It's not a case of people being expendible. It's a case of deaths from course of action A being more or fewer than from course of action B.
The problem with that is the complete unwillingness to consider any factor other than deaths when deciding which course of action to take.
Deaths are a simple metric, and probably correlated to other factors. It isn't that the other factors are ignored, just that people are looking at them as an additional cost that will scale approximately with death rates - cut death rates and you cut the costs of other factors as well.
We know that for every death there are x people who recover but suffer medium to long term complications - at present we don't know what all those complications are (because we've only been able to observe people over the short term) nor what value 'x' will take, though it's almost certainly greater than unity. Longer term complications means treatment over a long period of time (which will mean a long term additional cost to the health services) and may mean reduced ability to work (adding costs to the benefits system) both for those who have these complications and family members who will take the bulk of the caring duties.
Asked what her updated estimate for the Infection Fatality Rate is, Professor Gupta says, “I think that the epidemic has largely come and is on its way out in this country so I think it would be definitely less than 1 in 1000 and probably closer to 1 in 10,000.”
(italics mine)
I understood that she was making an estimate of what the rate is going forward, and this is relevant do lifting lockdown.
It's dependent on a lot of 'ands', that to me are looking a lot less likely now than they were before (in March).
I'm not sure how much the summary points meet the content, it seemed a lot better on the bit of film I watched (I think they may have restated positions from March).
As C.S states we pretty much know that it has to be greater the 1 in 1000 in the population as a whole.
I don't think the death rates and experience of e.g. the aircraft carriers are now really consistent with a simple much earlier start with low mortality (I have a lot of sympathy for the "something happened at Christmas" view, but the associated things didn't happen*), but that's something I'd be happy to defer to experts with reasons.
In hindsight track and trace seems to have worked in S Korea, which it shouldn't if her model had been right (that doesn't mean Ferguson's model isn't extreme the other way, but the antibody results suggest that it is closer).
If we are at herd immunity then we would be fine, if we are not (and are not in control either) then a free release would just jump straight back onto the original curve where we left it. But for that to be the case .
Again minimising the bad effects of lockdown, I'm sure there will be miniscual objection. I'm all for it, Corbyn wanted rights for the self-employed, Stammer wanted an exit plan and to protect against evictions, the Green's want to go much further, for fuck's sake even the Tory's are now saying visiting your family is important!
Even at some risks to the populace. To go with the WW2 analogy, we set lots of young people in places where they died, to save us from the horrors of Nazism. But we still turned our lights out. But even the kamikaze pilots, they may have been as 'expendable' as you can get, but they tried to use them on ships rather than flying them into Tokyo.
And if it really were essentially for ever, then yes we'd have to consider it on a long term basis [and taking the hit].
I don't see why the IFR would change going forward under her theory. Even if a large fraction of people have immunity, that would do nothing to change the fatality rate among people who become infected.
Generally I'm not particularly persuaded by the interview. She appears to have no actual evidence for her theory that vast numbers of people have already been infected, and seems not at all daunted by evidence against it (like serology tests).
I understood that she was making an estimate of what the rate is going forward, and this is relevant do lifting lockdown.
You weren't talking about lifting lockdown just now, you were talking about the principle of lockdown in the first place. I explained why that principle was a good thing, and you haven't acknowledged the point I made, you've changed the subject.
You're not the only person that seems to think lockdown could be permanent, or was envisaged as permanent by some government or other somewhere. I've asked for evidence of this more than once, and not found any yet.
I think it is a balanced view. She accepts it is possible (not quite happy with plausible) that Fergusons model is right and the mortality fall off is due to the lockdown, and she cannot disprove it, but she thinks it more likely that the decay in cases is just a natural decay and would happen without lockdown. Of course we may never have proof.
To believe this, you have to believe that lockdown had no effect on the spread of the virus. Most epidemiologists would find that suggestion rather surprising. "Natural decay" can certainly happen, but it doesn't just miraculously happen by itself - you need to have some mechanism, and all those mechanisms are testable.
"Of course we may never have proof" is the last refuge of the charlatan. All of these things are measurable. It's a lot of work, but fatalistically shrugging and saying "I guess we'll never know" is anti-science nonsense.
I am slightly surprised at the total acceptance on this ship of whatever the government says, and the devaluation of the skeptical mindset, but maybe that's a thought for the What is the Ship Coming To thread. There was a time when skepticism, especially of government policies, was viewed as a Good Thing. I remember those days.
Nothing I have seen on the ship has been "total acceptance of whatever the government says". The ship has, in general, been rather critical of the responses of the UK and US governments in particular to the epidemic, and has had any number of posts along the lines of "government official X said this. This is why is is nonsense" followed by several paragraphs explaining in detail why the poster thinks the government position is wrong. In most (perhaps even all) cases, these arguments have all been in the direction that the government is taking too risky a position, and will cause more deaths as a result.
Do we definitely not have evidence one way or another. It seems to me the curve going to satuation point and the curve following lockdowns should be marginally different.
Though as a layman the NHS curve is too noisy for me to tell them apart* (though the very different tail looks to me to be more lock-down barely working than saturation).
*especially as we started washing hands weeks before, and things take time, so the curve gets flattened anyway.
Asked what her updated estimate for the Infection Fatality Rate is, Professor Gupta says, “I think that the epidemic has largely come and is on its way out in this country so I think it would be definitely less than 1 in 1000 and probably closer to 1 in 10,000.”
(italics mine)
I understood that she was making an estimate of what the rate is going forward, and this is relevant do lifting lockdown.
Either I've misunderstood something or she doesn't understand what the Infection Fatality Rate is. As I understand it the IFR for covid19 is somewhere around 1%, for every 100 people infected 1 of them will die. Now, I'll accept that improvements to treatment methods will reduce that, but not by orders of magnitude without a specific anti-viral drug that targets the coronavirus specifically. We've a few existing drugs under trial, but they'll be either general anti-virals or targeting a different virus entirely with the hope that it'll have an effect on this coronavirus (plus some way out on left field ideas, like drugs that target a plasmodium such as malaria being tested despite the totally different mechanisms for infection and reproduction ... I really don't know why anyone thought that would even have a chance).
