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Coronavirus: Some scientists say UK virus strategy is 'risking lives'

126 points by doppp 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
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bb123 7y ago
I’m really surprised at the public reaction in the UK. Many of my friends are still going to pubs and concerts like nothing is going on. Life is just continuing as normal. Feels a bit like they’re being used a cannon fodder in this huge “herd immunity” gamble, because some of them will get it, and some of them will die. Personally I’m staying as isolated as I can until the worst of this is over, regardless of the official advice.
- Aqua 7y ago
  On the other hand, if it works the payoff will be quite significant in terms of impact to the economy compared to the rest of the world.
  - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
    If condemning 2-5% of your elderly population to death with a shrug is seen as shrewd economic policy, I’m moving to Mars. Fuck this place.
    - glofish 7y ago
      It has always been like that, only usually it is not this obvious. All advanced societies are built on the exploitation of someone else, you just did not get to see who those people were. Note: I am not endorsing the choice - just observing.
    - CPLX 7y ago
      You’re going to be really upset then when you find out what happens to the elderly if you just wait a few years. This stuff always involves complicated choices. For example, would you advocate a policy of taxing all restaurant owners at a 90% marginal rate forcing most into bankruptcy to pay for a very expensive new medical treatment that only works on the elderly and extends their life just a few years? If you proposed that do you think it would be unanimous or controversial?
      - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
        Describing sheer abandonment of elder care as “a complicated trade-off” is utterly disgusting.
        CPLX 7y ago
        Did anyone propose that? Do you believe that, in normal circumstances, we should repurpose all money typically spent on primary education and firefighting to go to elder care instead? If you weren’t arguing for that last year then you believe in complicated trade-offs too. The concept of trade-offs is the absolute core basis of all major public policy decisions. It’s also the basic of many personal decisions. If you’re familiar with hospice care or a DNR order then you know that end of life questions have trade-off calculations as well, even within families or between life partners. Pretending this is a binary decision is just nonsensical.
        mlthoughts2018 7y ago
        > “ Did anyone propose that?” In rereading your post carefully, the answer is yes. You did describe it that way and offer a reason to think it’s not so bad. Doing so is shameful.
        rsecora 7y ago
        One day youngers will be elders too, and the future youngers will apply the same rules. Marines say "no one left behind", for a reason, because it creates a group... A society. The UK decision smells like eugenics.
    - amscanne 7y ago
      I imagine that 2-5% of people over 70 die each year from other natural causes, if not much more. I’m not justifying anything, but I feel the death rates need to be understood in this context.
      - bcrosby95 7y ago
        What's with the focus of people over 70? If you catch this and are in your 50s or 60s, you have a decently high chance of dying. Hell, the young and healthy can go skydiving 100 times and have less chance of dying vs coronavirus. Nevermind the not dying part. Over 50% of ICU spots in France and the Netherlands for coronavirus are taken up by people under 60. Pneumonia this severe can cause permanent lung damage.
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      It's not 2%-5% of the elderly, it's 10% or more. Particularly with no supportive treatment. The UK government say they will try to preferentially isolate the elderly population, but this makes very little sense. People will spread the infection regardless, and some social contacts across generations will have to occur.
    - jotm 7y ago
      "Some of you may die, but that's a risk I'm willing to take"
      - zepto 7y ago
        “Some of you will die but that’s a risk I’m willing to take”
        sgt101 7y ago
        "Some of you will die* this year, and there is nothing that anyone can do about that" *some of you will die even without the virus, more of you will die than normal because of it, this is awful, but true.
        zepto 7y ago
        Many more of you will die than would have if I had chosen a better policy.
        sgt101 7y ago
        That may or may not be true - there's no given that there is a better policy or that any of the policies that we have seen are a better policy. We won't know until next year at least - the final counting will take a while.
    - avip 7y ago
      Wake up people. The fatality in Italy borders 8% average! For that age group it's > 10% UK seems to be playing a very dangerous game.
      - CraigJPerry 7y ago
        I don’t think wake up is the right sentiment. In South Korea, Germany, the diamond princess, in fact anywhere that’s not Italy or Wuhan the death rate is lower. The higher death rates have occurred in places where the health system was overrun. Of course with the current trajectory the UK health system will be over run.
    - Gupie 7y ago
      Deaths in the elderly is precisely what the UK strategy is aiming to avoid. Isolate elderly and other at risk groups until there is herd immunity in the rest of the population.
      - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
        The UK strategy is not aiming to reduce deaths in the elderly. Claiming that it is would be a grievous lie to distract attention from the real and only reason: propping up the economy as long as possible. Claiming you can isolate at risk groups well enough while the whole country is going about its business is just putting your fingers in your ears and going lalalalala.
    - JamesBarney 7y ago
      It's 2-5% of the general population. It's much higher among the elderly. And once the hospitals gets overrun it could easily be even higher than that.
  - glofish 7y ago
    If the strategy works the UK will benefit massively. It is like seeing an experiment playing out at a societal scale. We are all looking at it from a personal level, but successful societies have always been built on sacrifices of various kinds - their costs or others (colonization)
  - yulaow 7y ago
    And if it doesn't work it would be catastrophic in terms of impact because the NHS will collapse fast and won't be even able to process all the other medical needs of the population for an extremely long time.
    - CraigJPerry 7y ago
      Taking a step back from the impact on patients, if you subscribe to conservative economic thinking, this would be a good thing in the long run. Of course the impact would be blunt but relatively short and in conservative thinking a quick swallow of a bitter pill for future benefits is a perfect idea. The future benefit being get the state out of medicine. I don’t subscribe to this view at all but having read Rees-Mogg’s daddy’s book, the Soverign Individual i will happily stake my house on the above being very close to the victorian geezer’s view on this.
    - baby 7y ago
      On the other hand free healthcare!
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - overcast 7y ago
    So you saying I should have call options on EWU? Probably a bit premature, but could be a good gamble.
    - cycrutchfield 7y ago
      TBH this looks more like you should buy a straddle.
  - Twisell 7y ago
    There is however another underlying gamble. If they let the virus freely evolve and spread this might also give it more opportunities to mutate and maybe become more lethal whereas country that try to mitigate contagion won't offer as many hosts to try random forks...
    - gruez 7y ago
      >this might also give it more opportunities to mutate and maybe become more lethal AFAIK viruses tend to mutate to be less lethal because killing the host is bad for reproduction. random source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu >This is a common occurrence with influenza viruses: there is a tendency for pathogenic viruses to become less lethal with time, as the hosts of more dangerous strains tend to die out
      - klipt 7y ago
        The first wave of the Spanish Flu mostly killed the elderly. The second wave mutated and killed young, normally healthy people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Deadly_second_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Deadly_second_wave
        CraigJPerry 7y ago
        I see that same line being peddled out of context like this frequently these days. When you point out the young people factor you really also need to point out why that was the case and it wasn’t because of the mutation of the virus...
        klipt 7y ago
        Wikipedia says it was a mutation, although the selective pressure on that mutation (war) is something we hopefully won't have in today's circumstances.
    - empath75 7y ago
      There is very little evolutionary pressure to mutate to a more lethal variant and a lot of pressure to mutate to less dangerous variant. The ideal evolutionary strategy is to produce excess bodily fluids from sweating, coughing and sneezing, while not making people so sick that they lay down and stay home, let alone die. Viruses don’t get bonus points for being lethal, unlike certain video games.
  - jotm 7y ago
    People are still working everywhere. It will be interesting to see GBP/EURO this week, on Friday it tumbled doooown. I predict it will go down another 5p.
- overcast 7y ago
  Same here, I'm continuously amazed people are actively "standing up" to a virus. Like it's some terrorist threat that they won't back down in fear from. A dude last week told me he's flying out for a cruise this week. How many spring breakers hopped on planes to Mexico? Can you really not live without going out for a few weeks? Stay inside, read a book, watch some movies, work on that video game backlog, get some work done. The quicker we stop the spread, the quicker we can all go back to our normal lives. All you're doing is just making it longer and more devastating. wtf people. Use your brains. It's totally irresponsible for you to be spreading this to everyone else.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > Like it's some terrorist threat that they won't back down in fear from. Ironically, even the actual terrorists decided to back down in fear from it, suspend their terrorist activities, and teach themselves how to wash hands properly. https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-isis-terrorists-europe/ https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-isis-terrorists-...
  - ivanbakel 7y ago
    >The quicker we stop the spread, the quicker we can all go back to our normal lives. All you're doing is just making it longer and more devastating. From my understanding, this isn't really true. "Stopping the spread" is an unreasonable and incredibly difficult undertaking. Isolation is about reducing the rate of cases. It's likely that similar infection numbers will be reached over the course of the whole pandemic no matter what. Nobody is going back to "normal life" any time soon - the only question is how drastic the counter-measures will be.
    - swader999 7y ago
      The idea to social distancing is to slow the inevitable spread so health infrastructure isn't overwhelmed and death is minimized.
