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For the thickos this explains it very well in a simple form even people who don’t know which county they live in or team they support could potentially grasp.
It would be good if a proper scientist did this on national TV so everyone can try to understand the strategy.
Coronavirus â˜£ï¸ on 16:05 - Mar 15 by Capt_Koons
So experts are back in fashion now? Gove was so insistent that we shouldn't listen to them in the run up to the Brexit fiasco.
You're right,we've had four years of don't trust the experts and now we have the most untrustworthy prime minister in our history telling us to trust them.
0
Coronavirus â˜£ï¸ on 17:03 - Mar 15 with 1279 views
Your house is on fire, and the people whom you have trusted with your care are not trying to put it out. Even though they knew it was coming, and could see what happened to the neighbours as they were overwhelmed with terrifying speed, the UK government has inexplicably chosen to encourage the flames, in the misguided notion that somehow they will be able to control them.
When I first heard about this, I could not believe it. I research and teach the evolution and epidemiology of infectious disease at Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health. My colleagues here in the US, even as they are reeling from the stumbling response of the Donald Trump administration to the crisis, assumed that reports of the UK policy were satire — an example of the wry humour for which the country is famed. But they are all too real.
'The UK’s Covid-19 strategy dangerously leaves too many questions unanswered' Anthony Costello The coronavirus outbreak can be suppressed as China and others have done, but we need to act now - Anthony Costello is professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London and a former director of maternal and child health at the WHO The public health response to a serious epidemic is laid out simply and clearly by the World Health Organization (WHO). Test intensively, trace contacts, quarantine and maintain social distancing. When Covid-19 got out of control in Wuhan, after three weeks of public health inaction, the Chinese authorities mounted a proper campaign to control the virus. They listened to the WHO. They tested extensively, setting up mobile testing centres, and getting the test result time down from four days to four hours. They cut the time from onset of symptoms to lab result from 12 to three days. They identified family clusters (the virus spreads mainly through extended close contact so family members are most at risk) and arranged isolation centres for contacts. Above all, they mobilised communities. They didn’t leave it all to messages and nudge behavioural methods. Yes, Wuhan was in lockdown, but across the country local authorities had high autonomy to help people abide by these best public health principles. This was not a terrorised population but one passionate about tackling an existential threat. They also used apps and smartphones to get messages across, to share information about local clusters and for data collection. Everyone in Wuhan, a city of 11 million, ordered their food online, and had it delivered. And the strategy worked. In seven weeks China stopped the epidemic in its tracks. It now reports only 10 to 20 new cases per day in a population of nearly 1.4 billion. Deaths have plummeted. Several other countries, including South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan, have copied this strategy, with local modifications, with similar results.
Now they realise they must face the challenge of how to loosen up, and whether allowing the economy to recover will lead to more outbreaks, but they have a nationwide system to jump on new clusters and outbreaks to keep this under control. The aim is to wait and hope for drugs and vaccines to emerge in the next 12 months to enable them to treat cases and to build proper herd immunity from a vaccine. I had assumed that the UK would do the same, that the authorities would be building their resources and plans around nationwide testing, contact tracing, quarantine and a progressive policy of social distancing. I assumed they would inform the public they had a two- to three-month “contain and delay” strategy to get the epidemic under control, and mobilise communities everywhere to provide local support. But from the press conferences last week, the government is not following the WHO strategy. They appear to have concluded that it is inevitable most people would get the disease, so we should let the epidemic proceed to allow 60% of the population to become infected and build herd immunity through the wild virus. What is the scientific justification for this departure from WHO policy? I have questions: Why have they abandoned population testing and contact tracing to identify and seclude clusters of infections? They recommend only testing cases in hospital. Won’t this strategy ensure that the spread of the virus is intense and will cause more infections and more deaths in the near term?
Why do they recommend self-isolation only for people with symptoms when Maria Van Kerkhove of the WHO reports that “it seems that people shed more virus in the early phases rather than the late phases of disease”? Asymptomatic contacts may be highly infectious, so they should be tested, isolated and followed up in the community. Will they set up quarantine centres to help those who have no family support or are homeless, or need social care?