Of course, a revision to the IFR can also follow from improved estimates of how many people are infected but asymptomatic - in which case an IFR of 1% would mean that 5 million people in the UK have been infected, whereas if half the population has been infected the IFR would be about 0.2%. Even her 0.1% (much less 0.01%) would seem far too small as otherwise the entire population has already been infected (and. 0.01% would need there to be far more infected people in the UK than the population). It seems unlikely that even 5M people have been infected in the UK, meaning that an IFR of 1% is too low and needs to be revised upwards not down.
You're not the only person that seems to think lockdown could be permanent, or was envisaged as permanent by some government or other somewhere. I've asked for evidence of this more than once, and not found any yet.
When the government has gone into it with no exit strategy beyond vague notions like “once it’s safe”, “test and trace” and “when we have a vaccine” then the likelihood that exit will never happen is greater than zero, and has to be acknowledged as a risk. Especially as there seem to be plenty of people who will never think it’s safe enough so long as even one case exists, any attempt at test and trace is being denigrated as insufficient, and even the WHO has said there may never be a vaccine.
Yes it's not an ideal position to be in. That said the WHO have said there may never be a vaccine but there are promising aspects. Things were declining (slower than would be good), any thoughts on the easiest ways to break these transmissions (have there been any studies done)?
Any thoughts on things that get maximum good effects for minimal extra transmissions?
You're not the only person that seems to think lockdown could be permanent, or was envisaged as permanent by some government or other somewhere. I've asked for evidence of this more than once, and not found any yet.
When the government has gone into it with no exit strategy beyond vague notions like “once it’s safe”, “test and trace” and “when we have a vaccine” then the likelihood that exit will never happen is greater than zero, and has to be acknowledged as a risk. Especially as there seem to be plenty of people who will never think it’s safe enough so long as even one case exists, any attempt at test and trace is being denigrated as insufficient, and even the WHO has said there may never be a vaccine.
There's nothing wrong with entering a lockdown without an exit strategy, so long as the period in lockdown is spent devising an exit strategy. It was very clear weeks before the government put the "stay at home" policy in place that the only way to control the spread of the virus was a severe restriction on activities which bring people from different households into contact. Thus we needed to enter the lockdown, regardless of whether there was an exit strategy at that time.
We now have an exit strategy in Scotland, though the timing is dependent upon how quickly the number of infected people declines. There's no reason why there shouldn't be an exit strategy for the whole UK, or for other regions of the UK (the chances are strong that the conditions to progress through the strategy will be at different times in different places - and you either have regional strategies or you leave some parts in more severe lockdown until the whole country has achieved the conditions for the next stage in the strategy).
Test and trace has been proven to be effective if properly implemented. South Korea has done it from a very high initial incidence rate, many other countries had the time to implement a track and trace system before they had a lot of cases. The question is whether the UK government is working towards an effective strategy for England.
A properly implemented test and trace strategy, built on a low rate of infection resulting from holding the lockdown in place long enough, coupled with some minimal social distancing measures should be able to keep the infection rate low enough that we can significantly ease restrictions on the most vulnerable. We'll need to make some positive changes to society - eg: we'll need to sort out pay and conditions such that people aren't compelled to go into work if they're ill (because, we'll still need to self-isolate if we develop anything resembling covid symptoms, until tested, and I've seen data somewhere that about 105 of the population would go into work even if they're tested positive because they couldn't afford to miss the pay cheque). But, most of what we're used to will return to normal.
A vaccine would be a bonus, if there's an effective test and trace programme suppressing infection rates.
You're not the only person that seems to think lockdown could be permanent, or was envisaged as permanent by some government or other somewhere. I've asked for evidence of this more than once, and not found any yet.
the likelihood that exit will never happen is greater than zero, and has to be acknowledged as a risk.
As is the likelihood of being hit by an Earth-destroying asteriod, but that's not one that keeps me awake at night (usually).
Show me anyone, including the WHO, envisaging permanent lockdown as a real possibility.
Especially as there seem to be plenty of people who will never think it’s safe enough so long as even one case exists
Where are these numerous people?
even the WHO has said there may never be a vaccine.
The absence of a vaccine doesn't necessarily imply permanent lockdown. It might mean a lot of changes and restrictions long term, but it certainly isn't a reason not to have a lockdown in the first place either.
I share some of Marvin's concerns about an exit strategy, since I have no evidence any member of this government could tell a strategy from a layer of rock.
With respect to exit from lockdown there are really two questions:
1. Is an exit strategy which allows a return to life without significant restrictions while preventing a large number of more deaths possible?
I would say that this, because several countries have managed to enact test and trace protocols that identify and isolate people who carry the virus while allowing the rest of the people (including those who have recovered from the disease) to carry on life with very few restrictions. Thus, a strategy that maintains the lockdown until infection rates are low enough that it would be possible to run a test and trace policy will be an exit strategy that fulfils the balance of minimal additional deaths with minimal social disruption.
2. Is what the government proposing going to achieve that?
Well, you all know my answer to that. If we fail to achieve that balance of minimal social disruption and minimal additional deaths then this would be the result of several possible factors, which can be broadly categorised as:
an inadequate lockdown that failed to sufficiently suppress the virus, either introduced too late, didn't shut things down enough, or was ignored by too many people;
a too early relaxation of the lockdown before the number of infections had fallen far enough;
inadequate capability for test and trace, so that new outbreaks are not identified and isolated fast enough to prevent a reintroduction of wider community transmission
In the UK we were late on introducing a lockdown, so we're now working on reducing the number of people infected from a peak that was higher than it needed to be. All the UK governments are equally at fault on this. There also appears to have been significant gaps in how the lockdown happened - eg: evidence of inadequate testing of people being moved into nursing homes from hospitals. There has also been a significant number of people who ignored the restrictions with little in the way of sanction. Again, this seems to be a pattern repeated in all parts of the UK, though maybe some places handled things a little bit better than other places.
At present there doesn't appear to be sufficient evidence that the number of infected people has reduced to a point where significant relaxations on the restrictions could be introduced without starting a second wave. None of our nations has the test and trace protocols needed in place with sufficient capacity to handle more than a fraction of the current number of cases - more time is needed to both reduce the number of infected people further and allow more time to expand test and trace capability. It certainly appears that the UK government has jumped the gun on this and doesn't appear to have used the last two months to build on the existing tracing capability within local authorities and local health services (albeit severely degraded capability after a decade of under funding) and is only just starting to establish a parallel capability that ignores and sidelines existing expertise. To me the Scottish approach of building on what already exists at a local level seems to be more practical and sensible, and further advanced, and the later relaxation of lockdown restrictions means this is more likely to work.