      - bob33212 7y ago
- rolltiide 7y ago
  When you look at the incentives: less vulnerable people (because the vulnerable ones will be wiped out) will make it more economical for the trade deal with the US to go through, the part about healthcare. So yeah they probably are making them cannon fodder, whether its intentional or not, the incentives would let higher ups look at the proposal and say "by golly that makes so much sense", whereas the rest of the world wouldn't consider this proposal as killing two birds with one stone and just reject the proposal.
  - Gupie 7y ago
    Vulnerable people are being told to isolate themselves until herd there is herd immunity. The policy protects that elderly.
- CPLX 7y ago
  It’s the same in New York. At this point we can talk all day about it on message boards but we are going to find out who’s right soon enough regardless.
- wintorez 7y ago
  They have taken "Keep Calm and Carry On" to the heart.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  "Keep Calm and Carry On" is a big part of British national identity. It may or may not be appropriate in this crisis, sounds like genuine experts are arguing both ways, but that's part of the reason behind why the British respond like this.
  - tiles 7y ago
    That's what confuses me. How particularly is the UK so different from the rest of Europe or the globe even? I get that how the UK views itself may give support for this strategy, and it agrees with how I view UK society, but why only in this location is national identity the defining factor in pandemic response?
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      The UK is a funny combination of collectivism and individualism. The NHS, BBC, the Blitz spirit, but also small-c-conservatism, almost always slightly-right-of-centre governments, the Monarchy. It's culturally mid-Atlantic - somewhere between the European way and the way in the United States. And that's pretty much how they're responding to this crisis, isn't it?
    - dmix 7y ago
      The UK already has more aggressive policies than Canada and our PM is in isolation. The UK is easily par for the course. It really only got very serious yesterday when numbers doubled (which we saw with the US reacting to that news). The UK government has also completely denied the “herd immunity” thing is part of any active policy. But that hasn’t slowed down social media... or HN for that matter.
    - xorcist 7y ago
      Is it really that different? The actions and motivations seems very much like Finland and Sweden, for example, in as much as they stage their response and focus on keeping the society running until data suggests otherwise.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  > Personally I’m staying as isolated as I can until the worst of this is over, regardless of the official advice. Good choice. Look at what Italy and Spain are doing now. Stay at home as much as possible, don't hang out with others. Wear personal protective equipment if you must go out for some reason.
  - mattmanser 7y ago
    It's worth pointing out that Italy is about 2 weeks further along in infection spread than the UK and Spain a week. Italy's had 1800 death, Spain 300, UK 30. They're all roughly the same size population (60, 50, 70 million) As I've said in other threads on this, I would assume that the earlier you lock down, the longer you have to stay locked down. Or you risk a second peak. There's a balancing act, given that it's not possible now to stop the spread, only slow it. Lock down too early and you do a lot of damage to the economy and by extension the country. Lock down too late and people die from lack of care.
    - sgt101 7y ago
      Additionally it is not clear yet that the interventions in Italy and Spain have worked. It will not be clear for some months in fact.
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      > I would assume that the earlier you lock down, the longer you have to stay locked down. I would not assume that at all. Containment is still possible in a looser sense; many places in both Italy and Spain may end up being disease-free in a shorter period of time by locking down things early, and then they can contribute healthcare resources to places where the disease is more widespread, or even be put under some sort of protective "reverse" quarantine with less strict measures.
      - mattmanser 7y ago
        And then you've got to lock down the next region, which re-infects the first region or you've got to keep the lock-down there happening, and so on, and so on. Did you not think this through? Essentially the whole things a massive balancing act, allow a certain amount of infections, but not too many the health service gets overwhelmed. Even China's now getting more infections from outside than in, which is only going to grow. The consensus is that you can't stop it now. So your plan might be an even worse idea, a cascading lock down, that lasts even longer. The only hope being summer stops it like flu, but then you're left with a potential resurgence in autumn and even more lock downs.
- jotm 7y ago
  It's the British way, they're a tough cynical bunch heh. Plus it's human nature to not believe something until it happens to you or your family. I'm not gonna panic, and keep going as usual, with the recommended precautions. Ideally I don't want to get infected, but if I do, oh well, such is life.
- zulgan 7y ago
  do not judge people's relationship with death. some are rational, some petrify and can not move, some try to face it, some turn inside, some turn outside. some old people are going out on purpose, if they petrify they will not be able to live anyway. anyway, it is not easy for anyone when the mass is moving in such volatile way, not to mention individual responsibility towards the group is stressed to extremes (as you can see people fighting over toilet paper for example) i am also staying as isolated as i can, but from time to time i force myself and my family to go out in the forest, to see that the world is not burning yet.
  - senordevnyc 7y ago
    This has little to do with your risk of death as an individual unless you’re in a vulnerable population. Rather, it’s about people’s selfish indifference to how their actions risk infecting and killing other people. And I’ll judge that all I want, thanks.
    - sgt101 7y ago
      How do you feel about people who drive cars? Driving a car risks killing people - tens of thousands die in car accidents. Do you judge drivers?
- muse900 7y ago
  I would like to see if Gov officials apply the same 'herd immunity' tactic to themselves and their relatives as well. Would be great to see if Boris Johnson and his cabinet and their close ones are staying home or not.
  - Hokusai 7y ago
    > I would like to see if Gov officials apply the same 'herd immunity' tactic to themselves and their relatives as well. The problem is not getting the virus. But, if everybody gets it at the same time. That will make hospitals collapse as queues of people wait for treatment. If Goverment officials have access to health care, it does not matter for them what happens to the rest of the population. Herd immunity works. And one hundred years from now what the government did is irrelevant. The problem is the suffering that may be caused to the current UK citizens. It may work, but the price to pay if it doesn't is very high. It not only includes lives but the long term trust in the government and its institutions, that is quite eroded already.
- grawprog 7y ago
  So why didn't people do this back in 2009? https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemic.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemi... Or back in 2014? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/12/30/this-seasons-flu-activity-has-reached-the-epidemic-threshold-the-cdc-says/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/1... Why is the world taking such an extreme reaction towards a disease that's less deadly and infectious than ones from 5 and 11 years ago where there wasn't an air of extreme hostility directed towards people for not worrying? Is it because the name is scarier? Is it because it's not a flu but a coronavirus? Because I still remember those, those were genuinely scary, mortality rates were high for healthy people, there were millions of cases around the world, and it was highly infectious. Yet, there was no massive global quarantine, the world didn't end, and life went on. Why should a disease that is less bad in every conceivable way be so much more panic inducing?
  - noja 7y ago
    > Why should a disease that is less bad in every conceivable way be so much more panic inducing? Because it's worse in every way: the initial containment has failed, the base immunity does not exist, the transmission rate is much higher, and the virus is more deadly.
    - grawprog 7y ago
      >and the virus is more deadly. Explain this, because this is the part I just can't wrap my head around. How is a disease that's deadly towards a much smaller percentage of the population 'more deadly'. Children aren't affected, anyone under the age of 60 is mildly affected barring pre-existing health problems. How is that more deadly than, a 30% mortality rate for young otherwise healthy individuals in the case of 2009's pandemic?
      - noja 7y ago
        Don't forget containment failed.
- mike-cardwell 7y ago
  "like nothing is going on" - Most people assume they'll be fine. And they're right. Even those that get it, the vast majority will survive it, like they survive most illnesses. It's just not that scary unless you're in an at-risk category. I say this as a British male in my 30's. I'm not changing anything unless I get ill. And then, it will only be to stay away from at-risk people and large gatherings. If I worked in an office, I'd work from home, but I work from home already. I'm certainly not going to barracade myself in my house for weeks/months. That's just my perspective, and one which may explain why you're seeing this behaviour from other Brits. [edit] Yeah, I thought this comment might be controversial. General response seems to be that I should be more scared than I am, and that I should do more than I am to stop the spread of the disease. I'm still not scared, and I still feel my response is proprotionate at this time.
  - yread 7y ago
    Even young people end up in ICU like this 16 year old: https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/nederland/artikel/5056536/sehraz-breda-coronavirus-16-intensive-care-besmet-covid19 https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/nederland/artikel/5056536/se... As the classic asks: Do you feel lucky, punk?
    - baby 7y ago
      They probably would have ended up there after catching the flu.
      - allannienhuis 7y ago
        but they're no where nearly as likely to catch the flu as they are this virus, which no one is immune to.
      - wila 7y ago
        The boy was never sick.
    - mike-cardwell 7y ago
      Every time I eat something or go somewhere, or don't eat something or don't go somewhere, I'm taking a risk with my life. What matters is what the level of risk is, and what the cost of reducing that risk is. I feel lucky.
- onetimemanytime 7y ago
  The bravest of the brave, hide from this. These guys don't know what's gonna hit them. But the fault lies with the government, they know and should know better
tosh 7y ago
(edit: removed my comment because it was unnecessary)
- outside1234 7y ago
  typo: I think you meant: some "scientists" :)
cs02rm0 7y ago
