since I have no school age children maybe I can't put myself in the place of parents. My wife's niece with two small kiddies can't wait for them to be back. There are no provable answers to these things.
Also, this BBC article about the Swedish deaths from Covid-19 are at least half in care homes there.
This lockdown has been very bad for some of my family. We are desperate to be able to get out and meet people again. In the current situation, that will kill people. It's not the responsible thing to do. So we stay home and endure.
But that implication is complete bullshit. You have to make a random guess and then think that means that people who have studied infectious diseases for their entire career also have to make a random guess.
Or you could, you know, actually read the PDF I linked to.
If there's one thing that you and @anteater have in common right now, it's that you're both assuming your own complete lack of knowledge is shared by everyone else.
Sometimes, they don't know the truth, or can't/won't accept it, or it's a CYA (covering your *ss) move, or it's politics, or they really think it's best for their people.
So it may be...self-defeating...counter-productive...to expect that gov'ts will tell the truth and that they will get things right.
FWUW. YMMV.
And with those words @Anteater outed himself as Kevin Hassett, the man who predicted U.S. COVID-19 deaths would be zero starting around May 16.
Interestingly we have a parallel situation going on right now. The Indian and Bangladeshi governments are evacuating people from coastal areas in advance of Cyclone Amphan. @Anteater would seem to be willing to argue that the loss of "freedom of movement" in such involuntary evacuations is worse than the anticipated loss of life involved in leaving people in place and that this kind of "government overreach" is probably undertaken for malign reasons. Others would probably regard this as paranoid conspiracy-mongering. Who's to say who's right?
I mean, governments frequently cramp our style by restricting our ability to buy dangerous things, or sell dangerous things. They demand that we drive at a speed that enables us to react to hazards and follow 'road rules' and even pass a test before we can driver unsupervised. And tell us we can only set up business as a doctor if we've got some medical qualifications.
These are all restrictions on freedom. Laws** are basically nothing BUT restrictions on freedom.
Of course, what happens is that people only ever focus on the restrictions on freedom that are currently inconveniencing them personally, and don't talk about all the restrictions that are working quite nicely for them.
**And rules that we don't call 'laws'. The rules of tennis are a restriction on how and where I whack a ball.
Few people enjoy actually being confined or believe their governments to be wholly benign, but I think more than a few are willing to accept restrictions for the common good. Fortunately.
With a population of about 25 million, we've had 100 deaths. Rates in NZ and Taiwan are even lower. There has been a very strict lockdown here with many workplaces closed, along with pubs, restaurants and cafés. Next to no-one on trains - the other day we saw a morning peak train, 7 passengers in 8 carriages of a train which by our station would be half full or so, say 450 passengers. OTOH, most shops have remained open.
As already explained, I had withdrawn from potentially dangerous situations, mainly amateur orchestras/bands before being told to, and in one case whilst others were still going. Because I do not actually intend to get infected by COVID or infect others.
Whether the dangers faced in India are comparable with me, illegally, sitting down on a park bench with nobody within sight, I tend to doubt. Or buying what some puritan may think of as non-essential, or even going for a drive in the country. I have never believed that Government prohibitions are unjustifiable per se. And there are plenty of those in Sweden, whose approach I do prefer. That is not at issue.
Two things are at issue with me. The first is transparency. So I would like to know the scientific basis for the decisions. It shouldn't be allowed to be done with no scrutiny. The second is proportionality. Once people realise they can make rules, they tend to like it, and once the police know they can boss people around, they also like it. Especially when they can do what they want (they routinely violate social distancing). So where ruling are evidently disproportionate, they are in more need of being challenged and enforcers need to know they are accountable to prevent plain bullying for the hell of it.
It's easy to say that since the things I object to are relatively minor and anyhow many soon got revised, I am making a mountain out of a molehill. Fair enough - I don't expect everyone to have my (arguably over-)sensibility to being pushed around. Or to the creation of a snooper culture. Fine.
They don't.
They have to make a rule for millions of people. They have to make it simple and straightforward and easy to enforce. They have to make it so there aren't going to be hundreds of thousands of consultations of the rule book every day to check which side of the dividing line a particular park bench/purchase/drive is going to fall on.
Do you understand what I'm saying here? I spend my career watching people swing between complaining that a simple rule is too blunt of an instrument and doesn't take into account enough factors, and complaining that a detailed rule that takes into account lots of things is too difficult to read or understand or apply.
Before we got to lockdown stage here, and were watching some of what was happening overseas, one of my cleverer Facebook friends started reasoning about how he could justify going to a more remote picnic spot because there was never anyone else there. I pointed out to him what would happen: all the other clever people in town would similarly justify how they could go to a remote picnic spot, and all the more remote picnic spots would suddenly become heavily occupied.
And that's pretty much what happened when shutdowns started happening here. The first weekend, a nature reserve a bit out of town had a massive influx of visitors. They had to close it.
Rulemakers do not have the time and resources to tailor the rules to your arguments about why your out of the way park bench is fine, and they certainly don't want to spend the resources involved in tracing all of the clever people who all concluded that the same park bench was sufficiently out of the way.
The rules are blunt because that's the only practical option. Suck it up.
Which only remains true so long as no-one else has the same thought.
Your isolated park bench only remains isolated so long as you're the only smart-arse lockdown skeptic in the neighbourhood looking for an isolated park bench.
Agreed.
My worry is that the lesson won’t be learnt.
Here is a good, if depressing, article - https://tinyurl.com/y7ug3rol
Yes, but this sort of thing is going to be quite hard to do because you only have a limited number of counterfactuals - the fact that the UK lagged the rest of Europe in implementing the lock-down may also be why the lock-down 'didn't work so well' (compared to what? the places that locked down sooner rather than the UK without any lockdown).
(Tangent, sort of: in his most recent address, the President of the Republic thanked us all for complying with the rules and buttered us up by saying that the French are said to be indisciplined but we've proved that to be untrue. Nah. We are that indisciplined. We just didn't fancy the fines.)
Whereas South Korea did a spectacular job of slamming the breaks on what was initially quite a large outbreak, and they did it with a huge effort on testing and tracing as well as isolation. Which they were well set up for after an outbreak of MERS in 2015.