The 1918-19 flu pandemic lasted over a year and had 3 waves.
But people want this to be all over after less than 3 months.
In fact it was the second wave of flu that killed more people. And one reason was because people lost patience with those authorities who had instructed social isolation and decided that there was no point, because some people would die anyway.
I might add that when Australia started having measures, the Prime Minister quite openly talked about the possibility of at least some measures lasting 6 months. It's clear around here that some commentators just ignored that.
We're in a position to relax some of our measures in stages, which will probably keep a lid on discontent. But the message is still that there's a long way to go to full normalcy. For example the ban on most people going overseas is likely to remain in place for quite some time, with the vague possible exception of trips to New Zealand.
I might add that when Australia started having measures, the Prime Minister quite openly talked about the possibility of at least some measures lasting 6 months. It's clear around here that some commentators just ignored that.
We're in a position to relax some of our measures in stages, which will probably keep a lid on discontent. But the message is still that there's a long way to go to full normalcy. For example the ban on most people going overseas is likely to remain in place for quite some time, with the vague possible exception of trips to New Zealand.
I don't know about where you are, but we've not picked up any discontent here - annoyance that the restrictions are there but acceptance that they're necessary and have worked. Also a fair bit of concern that they're being lifted too soon.
The national figures at 8 this morning were just over 7,000 cases and 102 deaths. Those in NZ are even better.
Not really any discontent here either, apart from the occasional report you see (5G protests, sigh) and teenagers who clearly aren't keeping 1.5 metres apart. Mostly what I see is a lot of gratitude that Australia as a whole and Canberra specifically have had a pretty good run.
And the occasional desire to go and physically assault those of my neighbours who seem incapable of keeping their dog quiet...
I share some of Marvin's concerns about an exit strategy, since I have no evidence any member of this government could tell a strategy from a layer of rock.
Fair enough, but looking at the "ethical, political, and practical" issues as a whole, not having an exit strategy doesn't mean imposing a lockdown was the wrong thing to do.
Right from the beginning of this, I compared the lockdown to the Brexit transition period in that it had the advantage, given a bad situation, of buying some time to adjust.
And even if that time isn't spent devising an exit strategy, it still 'flattens the curve' and, in the main, effects relevant social change (distancing, masks, hand-washing). Of course there are rebels, but overall I'm amazed at the degree of compliance here. I don't think it would have happened without the lockdown.
France has some sort of exit strategy, for which the metric seems to be the number of available ICU beds, and for which 'track and trace' currently consists in a small army of people calling potentially infected people, not any smartphone technology. I can't really see much scientific basis for the date on which lockdown restrictions began to be lifted; I think the decision is economic and political. So far, this seems to be working. Either way, I don't hear any significant voices criticising the lockdown in the first place.
But people want this to be all over after less than 3 months
Lockdown should have been over after less than 3 weeks.
If it's serious enough to warrant a suspension of civil liberties such as the right to travel and the right to freedom of association, then it's a national emergency which warrants isolation of everyone for a short period - perhaps 10 days. Enough time for the disease to incubate so that we know who has it and who doesn't. After which lockdown would be over, and we would rely on social distancing, contact tracing etc to deal with localised incidence arising from asymptomatic carriers.
Didn't NZ attempt this ?
Do you remember Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy ? The bit where all the people with non-essential jobs were packed off to another planet in a giant spaceship ?
They're not doing that to us yet. Just shutting down our social lives for months with no clear end in sight while they fail to control the spread of the disease in the essential sector...
A very short lockdown would have only worked if it was introduced as soon as the virus was found outwith China, universally followed (and, given that there are key workers who we'd need to leave home for work it could never be universal, even if we didn't have idiots congregating in the park or driving 250 miles to visit parents) and global.
If you delay introduction of a lockdown then the number of people infected at the start of the lockdown is high. If the lockdown isn't universal then the reduction in R isn't as large and the number of cases continues to increase during the start of the lockdown, and lockdown needs to persist longer to bring the number of cases below whatever is deemed acceptable. If the lockdown isn't global you can effectively eliminate the virus in one country, but it only takes one visitor from an infected country and you do it all again.
Coercive control is necessary when a significant minority can only whine like toddlers, because this is not an individual issue; it's a matter of how everyone's behaviour adds up to affect the spread of the virus. Where is the evidence of enough people behaving like adults? The lack of reduction in the R number suggests that this behaviour is still not well enough controlled to reduce this, but then there are difficulities with the evidence. For that matter, where is the evidence of the toddler government allowing a proper test, trace and contact process to be put in place by the public sector bodies there to construct it? Then wemight just have the evidence in place. There are so many problems with moving to anything like a sustainable position from where we are it's hard to know where to start. Having locked down late and patchily, and compounded every possible error, how do we get out?
chrisstiles:
This is from the interview:
Asked what her updated estimate for the Infection Fatality Rate is, Professor Gupta says, “I think that the epidemic has largely come and is on its way out in this country so I think it would be definitely less than 1 in 1000 and probably closer to 1 in 10,000.”
(italics mine)
I understood that she was making an estimate of what the rate is going forward, and this is relevant do lifting lockdown.
FWIW I think I was holding the wrong end of the stick and in consequence talking nonsense. Sorry.
If you do believe as she does that relatively view new deaths will occur, and also believe that the number of reported COVID deaths is over-estimated by a degree, then 0.05% i.e. 500 per million is not unreasonable, and this is the figure she favoured, not 0.01%.
That would be the IFR rate for the UK. I'm not sure if there is any value in looking at global IFR rates since they will depend so much on context, and the UK has an old demographic.
That would be the IFR rate for the UK. I'm not sure if there is any value in looking at global IFR rates since they will depend so much on context, and the UK has an old demographic.
I don't think the UK demographic is that much different from other similar nations (the rest of western Europe, the US etc) but, yes, probably the IFR in the UK would be slightly higher than the global average. I'd have thought that sensible planning would assume the highest IFR, so you're prepared (as far as possible) for the number of hospitalisations and deaths that would lead to and count yourself lucky if it's less than that.
But people want this to be all over after less than 3 months
Lockdown should have been over after less than 3 weeks.