What are their plans for national, district, municipal, village and community mobilisation? “Nudge” is not enough. We need to devolve power and autonomy to allow locally intelligent decisions around a coherent national strategy. What is their detailed strategy for screening of infected people in the home, and provision of CT scans for those with early signs of pneumonia and to identify those at high risk? Without an all-out national mobilisation for social distancing, are the behavioural and nudge strategies really evidence-based to flatten the peak? Or simply based on models?
Why are we emphasising herd immunity now? Does coronavirus induce strong herd immunity or is it like flu, where immunity remains weak and new strains emerge each year? We have much to learn about Covid-19 immune responses. Doesn’t this contradict WHO policy? Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, said after declaring a pandemic: “The idea that countries should shift from containment to mitigation is wrong and dangerous.”
Shouldn’t we wait to see the China situation? They have contained the epidemic after seven weeks of intensive national effort. Will epidemics break out again in new states? Maybe. Will their strengthened systems not contain them quickly and effectively? What is their herd immunity to date? We don’t have the data available but new tests are coming online. It might be substantial, without a massive epidemic. The WHO policy — practised by China, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong — is to keep things damped down until drugs and a vaccine are available. Vaccines are a safer way to develop herd immunity, without the risks associated with the disease itself. Is it wise or ethical to adopt a policy that threatens immediate casualties on the basis of uncertain future benefit?
What is the policy to promote social distancing? How can we promote advice for families, mass gatherings, schools, workplaces, restaurants, theatres? And can we make it locally relevant? School closures might be phased depending on the intensity of transmission based on local data about clusters, as they did in Singapore. But we need testing and sharing of information online for local decisions. Finally, on the precautionary principle, shouldn’t we go all out to damp this epidemic down, with all possible measures, whether evidence is strong, uncertain or weak, and worry about herd immunity when we have more evidence? The stated government policy is to allow 40 million people to become infected. This could mean 6 million hospital admissions, 2 million requiring special or intensive care, and 402,000 deaths if the chief medical officer Prof Chris Whitty’s 1% estimate of mortality is correct.
We can suppress this epidemic in the way that China and other countries have done. Then we can worry about how to loosen up, and hope that a vaccine comes onboard. But we need to act now. Every day of delay will mean more people become infected or die.
- Anthony Costello is professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London and a former director of maternal and child health at the WHO
0
Coronavirus â˜£ï¸ on 07:58 - Mar 16 with 1187 views
'The UK’s Covid-19 strategy dangerously leaves too many questions unanswered' Anthony Costello The coronavirus outbreak can be suppressed as China and others have done, but we need to act now - Anthony Costello is professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London and a former director of maternal and child health at the WHO The public health response to a serious epidemic is laid out simply and clearly by the World Health Organization (WHO). Test intensively, trace contacts, quarantine and maintain social distancing. When Covid-19 got out of control in Wuhan, after three weeks of public health inaction, the Chinese authorities mounted a proper campaign to control the virus. They listened to the WHO. They tested extensively, setting up mobile testing centres, and getting the test result time down from four days to four hours. They cut the time from onset of symptoms to lab result from 12 to three days. They identified family clusters (the virus spreads mainly through extended close contact so family members are most at risk) and arranged isolation centres for contacts. Above all, they mobilised communities. They didn’t leave it all to messages and nudge behavioural methods. Yes, Wuhan was in lockdown, but across the country local authorities had high autonomy to help people abide by these best public health principles. This was not a terrorised population but one passionate about tackling an existential threat. They also used apps and smartphones to get messages across, to share information about local clusters and for data collection. Everyone in Wuhan, a city of 11 million, ordered their food online, and had it delivered. And the strategy worked. In seven weeks China stopped the epidemic in its tracks. It now reports only 10 to 20 new cases per day in a population of nearly 1.4 billion. Deaths have plummeted. Several other countries, including South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan, have copied this strategy, with local modifications, with similar results.