In an open letter, the 229 specialists in disciplines ranging from mathematics to genetics - though no leading experts in the science of the spread of diseases It's not clear to me why we should listen to these people over the likes of Chris Whitty. Especially as they seem to have mischaracterised comments around herd immunity, which I've only seen stated as an aspect that may help rather than the strategy (to reduce the peak).
- DanBC 7y ago
  > which I've only seen stated as Government started talking about herd immunity as a strategy, and there's video of Boris saying this. They've stopped saying it, and they've changed their comms, because it's such an unpalatable message and they were getting (still are getting) considerable push-back from the public.
  - makomk 7y ago
    Herd immunity isn't the strategy, it's more like an inevitable consequence that there's probably no way for European countries to avoid hitting at this point. The strategy is about how to try and minimize the deaths and destruction caused in the process of getting there.
- lozenge 7y ago
  They promoted herd immunity for two days, and are now offering wishy-washy denials. https://twitter.com/BBCr4today/status/1238390547783528448 https://twitter.com/BBCr4today/status/1238390547783528448 https://twitter.com/L__Macfarlane/status/1239190996379930626 https://twitter.com/L__Macfarlane/status/1239190996379930626
stared 7y ago
It will be one of the deadliest A/B tests this year. Or, as I saw in one conversation among my friends: - I thought that the UK is a rational and science-driven country. - Yes. And it is why they've offered themselves to serve as a control group.
- captain_price7 7y ago
  Yeah, was thinking the same. Even if it doesn't work as expected for UK, it would at least be a good lesson for the world.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
globular-toast 7y ago
Mathematics professors know as much about the spread of disease as anyone else here. The UK is taking measures. The public has been educated and told to stay at home if they show symptoms. If people were uneducated they'd be at work with a slight cough spreading it around. There's a strong social stigma in the UK to not take absence due to a cold. So this is a big deal. At the end of the day, there's no evidence that the measures other countries are taking will work either. There is a strong argument that closing schools will impact the NHS, even though children aren't very at risk. Other countries are essentially on lockdown indefinitely right now because none of the isolated people have been exposed.
- starfallg 7y ago
  > There is a strong argument that closing schools will impact the NHS, even though children aren't very at risk. This is a complete moot point. Other countries have implemented free childcare for healthcare workers when schools are shut. There is no reason why the UK cannot do this for NHS staff. And because children are not at risk of developing serious symptoms, they can be a huge reservoir for the virus, which then infects the middle-aged and elderly.
  - globular-toast 7y ago
    > Other countries have implemented free childcare for healthcare workers when schools are shut. There is no reason why the UK cannot do this for NHS staff. Other countries haven't shown evidence that their approach is more effective. The UK solution is to not close schools.
    - nullc 7y ago
      What has been shown however, is that for sars-cov-2 that young people are asymptomatic carriers at much higher rates than for other infections. And what has also been shown is that the R0 for other respiratory infections is tremendously higher in schools than in the general population. Though it has not been proven that schools are a hotbed of contagion for sars-cov-2, there is a lot of reason to expect them to be and little reason to expect that they aren't.
toxik 7y ago
From what I gathered from actual epidemiologists, the main issue isn't who takes the grandest of stands on this the day of reckoning, but rather, who takes what LONG-TERM action? Can you really shut down your economy, realistically, for more than a few weeks? The virus is sure to survive whatever countermeasures you put in its path. Flattening the curve is the idea, so that health services can deal with the critically ill. That means EVERYONE HAS TO LIMIT THEIR CONTACT, as much as possible. If you thought capitalist society was good at distributing goods, just look at what happened to hand sanitizer. Everybody needs it now, yet it has been bought up by the few that got to it.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  As far as I understand, the UK's strategy is essentially steepening the curve into one huge but thin peak, in order to minimize the time countermeasures have to be in place - which is the exact opposite of what "flattening the curve" is about.
  - rcxdude 7y ago
    That doesn't seem like what they were proposing. From what I saw the idea was to flatten the curve at the point it is steepest, instead of trying to flatten it while it's still pretty flat, which just increases the time you need to keep countermeasures in place (because delaying only helps a little: it's very unlikely you can delay until a vaccine is developed, the main benefit of a few months delay is the NHS has less of its regular winter workload to deal with, which is higher than in summer).
    - marcosdumay 7y ago
      Ouch. Good luck trying to get the timing right. The earlier you start with countermeasures, the longer you can try them and see how they affect the spread rate. If you wait to impose them at the last minute, you will have to choose erring on too expensive measures or on letting your people die.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
j8hn 7y ago
I have been wondering about this. If health experts are saying it's inevitable that a large portion of the population is going to be infected with the virus then why not limit isolation to those most at risk.
- peterwoerner 7y ago
  In my mind you want to isolate until we better know how to treat it. I have seen some "evidence" on twitter that anabolic steroids seem to help and that the cs. Koreans are more successful with a treatment of zinc plus mineral salts. I thin eventually we will be able to limit the mortality rate significantly, but it will take time to determine what is effective.
- 76543210 7y ago
  I think I'm with you. I don't think it can be contained anymore. Even if it seems gone, it can pop up and we go on lockdown again? I wonder if the lockdown people are anti-math.
  - cycrutchfield 7y ago
    It’s the anti-lockdown people that are anti-math. Any reasonable person can see that the lethality of the virus is much worse when the healthcare system is saturated. If you accept this, then the only solution is to reduce the transmission rate to reduce saturation of the healthcare system, i.e. “flatten the curve”.
    - rcxdude 7y ago
      I think the point of the UK strategy is doing such a thing early doesn't help much: if you bring in such measures while the number of cases is small, you'll delay the peak but it won't reduce it much unless you can sustain it all the way through, and by increasing the time you're trying to sustain it you run the risk it won't be sustainable.
      - nullc 7y ago
feral 7y ago
I'm guessing that the UK has decided this can't be practically contained, that even total shutdown will only push it back a couple of months with huge cost. As such they are just going to accept mass casualties. See figure 4 at the bottom of this preprint from one of the UK research groups about the tactics in Wuhan: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033050v1.full.pdf+html https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033050v... they appear to be modeling here that even a total shutdown for a month, or for two months, will still lead to a similar epidemic. I think that similar thinking is driving the UK policy but that's just a guess. I wrote a blog post trying to predict the impact of this virus on Ireland. The fatality rates look grim: https://medium.com/@fergal.reid/predicting-the-impact-of-coronovirus-on-ireland-bff1b6d00d6a https://medium.com/@fergal.reid/predicting-the-impact-of-cor...
LordHumungous 7y ago
> 229 specialists in disciplines ranging from mathematics to genetics - though no leading experts in the science of the spread of diseases
- stevenwoo 7y ago
  Here’s what you are asking for though USA, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/15/epidemiologist-britain-herd-immunity-coronavirus-covid-19 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/15/epidem...
  - LordHumungous 7y ago
    > Nobody should be under the illusion that this is something that can be dodged through somehow manipulating a virus that we are only beginning to understand. This will not pass you by; this is not a tornado, it is a hurricane. Isn't this exactly what the UK strategy amounts to? An acknowledgement that the pandemic can only mitigated at this point? It seems to me that those who are in the "shut down everything" camp are under the illusion that the virus can be stopped.
    - kronin 7y ago
      Not stopped, no. Slowed. Give the healthcare system a chance to deal with those that are coming in, without being overwhelmed. Give the researchers a chance to come up with an immunity shot. Time is our friend in this situation.
gdubs 7y ago
I commented on one of the other threads that I personally think this strategy is nuts. I compared it to Dr Strangelove, but really I was thinking of the beginning of “Fail Safe” when the Kissinger-like figure argues that nuclear war could be winnable for the United States. Making a decision like this without releasing all of the data and assumptions behind the model feels unbelievably cavalier. It affects the whole world. A couple of months into this, my lowly opinion is: give us the South Korean response, please. What I’d like to see is massive global cooperation to manufacture a billion masks, and an absurd number of tests — combined with aggressive social distancing, public education, hand sanitizer stations, etc. It’s interesting that the UK government rode to power on a wave of populism — yet are proposing a solution that requires full faith in elites, with little transparency into the data and assumptions. A very precarious time. [edit: obviously the South Korean model requires faith in institutions as well — but to me they’ve been fully transparent from the start.]
- ghaff 7y ago
  >when the Kissinger-like figure argues that nuclear war could be winnable for the United States. Minor nit: It was at least widely assumed that Groeteschele in Fail Safe (as well as Dr. Strangelove in Dr. Strangelove) was deliberately modeled on RAND Corporation military strategist Herman Kahn.
- j8hn 7y ago
  Digital tracing also seems to be very helpful in the Korean response. Would you support your government to have a digital database of gps data, credit card transactions, and immigration entry information?
thdrdt 7y ago
Years ago I got the flu very bad when I was healthy. I thought I was going to die. Most of the time your body will fight the flu, but when you get it bad it is very serious. I cannot imagine why you would do this to your citizens. Depending on how bad they get it even young healthy people will die.
- Drunk_Engineer 7y ago
  Everyone is going to get coronavirus regardless (the isolation measures just slow it down, not stop it). The UK calculated it is better for its citizens to go through that now, outside normal flu season when hospitals get more busy. And as others pointed out, the economic impact is minimized. Crashing the economy also has bad health effects.
