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Comment by garmaine | Hacker News Reader

> Wasn’t R<1 the magic number for ending the first lockdown?

NO!!!

Sorry this is infuriating. What’s the point of getting to R<1 if you then immediately end lockdown and have it shoot right back us? It’s a necessary step, but just abstep in the process. You need to stay in lockdown long enough to get case counts low enough to be able to fully trace.

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For political reasons, this isn't possible for the UK right now.

To be fair, they've made a mess of the whole pandemic, which is very disappointing given that public health was invented there.

Something I learned after moving from the UK to Germany, is that my German friends think Otto von Bismarck invented modern public health in 1883 and the NHS was based on their model.

My German language and history is not good enough for a rigorous comparison.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Otto_von_Bismarck...

Bismarck did create the first public health system back then and the model is called the Bismarck Model. The NHS is nothing like that though and is based on what's called the Beveridge Model after the man who proposed it:

https://morningsignout.com/international-health-care-systems...

http://morningsignout.com/international-health-care-systems-...

Modern public health (which is sanitation essentially) was rolled out across the UK much earlier than anywhere else.

It is perhaps a mark of public health's incredible success that both replies think I was talking about the NHS.

Also, Bismarck invented the modern industrial state long before anyone else had realized this stuff was important.

That is a myth. For example, NHS New Zealand predates NHS UK by around 10 years.

Absolutely. Not saying they chose the right magic number!

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