Now they realise they must face the challenge of how to loosen up, and whether allowing the economy to recover will lead to more outbreaks, but they have a nationwide system to jump on new clusters and outbreaks to keep this under control. The aim is to wait and hope for drugs and vaccines to emerge in the next 12 months to enable them to treat cases and to build proper herd immunity from a vaccine. I had assumed that the UK would do the same, that the authorities would be building their resources and plans around nationwide testing, contact tracing, quarantine and a progressive policy of social distancing. I assumed they would inform the public they had a two- to three-month “contain and delay” strategy to get the epidemic under control, and mobilise communities everywhere to provide local support. But from the press conferences last week, the government is not following the WHO strategy. They appear to have concluded that it is inevitable most people would get the disease, so we should let the epidemic proceed to allow 60% of the population to become infected and build herd immunity through the wild virus. What is the scientific justification for this departure from WHO policy? I have questions: Why have they abandoned population testing and contact tracing to identify and seclude clusters of infections? They recommend only testing cases in hospital. Won’t this strategy ensure that the spread of the virus is intense and will cause more infections and more deaths in the near term?
Why do they recommend self-isolation only for people with symptoms when Maria Van Kerkhove of the WHO reports that “it seems that people shed more virus in the early phases rather than the late phases of disease”? Asymptomatic contacts may be highly infectious, so they should be tested, isolated and followed up in the community. Will they set up quarantine centres to help those who have no family support or are homeless, or need social care?
What are their plans for national, district, municipal, village and community mobilisation? “Nudge” is not enough. We need to devolve power and autonomy to allow locally intelligent decisions around a coherent national strategy. What is their detailed strategy for screening of infected people in the home, and provision of CT scans for those with early signs of pneumonia and to identify those at high risk? Without an all-out national mobilisation for social distancing, are the behavioural and nudge strategies really evidence-based to flatten the peak? Or simply based on models?
Why are we emphasising herd immunity now? Does coronavirus induce strong herd immunity or is it like flu, where immunity remains weak and new strains emerge each year? We have much to learn about Covid-19 immune responses. Doesn’t this contradict WHO policy? Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, said after declaring a pandemic: “The idea that countries should shift from containment to mitigation is wrong and dangerous.”
Shouldn’t we wait to see the China situation? They have contained the epidemic after seven weeks of intensive national effort. Will epidemics break out again in new states? Maybe. Will their strengthened systems not contain them quickly and effectively? What is their herd immunity to date? We don’t have the data available but new tests are coming online. It might be substantial, without a massive epidemic. The WHO policy — practised by China, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong — is to keep things damped down until drugs and a vaccine are available. Vaccines are a safer way to develop herd immunity, without the risks associated with the disease itself. Is it wise or ethical to adopt a policy that threatens immediate casualties on the basis of uncertain future benefit?
What is the policy to promote social distancing? How can we promote advice for families, mass gatherings, schools, workplaces, restaurants, theatres? And can we make it locally relevant? School closures might be phased depending on the intensity of transmission based on local data about clusters, as they did in Singapore. But we need testing and sharing of information online for local decisions. Finally, on the precautionary principle, shouldn’t we go all out to damp this epidemic down, with all possible measures, whether evidence is strong, uncertain or weak, and worry about herd immunity when we have more evidence? The stated government policy is to allow 40 million people to become infected. This could mean 6 million hospital admissions, 2 million requiring special or intensive care, and 402,000 deaths if the chief medical officer Prof Chris Whitty’s 1% estimate of mortality is correct.
We can suppress this epidemic in the way that China and other countries have done. Then we can worry about how to loosen up, and hope that a vaccine comes onboard. But we need to act now. Every day of delay will mean more people become infected or die.
- Anthony Costello is professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London and a former director of maternal and child health at the WHO
And I'm sure if the government strategy had matched China's you'd have frantically searched cyberspace for someone that disagreed with it. You're agenda is so obvious.
