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Comment by stupidcar | Hacker News Reader

This article is confusing. It starts off by saying this is an analysis of "best" and "worst" case scenarios for continued growth in cases, but later it says:

> HSJ understands that the briefing was part of an attempt to get senior clinical leaders to focus on what they would have to do, if current growth trends were not surpressed by the tighter lockdown.

So, er, what if the growth trends are suppressed by the tighter lockdown, as seems likely? Will things then be better than the "best" case scenario?

It sounds like there's a bit of misreporting going on here. The leaked document forecasts demand based on pre-lockdown trends, to highlight the significant risks. But the article is reporting it as if running of beds is totally guaranteed in all circumstances, which doesn't appear to be the case, if the lockdown works.

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The hospitalisation curve for the next fortnight is largely locked in by what was happening before lockdown started. If lockdown has a positive effect, it'll be visible in the hospitalisation stats after 12 days or so.

It's not immediately obvious from any reporting but the "rules" in London haven't actually changed significantly since the 20th December (schools did not reopen as planned but they'd been closed since before then anyway for the Christmas break).

The only meaningful change in the past couple of days is the "takeaway pint" ban (which is unlikely to make any difference and is purely symbolic).

I agree that the "best case" scenario should probably involve some impact from the lockdown (after a delay), but given the experience in California (which was that the lockdown didn't slow things down much, if at all), it seems at least plausible to look at what happens if the same is true in the U.K.

> So, er, what if the growth trends are suppressed by the tighter lockdown, as seems likely? Will things then be better than the "best" case scenario?

There's two lag factors to consider. The first is the lag between restrictions and cases dropping, this takes a couple of weeks and cases and the growth isn't likely to even slow for 1 week. The second is the lag between infections and people getting seriously sick and needing hospitalization, that takes 3-4 weeks. There's also the serious possibility that the restrictions arn't strict enough to make a big difference.

This scenario is basically baked in, avoiding it required action weeks earlier.

Or because of the incompetence of those in charge people just don’t take the lockdown seriously...

Nobody is in charge of people's perspectives. The UK has really gone all in on psychosocial nudge tactics in this pandemic, and it has massively failed so far. Arguably, they've done so because they knew the population were so belligerent and arrogantly ignorant that a more direct approach would definitely fail. They have leveraged the 'new variant' to implement at the last moment the measures that were being recommended for months by all their expert committees. People here don't want to be told what to do and there are very well organised efforts to encourage people to feel empowered in their ignorance and irresponsibility. The 'people in charge' aren't the only ones to blame for that.

I would expect that if growth trends are suppressed by the tighter lockdown, that would be the best case scenario. That’s not the most likely scenario though, and you need to prepare for the worst case scenario. So that’s what clinical leaders need to focus on, right?

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