If it's serious enough to warrant a suspension of civil liberties such as the right to travel and the right to freedom of association, then it's a national emergency which warrants isolation of everyone for a short period - perhaps 10 days. Enough time for the disease to incubate so that we know who has it and who doesn't. After which lockdown would be over, and we would rely on social distancing, contact tracing etc to deal with localised incidence arising from asymptomatic carriers.
Didn't NZ attempt this ?
Do you remember Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy ? The bit where all the people with non-essential jobs were packed off to another planet in a giant spaceship ?
They're not doing that to us yet. Just shutting down our social lives for months with no clear end in sight while they fail to control the spread of the disease in the essential sector...
Where to start with this? From your last paragraph, shutting down social lives is an essential part of controlling the spread of the virus. We've not been to a restaurant, not even a little local Thai, for 8 weeks; it's only in the last week that we've been able to sit down at a coffee shop. That has limits on numbers.
As for NZ - it has been extremely successful in controlling the illness. We would have been much more successful save for 2 things. The first is that someone yet to be identified (there's a quasi-judicial investigation underway), allowed a cruise ship to dock in Sydney without a proper health check nor an adequate quarantine period. The virus also got a hold in an Anglicare nursing home for elderly residents in western Sydney and now 15 or 16 residents have died with more ill.
It's not just waiting a period. There would be the waiting you suggest followed by a very thorough cleansing of everything, down to the security fencing between a walkway we often use and the adjacent railway line. How on earth do you do that? Then additional waiting after that and another cleansing.
I can't speak for NZ, but the only people carrying on here about infringement of civil liberties are the usual ratbag extreme right. Not even the Trots have chimed in with similar comments.
I can't speak for NZ, but the only people carrying on here about infringement of civil liberties are the usual ratbag extreme right.
Does it not worry you at all that the issue of civil liberties is being left to the extreme right to campaign for?
I'd support any party which was hot on civil liberties, and the Lib Dems seem to have given up on this. But your right, the cause is becoming identified with the extreme right. Which I think is a bad thing for politics in the UK.
The left is concerned for the civil liberties of all. Those who are dead or suffering life-changing long term consequences of contracting this disease have had their civil liberties infringed far more than people who, for a few months, are unable to go to a football match or have a pint down the pub with their mates.
Besides the far right (here in the UK at least) seem to only be interested in making sure the super-wealthy can continue to screw others to make yet more money. They're certainly not showing any concern for the civil liberties of the majority, for example the right to work (which also includes being on the bus or train to get to work) without risking contracting a potentially fatal illness and passing it onto their family. They seem to want to reopen businesses, regardless of whether that can be one safely, so that business men can get back to making excessive profits.
Which is why the left are concentrating on trying to convince the government to slow down their reckless dash towards re-opening the economy until it can be done safely. Our emphasis is on something far more important than whether Mr Privileged RichBloke can visit mummy.
I can't speak for NZ, but the only people carrying on here about infringement of civil liberties are the usual ratbag extreme right.
Does it not worry you at all that the issue of civil liberties is being left to the extreme right to campaign for?
I'd support any party which was hot on civil liberties, and the Lib Dems seem to have given up on this. But your right, the cause is becoming identified with the extreme right. Which I think is a bad thing for politics in the UK.
Clueless bleatings. Honestly, this is scripted by Orwell in Animal Farm.
The stench of bullshit is just beyond anything I have ever encoutered. If you are determined to die for rights you will never get to exercise because of your death, feel free. But leave the rest of us out of it. Oh no, you can't, so you'll kill us.
I share some of Marvin's concerns about an exit strategy, since I have no evidence any member of this government could tell a strategy from a layer of rock.
Fair enough, but looking at the "ethical, political, and practical" issues as a whole, not having an exit strategy doesn't mean imposing a lockdown was the wrong thing to do.
My worries are actually a bit different from Marvin's: not so much that the lockdown persists indefinitely, but that it is lifted in a half-arsed way, the infection rate gets out of control, the lockdown is reimposed in a panic, repeat ad infinitum; with no genuine attempt to use the time gained to set up competent contact tracing or anything else that will get the infection under control.
I can't speak for NZ, but the only people carrying on here about infringement of civil liberties are the usual ratbag extreme right.
Does it not worry you at all that the issue of civil liberties is being left to the extreme right to campaign for?
I'd support any party which was hot on civil liberties, and the Lib Dems seem to have given up on this. But your right, the cause is becoming identified with the extreme right. Which I think is a bad thing for politics in the UK.
It is not an issue of civil liberties, but rather that of public health. That is the position of the vast majority of the population. I would not at all agree with your suggestion that the extreme right is campaigning for civil liberties on this (or indeed any other) occasion.
Well, so far, the French seem to be doing not too badly. We've largely adopted distancing, masks, etc. etc. and some non-electronic tracing, and so far the number of cases isn't spiralling back out of control. From this I conclude, perhaps prematurely, that adopting distancing and handwashing is quite effective.
I'm suggesting that if it's universal then we're in a whole different ballgame.
And that the choice for any government is to tackle the practical difficulties of implementing a short universal lockdown. Versus only doing what's easy and letting a partial lockdown persist for months.
With the psychology being that people will put up with a lot if it's for a known short period of time and affects everyone.
If the lockdown isn't global you can effectively eliminate the virus in one country, but it only takes one visitor from an infected country and you do it all again.
Yes. But I'm suggesting that the breach of people's fundamental rights involved in not letting people into your country unless they've just been through a quarantine procedure in the country they're coming from is minor.
Compared with the breach of rights involved in having the police stop motorists and demand to know their origin and destination and reason for travel, and punishing people if the answers don't match what the government has decided are acceptable.
But people want this to be all over after less than 3 months
Lockdown should have been over after less than 3 weeks.
If it's serious enough to warrant a suspension of civil liberties such as the right to travel and the right to freedom of association, then it's a national emergency which warrants isolation of everyone for a short period - perhaps 10 days. Enough time for the disease to incubate so that we know who has it and who doesn't. After which lockdown would be over, and we would rely on social distancing, contact tracing etc to deal with localised incidence arising from asymptomatic carriers.
Didn't NZ attempt this ?
Do you remember Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy ? The bit where all the people with non-essential jobs were packed off to another planet in a giant spaceship ?
They're not doing that to us yet. Just shutting down our social lives for months with no clear end in sight while they fail to control the spread of the disease in the essential sector...
