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Tomas Puyeo Latest

The home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
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This is the home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
redsturgeon
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Tomas Puyeo Latest

#409826

Postby redsturgeon » May 6th, 2021, 3:34 pm

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-west

Summary 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.

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Re: Tomas Puyeo Latest

#409832

Postby Dod101 » May 6th, 2021, 3:47 pm

I have no idea who this man is but my goodness he is pretty good. We could all have written that, especially with the benefit of hindsight. Is he being paid for these gems of wisdom?

Dod

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Re: Tomas Puyeo Latest

#409836

Postby redsturgeon » May 6th, 2021, 3:59 pm

Dod101 wrote:I have no idea who this man is but my goodness he is pretty good. We could all have written that, especially with the benefit of hindsight. Is he being paid for these gems of wisdom?

Dod


Did you make the same calls as him back in March 2020?

John

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Re: Tomas Puyeo Latest

#409842

Postby XFool » May 6th, 2021, 4:22 pm

Dod101 wrote:I have no idea who this man is but my goodness he is pretty good. We could all have written that, especially with the benefit of hindsight. Is he being paid for these gems of wisdom?

Dod

He was saying it over a year ago!

Or, more accurately, he was laying out what needed to be done in the coming months. How we could successfully tackle the pandemic. (The Hammer and the Dance)

Things he wasn't saying a year ago:

"It's really pretty harmless"
"It isn't really a pandemic"
"It's all a lot of fuss about nothing"
"We don't need to do anything"
"Viruses don't do waves"
"It'll all be over by summer"
"Lockdowns don't work"
etc.

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Re: Tomas Puyeo Latest

#409843

Postby Dod101 » May 6th, 2021, 4:28 pm

redsturgeon wrote:
Dod101 wrote:I have no idea who this man is but my goodness he is pretty good. We could all have written that, especially with the benefit of hindsight. Is he being paid for these gems of wisdom?

Dod


Did you make the same calls as him back in March 2020?

John


No I did not even think much about it then. There would have been no point because no one would have paid any attention to my thoughts any more than they apparently did to his. If he was saying all this a year ago why has the title of the thread got 'latest' in it? He has not progressed very far in a year has he?

Dod

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Re: Tomas Puyeo Latest

#409872

Postby onthemove » May 6th, 2021, 6:01 pm

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-west

Summary 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 :lol: ... 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.

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Re: Tomas Puyeo Latest

#409879

Postby onthemove » May 6th, 2021, 6:20 pm

XFool wrote:
Dod101 wrote:I have no idea who this man is but my goodness he is pretty good. We could all have written that, especially with the benefit of hindsight. Is he being paid for these gems of wisdom?

Dod

He was saying it over a year ago!

Or, more accurately, he was laying out what needed to be done in the coming months. How we could successfully tackle the pandemic. (The Hammer and the Dance)

Things he wasn't saying a year ago:

"It's really pretty harmless"
"It isn't really a pandemic"
"It's all a lot of fuss about nothing"
"We don't need to do anything"
"Viruses don't do waves"
"It'll all be over by summer"
"Lockdowns don't work"
etc.


Things he was assuming a year ago...

https://tomaspueyo.medium.com/coronavir ... 9337092b56

(significantly paraphrased, not a verbatim quote) 'we will definitely get a vaccine or very effective treatment'

His proposals were untenable without at least one or the other.

And neither was a given.

Had things turned out differently re. the vaccines, he may have been forced to admit Sweden had it right all along; that without a vaccine, yup, it was going to have to be perma-lockdown (or distancing, isolation, testing, etc, for ever more), which would eventually lead to herd immunity anyway.

But then you'd still have all the negatives of reaching herd immunity, but all coming after all the negatives of lockdown, testing, economic damage, etc, for however long you decided to kick the can down the road hoping for a vaccine before hand.

Really, without a vaccine - which was not a given - all he was proposing was a far slower, much longer, more costly burn of the same strategy that Sweden employed.

Without a vaccine (or significantly effective treatment, which we still don't have), his strategy would have ended up in just the same place - herd immunity - just drawn out longer, with greater societal and economic costs as a result.

While there might have been some justification to say "well at least give the vaccines a chance first"...

... what I didn't hear these people doing, is actually putting a number on it... how long would have been reasonable? 6 month? 12 months? 2 years, 4 years? 10 years?

Can anyone point me to an article by St Tomas where he puts a cap on how long he would have waited without for a vaccine before he would have accepted the need for the a "Plan B"?

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Re: Tomas Puyeo Latest

#409887

Postby zico » May 6th, 2021, 6:33 pm

Back in March I thought the general view was that a vaccine would be 12-18 months away (certainly not 10 years). The big unknown was how effective it would be. The vaccines developed have exceeded expectations from back in March 2020.

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Re: Tomas Puyeo Latest

#409888

Postby XFool » May 6th, 2021, 6:43 pm

onthemove wrote: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!

Nonsense. We never had a proper, full, hard lockdown. We had what we had. Every little restriction in the UK now seems to be described as a "lockdown".