  - nullc 7y ago
    The UK has declined to show their math. Add in the fact that that hospital overload is easily hit with small percentages of the population infected and that even relatively young people die at high rates when they can't receive critical care, I am extremely doubtful that they calculated much of anything here. If large amounts of working age people die because of overloaded hospitals the negative economic effects will be tremendous. Moreover, they now appear to be walking back their plan, suggesting that they will actually trying to slow the progression as much as possible... which is what almost everyone else is doing (as full containment isn't possible).
  - earthtourist 7y ago
    Depending on the rate of infection, there might be time for 20-80% of the population to be vaccinated before being infected. Whatever the number, it would be nice to save as many lives and as much potential long-term damage to people as possible.
    - Drunk_Engineer 7y ago
      There is no vaccine, and won't be for many years (if at all).
jotm 7y ago
The bigger problem is people coming from the UK are testing positive... They're imposing this "plan" on everyone else without a care.
deleted 7y ago
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threedots 7y ago
Whether you think this is crazy or not depends on whether you share the premise this strategy is based on: namely that there is no solution which prevents widespread infection and that all quarantine measures are no more than temporary and might be damaging if they push a second peak into the winter. The plan is to lockdown the vulnerable and let the virus run its course through the rest of society. In this scenario you think(/hope) that the people not locked down only get mild versions of the disease and so don't require hospitalisation. You come out the other side with herd immunity which (again you hope) stops the disease from gaining a foothold again. Lots of unknowns, of course, but if your starting point is complete infection of the population is inevitable then it doesn't seem necessarily any riskier than other methods and has the merit of being quicker if nothing else. If you think complete infection is preventable then it looks reckless at best, and a borderline genocide at worst.
Leary 7y ago
There's one way this strategy would work: If you could hermetically seal all of your above 60 population for 4 months. I guess that's what they'll attempt.
- hatenberg 7y ago
  60% would be wishful thinking given the R0 we are seeing. More like 80-90%
streetcat1 7y ago
The problem is more than pure health issues. By choosing these strategies, the UK assures that no other country will allow UK citizens into its borders a long time after the first wave of the virus passed.
rsecora 7y ago
Taleb opinion about this: UK Policy is a speculative lunacy. Playing with the toy standard epidemiological SIR model. We have no idea how model parameters cause a yuuuge variation in ourcomes. We don't even know the central parameters/whether stochastic. Try to add perturbations for "herd immunity". https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1239171413342289921?s=19 https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1239171413342289921?s=19
xd 7y ago
I live in the UK and volunteer on the front line; current events won't stop me doing so irregardless of the risk to myself or my family. The comments here on the UK's response are disappointing to say the least and just the product of modern day hysteria. No one knows how this is going to play out, so stop pretending to have some great insight - just focus on protecting yourself, instead of spreading fear, if you are that way inclined and let the rest of us get on with handling the situation.
- cycrutchfield 7y ago
  > No one knows how this is going to play out It’s entirely predictable how this is going to play out. Sadly, not for the best, if the current trajectory is not adjusted.
  - xd 7y ago
    Can you cite your experience in these matters and the data from which you have come to this conclusion.. or is this just your feelings from consuming to much main stream media? But really, I'd love to hear your opinion on how the trajectory shoud be shifted.
hatenberg 7y ago
A few ways viruses can cause long term issues: - You don't get immune due to strains and changes (flu) - You get it forever latently and it comes back from time to time (HSV) - malignant tissue abnormalities, Cancer, organ failure over time (some HSV strains, HEP) - You get immunity but if another strain hits you you bleed from all orifices and may die (dengue) - It stays with you forever and makes you more vulnerable to tons of other virii (Eppstein-Barr - I know, killer combo, HSV, HEP) - Chronic fatigue syndrome (Epstein-Barr) - It depletes your immune system leaving you vulnerable for life (HIV) - Permanent lung, liver, kidney or heart damage (SARS) - chronic joint and muscle pain, vision and hearing loss, abdominal pain, bleeding, malaise, and psychological problems (Ebola) - birth defects, chronic joint pain and inflammation (Zika) We have NO IDEA right now if this one has such effects or interactions ... it's too early. But we have indication for several side effects from Wuhan that are being studied like permanent lung scarring and T-cell exhaustion. So this "strategy" (They would all speak German if they used this to save the economy in 1940) is beyond madness. Please please please do not take this lightly with a I'll get it anyway attitude. More time buys understanding, treatment, lower severity and better survival chances. (Same reason to be cautious with rushed vaccines (well tested ones are just fine) - especially if they show up unseasonably early for election time. Read up on the Philippines dengue vaccine for the gory details)
- gridlockd 7y ago
  Let us be cynical here, the NHS already kills thousands of critical but not necessarily terminal patients as a cost saving measure. Shaving off a decade of lifetime or more from chronically ill patients could save the NHS trillions of pounds in the coming years.
  - philjohn 7y ago
    Stats to back that up please ...
    - gridlockd 7y ago
      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/elder/9343428/Elderly-patients-helped-to-die-to-free-up-beds-warns-doctor.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/elder/9343428/Elderl... Obviously there are no official statistics on how many people who were left to die could've lived on, and for how long.
m-i-l 7y ago
The bottom line is that every virus strategy is going to be "risking lives". From the "do nothing and hope it goes away" strategy to the "shut everything down and hope it goes away" strategy, through all the "flattening the curve" strategies in between, they're all going to be risking lives, given no-one really knows how this is going to work out. But one thing I do know is that now is not the time for political grandstanding or international conflict. We're all in this together as a planet, and our best chance of getting through it is by working together. And I also know I would prefer to listen to a group of people who have spent their careers specialising in studying how infectious diseases spread. As the original article says, this list has "no leading experts in the science of the spread of diseases", and if anyone has taken the time to look at the list it is largely maths PhD students and the like. Which I guess is still better than the Silicon Valley charlatans and wannabe social media influencers who seem to be getting a disturbingly uncharacteristic amount of airtime on HN at the moment.
danielovichdk 7y ago
Solidarity my good people. That is one virtue you americans have, that A Lot of us europeans simply do not. It will be our downfall eventually, and the americans will perhaps conquer yet again, because you really are good at showing love and compassion. I mean that. Take care of yourselves and help where you can. Please.
m0zg 7y ago
They probably just ran the numbers and discovered they'd be risking fewer lives if they did what they are doing instead of shutting down their economy indefinitely. The latter, at a large enough scale, can be quite deadly too.
HugoDaniel 7y ago
Sweden is also taking similar measures
plughs 7y ago
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/andrew-sullivan-reality-arrives-to-the-trump-era.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/andrew-sullivan-real... This is a really insightful article from Andrew Sullivan where he compares the initial reaction to the Coronavirus to the initial reactions to AIDS. For too long the homosexual community was in denial about the level of risk. The wanted to think that it would blow over, and no dramatic changes were needed. Sullivan sees the echos now. A lot of people are still determined to downplay it, as though it proves some sort of moral victory over the people stocking up on toilet paper. The reality is that things may not go back to 'normal' for a long time.
mirekrusin 7y ago
I don't get this narrative, everybody on the planet earth is currently relying on "heard immunity". What they don't agree on is about measures to take, which is two-dimentional slider (time, social distancing) that outputs multidimentional output of - time, age group death rate/absolute count, nhs capacity, economic impact, heard immunity, retransmission etc. On one side I'm impressed by the world's rapid response. On the other hand I'm surprised how poor published scientific modeling/decision making is. We know pretty much all of parameters we need to know by now. Making an online model should be as easy as interview task for data scientist. And we have greatest minds focusing/ready to dedicate time to it. Why are we doing fruitless political arguments? Just share the model and data on github. Refine it every day with new data. I'd start with real estimated infection counts (they can be derived from official confirmed infection counts by mapping on age weighted symptoms that require hospitalisation - those people are tested only plus incubation period estimated population - those people will not be tested but they are infected). Any current estimate I've seen seems to lag in time if you take under account incubation period (4d) and real estimated infection count vs confimed cases (5x+). We need plots for next 3 years or so with breakthrough placeholders - ie. it is highly unlikely that we won't have cure at some level to deal with it in 3 years from now. It is highly speculative game if you estimate further in the future, yes, but medium term there should be obvious optimal decision.
pier25 7y ago
I live in Mexico where the government has been heavily criticized for not making more tests even to people with symptoms. They are taking very tepid measures. Schools will close by the end of next week and there will be recommended social distancing measures starting in about 10 days. This weekend there is a huge festival in Mexico City with about 70k assistants every day (Vive Latino). Monday is a national holiday so millions of Mexicans are traveling all over the country. Mexico City has +20M people and a very fragile public health system. Every month only the underground moves 130M passengers. I hope I'm wrong on this but I fear this will be one of the worse impacted cities on Earth. Thankfully we do not live there but we've been on self imposed lockdown for about a week anyway.
deleted 7y ago
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126 points by doppp 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