It is no great surprise that there are people that disagree with a certain policy; there are plenty of people that agree with it. We can't do this by committee and wait for every expert to declare their credentials and put their tuppence-worth in. Corbyn suggested that approach for his nuclear policy and rightly got laughed at. I'm in favour of small government but in certain scenarios we need those in charge to choose a course of action and for us to all go with it and if the situation changes, we alter that course. The undermining of those decisions by I'm cleverer than you types on Twitter does no-one any favours as it adds to the confusion, leads people to go against the advice and makes the situation worse.
Standby to standby
0
Coronavirus â˜£ï¸ on 08:04 - Mar 16 with 1181 views
And I'm sure if the government strategy had matched China's you'd have frantically searched cyberspace for someone that disagreed with it. You're agenda is so obvious.
It is no great surprise that there are people that disagree with a certain policy; there are plenty of people that agree with it. We can't do this by committee and wait for every expert to declare their credentials and put their tuppence-worth in. Corbyn suggested that approach for his nuclear policy and rightly got laughed at. I'm in favour of small government but in certain scenarios we need those in charge to choose a course of action and for us to all go with it and if the situation changes, we alter that course. The undermining of those decisions by I'm cleverer than you types on Twitter does no-one any favours as it adds to the confusion, leads people to go against the advice and makes the situation worse.
'And I'm sure if the government strategy had matched China's you'd have frantically searched cyberspace for someone that disagreed with it.' That's where you're wrong I would have been more than happy with that, I'm of the opinion that western governments were way too slow to react, we should have locked our borders from day one until the Chinese had it under control.
0
Coronavirus â˜£ï¸ on 09:44 - Mar 16 with 1151 views
'The UK’s Covid-19 strategy dangerously leaves too many questions unanswered' Anthony Costello The coronavirus outbreak can be suppressed as China and others have done, but we need to act now - Anthony Costello is professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London and a former director of maternal and child health at the WHO The public health response to a serious epidemic is laid out simply and clearly by the World Health Organization (WHO). Test intensively, trace contacts, quarantine and maintain social distancing. When Covid-19 got out of control in Wuhan, after three weeks of public health inaction, the Chinese authorities mounted a proper campaign to control the virus. They listened to the WHO. They tested extensively, setting up mobile testing centres, and getting the test result time down from four days to four hours. They cut the time from onset of symptoms to lab result from 12 to three days. They identified family clusters (the virus spreads mainly through extended close contact so family members are most at risk) and arranged isolation centres for contacts. Above all, they mobilised communities. They didn’t leave it all to messages and nudge behavioural methods. Yes, Wuhan was in lockdown, but across the country local authorities had high autonomy to help people abide by these best public health principles. This was not a terrorised population but one passionate about tackling an existential threat. They also used apps and smartphones to get messages across, to share information about local clusters and for data collection. Everyone in Wuhan, a city of 11 million, ordered their food online, and had it delivered. And the strategy worked. In seven weeks China stopped the epidemic in its tracks. It now reports only 10 to 20 new cases per day in a population of nearly 1.4 billion. Deaths have plummeted. Several other countries, including South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan, have copied this strategy, with local modifications, with similar results.
Now they realise they must face the challenge of how to loosen up, and whether allowing the economy to recover will lead to more outbreaks, but they have a nationwide system to jump on new clusters and outbreaks to keep this under control. The aim is to wait and hope for drugs and vaccines to emerge in the next 12 months to enable them to treat cases and to build proper herd immunity from a vaccine. I had assumed that the UK would do the same, that the authorities would be building their resources and plans around nationwide testing, contact tracing, quarantine and a progressive policy of social distancing. I assumed they would inform the public they had a two- to three-month “contain and delay” strategy to get the epidemic under control, and mobilise communities everywhere to provide local support. But from the press conferences last week, the government is not following the WHO strategy. They appear to have concluded that it is inevitable most people would get the disease, so we should let the epidemic proceed to allow 60% of the population to become infected and build herd immunity through the wild virus. What is the scientific justification for this departure from WHO policy? I have questions: Why have they abandoned population testing and contact tracing to identify and seclude clusters of infections? They recommend only testing cases in hospital. Won’t this strategy ensure that the spread of the virus is intense and will cause more infections and more deaths in the near term?