There are so many things wrong with this, but as (a) as it's nearly 10:30pm and (b) I suspect that trying to persuade you what is wrong with this is going to be a complete waste of time and energy, I'm largely going to leave it to others.
But your logic appears to be, if the situation is bad enough to inconvenience me this much, they should have made life completely unbearable and we could have got it over with. Which might work if you then promised to COMPLETELY seal off everyone involved thereafter. And explained how you were actually going to get rid of the people you found in those 10 days, where you were going to put them.
Meanwhile, here in the real world (where the notion of a "right" to travel is hilarious), you still had to get food, the country still was doing so importation of goods, and you didn't have a convenient dumping ground for how ever many thousand patients the UK had within a couple of weeks with a bunch of medical staff who agreed to be permanently exiled.
EDIT: And New Zealand did not succeed in eliminating the virus. They achieved much the same results as Australia, where the goal was suppression.
I can't speak for NZ, but the only people carrying on here about infringement of civil liberties are the usual ratbag extreme right.
Does it not worry you at all that the issue of civil liberties is being left to the extreme right to campaign for?
I'd support any party which was hot on civil liberties, and the Lib Dems seem to have given up on this. But your right, the cause is becoming identified with the extreme right. Which I think is a bad thing for politics in the UK.
The right are not campaigning for our civil liberties, they are campaigning for corporations making money.
If it's serious enough to warrant a suspension of civil liberties such as the right to travel and the right to freedom of association, then it's a national emergency which warrants isolation of everyone for a short period - perhaps 10 days.
And how, exactly, do you do this? Do the shops have enough food for everyone to go out and buy two weeks worth of supplies today? (The answer is "no", by the way.) How do you, in practical terms, just switch everything off, and start it up again in 2 weeks? How do you enforce it?
Presumably you're hoping that nursing homes and hospitals all have enough staff who don't have families of their own, so that you can isolate an adequate staff in the nursing home. Except that nursing homes don't actually have space for a bunch of staff to move in for a couple of weeks. Ditto hospitals.
A very short lockdown would have only worked if it was introduced as soon as the virus was found outwith China, universally followed (and, given that there are key workers who we'd need to leave home for work it could never be universal, . . .
<snip>
If the lockdown isn't universal then...
Aye, that's the rub.
I'm suggesting that if it's universal then we're in a whole different ballgame.
So you're suggesting that if conditions are met that can't possibly be met (I added in the bits of @Alan Cresswell 's post that explain why this is so) somehow get met there would be "a whole different ballgame". Fantasy league, I suppose.
Presumably you're hoping that nursing homes and hospitals all have enough staff who don't have families of their own, so that you can isolate an adequate staff in the nursing home. Except that nursing homes don't actually have space for a bunch of staff to move in for a couple of weeks. Ditto hospitals.
No, @Russ is suggesting that hospitals shut down and stop accepting patients in the midst of a pandemic. After all, if the lockdown is to be universal to get to his fantasy ballgame then doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff would have to be isolated as well. Just leave people to die untreated wherever they fall ill. Not sure how @Russ proposes to handle corpse removal in his proposed universal lockdown.
The lockdown has been broken here in England thanks to the perceived message from the top that it was only advice all along and we should go with our instincts to look after our own families (don't worry ourselves about anyone else's). So people are flocking to the beaches today.
I hope those who say one thing and do another recognise that their actions played a part in causing the next wave of the virus, if it comes. If it doesn't, then what was the lockdown all about? Conspiracy theorists say it was all part of the grand plan to control us.
Let's not be judgemental though. It's a reminder lesson in hypocrisy for all of us. Perhaps we shouldn't be disappointed in our politicians and their advisors and civil servants, as we shouldn't have expected anything else.
I go with the first two paragraphs but the last is far too kind. We need leaders not politicians. Leaders with courage to lead where we need to go, not where we want to.
Perhaps we shouldn't be disappointed in our politicians and their advisors and civil servants, as we shouldn't have expected anything else.
Let's be clear. Most politicians and civil servants are obeying the rules and behaving as they should. It is the particular politicians who are leading the Conservative Party at this time, and their chief advisor and power-behind-the-throne who do not think the rules apply to them.
Perhaps we shouldn't be disappointed in our politicians and their advisors and civil servants, as we shouldn't have expected anything else.
Let's be clear. Most politicians and civil servants are obeying the rules and behaving as they should. It is the particular politicians who are leading the Conservative Party at this time, and their chief advisor and power-behind-the-throne who do not think the rules apply to them.
There is a case for calling it out, but once it enters the political tit for tat it falls down the cracks. There are accusations from both sides coming out now. The principle stands.
I think everyone agrees on where we need to go. We need to get back to something as close as possible to where we were 6 months ago, and anything that has to change is a change for the better (I know several people who know that how they work will be forever changed - a lot of people have found they can work from home and businesses thinking "do we really need to rent such a big space when a lot of our staff can do most of their work from home?", and a member of a local church who's a consultant at the main hospital here has been doing 90% of her work online with only about 10% of patients needing to come in to the hospital for a physical exam - which she's found is better for the patients who mostly don't need to spend ages on the bus to the hospital and then wait for ages but get to sit comfortably at home, and she's not travelling into the hospital everyday either).
We need leaders not politicians. Leaders with courage to lead where we need to go, not where we want to.
On the contrary it seems to me that one of our problems is that we want our politicians to be good leaders rather than good politicians and too many of the politicians want that too.
And the effigy figure was labeled "Sic semper tyrannis" ("Thus always to tyrants")--which is what John Wilkes Booth reportedly shouted when he shot Abe Lincoln...
Pastor Cliff Christman said that law isn’t relative, and to understand the country’s laws, one should understand Biblical law.
“This has been one of the biggest shams in world history,” Christman said. “Grown men have been hiding in (their) homes nearly wetting their pants over this invisible enemy that nobody sees. Where is it at? Let it come out and face us. I serve the one true and living God who conquers all enemies. Why should we give our freedom and our liberties up for such fear (and) propaganda and all the garbage that is coming out of Frankfort today?”
And the effigy figure was labeled "Sic semper tyrannis" ("Thus always to tyrants")--which is what John Wilkes Booth reportedly shouted when he shot Abe Lincoln...
Pastor Cliff Christman said that law isn’t relative, and to understand the country’s laws, one should understand Biblical law.