I’m really surprised at the public reaction in the UK. Many of my friends are still going to pubs and concerts like nothing is going on. Life is just continuing as normal. Feels a bit like they’re being used a cannon fodder in this huge “herd immunity” gamble, because some of them will get it, and some of them will die. Personally I’m staying as isolated as I can until the worst of this is over, regardless of the official advice.

Aqua 7y ago
On the other hand, if it works the payoff will be quite significant in terms of impact to the economy compared to the rest of the world.
- mlthoughts2018 7y ago
  If condemning 2-5% of your elderly population to death with a shrug is seen as shrewd economic policy, I’m moving to Mars. Fuck this place.
  - glofish 7y ago
    It has always been like that, only usually it is not this obvious. All advanced societies are built on the exploitation of someone else, you just did not get to see who those people were. Note: I am not endorsing the choice - just observing.
  - CPLX 7y ago
    You’re going to be really upset then when you find out what happens to the elderly if you just wait a few years. This stuff always involves complicated choices. For example, would you advocate a policy of taxing all restaurant owners at a 90% marginal rate forcing most into bankruptcy to pay for a very expensive new medical treatment that only works on the elderly and extends their life just a few years? If you proposed that do you think it would be unanimous or controversial?
    - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
      Describing sheer abandonment of elder care as “a complicated trade-off” is utterly disgusting.
      - CPLX 7y ago
        Did anyone propose that? Do you believe that, in normal circumstances, we should repurpose all money typically spent on primary education and firefighting to go to elder care instead? If you weren’t arguing for that last year then you believe in complicated trade-offs too. The concept of trade-offs is the absolute core basis of all major public policy decisions. It’s also the basic of many personal decisions. If you’re familiar with hospice care or a DNR order then you know that end of life questions have trade-off calculations as well, even within families or between life partners. Pretending this is a binary decision is just nonsensical.
        mlthoughts2018 7y ago
        > “ Did anyone propose that?” In rereading your post carefully, the answer is yes. You did describe it that way and offer a reason to think it’s not so bad. Doing so is shameful.
        rsecora 7y ago
        One day youngers will be elders too, and the future youngers will apply the same rules. Marines say "no one left behind", for a reason, because it creates a group... A society. The UK decision smells like eugenics.
  - amscanne 7y ago
    I imagine that 2-5% of people over 70 die each year from other natural causes, if not much more. I’m not justifying anything, but I feel the death rates need to be understood in this context.
    - bcrosby95 7y ago
      What's with the focus of people over 70? If you catch this and are in your 50s or 60s, you have a decently high chance of dying. Hell, the young and healthy can go skydiving 100 times and have less chance of dying vs coronavirus. Nevermind the not dying part. Over 50% of ICU spots in France and the Netherlands for coronavirus are taken up by people under 60. Pneumonia this severe can cause permanent lung damage.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    It's not 2%-5% of the elderly, it's 10% or more. Particularly with no supportive treatment. The UK government say they will try to preferentially isolate the elderly population, but this makes very little sense. People will spread the infection regardless, and some social contacts across generations will have to occur.
  - jotm 7y ago
    "Some of you may die, but that's a risk I'm willing to take"
    - zepto 7y ago
      “Some of you will die but that’s a risk I’m willing to take”
      - sgt101 7y ago
        "Some of you will die* this year, and there is nothing that anyone can do about that" *some of you will die even without the virus, more of you will die than normal because of it, this is awful, but true.
        zepto 7y ago
        Many more of you will die than would have if I had chosen a better policy.
        sgt101 7y ago
        That may or may not be true - there's no given that there is a better policy or that any of the policies that we have seen are a better policy. We won't know until next year at least - the final counting will take a while.
  - avip 7y ago
    Wake up people. The fatality in Italy borders 8% average! For that age group it's > 10% UK seems to be playing a very dangerous game.
    - CraigJPerry 7y ago
      I don’t think wake up is the right sentiment. In South Korea, Germany, the diamond princess, in fact anywhere that’s not Italy or Wuhan the death rate is lower. The higher death rates have occurred in places where the health system was overrun. Of course with the current trajectory the UK health system will be over run.
  - Gupie 7y ago
    Deaths in the elderly is precisely what the UK strategy is aiming to avoid. Isolate elderly and other at risk groups until there is herd immunity in the rest of the population.
    - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
      The UK strategy is not aiming to reduce deaths in the elderly. Claiming that it is would be a grievous lie to distract attention from the real and only reason: propping up the economy as long as possible. Claiming you can isolate at risk groups well enough while the whole country is going about its business is just putting your fingers in your ears and going lalalalala.
  - JamesBarney 7y ago
    It's 2-5% of the general population. It's much higher among the elderly. And once the hospitals gets overrun it could easily be even higher than that.
- glofish 7y ago
  If the strategy works the UK will benefit massively. It is like seeing an experiment playing out at a societal scale. We are all looking at it from a personal level, but successful societies have always been built on sacrifices of various kinds - their costs or others (colonization)
- yulaow 7y ago
  And if it doesn't work it would be catastrophic in terms of impact because the NHS will collapse fast and won't be even able to process all the other medical needs of the population for an extremely long time.
  - CraigJPerry 7y ago
    Taking a step back from the impact on patients, if you subscribe to conservative economic thinking, this would be a good thing in the long run. Of course the impact would be blunt but relatively short and in conservative thinking a quick swallow of a bitter pill for future benefits is a perfect idea. The future benefit being get the state out of medicine. I don’t subscribe to this view at all but having read Rees-Mogg’s daddy’s book, the Soverign Individual i will happily stake my house on the above being very close to the victorian geezer’s view on this.
  - baby 7y ago
    On the other hand free healthcare!
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- overcast 7y ago
  So you saying I should have call options on EWU? Probably a bit premature, but could be a good gamble.
  - cycrutchfield 7y ago
    TBH this looks more like you should buy a straddle.
- Twisell 7y ago
  There is however another underlying gamble. If they let the virus freely evolve and spread this might also give it more opportunities to mutate and maybe become more lethal whereas country that try to mitigate contagion won't offer as many hosts to try random forks...
  - gruez 7y ago
    >this might also give it more opportunities to mutate and maybe become more lethal AFAIK viruses tend to mutate to be less lethal because killing the host is bad for reproduction. random source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu >This is a common occurrence with influenza viruses: there is a tendency for pathogenic viruses to become less lethal with time, as the hosts of more dangerous strains tend to die out
    - klipt 7y ago
      The first wave of the Spanish Flu mostly killed the elderly. The second wave mutated and killed young, normally healthy people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Deadly_second_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Deadly_second_wave
      - CraigJPerry 7y ago
        I see that same line being peddled out of context like this frequently these days. When you point out the young people factor you really also need to point out why that was the case and it wasn’t because of the mutation of the virus...
        klipt 7y ago
        Wikipedia says it was a mutation, although the selective pressure on that mutation (war) is something we hopefully won't have in today's circumstances.
  - empath75 7y ago
    There is very little evolutionary pressure to mutate to a more lethal variant and a lot of pressure to mutate to less dangerous variant. The ideal evolutionary strategy is to produce excess bodily fluids from sweating, coughing and sneezing, while not making people so sick that they lay down and stay home, let alone die. Viruses don’t get bonus points for being lethal, unlike certain video games.
- jotm 7y ago
  People are still working everywhere. It will be interesting to see GBP/EURO this week, on Friday it tumbled doooown. I predict it will go down another 5p.
overcast 7y ago
Same here, I'm continuously amazed people are actively "standing up" to a virus. Like it's some terrorist threat that they won't back down in fear from. A dude last week told me he's flying out for a cruise this week. How many spring breakers hopped on planes to Mexico? Can you really not live without going out for a few weeks? Stay inside, read a book, watch some movies, work on that video game backlog, get some work done. The quicker we stop the spread, the quicker we can all go back to our normal lives. All you're doing is just making it longer and more devastating. wtf people. Use your brains. It's totally irresponsible for you to be spreading this to everyone else.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > Like it's some terrorist threat that they won't back down in fear from. Ironically, even the actual terrorists decided to back down in fear from it, suspend their terrorist activities, and teach themselves how to wash hands properly. https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-isis-terrorists-europe/ https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-isis-terrorists-...
- ivanbakel 7y ago
  >The quicker we stop the spread, the quicker we can all go back to our normal lives. All you're doing is just making it longer and more devastating. From my understanding, this isn't really true. "Stopping the spread" is an unreasonable and incredibly difficult undertaking. Isolation is about reducing the rate of cases. It's likely that similar infection numbers will be reached over the course of the whole pandemic no matter what. Nobody is going back to "normal life" any time soon - the only question is how drastic the counter-measures will be.
  - swader999 7y ago
    The idea to social distancing is to slow the inevitable spread so health infrastructure isn't overwhelmed and death is minimized.