Why do they recommend self-isolation only for people with symptoms when Maria Van Kerkhove of the WHO reports that “it seems that people shed more virus in the early phases rather than the late phases of disease”? Asymptomatic contacts may be highly infectious, so they should be tested, isolated and followed up in the community. Will they set up quarantine centres to help those who have no family support or are homeless, or need social care?
What are their plans for national, district, municipal, village and community mobilisation? “Nudge” is not enough. We need to devolve power and autonomy to allow locally intelligent decisions around a coherent national strategy. What is their detailed strategy for screening of infected people in the home, and provision of CT scans for those with early signs of pneumonia and to identify those at high risk? Without an all-out national mobilisation for social distancing, are the behavioural and nudge strategies really evidence-based to flatten the peak? Or simply based on models?
Why are we emphasising herd immunity now? Does coronavirus induce strong herd immunity or is it like flu, where immunity remains weak and new strains emerge each year? We have much to learn about Covid-19 immune responses. Doesn’t this contradict WHO policy? Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, said after declaring a pandemic: “The idea that countries should shift from containment to mitigation is wrong and dangerous.”
Shouldn’t we wait to see the China situation? They have contained the epidemic after seven weeks of intensive national effort. Will epidemics break out again in new states? Maybe. Will their strengthened systems not contain them quickly and effectively? What is their herd immunity to date? We don’t have the data available but new tests are coming online. It might be substantial, without a massive epidemic. The WHO policy — practised by China, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong — is to keep things damped down until drugs and a vaccine are available. Vaccines are a safer way to develop herd immunity, without the risks associated with the disease itself. Is it wise or ethical to adopt a policy that threatens immediate casualties on the basis of uncertain future benefit?
What is the policy to promote social distancing? How can we promote advice for families, mass gatherings, schools, workplaces, restaurants, theatres? And can we make it locally relevant? School closures might be phased depending on the intensity of transmission based on local data about clusters, as they did in Singapore. But we need testing and sharing of information online for local decisions. Finally, on the precautionary principle, shouldn’t we go all out to damp this epidemic down, with all possible measures, whether evidence is strong, uncertain or weak, and worry about herd immunity when we have more evidence? The stated government policy is to allow 40 million people to become infected. This could mean 6 million hospital admissions, 2 million requiring special or intensive care, and 402,000 deaths if the chief medical officer Prof Chris Whitty’s 1% estimate of mortality is correct.
We can suppress this epidemic in the way that China and other countries have done. Then we can worry about how to loosen up, and hope that a vaccine comes onboard. But we need to act now. Every day of delay will mean more people become infected or die.
- Anthony Costello is professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London and a former director of maternal and child health at the WHO
Coronavirus â˜£ï¸ on 13:38 - Mar 15 by cocklebreath
It would be good if a proper scientist did this on national TV so everyone can try to understand the strategy.
If successive governments hadn't neglected the NHS so much perhaps the bottle would be much bigger. I can see why many health experts are panicking. Last year, long before coronavirus was even known about, my mum had a fall and spent hours on a trolley in a corridor in Soton General. It was pretty chaotic and that was just a run-of-the-mill Thursday evening by all accounts. Dread to think what might happen in our hospitals if the worst-case scenario comes to fruition.
0
Coronavirus â˜£ï¸ on 11:25 - Mar 16 with 1104 views
If successive governments hadn't neglected the NHS so much perhaps the bottle would be much bigger. I can see why many health experts are panicking. Last year, long before coronavirus was even known about, my mum had a fall and spent hours on a trolley in a corridor in Soton General. It was pretty chaotic and that was just a run-of-the-mill Thursday evening by all accounts. Dread to think what might happen in our hospitals if the worst-case scenario comes to fruition.
'and now, it appears to have been recognised that it’s not safe to try.'
There you have it in a nutshell,turns out all the other 'experts' were right all along and we were going to be used as an experiment.