Even more to the point, we kept on having our "lockdowns" when reality forced them upon us (and upon our politicians), remember? Pueyo's idea of a "lockdown" was a preemptive lockdown to prevent exponential growth taking off. Such lockdowns would have been early, sharp and short.

onthemove wrote: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.

Indeed. It would have been a problem if no effective vaccine had been found. I guess we would be looking ultimately at much higher death figures. Fortunately - with current bio-technology - we got several pretty quickly.

I suppose an alternative policy would have been to go for higher deaths up front. I wonder what we would be thinking now, in hindsight, given that effective vaccines were quickly developed?

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Re: Tomas Puyeo Latest

#409891

Postby XFool » May 6th, 2021, 6:51 pm

onthemove wrote:Things he was assuming a year ago...

https://tomaspueyo.medium.com/coronavir ... 9337092b56

(significantly paraphrased, not a verbatim quote) 'we will definitely get a vaccine or very effective treatment'

His proposals were untenable without at least one or the other.

And neither was a given.

Had things turned out differently re. the vaccines, he may have been forced to admit Sweden had it right all along; that without a vaccine, yup, it was going to have to be perma-lockdown (or distancing, isolation, testing, etc, for ever more), which would eventually lead to herd immunity anyway.

But then you'd still have all the negatives of reaching herd immunity, but all coming after all the negatives of lockdown, testing, economic damage, etc, for however long you decided to kick the can down the road hoping for a vaccine before hand.

Really, without a vaccine - which was not a given - all he was proposing was a far slower, much longer, more costly burn of the same strategy that Sweden employed.

Without a vaccine (or significantly effective treatment, which we still don't have), his strategy would have ended up in just the same place - herd immunity - just drawn out longer, with greater societal and economic costs as a result.

While there might have been some justification to say "well at least give the vaccines a chance first"...

... what I didn't hear these people doing, is actually putting a number on it... how long would have been reasonable? 6 month? 12 months? 2 years, 4 years? 10 years?

Can anyone point me to an article by St Tomas where he puts a cap on how long he would have waited without for a vaccine before he would have accepted the need for the a "Plan B"?

You have also left out of your thinking the effects of rising cases on the nation's health service. I will remind yet again that one major reason for lockdowns were to cap the number of critical cases from overwhelming the NHS.

"Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives."

Remember?

I also remind you that Puyeo's original plan involved rather more things than simply "lockdown". As he points out in his recent article, the West largely failed in those other measures as well. I refer you to the OP.

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Re: Tomas Puyeo Latest

#409897

Postby XFool » May 6th, 2021, 7:11 pm

onthemove wrote:Even now, with 20-20 hindsight, I would have much preferred to have had the Swedish approach.

Maybe you would. Possibly not everyone else:

COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden

Wikipedia

"The Swedish government's approach has received considerable criticism. Some Swedish scientists had called for stricter preventative measures throughout the pandemic, and an independent commission (Coronakommissionen) found that Sweden failed to protect care home residents due to the overall spread of the virus in society. In December 2020 both King Carl XVI Gustaf and Prime Minister Stefan Löfven admitted they felt that Sweden's COVID-19 strategy had been a failure due to the large number of deaths."

onthemove wrote: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.

Is not the government there to protect their populace during emergencies?

onthemove wrote: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.

It sounds to me that, like other fans of the "Swedish Model", you possibly have an over idealized conception of the model:

"Following agency advice, the government has passed legislation limiting freedom of assembly by temporarily banning gatherings of over 50 individuals, banning people from visiting nursing homes, and physically closing secondary schools and universities."

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Re: Tomas Puyeo Latest

#409919

Postby 9873210 » May 6th, 2021, 9:13 pm

There are at least five possible technical developments that would be game changers if sufficiently effective, cheap and available.
  • Vaccine
  • Prophylaxes
  • Testing
  • Treatment
  • Learning how the disease spreads

Locking down to delay widespread cases was not just a bet on vaccines. It was a bet that there were plenty of smart people who would come up with something. In fact there have been advances in all areas, although vaccines were the most spectacular in this case.

New Zealand and China have also shown that stopping the spread without a vaccine is possible, and in the case of New Zealand the restrictions do not need to be as draconian as many imagine, they can probably carry on indefinitely if there is no other option.

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Re: Tomas Puyeo Latest

#409928

Postby Mike4 » May 6th, 2021, 9:56 pm

XFool wrote:
Dod101 wrote:I have no idea who this man is but my goodness he is pretty good. We could all have written that, especially with the benefit of hindsight. Is he being paid for these gems of wisdom?

Dod

He was saying it over a year ago!

Or, more accurately, he was laying out what needed to be done in the coming months. How we could successfully tackle the pandemic. (The Hammer and the Dance)

Things he wasn't saying a year ago:

"It's really pretty harmless"
"It isn't really a pandemic"
"It's all a lot of fuss about nothing"
"We don't need to do anything"
"Viruses don't do waves"
"It'll all be over by summer"
"Lockdowns don't work"
etc.


You missed off:
The deaths don't matter, they were all about to die anyway
It's just a bad type of 'flu
Most people catching it survive, what's all the fuss?

Interestingly Thomas Puyeo was not being particularly prescient. It's basic stuff he tells us from the world of Public Health as a specialisation, much of it learned 100 years ago.


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