This is nothing less than a complete failure of leadership.
Apologies for being strong worded and political, but it really boils my blood.
The average age of COVID-19 fatalities in Italy is 80, median 82.5, and 99% of them had co-morbid conditions (an average of 3 comorbid conditions). In China the average age was mid-high 70s. Almost nobody outside a risk category has died so far. [1] These folks were on death's doorstep as is. If I'm not mistaken the plan was, rationally, to lock them inside while the problem sorted itself out.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-tho...
Another (small) problem is that there is permanent tissue damage in the lungs in those that recover.
True that we don’t know that conclusively here yet, although I wonder if we could base it off other similar viruses. Nobody to my knowledge has been reinfected.
Speaking of no evidence...
> Another (small) problem is that there is permanent tissue damage in the lungs in those that recover.
There is no evidence of that in COVID-19 yet. That doesn’t mean it won’t show up, but it doesn’t mean it will. You’re referencing something that happened in related SARS and MERS diseases which killed over 35%, not 0.35%, of those infected. It’s easily a 2 orders of magnitude worse disease.
If you have data or studies share them. Otherwise, stop fearmongering.
Their very nice citations: https://sites.google.com/view/sourcescorona
Mine:
Coronavirus' (common cold) and immunity: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=819038431
COVID-19's permanent impact to the lungs: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/24/coronavirus-wh...
--
On a more personal note: "fearmongering" is preferred over loss of life here. We will never know if we did too much to prevent this. But we will definitely know if we did too little.
Obviously I'm not asking people to panic, in fact, the opposite. Calm, reasonable and responsible actions do not preclude worry and having a healthy amount of fear for you and your loved ones.
Out of the 4 links, I skimmed the YouTube video, read the citations, and both of your links. Neither of your links refer to permanent effects after recovery. The only thing in the citations they're referencing to back up their claim is a one-line exerpt from the WHO report:
'Quote: “Lung tissue also displayed cellular and fibromyxoid exudation,desquamation of pneumocytes and pulmonary oedema.”' This appears to describe the actual condition of people with the disease as they have the disease, not after.
They they go on to cite a study about the much more dangerous SARS-COV-1.
As I said, nothing so far indicates that we will see permanent lung damage, certainly not in the vast majority of cases. It may happen, it may not, but it remains too soon to know for sure.
> On a more personal note: "fearmongering" is preferred over loss of life here.
As you may have noticed people tend not to react well in panic/fear situations, saturate very quickly and become very much irrational. It isn't always true IMO that fearmongering should be the go-to in difficult times when we have to make life or death decisions with limited data.
Businesses were doing everything they could to remain open, even if they were non-essential, forcing employee's to come into the office (often on even more crowded public transportation)
It was so bad that the UK government had to forcefully lock everyone in.
That is not a reasonable approach to a virus of which we don't know the full effects and whos' closest brothers (SARS-1, MERS, Cold) are incredibly dangerous, incredibly re-infectious and whos' current infection rate is more than double or even triple that of flu.
How many dead people are you expecting?
People under 10, nobody has died yet. In the 10-19 category, the CFR is between 0 and 0.45% In the 20-29 category, the CFR is between 0 and 0.31% In the 30-39 category, it's between 0.1 and 0.3%.
So let's say they decide anyone under 40 with no co-morbid conditions should go out while the rest remain indoors. I'd say we're looking at a CFR of 0 to 0.1% so in terms of numbers, that would be between 0 and (33% of the population * 0.1% * 66M) ~20K people, max. That's in line with the ~15K flu deaths per year in a bad flu season in the UK. And that's assuming young people with co-morbidities do a bad job of staying inside.
[1] https://twitter.com/AndyBiotech/status/1241741127205572609?s...
Do you have stats for the frequency of hospitalizations in the 20-50 years old range?
But the cool heads in charge who studied classics are right of course.
Clearly not, as evidenced by their lack of proceeding with the plan. That's my point.
Let's assume the infected population grows as s(x)=1/(1+e^-x). About 99% of the curve lies from -5 to 5, so let's ignore the rest to simplify the math. Let's then assume that 99% of the people are infected over the course of 180 days, so 1 day is h=10/180=0.055 on s(x). That's a decent attempt at "flattening the curve".
The curve goes from 0 to 1, so if for example s(h/2)-s(-h/2)=0.014, this tells you that around the peak of the infection, 1.4% of the infected population will get the disease in a single day. With 70% of the population getting infected, that's a lot of people (about a million in a single day).
Let's be super optimistic and say that 70% of people getting it means 7% having symptoms and 0.7% needing an ICU bed (younger people also get bad cases, even though the median age of death is high; they just survive thanks to the treatment). Problem is they will need it for 3 weeks (~20 days) so you need a lot of beds.