New data, new policy: why UK's coronavirus strategy changed
New quarantine and social distancing ‘suppression’ measures are based on modelling by Imperial College A week is a long time in a coronavirus pandemic. Within days of Boris Johnson and his advisers announcing that anyone with symptoms of a cold should stay at home for seven days but otherwise live life as normal, the prime minister came out with a series of bombshells that will effectively confine most of the population to their homes. What changed was new data on the impact of Italy’s out-of-control epidemic on its health service. Basically, it is catastrophic, with 30% of hospitalised patients having to be admitted to intensive care. The teams of modellers at Imperial College and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who advise government crunched those numbers — and the death toll and pressure on the NHS that came out were unacceptable.
Prof Neil Ferguson at Imperial College’s MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis and colleagues found that the mitigation strategy, as they called it — or scenario 1 — that the government had just announced would lead to 260,000 deaths. That would be not just deaths from the virus, but from other illnesses that the NHS would be too hard-pressed to treat.
Their modelling looked at all the interventions that might help drive down the infections and deaths. There were five, they said, that would have an impact:
- isolating people with a cough and temperature at home for seven days.
- quarantining families where somebody has symptoms for 14 days, to allow time for any symptoms in the others to show.
- social distancing, involving cutting the normal contacts people make at home, school or work by three-quarters.
- social distancing for everyone over 70, by asking them to stay at home.
- closure of schools and universities.
Last week’s mitigation strategy was about people staying home for seven days with symptoms. It was said that quarantine for families plus keeping the over-70s at home would probably follow. That package would reduce peak healthcare demand by two-thirds and cut deaths by half. But, the researchers said, “the resulting epidemic would still likely result in 260,000 deaths and therefore overwhelm the health system (most notably intensive care units)”.
So now we have scenario 2, which the modellers call suppression. It takes things much further, adopting all the measures except closing schools and universities. And school closures, said Ferguson, are probably also on the cards before too long. Ferguson and his colleague Prof Azra Ghani liken the new measures to China’s actions, which succeeded in driving down the epidemic to very low numbers. But unlike in China, anything that happens in the UK will be voluntary. The government will need population buy-in for this to work. The bad news is that although it will keep death rates down to 20,000 or possibly just a few thousand, said Ferguson, we are looking at these social curbs through to July or August — and even when the brakes are taken off, they may have to be slammed back on again. The virus will not have disappeared and could resurge. Only a small proportion of the population will have been infected, recovered and become immune.
The government’s earlier hopes that it could rely on large proportions — maybe 60% — of the population getting ill, getting better and becoming immune to build up some herd immunity in the UK population are dashed by this strategy, which many experts thought was dangerous anyway. Herd immunity is normally created by vaccinating large numbers of children, safeguarding those who cannot be inoculated. Nobody has ever tried to do that by allowing infection with a disease before — and now, it appears to have been recognised that it’s not safe to try.
0
Coronavirus â˜£ï¸ on 08:28 - Mar 17 with 953 views
'and now, it appears to have been recognised that it’s not safe to try.'
There you have it in a nutshell,turns out all the other 'experts' were right all along and we were going to be used as an experiment.
New data, new policy: why UK's coronavirus strategy changed
New quarantine and social distancing ‘suppression’ measures are based on modelling by Imperial College A week is a long time in a coronavirus pandemic. Within days of Boris Johnson and his advisers announcing that anyone with symptoms of a cold should stay at home for seven days but otherwise live life as normal, the prime minister came out with a series of bombshells that will effectively confine most of the population to their homes. What changed was new data on the impact of Italy’s out-of-control epidemic on its health service. Basically, it is catastrophic, with 30% of hospitalised patients having to be admitted to intensive care. The teams of modellers at Imperial College and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who advise government crunched those numbers — and the death toll and pressure on the NHS that came out were unacceptable.
Prof Neil Ferguson at Imperial College’s MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis and colleagues found that the mitigation strategy, as they called it — or scenario 1 — that the government had just announced would lead to 260,000 deaths. That would be not just deaths from the virus, but from other illnesses that the NHS would be too hard-pressed to treat.
Their modelling looked at all the interventions that might help drive down the infections and deaths. There were five, they said, that would have an impact:
- isolating people with a cough and temperature at home for seven days.