“This has been one of the biggest shams in world history,” Christman said. “Grown men have been hiding in (their) homes nearly wetting their pants over this invisible enemy that nobody sees. Where is it at? Let it come out and face us. I serve the one true and living God who conquers all enemies. Why should we give our freedom and our liberties up for such fear (and) propaganda and all the garbage that is coming out of Frankfort today?”
This has been one of the biggest shams in world history.
Pastor Cliff should actually read some history, then.
Grown men have been hiding in (their) homes nearly wetting their pants over this invisible enemy that nobody sees.
No, not really. Taking precautions isn't hiding in our homes. I presume Pastor Cliff turns off the lawn mower before sharpening the blades. And his pants stay dry while he does it.
Where is it at? Let it come out and face us.
Ignoramus. It is facing us. It's scything a path through us.
I serve the one true and living God who conquers all enemies. Why should we give our freedom and our liberties up for such fear (and) propaganda and all the garbage that is coming out of Frankfort today?”
Because you want your elderly, your diabetics, your sick, your loved ones to live and not have lasting, as-yet-unknown debilities for the rest of their lives. You do want that, don't you, Pastor Cliff?
Comments
We know that for every death there are x people who recover but suffer medium to long term complications - at present we don't know what all those complications are (because we've only been able to observe people over the short term) nor what value 'x' will take, though it's almost certainly greater than unity. Longer term complications means treatment over a long period of time (which will mean a long term additional cost to the health services) and may mean reduced ability to work (adding costs to the benefits system) both for those who have these complications and family members who will take the bulk of the caring duties.
This is from the interview: (italics mine)
I understood that she was making an estimate of what the rate is going forward, and this is relevant do lifting lockdown.
I'm not sure how much the summary points meet the content, it seemed a lot better on the bit of film I watched (I think they may have restated positions from March).
As C.S states we pretty much know that it has to be greater the 1 in 1000 in the population as a whole.
I don't think the death rates and experience of e.g. the aircraft carriers are now really consistent with a simple much earlier start with low mortality (I have a lot of sympathy for the "something happened at Christmas" view, but the associated things didn't happen*), but that's something I'd be happy to defer to experts with reasons.
In hindsight track and trace seems to have worked in S Korea, which it shouldn't if her model had been right (that doesn't mean Ferguson's model isn't extreme the other way, but the antibody results suggest that it is closer).
If we are at herd immunity then we would be fine, if we are not (and are not in control either) then a free release would just jump straight back onto the original curve where we left it. But for that to be the case .
Again minimising the bad effects of lockdown, I'm sure there will be miniscual objection. I'm all for it, Corbyn wanted rights for the self-employed, Stammer wanted an exit plan and to protect against evictions, the Green's want to go much further, for fuck's sake even the Tory's are now saying visiting your family is important!
Even at some risks to the populace. To go with the WW2 analogy, we set lots of young people in places where they died, to save us from the horrors of Nazism. But we still turned our lights out. But even the kamikaze pilots, they may have been as 'expendable' as you can get, but they tried to use them on ships rather than flying them into Tokyo.
And if it really were essentially for ever, then yes we'd have to consider it on a long term basis [and taking the hit].
*as far as I know.
Generally I'm not particularly persuaded by the interview. She appears to have no actual evidence for her theory that vast numbers of people have already been infected, and seems not at all daunted by evidence against it (like serology tests).
You weren't talking about lifting lockdown just now, you were talking about the principle of lockdown in the first place. I explained why that principle was a good thing, and you haven't acknowledged the point I made, you've changed the subject.
You're not the only person that seems to think lockdown could be permanent, or was envisaged as permanent by some government or other somewhere. I've asked for evidence of this more than once, and not found any yet.
To believe this, you have to believe that lockdown had no effect on the spread of the virus. Most epidemiologists would find that suggestion rather surprising. "Natural decay" can certainly happen, but it doesn't just miraculously happen by itself - you need to have some mechanism, and all those mechanisms are testable.
"Of course we may never have proof" is the last refuge of the charlatan. All of these things are measurable. It's a lot of work, but fatalistically shrugging and saying "I guess we'll never know" is anti-science nonsense.
Nothing I have seen on the ship has been "total acceptance of whatever the government says". The ship has, in general, been rather critical of the responses of the UK and US governments in particular to the epidemic, and has had any number of posts along the lines of "government official X said this. This is why is is nonsense" followed by several paragraphs explaining in detail why the poster thinks the government position is wrong. In most (perhaps even all) cases, these arguments have all been in the direction that the government is taking too risky a position, and will cause more deaths as a result.
Though as a layman the NHS curve is too noisy for me to tell them apart* (though the very different tail looks to me to be more lock-down barely working than saturation).
*especially as we started washing hands weeks before, and things take time, so the curve gets flattened anyway.
Of course, a revision to the IFR can also follow from improved estimates of how many people are infected but asymptomatic - in which case an IFR of 1% would mean that 5 million people in the UK have been infected, whereas if half the population has been infected the IFR would be about 0.2%. Even her 0.1% (much less 0.01%) would seem far too small as otherwise the entire population has already been infected (and. 0.01% would need there to be far more infected people in the UK than the population). It seems unlikely that even 5M people have been infected in the UK, meaning that an IFR of 1% is too low and needs to be revised upwards not down.
When the government has gone into it with no exit strategy beyond vague notions like “once it’s safe”, “test and trace” and “when we have a vaccine” then the likelihood that exit will never happen is greater than zero, and has to be acknowledged as a risk. Especially as there seem to be plenty of people who will never think it’s safe enough so long as even one case exists, any attempt at test and trace is being denigrated as insufficient, and even the WHO has said there may never be a vaccine.
Any thoughts on things that get maximum good effects for minimal extra transmissions?
We now have an exit strategy in Scotland, though the timing is dependent upon how quickly the number of infected people declines. There's no reason why there shouldn't be an exit strategy for the whole UK, or for other regions of the UK (the chances are strong that the conditions to progress through the strategy will be at different times in different places - and you either have regional strategies or you leave some parts in more severe lockdown until the whole country has achieved the conditions for the next stage in the strategy).
Test and trace has been proven to be effective if properly implemented. South Korea has done it from a very high initial incidence rate, many other countries had the time to implement a track and trace system before they had a lot of cases. The question is whether the UK government is working towards an effective strategy for England.
