redsturgeon wrote:You know I'm a big fan...well here is his latest which goes through much of what has been hotly debated here recently...did the UK do well or not? How well did other countries do? What did the successful countries do that the unsuccessful didn't?
No doubt those who don't like Mr Puyeo will find fault but it all seems very sensible to me.
https://unchartedterritories.substack.c ... -fail-westSummary of the mistakes made.
They missed the exponential growth of the virus.
They missed that it was a pandemic, and declared its existence so late.
They thought the population wouldn’t respect a lockdown.
They toyed with natural herd immunity. Some, like Sweden and Brazil, embraced it.
They lied, saying masks were unnecessary.
They missed that the transmission was through aerosols, and took months to apply that learning.
They didn’t dare to empower contact tracers.
They didn’t dare to enforce isolations and quarantines.
They didn’t dare to even propose using available data to help in contact tracing.
They missed building proper fences.They missed learning how to dance, and kept applying the hammerAnd so much more.
I had started to write a longer post. Pointing out that "lockdowns" aren't the only solution. What's needed is to break the chains of transmission, and legally enforced lockdowns are a blunt sledgehammer towards achieving that, but not the only method. Etc. But anyway, we've been round that loop multiple times, so no point going round it again.
But let's go back to March 2020 and see what St. Tomas was suggesting...
https://tomaspueyo.medium.com/coronavir ... 9337092b56 "On the other, countries can fight. They can lock down for a few weeks to buy us time, create an educated action plan, and control this virus until we have a vaccine."
Few weeks, eh?
We locked down for longer than a few weeks. All of us, under effective house arrest for more than 12 weeks.
That didn't work, did it!
But more crucially, his plan also depended upon "until we have a vaccine".
Really?
Whilst with 20-20 hindsight (of 2020!) we did end up with a vaccine. But that was far from a given.
I recall repeatedly hearing experts being trotted out reminding us that there was "no guarantee" a safe and effective vaccine would even be created, or even if it was it would likely take "10 yrs" to develop.
(One such expert being interviewed on channel 4 early in the pandemic, amusingly trotted that out straight after the news presenter had just interviewed (iirc) Professor Gilbert who'd said she was 80% confident of having a vaccine by September ... clearly this 'expert' hadn't seen the interview immediately prior, and when challenged by the news reader the "expert" then had to admit they knew nothing about that work ... though to be fair, at that time, very early on in the pandemic, more experts seemed to be urging caution re. vaccines than were promoting optimism, and the Oxford team weren't widely known at that point)If things had turned out differently, if the vaccines hadn't worked - and plenty of experts were warning us that that could happen, and let's not forget the pfizer and moderna vaccines use brand new technology that had never been proven to work before - then what?
"They toyed with natural herd immunity. Some, like Sweden and Brazil, embraced it."
If the vaccine development hadn't been successful, I can safely say that he wouldn't be being so smug, at least not about Sweden's strategy.
With no guarantee of a vaccine or effective treatment, Sweden's strategy is definitely the best. (Apart from their failure re. care homes, which Sweden admit to).
St Tomas doesn't say anything about how long he'd have expected everyone to keep up the dance if a vaccine hadn't materialised.
He talks a good talk on the technical side - he's clearly read all the books - but I'm glad he wasn't in charge of the UK response.
His exit plan seemed to be a lifetime of masks, distancing, contact tracing, intermittent lockdowns, until such time a vaccine were to be developed. Which many experts were cautioning could have been never.
Even now, with 20-20 hindsight, I would have much preferred to have had the Swedish approach.
On the information available at the time - the known-knowns - the Swedish approach still appears to me to have been the most rational approach. The Swedish approach was geared for the long haul; they knew it wasn't going to be over in 12 weeks.
It was also the most respectful towards the population - which is good if you need the people to be on your side and supporting you - and it also captured the essence of democracy - that the government is there to serve the people, not the other way around.
As long as you give the people all the right information (and don't Trumpify or Bolsanariofy it), it is the essence of democracy to let the people choose the situation they want. And people are perfectly capable of adapting their behaviour in response to clear and respected news and information - like number of cases, hospitals getting full, etc - without it having to be legally mandated.