sg31 wrote:
I watched Some 'Government expert' explaining the strategy they are using. His point was that the normal graph of an epidemic was like a mountan and the aim was to stop it part way up the slope and create a plateau at a level where the NHS could cope.
Reading between the lines they positively do want people infected, just not all at once. By stretching the plateau out they will create a body of people with immunuty when they recover. These people can keep the country going while others are infected and recover in their turn. This will mean next winter there will be some 'herd immunity' rather than a major peak.
I can see the point but it is hard luck on the families who will lose their loved ones before their time.
The UK is adopting a very different approach to most other countries in the world - which may be right or wrong, but the big point for me is that it's too early to know the best way to deal with a new virus, and with every day there's more information becoming available, so "extreme" measures (such as lockdown) buy extra time to better understand the spread and effects on Western populations, and also to find out how effective (or not) the more "extreme" measures are. It may be that all countries decide in a month's time to adopt the UK model, but they'd still have the option to switch strategies. The UK is going "all in" for its strategy, and if in a month's time, it turns out that immediate "extreme" measures are more effective, there's no way for the UK to change strategies.
People in the UK are already adopting "social distancing" measures, which weren't mentioned at all in yesterday's PM & Experts conference, and care homes are making up their own policies on the hoof about restricting/banning visitors, or what safety measures to use. (From an analytical/modelling point of view, it will be quite useful to have a lot of different policies, which are in effect simultaneous testing of different approaches, so the best approach can then be rolled out by the Government.
The UK Government is putting an awful lot of store on "behavioural modelling" but this really is not an exact science, and an area of modelling that can be very easily "tweaked" by non-analytical people. Obviously I don't know the current UK assumptions, but they will be along the lines of - 95% of people will follow guidance for first 4 weeks, then it'll reduce by 10% per week until virtually everyone ignores it in 2 months time. The assumption also seems to be that if you give guidance too soon, you won't be able to reinforce it later. But nobody really knows - these are assumptions. It could be 85% of people initially following guidance, maybe it'll be 5 months before everyone ignores it, maybe 50% of people will continue to follow the advice for years (e.g. coughing/sneezing in public, handwashing for 20 seconds). We've never had anything quite like this in the UK since the 1919 Spanish flu pandemic, so there is no hard evidence about current UK's population to a pandemic that a scientist can insist is the truth.
Chief Medical Officer has said they're expecting future epidemic in future years, and if that's the case, the UK approach may eventually turn out to be the best option, particularly if Covid-19 mutates into a more dangerous form, but people who caught the current virus become less suspectible ro future viruses.