Specifically s(10h)-s(-10h) = 0.27, that is, 27% of the infected population will get the disease in the 3 weeks around the peak. At this point 27% * 70% * 0.7% of the UK population needs ICU beds at the same time.
That's 80000 people, but the country has just 4000 ICU beds. Those that couldn't be treated would die, and that's just in the 3 weeks around the peak.
It's safe to say that for most of those 6 months the NHS would be so overwhelmed that close to 0.7% * 70% of the UK population would die. It's a back of the envelope calculation, only the order of magnitude makes sense. But still, it's in the hundreds of thousands.
So yes, unless Johnson could find tens of thousands of ICU beds in the next few weeks (because the numbers would reach 10000 or so long before that peak point) those many people would die from lack of treatment. And the NHS would be completely clogged, so more people would die preventable deaths due to lack of room for treating non-COVID-related patients.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...
Hence the change in tact.
Even if you could override human behaviour, there is still concern that the virus will mutate to fast for anything remotely similar to herd immunity to be possible.
And please f*ck off with 'only old people die from COVID-19'. Old people with 3 comorbid conditions deserve better than to be left to die because some smartasses feel like it. And there are other groups of people risking dire consequences of COVID-19. Like people with weak immune system. Or ones with diabetes. Or ones being treated for cancer. Should we write off them too?
Nobody said that, you didn't read my post.
(1) People in risk categories are at risk. One of which is being old, and another is having a comorbid condition, and a huge one is having 3 comorbid conditions while being 82.5. That's a risk category for getting out of your bed in the morning.
(2) Those people, the old, and with comorbid conditions, were to isolate, as they are doing literally right now.
(3) The whole point behind the process was to create a protective buffer around them, otherwise they wouldn't be calling for their isolation.
Take a deep breath.
It's not the only blocker, just an example of the incompetence with which the UK government has been operating thus far.
People in vulnerable groups have been told to shield.
There's not much point continuing this conversation: you've been factually incorrect in every single reply you've made to me.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-on-shiel...
(2) What is described in this post is what everyone else is doing, keeping the vulnerable inside and providing services such as prescription delivery and at least helping coordinate food delivery. ("Please visit gov.uk/coronavirus-extremely-vulnerable to register for the support that you need. This includes help with food, shopping deliveries and additional care you might need. The government is helping pharmacies to deliver prescriptions. Prescriptions will continue to cover the same length of time as usual.")
(3) It specifically says that everyone in a risk category is getting a letter by March 29th ("The NHS in England is directly contacting people with these conditions to provide further advice.")
I don't really know what you're asking for, or what you think is factually incorrect.
[1] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/boris-johnson-coronav...
Having spent a few days in hospital last year for a comparatively mild pneumonia, I'm definitely not looking forward for a repeat.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/23/millions-of-americans-are-on...
Money is imaginary. It's easy to defer rent payments and mail checks so people can focus on food, medicine, and heat for a while.
If you're between leases that's quite the pickle.
I have a secure one now, thankfully. I've actually been pretty lucky with the entire situation as I generally play these things fast and loose.
It's not that hard to just not rent or own a home - tons of people are in unofficial house shares etc :)
It was rational in a parallel world free & infinite healthcare workers + ventilators.
Brutal, but rational.
Tying up resources on an 82yo with two underlying health conditions is not rational.
The moral stance you are taking here is abhorrent and I disagree with it to my very core.
That's not the point.
Hospitals become overwhelmed with people who need an ICU bed, and a ventilator, and oxygen, and intubation, for weeks. Sure, they go on to recover, but while they're in those beds it means the health system can't provide other treatment. All those hips and knees go un-replaced; a bunch of cancer care gets cancelled; people involved in accidents go without care. Even if you ignore anyone over 80[1] you still have hospitals full of people who need intensive care.
Watch this video. It's not 80 year olds lying on the floors. This is in Spain, a country with a world-class healthcare system: https://twitter.com/shuja_2006/status/1242161754768953344?s=...
This video shows a mix of ages. https://twitter.com/WellingMichael/status/124145219842648474...
Here's Spain building a field hospital to cope with the numbers: https://twitter.com/VOANews/status/1241882351115939847?s=20
Herd immunity hasn't worked. It's been a catastrophic failure that's flooded hospitals with very ill people.
That's 100% the point. If you know who they are you can isolate them.
> Herd immunity hasn't worked. It's been a catastrophic failure that's flooded hospitals with very ill people.
I assume that you know many people with Polio then?
What do you do with everyone else?
So even if young people do not die of Coronavirus (which we do not know for sure) they die because they cannot get medical treatment after cutting their finger on a rusty table edge, or get into a car accident and cannot get medical help, etc.