A properly implemented test and trace strategy, built on a low rate of infection resulting from holding the lockdown in place long enough, coupled with some minimal social distancing measures should be able to keep the infection rate low enough that we can significantly ease restrictions on the most vulnerable. We'll need to make some positive changes to society - eg: we'll need to sort out pay and conditions such that people aren't compelled to go into work if they're ill (because, we'll still need to self-isolate if we develop anything resembling covid symptoms, until tested, and I've seen data somewhere that about 105 of the population would go into work even if they're tested positive because they couldn't afford to miss the pay cheque). But, most of what we're used to will return to normal.
A vaccine would be a bonus, if there's an effective test and trace programme suppressing infection rates.
Show me anyone, including the WHO, envisaging permanent lockdown as a real possibility.
Where are these numerous people? The absence of a vaccine doesn't necessarily imply permanent lockdown. It might mean a lot of changes and restrictions long term, but it certainly isn't a reason not to have a lockdown in the first place either.
1. Is an exit strategy which allows a return to life without significant restrictions while preventing a large number of more deaths possible?
I would say that this, because several countries have managed to enact test and trace protocols that identify and isolate people who carry the virus while allowing the rest of the people (including those who have recovered from the disease) to carry on life with very few restrictions. Thus, a strategy that maintains the lockdown until infection rates are low enough that it would be possible to run a test and trace policy will be an exit strategy that fulfils the balance of minimal additional deaths with minimal social disruption.
2. Is what the government proposing going to achieve that?
Well, you all know my answer to that. If we fail to achieve that balance of minimal social disruption and minimal additional deaths then this would be the result of several possible factors, which can be broadly categorised as:
an inadequate lockdown that failed to sufficiently suppress the virus, either introduced too late, didn't shut things down enough, or was ignored by too many people;
a too early relaxation of the lockdown before the number of infections had fallen far enough;
inadequate capability for test and trace, so that new outbreaks are not identified and isolated fast enough to prevent a reintroduction of wider community transmission
In the UK we were late on introducing a lockdown, so we're now working on reducing the number of people infected from a peak that was higher than it needed to be. All the UK governments are equally at fault on this. There also appears to have been significant gaps in how the lockdown happened - eg: evidence of inadequate testing of people being moved into nursing homes from hospitals. There has also been a significant number of people who ignored the restrictions with little in the way of sanction. Again, this seems to be a pattern repeated in all parts of the UK, though maybe some places handled things a little bit better than other places.
At present there doesn't appear to be sufficient evidence that the number of infected people has reduced to a point where significant relaxations on the restrictions could be introduced without starting a second wave. None of our nations has the test and trace protocols needed in place with sufficient capacity to handle more than a fraction of the current number of cases - more time is needed to both reduce the number of infected people further and allow more time to expand test and trace capability. It certainly appears that the UK government has jumped the gun on this and doesn't appear to have used the last two months to build on the existing tracing capability within local authorities and local health services (albeit severely degraded capability after a decade of under funding) and is only just starting to establish a parallel capability that ignores and sidelines existing expertise. To me the Scottish approach of building on what already exists at a local level seems to be more practical and sensible, and further advanced, and the later relaxation of lockdown restrictions means this is more likely to work.
But people want this to be all over after less than 3 months.
In fact it was the second wave of flu that killed more people. And one reason was because people lost patience with those authorities who had instructed social isolation and decided that there was no point, because some people would die anyway.
We're in a position to relax some of our measures in stages, which will probably keep a lid on discontent. But the message is still that there's a long way to go to full normalcy. For example the ban on most people going overseas is likely to remain in place for quite some time, with the vague possible exception of trips to New Zealand.
I don't know about where you are, but we've not picked up any discontent here - annoyance that the restrictions are there but acceptance that they're necessary and have worked. Also a fair bit of concern that they're being lifted too soon.
The national figures at 8 this morning were just over 7,000 cases and 102 deaths. Those in NZ are even better.
And the occasional desire to go and physically assault those of my neighbours who seem incapable of keeping their dog quiet...
Fair enough, but looking at the "ethical, political, and practical" issues as a whole, not having an exit strategy doesn't mean imposing a lockdown was the wrong thing to do.
Right from the beginning of this, I compared the lockdown to the Brexit transition period in that it had the advantage, given a bad situation, of buying some time to adjust.
And even if that time isn't spent devising an exit strategy, it still 'flattens the curve' and, in the main, effects relevant social change (distancing, masks, hand-washing). Of course there are rebels, but overall I'm amazed at the degree of compliance here. I don't think it would have happened without the lockdown.
France has some sort of exit strategy, for which the metric seems to be the number of available ICU beds, and for which 'track and trace' currently consists in a small army of people calling potentially infected people, not any smartphone technology. I can't really see much scientific basis for the date on which lockdown restrictions began to be lifted; I think the decision is economic and political. So far, this seems to be working. Either way, I don't hear any significant voices criticising the lockdown in the first place.
Lockdown should have been over after less than 3 weeks.
If it's serious enough to warrant a suspension of civil liberties such as the right to travel and the right to freedom of association, then it's a national emergency which warrants isolation of everyone for a short period - perhaps 10 days. Enough time for the disease to incubate so that we know who has it and who doesn't. After which lockdown would be over, and we would rely on social distancing, contact tracing etc to deal with localised incidence arising from asymptomatic carriers.
Didn't NZ attempt this ?
Do you remember Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy ? The bit where all the people with non-essential jobs were packed off to another planet in a giant spaceship ?
They're not doing that to us yet. Just shutting down our social lives for months with no clear end in sight while they fail to control the spread of the disease in the essential sector...
If you delay introduction of a lockdown then the number of people infected at the start of the lockdown is high. If the lockdown isn't universal then the reduction in R isn't as large and the number of cases continues to increase during the start of the lockdown, and lockdown needs to persist longer to bring the number of cases below whatever is deemed acceptable. If the lockdown isn't global you can effectively eliminate the virus in one country, but it only takes one visitor from an infected country and you do it all again.
If you do believe as she does that relatively view new deaths will occur, and also believe that the number of reported COVID deaths is over-estimated by a degree, then 0.05% i.e. 500 per million is not unreasonable, and this is the figure she favoured, not 0.01%.
That would be the IFR rate for the UK. I'm not sure if there is any value in looking at global IFR rates since they will depend so much on context, and the UK has an old demographic.