    - bob33212 7y ago
rolltiide 7y ago
When you look at the incentives: less vulnerable people (because the vulnerable ones will be wiped out) will make it more economical for the trade deal with the US to go through, the part about healthcare. So yeah they probably are making them cannon fodder, whether its intentional or not, the incentives would let higher ups look at the proposal and say "by golly that makes so much sense", whereas the rest of the world wouldn't consider this proposal as killing two birds with one stone and just reject the proposal.
- Gupie 7y ago
  Vulnerable people are being told to isolate themselves until herd there is herd immunity. The policy protects that elderly.
CPLX 7y ago
It’s the same in New York. At this point we can talk all day about it on message boards but we are going to find out who’s right soon enough regardless.
wintorez 7y ago
They have taken "Keep Calm and Carry On" to the heart.
chrisseaton 7y ago
"Keep Calm and Carry On" is a big part of British national identity. It may or may not be appropriate in this crisis, sounds like genuine experts are arguing both ways, but that's part of the reason behind why the British respond like this.
- tiles 7y ago
  That's what confuses me. How particularly is the UK so different from the rest of Europe or the globe even? I get that how the UK views itself may give support for this strategy, and it agrees with how I view UK society, but why only in this location is national identity the defining factor in pandemic response?
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    The UK is a funny combination of collectivism and individualism. The NHS, BBC, the Blitz spirit, but also small-c-conservatism, almost always slightly-right-of-centre governments, the Monarchy. It's culturally mid-Atlantic - somewhere between the European way and the way in the United States. And that's pretty much how they're responding to this crisis, isn't it?
  - dmix 7y ago
    The UK already has more aggressive policies than Canada and our PM is in isolation. The UK is easily par for the course. It really only got very serious yesterday when numbers doubled (which we saw with the US reacting to that news). The UK government has also completely denied the “herd immunity” thing is part of any active policy. But that hasn’t slowed down social media... or HN for that matter.
  - xorcist 7y ago
    Is it really that different? The actions and motivations seems very much like Finland and Sweden, for example, in as much as they stage their response and focus on keeping the society running until data suggests otherwise.
zozbot234 7y ago
> Personally I’m staying as isolated as I can until the worst of this is over, regardless of the official advice. Good choice. Look at what Italy and Spain are doing now. Stay at home as much as possible, don't hang out with others. Wear personal protective equipment if you must go out for some reason.
- mattmanser 7y ago
  It's worth pointing out that Italy is about 2 weeks further along in infection spread than the UK and Spain a week. Italy's had 1800 death, Spain 300, UK 30. They're all roughly the same size population (60, 50, 70 million) As I've said in other threads on this, I would assume that the earlier you lock down, the longer you have to stay locked down. Or you risk a second peak. There's a balancing act, given that it's not possible now to stop the spread, only slow it. Lock down too early and you do a lot of damage to the economy and by extension the country. Lock down too late and people die from lack of care.
  - sgt101 7y ago
    Additionally it is not clear yet that the interventions in Italy and Spain have worked. It will not be clear for some months in fact.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    > I would assume that the earlier you lock down, the longer you have to stay locked down. I would not assume that at all. Containment is still possible in a looser sense; many places in both Italy and Spain may end up being disease-free in a shorter period of time by locking down things early, and then they can contribute healthcare resources to places where the disease is more widespread, or even be put under some sort of protective "reverse" quarantine with less strict measures.
    - mattmanser 7y ago
      And then you've got to lock down the next region, which re-infects the first region or you've got to keep the lock-down there happening, and so on, and so on. Did you not think this through? Essentially the whole things a massive balancing act, allow a certain amount of infections, but not too many the health service gets overwhelmed. Even China's now getting more infections from outside than in, which is only going to grow. The consensus is that you can't stop it now. So your plan might be an even worse idea, a cascading lock down, that lasts even longer. The only hope being summer stops it like flu, but then you're left with a potential resurgence in autumn and even more lock downs.
jotm 7y ago
It's the British way, they're a tough cynical bunch heh. Plus it's human nature to not believe something until it happens to you or your family. I'm not gonna panic, and keep going as usual, with the recommended precautions. Ideally I don't want to get infected, but if I do, oh well, such is life.
zulgan 7y ago
do not judge people's relationship with death. some are rational, some petrify and can not move, some try to face it, some turn inside, some turn outside. some old people are going out on purpose, if they petrify they will not be able to live anyway. anyway, it is not easy for anyone when the mass is moving in such volatile way, not to mention individual responsibility towards the group is stressed to extremes (as you can see people fighting over toilet paper for example) i am also staying as isolated as i can, but from time to time i force myself and my family to go out in the forest, to see that the world is not burning yet.
- senordevnyc 7y ago
  This has little to do with your risk of death as an individual unless you’re in a vulnerable population. Rather, it’s about people’s selfish indifference to how their actions risk infecting and killing other people. And I’ll judge that all I want, thanks.
  - sgt101 7y ago
    How do you feel about people who drive cars? Driving a car risks killing people - tens of thousands die in car accidents. Do you judge drivers?
muse900 7y ago
I would like to see if Gov officials apply the same 'herd immunity' tactic to themselves and their relatives as well. Would be great to see if Boris Johnson and his cabinet and their close ones are staying home or not.
- Hokusai 7y ago
  > I would like to see if Gov officials apply the same 'herd immunity' tactic to themselves and their relatives as well. The problem is not getting the virus. But, if everybody gets it at the same time. That will make hospitals collapse as queues of people wait for treatment. If Goverment officials have access to health care, it does not matter for them what happens to the rest of the population. Herd immunity works. And one hundred years from now what the government did is irrelevant. The problem is the suffering that may be caused to the current UK citizens. It may work, but the price to pay if it doesn't is very high. It not only includes lives but the long term trust in the government and its institutions, that is quite eroded already.
grawprog 7y ago
So why didn't people do this back in 2009? https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemic.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemi... Or back in 2014? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/12/30/this-seasons-flu-activity-has-reached-the-epidemic-threshold-the-cdc-says/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/1... Why is the world taking such an extreme reaction towards a disease that's less deadly and infectious than ones from 5 and 11 years ago where there wasn't an air of extreme hostility directed towards people for not worrying? Is it because the name is scarier? Is it because it's not a flu but a coronavirus? Because I still remember those, those were genuinely scary, mortality rates were high for healthy people, there were millions of cases around the world, and it was highly infectious. Yet, there was no massive global quarantine, the world didn't end, and life went on. Why should a disease that is less bad in every conceivable way be so much more panic inducing?
- noja 7y ago
  > Why should a disease that is less bad in every conceivable way be so much more panic inducing? Because it's worse in every way: the initial containment has failed, the base immunity does not exist, the transmission rate is much higher, and the virus is more deadly.
  - grawprog 7y ago
    >and the virus is more deadly. Explain this, because this is the part I just can't wrap my head around. How is a disease that's deadly towards a much smaller percentage of the population 'more deadly'. Children aren't affected, anyone under the age of 60 is mildly affected barring pre-existing health problems. How is that more deadly than, a 30% mortality rate for young otherwise healthy individuals in the case of 2009's pandemic?
    - noja 7y ago
      Don't forget containment failed.
mike-cardwell 7y ago
"like nothing is going on" - Most people assume they'll be fine. And they're right. Even those that get it, the vast majority will survive it, like they survive most illnesses. It's just not that scary unless you're in an at-risk category. I say this as a British male in my 30's. I'm not changing anything unless I get ill. And then, it will only be to stay away from at-risk people and large gatherings. If I worked in an office, I'd work from home, but I work from home already. I'm certainly not going to barracade myself in my house for weeks/months. That's just my perspective, and one which may explain why you're seeing this behaviour from other Brits. [edit] Yeah, I thought this comment might be controversial. General response seems to be that I should be more scared than I am, and that I should do more than I am to stop the spread of the disease. I'm still not scared, and I still feel my response is proprotionate at this time.
- yread 7y ago
  Even young people end up in ICU like this 16 year old: https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/nederland/artikel/5056536/sehraz-breda-coronavirus-16-intensive-care-besmet-covid19 https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/nederland/artikel/5056536/se... As the classic asks: Do you feel lucky, punk?
  - baby 7y ago
    They probably would have ended up there after catching the flu.
    - allannienhuis 7y ago
      but they're no where nearly as likely to catch the flu as they are this virus, which no one is immune to.
    - wila 7y ago
      The boy was never sick.
  - mike-cardwell 7y ago
    Every time I eat something or go somewhere, or don't eat something or don't go somewhere, I'm taking a risk with my life. What matters is what the level of risk is, and what the cost of reducing that risk is. I feel lucky.
onetimemanytime 7y ago
The bravest of the brave, hide from this. These guys don't know what's gonna hit them. But the fault lies with the government, they know and should know better

