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This is a bit too cute by half, especially considering that leading UK politicians have themselves cited "herd immunity" as the reason to do what they're doing.

This is a bit too cute by half, especially considering that leading UK politicians have themselves cited "herd immunity" as the reason to do what they're doing. Your rephrasing sounds reasonable, but I'm not sure what it concretely means, particularly how it differs from every other country's approach. It's vague enough that you could pretty much say the same thing about everything from China's to Singapore's to the United States' approach.

dmix 7y ago
> Matt Hancock insists 'herd immunity' not part of government's plan for tackling coronavirus > Mr Hancock added: "Herd immunity is not a part of it. That is a scientific concept, not a goal or a strategy. Our goal is to protect life from this virus, our strategy is to protect the most vulnerable and protect the NHS through contain, delay, research and mitigate." https://politicshome.com/news/uk/health-and-care/illnesstreatments/news/110595/matt-hancock-insists-herd-immunity-not-part https://politicshome.com/news/uk/health-and-care/illnesstrea... The amount of politicizing people are engaging is a bit sad. Especially when you take a wider view at how every country with the best doctors and scientists have dealt with it. Significant criticism has happened across party and ideological lines (Which you’d hope the healthcare bodies would be largely independent of and instead follows the best scientific advice). Even here in Canada where our prime minister’s wife got COVID-19 and are both in isolation, yet they’ve been even less aggressive than the policies the UK has already announced. It’s obvious few countries and even WHO were well prepared for something of this scale and a ton of criticism today has the benefit of retrospect. Meanwhile aggressive policies, like the US closing borders and China locking up entire apartment buildings when one resident gets sick, also got immediate heavy push back, and globally has been far more the exception than the rule. Even with better preparedness, which no doubt will be adopted after this event, there is still a difficult balance between scaling up restrictions on daily life without being accused of being “draconian” (which is how I remember the same UK press characterized Italy’s early moves). Especially politically, let alone scientifically. We should be spending more effort on finding the right balance, which is still not obvious nor scientifically well established for countries with lower rates, even today. Those are the hard questions, political opportunism is easy and low effort.
- scarmig 7y ago
  I'm still left in entirely in the dark about what the UK's strategy actually is. As far as I can tell, it's "do less than other countries to avoid experiencing as much economic disruption." Which is fine (for the purposes of this discussion), but everyone defending the UK's policy should at least just own it.

dmix 7y ago

> Matt Hancock insists 'herd immunity' not part of government's plan for tackling coronavirus > Mr Hancock added: "Herd immunity is not a part of it. That is a scientific concept, not a goal or a strategy. Our goal is to protect life from this virus, our strategy is to protect the most vulnerable and protect the NHS through contain, delay, research and mitigate." https://politicshome.com/news/uk/health-and-care/illnesstreatments/news/110595/matt-hancock-insists-herd-immunity-not-part https://politicshome.com/news/uk/health-and-care/illnesstrea... The amount of politicizing people are engaging is a bit sad. Especially when you take a wider view at how every country with the best doctors and scientists have dealt with it. Significant criticism has happened across party and ideological lines (Which you’d hope the healthcare bodies would be largely independent of and instead follows the best scientific advice). Even here in Canada where our prime minister’s wife got COVID-19 and are both in isolation, yet they’ve been even less aggressive than the policies the UK has already announced. It’s obvious few countries and even WHO were well prepared for something of this scale and a ton of criticism today has the benefit of retrospect. Meanwhile aggressive policies, like the US closing borders and China locking up entire apartment buildings when one resident gets sick, also got immediate heavy push back, and globally has been far more the exception than the rule. Even with better preparedness, which no doubt will be adopted after this event, there is still a difficult balance between scaling up restrictions on daily life without being accused of being “draconian” (which is how I remember the same UK press characterized Italy’s early moves). Especially politically, let alone scientifically. We should be spending more effort on finding the right balance, which is still not obvious nor scientifically well established for countries with lower rates, even today. Those are the hard questions, political opportunism is easy and low effort.

scarmig 7y ago
I'm still left in entirely in the dark about what the UK's strategy actually is. As far as I can tell, it's "do less than other countries to avoid experiencing as much economic disruption." Which is fine (for the purposes of this discussion), but everyone defending the UK's policy should at least just own it.