> I assume that you know many people with Polio then?
It's disingenuous at best to ignore that the parent comment referred specifically to seeking herd immunity (as opposed to early lockdown) of COVID-19.
Isn't there evidence that a high enough proportion of those low risk people would require hospitalization too and that would overwhelm the capacity? That's my only remaining concern about the idea.
I won't even claim that severe lockdowns (which is not what anyone in the US or UK is facing) is the best solution.
However, in the absence of almost any reliable knowledge, it's probably the ONLY rational plan based on the fact that the one thing we do know is the method of spreading, and locking down will prevent that spread.
FWIW I don't think herd immunity will work given that other corronaviruses (the common cold) mutate frequently, it is too early to tell, but TBH a risky move for any government which can see positive results from other approaches elsewhere.
The current approach is really bourne out of a failure to act early - that $1 antibody testing kit was overlooked by ministers until it was pointed out to them by a journalist. That airports weren't locked down immediately with a 2 week mandatory quarantine, drafting ex-NHS staff only last week was 3 weeks late etc
A cynic might point out that this virus is likely to kick the can down the road wrt pensions /ageing populations /finding an economic model not based around GDP/having more kids. There is a rumour that a senior MP made comments about collateral damage, if you were really cynical it might be pointed out that this constitutes a large portion of some parties' voter base.
There are some silver linings- after all of this teachers are likely to be appreciated as is a national health service (Medicare anyone?), remote working will be easier, and there are some amazing stories of compassion out there!
- Isn't there a significant risk that immunity after infection might wear of too soon after infection for herd immunity to be practicable, at least without driving up the deaths yet further?
- Isn't there a significant risk that we end up with a lot of people who survive but have long term health problems?
- Wouldn't the fact that no one else seems to think herd immunity is such a hot idea any more mean the UK faces a high risk to be completely quarantined off by other countries? Brexit probably doesn't reduce the chances of that happening either. Could that not have a few bad economic and other effects?
- Isn't there a significant risk that isolating vulnerable people or the infected in ICUs may not work as well as intended? What if a lot of nurses and doctors get infected and pass it on to other people who have no chronic problems but are temporarily weakened? What if it turns out that seeing a lot of people die miserably without being able to do much about it for weeks on end takes its toll on the current crop of health care professionals or the UK's ability to recruit future generations?
- Wouldn't that most likely mean giving up on eradicating Covid-19 completely? Is it really desirable to permanently reduce life expectancy by keeping it around forever?
- What if the virus changes in an unanticipated direction? Would the herd immunisation strategy not put exactly the type of evolutionary pressure on the virus that you don't want? Namely to become more virulent? Is that not a bit risky?
That ship has long since sailed.
For what it's worth, I think eradicating something world-wide that has already spread widely beyond the relatively competent and affluent countries is going to be tough. But personally, I'd much rather see it eradicated in just competent and affluent countries than not at all.
With something this infectious all it takes is one visitor from one of the have-not countries to put the have-country into total lockdown. That's not a realistic plan moving forward either.
1. People don't just start to magically teleport around if you restrict their travel. I know that defies common wisdom, which is presumably why the UK and others kept (keep?) importing people from disease Epicentres like Milan or Teheran en-masse right up the point of total lockdown. But if, for example, Japan, the UK or Australia decide they don't want Iranians to visit their shores for a while, at least not without on the spot testing, automatic two week quarantine or other heavy restrictions: what is the would be Iranian mass-infector going to do about it? And is greatly restricting travel from incompetent countries really going to wreck your nation?
2. Vaccines are cheap. If it's possible to create a vaccine that is sufficiently safe and covers enough strains of the virus, you can just vaccinate enough of your population that the disease will, effectively, no longer be very infectious. Then you can intelligently spend some comparatively trifling sums to make such vaccination programs available to countries that genuinely can't afford them.
If herd immunity would have worked, then a vaccine will work. That might be 2022, but it's definitely not forever.
Everything else is still up in the air. We have to buy time, time to find effective antivirals (work in progress), time to get an effective vaccine (work in progress), time to understand the virus enough to know even such a simple thing as how long somebody who's had it and recovered might be immune for. That one critical number you have to know in order to know if a plan like the herd immunity idea is even remotely feasible, that one critical number that NOBODY KNOWS.
Isolation is, from everything I've read, the only strategy currently supported by the available evidence. Maybe in six months we'll have data that says herd immunity would have worked, but we really don't know right now.
You're talking about rationality and completely ignoring the fact that your numbers are based on areas where people have already taken the policies that you're saying are irrational.
In 2 weeks we'll know the true extent of how much the virus has spread today. We're behind always.