tosh 7y ago

(edit: removed my comment because it was unnecessary)

outside1234 7y ago
typo: I think you meant: some "scientists" :)

cs02rm0 7y ago

In an open letter, the 229 specialists in disciplines ranging from mathematics to genetics - though no leading experts in the science of the spread of diseases It's not clear to me why we should listen to these people over the likes of Chris Whitty. Especially as they seem to have mischaracterised comments around herd immunity, which I've only seen stated as an aspect that may help rather than the strategy (to reduce the peak).

DanBC 7y ago
> which I've only seen stated as Government started talking about herd immunity as a strategy, and there's video of Boris saying this. They've stopped saying it, and they've changed their comms, because it's such an unpalatable message and they were getting (still are getting) considerable push-back from the public.
- makomk 7y ago
  Herd immunity isn't the strategy, it's more like an inevitable consequence that there's probably no way for European countries to avoid hitting at this point. The strategy is about how to try and minimize the deaths and destruction caused in the process of getting there.
lozenge 7y ago
They promoted herd immunity for two days, and are now offering wishy-washy denials. https://twitter.com/BBCr4today/status/1238390547783528448 https://twitter.com/BBCr4today/status/1238390547783528448 https://twitter.com/L__Macfarlane/status/1239190996379930626 https://twitter.com/L__Macfarlane/status/1239190996379930626

stared 7y ago

It will be one of the deadliest A/B tests this year. Or, as I saw in one conversation among my friends: - I thought that the UK is a rational and science-driven country. - Yes. And it is why they've offered themselves to serve as a control group.

captain_price7 7y ago
Yeah, was thinking the same. Even if it doesn't work as expected for UK, it would at least be a good lesson for the world.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

globular-toast 7y ago

Mathematics professors know as much about the spread of disease as anyone else here. The UK is taking measures. The public has been educated and told to stay at home if they show symptoms. If people were uneducated they'd be at work with a slight cough spreading it around. There's a strong social stigma in the UK to not take absence due to a cold. So this is a big deal. At the end of the day, there's no evidence that the measures other countries are taking will work either. There is a strong argument that closing schools will impact the NHS, even though children aren't very at risk. Other countries are essentially on lockdown indefinitely right now because none of the isolated people have been exposed.

starfallg 7y ago
> There is a strong argument that closing schools will impact the NHS, even though children aren't very at risk. This is a complete moot point. Other countries have implemented free childcare for healthcare workers when schools are shut. There is no reason why the UK cannot do this for NHS staff. And because children are not at risk of developing serious symptoms, they can be a huge reservoir for the virus, which then infects the middle-aged and elderly.
- globular-toast 7y ago
  > Other countries have implemented free childcare for healthcare workers when schools are shut. There is no reason why the UK cannot do this for NHS staff. Other countries haven't shown evidence that their approach is more effective. The UK solution is to not close schools.
  - nullc 7y ago
    What has been shown however, is that for sars-cov-2 that young people are asymptomatic carriers at much higher rates than for other infections. And what has also been shown is that the R0 for other respiratory infections is tremendously higher in schools than in the general population. Though it has not been proven that schools are a hotbed of contagion for sars-cov-2, there is a lot of reason to expect them to be and little reason to expect that they aren't.

toxik 7y ago

From what I gathered from actual epidemiologists, the main issue isn't who takes the grandest of stands on this the day of reckoning, but rather, who takes what LONG-TERM action? Can you really shut down your economy, realistically, for more than a few weeks? The virus is sure to survive whatever countermeasures you put in its path. Flattening the curve is the idea, so that health services can deal with the critically ill. That means EVERYONE HAS TO LIMIT THEIR CONTACT, as much as possible. If you thought capitalist society was good at distributing goods, just look at what happened to hand sanitizer. Everybody needs it now, yet it has been bought up by the few that got to it.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
As far as I understand, the UK's strategy is essentially steepening the curve into one huge but thin peak, in order to minimize the time countermeasures have to be in place - which is the exact opposite of what "flattening the curve" is about.
- rcxdude 7y ago
  That doesn't seem like what they were proposing. From what I saw the idea was to flatten the curve at the point it is steepest, instead of trying to flatten it while it's still pretty flat, which just increases the time you need to keep countermeasures in place (because delaying only helps a little: it's very unlikely you can delay until a vaccine is developed, the main benefit of a few months delay is the NHS has less of its regular winter workload to deal with, which is higher than in summer).
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    Ouch. Good luck trying to get the timing right. The earlier you start with countermeasures, the longer you can try them and see how they affect the spread rate. If you wait to impose them at the last minute, you will have to choose erring on too expensive measures or on letting your people die.
- marcosdumay 7y ago

j8hn 7y ago

I have been wondering about this. If health experts are saying it's inevitable that a large portion of the population is going to be infected with the virus then why not limit isolation to those most at risk.

peterwoerner 7y ago
In my mind you want to isolate until we better know how to treat it. I have seen some "evidence" on twitter that anabolic steroids seem to help and that the cs. Koreans are more successful with a treatment of zinc plus mineral salts. I thin eventually we will be able to limit the mortality rate significantly, but it will take time to determine what is effective.
76543210 7y ago
I think I'm with you. I don't think it can be contained anymore. Even if it seems gone, it can pop up and we go on lockdown again? I wonder if the lockdown people are anti-math.
- cycrutchfield 7y ago
  It’s the anti-lockdown people that are anti-math. Any reasonable person can see that the lethality of the virus is much worse when the healthcare system is saturated. If you accept this, then the only solution is to reduce the transmission rate to reduce saturation of the healthcare system, i.e. “flatten the curve”.
  - rcxdude 7y ago
    I think the point of the UK strategy is doing such a thing early doesn't help much: if you bring in such measures while the number of cases is small, you'll delay the peak but it won't reduce it much unless you can sustain it all the way through, and by increasing the time you're trying to sustain it you run the risk it won't be sustainable.
    - nullc 7y ago

feral 7y ago

I'm guessing that the UK has decided this can't be practically contained, that even total shutdown will only push it back a couple of months with huge cost. As such they are just going to accept mass casualties. See figure 4 at the bottom of this preprint from one of the UK research groups about the tactics in Wuhan: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033050v1.full.pdf+html https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033050v... they appear to be modeling here that even a total shutdown for a month, or for two months, will still lead to a similar epidemic. I think that similar thinking is driving the UK policy but that's just a guess. I wrote a blog post trying to predict the impact of this virus on Ireland. The fatality rates look grim: https://medium.com/@fergal.reid/predicting-the-impact-of-coronovirus-on-ireland-bff1b6d00d6a https://medium.com/@fergal.reid/predicting-the-impact-of-cor...

LordHumungous 7y ago

> 229 specialists in disciplines ranging from mathematics to genetics - though no leading experts in the science of the spread of diseases

stevenwoo 7y ago
Here’s what you are asking for though USA, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/15/epidemiologist-britain-herd-immunity-coronavirus-covid-19 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/15/epidem...
- LordHumungous 7y ago
  > Nobody should be under the illusion that this is something that can be dodged through somehow manipulating a virus that we are only beginning to understand. This will not pass you by; this is not a tornado, it is a hurricane. Isn't this exactly what the UK strategy amounts to? An acknowledgement that the pandemic can only mitigated at this point? It seems to me that those who are in the "shut down everything" camp are under the illusion that the virus can be stopped.
  - kronin 7y ago
    Not stopped, no. Slowed. Give the healthcare system a chance to deal with those that are coming in, without being overwhelmed. Give the researchers a chance to come up with an immunity shot. Time is our friend in this situation.

gdubs 7y ago

I commented on one of the other threads that I personally think this strategy is nuts. I compared it to Dr Strangelove, but really I was thinking of the beginning of “Fail Safe” when the Kissinger-like figure argues that nuclear war could be winnable for the United States. Making a decision like this without releasing all of the data and assumptions behind the model feels unbelievably cavalier. It affects the whole world. A couple of months into this, my lowly opinion is: give us the South Korean response, please. What I’d like to see is massive global cooperation to manufacture a billion masks, and an absurd number of tests — combined with aggressive social distancing, public education, hand sanitizer stations, etc. It’s interesting that the UK government rode to power on a wave of populism — yet are proposing a solution that requires full faith in elites, with little transparency into the data and assumptions. A very precarious time. [edit: obviously the South Korean model requires faith in institutions as well — but to me they’ve been fully transparent from the start.]

ghaff 7y ago
>when the Kissinger-like figure argues that nuclear war could be winnable for the United States. Minor nit: It was at least widely assumed that Groeteschele in Fail Safe (as well as Dr. Strangelove in Dr. Strangelove) was deliberately modeled on RAND Corporation military strategist Herman Kahn.
j8hn 7y ago
Digital tracing also seems to be very helpful in the Korean response. Would you support your government to have a digital database of gps data, credit card transactions, and immigration entry information?

thdrdt 7y ago

Years ago I got the flu very bad when I was healthy. I thought I was going to die. Most of the time your body will fight the flu, but when you get it bad it is very serious. I cannot imagine why you would do this to your citizens. Depending on how bad they get it even young healthy people will die.