Where to start with this? From your last paragraph, shutting down social lives is an essential part of controlling the spread of the virus. We've not been to a restaurant, not even a little local Thai, for 8 weeks; it's only in the last week that we've been able to sit down at a coffee shop. That has limits on numbers.
As for NZ - it has been extremely successful in controlling the illness. We would have been much more successful save for 2 things. The first is that someone yet to be identified (there's a quasi-judicial investigation underway), allowed a cruise ship to dock in Sydney without a proper health check nor an adequate quarantine period. The virus also got a hold in an Anglicare nursing home for elderly residents in western Sydney and now 15 or 16 residents have died with more ill.
It's not just waiting a period. There would be the waiting you suggest followed by a very thorough cleansing of everything, down to the security fencing between a walkway we often use and the adjacent railway line. How on earth do you do that? Then additional waiting after that and another cleansing.
I can't speak for NZ, but the only people carrying on here about infringement of civil liberties are the usual ratbag extreme right. Not even the Trots have chimed in with similar comments.
I'd support any party which was hot on civil liberties, and the Lib Dems seem to have given up on this. But your right, the cause is becoming identified with the extreme right. Which I think is a bad thing for politics in the UK.
Besides the far right (here in the UK at least) seem to only be interested in making sure the super-wealthy can continue to screw others to make yet more money. They're certainly not showing any concern for the civil liberties of the majority, for example the right to work (which also includes being on the bus or train to get to work) without risking contracting a potentially fatal illness and passing it onto their family. They seem to want to reopen businesses, regardless of whether that can be one safely, so that business men can get back to making excessive profits.
Which is why the left are concentrating on trying to convince the government to slow down their reckless dash towards re-opening the economy until it can be done safely. Our emphasis is on something far more important than whether Mr Privileged RichBloke can visit mummy.
Clueless bleatings. Honestly, this is scripted by Orwell in Animal Farm.
The stench of bullshit is just beyond anything I have ever encoutered. If you are determined to die for rights you will never get to exercise because of your death, feel free. But leave the rest of us out of it. Oh no, you can't, so you'll kill us.
FUCK OFF.
It is not an issue of civil liberties, but rather that of public health. That is the position of the vast majority of the population. I would not at all agree with your suggestion that the extreme right is campaigning for civil liberties on this (or indeed any other) occasion.
I'm suggesting that if it's universal then we're in a whole different ballgame.
And that the choice for any government is to tackle the practical difficulties of implementing a short universal lockdown. Versus only doing what's easy and letting a partial lockdown persist for months.
With the psychology being that people will put up with a lot if it's for a known short period of time and affects everyone.
Yes. But I'm suggesting that the breach of people's fundamental rights involved in not letting people into your country unless they've just been through a quarantine procedure in the country they're coming from is minor.
Compared with the breach of rights involved in having the police stop motorists and demand to know their origin and destination and reason for travel, and punishing people if the answers don't match what the government has decided are acceptable.
There are so many things wrong with this, but as (a) as it's nearly 10:30pm and (b) I suspect that trying to persuade you what is wrong with this is going to be a complete waste of time and energy, I'm largely going to leave it to others.
But your logic appears to be, if the situation is bad enough to inconvenience me this much, they should have made life completely unbearable and we could have got it over with. Which might work if you then promised to COMPLETELY seal off everyone involved thereafter. And explained how you were actually going to get rid of the people you found in those 10 days, where you were going to put them.
Meanwhile, here in the real world (where the notion of a "right" to travel is hilarious), you still had to get food, the country still was doing so importation of goods, and you didn't have a convenient dumping ground for how ever many thousand patients the UK had within a couple of weeks with a bunch of medical staff who agreed to be permanently exiled.
EDIT: And New Zealand did not succeed in eliminating the virus. They achieved much the same results as Australia, where the goal was suppression.
And how, exactly, do you do this? Do the shops have enough food for everyone to go out and buy two weeks worth of supplies today? (The answer is "no", by the way.) How do you, in practical terms, just switch everything off, and start it up again in 2 weeks? How do you enforce it?
Presumably you're hoping that nursing homes and hospitals all have enough staff who don't have families of their own, so that you can isolate an adequate staff in the nursing home. Except that nursing homes don't actually have space for a bunch of staff to move in for a couple of weeks. Ditto hospitals.
So you're suggesting that if conditions are met that can't possibly be met (I added in the bits of @Alan Cresswell 's post that explain why this is so) somehow get met there would be "a whole different ballgame". Fantasy league, I suppose.
No, @Russ is suggesting that hospitals shut down and stop accepting patients in the midst of a pandemic. After all, if the lockdown is to be universal to get to his fantasy ballgame then doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff would have to be isolated as well. Just leave people to die untreated wherever they fall ill. Not sure how @Russ proposes to handle corpse removal in his proposed universal lockdown.
It would worry me what they were really after.
Perhaps he takes Luke 9:60 just a little too literally.
I hope those who say one thing and do another recognise that their actions played a part in causing the next wave of the virus, if it comes. If it doesn't, then what was the lockdown all about? Conspiracy theorists say it was all part of the grand plan to control us.
Let's not be judgemental though. It's a reminder lesson in hypocrisy for all of us. Perhaps we shouldn't be disappointed in our politicians and their advisors and civil servants, as we shouldn't have expected anything else.
There is a case for calling it out, but once it enters the political tit for tat it falls down the cracks. There are accusations from both sides coming out now. The principle stands.
Who gets to decide where we need to go?
The point of disagreement is how we get there.
"Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear hanged in effigy as Second Amendment supporters protest coronavirus restrictions" (Yahoo).
And the effigy figure was labeled "Sic semper tyrannis" ("Thus always to tyrants")--which is what John Wilkes Booth reportedly shouted when he shot Abe Lincoln...
Frack.
(A sci-fi cuss word.)
Battlestar Galactica
Meaning of "We've had 7, dear" at the start of your post?
Pastor Cliff should actually read some history, then.
No, not really. Taking precautions isn't hiding in our homes. I presume Pastor Cliff turns off the lawn mower before sharpening the blades. And his pants stay dry while he does it.
Ignoramus. It is facing us. It's scything a path through us.
Because you want your elderly, your diabetics, your sick, your loved ones to live and not have lasting, as-yet-unknown debilities for the rest of their lives. You do want that, don't you, Pastor Cliff?