- quarantining families where somebody has symptoms for 14 days, to allow time for any symptoms in the others to show.
- social distancing, involving cutting the normal contacts people make at home, school or work by three-quarters.
- social distancing for everyone over 70, by asking them to stay at home.
- closure of schools and universities.
Last week’s mitigation strategy was about people staying home for seven days with symptoms. It was said that quarantine for families plus keeping the over-70s at home would probably follow. That package would reduce peak healthcare demand by two-thirds and cut deaths by half. But, the researchers said, “the resulting epidemic would still likely result in 260,000 deaths and therefore overwhelm the health system (most notably intensive care units)”.
So now we have scenario 2, which the modellers call suppression. It takes things much further, adopting all the measures except closing schools and universities. And school closures, said Ferguson, are probably also on the cards before too long. Ferguson and his colleague Prof Azra Ghani liken the new measures to China’s actions, which succeeded in driving down the epidemic to very low numbers. But unlike in China, anything that happens in the UK will be voluntary. The government will need population buy-in for this to work. The bad news is that although it will keep death rates down to 20,000 or possibly just a few thousand, said Ferguson, we are looking at these social curbs through to July or August — and even when the brakes are taken off, they may have to be slammed back on again. The virus will not have disappeared and could resurge. Only a small proportion of the population will have been infected, recovered and become immune.
The government’s earlier hopes that it could rely on large proportions — maybe 60% — of the population getting ill, getting better and becoming immune to build up some herd immunity in the UK population are dashed by this strategy, which many experts thought was dangerous anyway. Herd immunity is normally created by vaccinating large numbers of children, safeguarding those who cannot be inoculated. Nobody has ever tried to do that by allowing infection with a disease before — and now, it appears to have been recognised that it’s not safe to try.
Your nutshell is just an opinion and your experts weren't necessarily right all along, they just had a different opinion to other experts. Your C&P job clearly refers to new data and, as I said before, if the situation changes the tack will change.
A WHO envoy has commented:
"The thinking about the possibility of further more severe outbreaks coming later was perfectly valid, however as it became clear how quickly the virus has been advancing in other European countries a shift in position was absolutely right.
"I'm really pleased this has happened. And I would like to stress that in every other country positions are having to be shifted as we know more about the outbreak.
"We are just dealing with something that's so new with so many things we don't know that we have to be prepared for a change in tack from time to time even though it's distressing."
That is a much more measured response than this 'told you so' bollix you've come out with.
As for experimentation, a unified strategy gives a unified outcome, either good or bad. To fully understand something there needs to be different strategies in order to learn what is absolutely the best way forward. I guess now we'll never know and wonder what might have been if the virus comes back with a vengeance in subsequent winters.
Standby to standby
0
Coronavirus â˜£ï¸ on 08:43 - Mar 17 with 945 views
Your nutshell is just an opinion and your experts weren't necessarily right all along, they just had a different opinion to other experts. Your C&P job clearly refers to new data and, as I said before, if the situation changes the tack will change.
A WHO envoy has commented:
"The thinking about the possibility of further more severe outbreaks coming later was perfectly valid, however as it became clear how quickly the virus has been advancing in other European countries a shift in position was absolutely right.
"I'm really pleased this has happened. And I would like to stress that in every other country positions are having to be shifted as we know more about the outbreak.
"We are just dealing with something that's so new with so many things we don't know that we have to be prepared for a change in tack from time to time even though it's distressing."
That is a much more measured response than this 'told you so' bollix you've come out with.
As for experimentation, a unified strategy gives a unified outcome, either good or bad. To fully understand something there needs to be different strategies in order to learn what is absolutely the best way forward. I guess now we'll never know and wonder what might have been if the virus comes back with a vengeance in subsequent winters.
Modelling for the herd immunity strategy showed a best case of 250,000 deaths with the NHS completely swamped and thousands of people dying from unrelated illnesses because of a lack of treatment,worst case ran into over a million dead. The clown clearly didn't want that on his CV. This won't end until there's a vaccine.
0
Coronavirus â˜£ï¸ on 08:30 - Mar 18 with 876 views
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