Drunk_Engineer 7y ago
Everyone is going to get coronavirus regardless (the isolation measures just slow it down, not stop it). The UK calculated it is better for its citizens to go through that now, outside normal flu season when hospitals get more busy. And as others pointed out, the economic impact is minimized. Crashing the economy also has bad health effects.
- nullc 7y ago
  The UK has declined to show their math. Add in the fact that that hospital overload is easily hit with small percentages of the population infected and that even relatively young people die at high rates when they can't receive critical care, I am extremely doubtful that they calculated much of anything here. If large amounts of working age people die because of overloaded hospitals the negative economic effects will be tremendous. Moreover, they now appear to be walking back their plan, suggesting that they will actually trying to slow the progression as much as possible... which is what almost everyone else is doing (as full containment isn't possible).
- earthtourist 7y ago
  Depending on the rate of infection, there might be time for 20-80% of the population to be vaccinated before being infected. Whatever the number, it would be nice to save as many lives and as much potential long-term damage to people as possible.
  - Drunk_Engineer 7y ago
    There is no vaccine, and won't be for many years (if at all).

jotm 7y ago

The bigger problem is people coming from the UK are testing positive... They're imposing this "plan" on everyone else without a care.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

threedots 7y ago

Whether you think this is crazy or not depends on whether you share the premise this strategy is based on: namely that there is no solution which prevents widespread infection and that all quarantine measures are no more than temporary and might be damaging if they push a second peak into the winter. The plan is to lockdown the vulnerable and let the virus run its course through the rest of society. In this scenario you think(/hope) that the people not locked down only get mild versions of the disease and so don't require hospitalisation. You come out the other side with herd immunity which (again you hope) stops the disease from gaining a foothold again. Lots of unknowns, of course, but if your starting point is complete infection of the population is inevitable then it doesn't seem necessarily any riskier than other methods and has the merit of being quicker if nothing else. If you think complete infection is preventable then it looks reckless at best, and a borderline genocide at worst.

Leary 7y ago

There's one way this strategy would work: If you could hermetically seal all of your above 60 population for 4 months. I guess that's what they'll attempt.

hatenberg 7y ago
60% would be wishful thinking given the R0 we are seeing. More like 80-90%

streetcat1 7y ago

The problem is more than pure health issues. By choosing these strategies, the UK assures that no other country will allow UK citizens into its borders a long time after the first wave of the virus passed.

rsecora 7y ago

Taleb opinion about this: UK Policy is a speculative lunacy. Playing with the toy standard epidemiological SIR model. We have no idea how model parameters cause a yuuuge variation in ourcomes. We don't even know the central parameters/whether stochastic. Try to add perturbations for "herd immunity". https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1239171413342289921?s=19 https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1239171413342289921?s=19

xd 7y ago

I live in the UK and volunteer on the front line; current events won't stop me doing so irregardless of the risk to myself or my family. The comments here on the UK's response are disappointing to say the least and just the product of modern day hysteria. No one knows how this is going to play out, so stop pretending to have some great insight - just focus on protecting yourself, instead of spreading fear, if you are that way inclined and let the rest of us get on with handling the situation.

cycrutchfield 7y ago
> No one knows how this is going to play out It’s entirely predictable how this is going to play out. Sadly, not for the best, if the current trajectory is not adjusted.
- xd 7y ago
  Can you cite your experience in these matters and the data from which you have come to this conclusion.. or is this just your feelings from consuming to much main stream media? But really, I'd love to hear your opinion on how the trajectory shoud be shifted.

hatenberg 7y ago

A few ways viruses can cause long term issues: - You don't get immune due to strains and changes (flu) - You get it forever latently and it comes back from time to time (HSV) - malignant tissue abnormalities, Cancer, organ failure over time (some HSV strains, HEP) - You get immunity but if another strain hits you you bleed from all orifices and may die (dengue) - It stays with you forever and makes you more vulnerable to tons of other virii (Eppstein-Barr - I know, killer combo, HSV, HEP) - Chronic fatigue syndrome (Epstein-Barr) - It depletes your immune system leaving you vulnerable for life (HIV) - Permanent lung, liver, kidney or heart damage (SARS) - chronic joint and muscle pain, vision and hearing loss, abdominal pain, bleeding, malaise, and psychological problems (Ebola) - birth defects, chronic joint pain and inflammation (Zika) We have NO IDEA right now if this one has such effects or interactions ... it's too early. But we have indication for several side effects from Wuhan that are being studied like permanent lung scarring and T-cell exhaustion. So this "strategy" (They would all speak German if they used this to save the economy in 1940) is beyond madness. Please please please do not take this lightly with a I'll get it anyway attitude. More time buys understanding, treatment, lower severity and better survival chances. (Same reason to be cautious with rushed vaccines (well tested ones are just fine) - especially if they show up unseasonably early for election time. Read up on the Philippines dengue vaccine for the gory details)

gridlockd 7y ago
Let us be cynical here, the NHS already kills thousands of critical but not necessarily terminal patients as a cost saving measure. Shaving off a decade of lifetime or more from chronically ill patients could save the NHS trillions of pounds in the coming years.
- philjohn 7y ago
  Stats to back that up please ...
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/elder/9343428/Elderly-patients-helped-to-die-to-free-up-beds-warns-doctor.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/elder/9343428/Elderl... Obviously there are no official statistics on how many people who were left to die could've lived on, and for how long.

m-i-l 7y ago

The bottom line is that every virus strategy is going to be "risking lives". From the "do nothing and hope it goes away" strategy to the "shut everything down and hope it goes away" strategy, through all the "flattening the curve" strategies in between, they're all going to be risking lives, given no-one really knows how this is going to work out. But one thing I do know is that now is not the time for political grandstanding or international conflict. We're all in this together as a planet, and our best chance of getting through it is by working together. And I also know I would prefer to listen to a group of people who have spent their careers specialising in studying how infectious diseases spread. As the original article says, this list has "no leading experts in the science of the spread of diseases", and if anyone has taken the time to look at the list it is largely maths PhD students and the like. Which I guess is still better than the Silicon Valley charlatans and wannabe social media influencers who seem to be getting a disturbingly uncharacteristic amount of airtime on HN at the moment.

danielovichdk 7y ago

Solidarity my good people. That is one virtue you americans have, that A Lot of us europeans simply do not. It will be our downfall eventually, and the americans will perhaps conquer yet again, because you really are good at showing love and compassion. I mean that. Take care of yourselves and help where you can. Please.

m0zg 7y ago

They probably just ran the numbers and discovered they'd be risking fewer lives if they did what they are doing instead of shutting down their economy indefinitely. The latter, at a large enough scale, can be quite deadly too.

HugoDaniel 7y ago

Sweden is also taking similar measures

plughs 7y ago

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/andrew-sullivan-reality-arrives-to-the-trump-era.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/andrew-sullivan-real... This is a really insightful article from Andrew Sullivan where he compares the initial reaction to the Coronavirus to the initial reactions to AIDS. For too long the homosexual community was in denial about the level of risk. The wanted to think that it would blow over, and no dramatic changes were needed. Sullivan sees the echos now. A lot of people are still determined to downplay it, as though it proves some sort of moral victory over the people stocking up on toilet paper. The reality is that things may not go back to 'normal' for a long time.

mirekrusin 7y ago

I don't get this narrative, everybody on the planet earth is currently relying on "heard immunity". What they don't agree on is about measures to take, which is two-dimentional slider (time, social distancing) that outputs multidimentional output of - time, age group death rate/absolute count, nhs capacity, economic impact, heard immunity, retransmission etc. On one side I'm impressed by the world's rapid response. On the other hand I'm surprised how poor published scientific modeling/decision making is. We know pretty much all of parameters we need to know by now. Making an online model should be as easy as interview task for data scientist. And we have greatest minds focusing/ready to dedicate time to it. Why are we doing fruitless political arguments? Just share the model and data on github. Refine it every day with new data. I'd start with real estimated infection counts (they can be derived from official confirmed infection counts by mapping on age weighted symptoms that require hospitalisation - those people are tested only plus incubation period estimated population - those people will not be tested but they are infected). Any current estimate I've seen seems to lag in time if you take under account incubation period (4d) and real estimated infection count vs confimed cases (5x+). We need plots for next 3 years or so with breakthrough placeholders - ie. it is highly unlikely that we won't have cure at some level to deal with it in 3 years from now. It is highly speculative game if you estimate further in the future, yes, but medium term there should be obvious optimal decision.

pier25 7y ago

I live in Mexico where the government has been heavily criticized for not making more tests even to people with symptoms. They are taking very tepid measures. Schools will close by the end of next week and there will be recommended social distancing measures starting in about 10 days. This weekend there is a huge festival in Mexico City with about 70k assistants every day (Vive Latino). Monday is a national holiday so millions of Mexicans are traveling all over the country. Mexico City has +20M people and a very fragile public health system. Every month only the underground moves 130M passengers. I hope I'm wrong on this but I fear this will be one of the worse impacted cities on Earth. Thankfully we do not live there but we've been on self imposed lockdown for about a week anyway.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

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