7 ms·

I'm not sure there is a consensus against it. I've seen a few articles like this (which is worrying) but articles in favour of the status quo tend to not get so

I'm not sure there is a consensus against it. I've seen a few articles like this (which is worrying) but articles in favour of the status quo tend to not get so much prominence. I really hope the government knows what it's doing. They have promised to publish their models, so hopefully that will give some more confidence.

mytailorisrich 7y ago
The government has somewhat changed the message and they are now saying that their priority is to save lives, which does sound like contradicting their previous message of rapid herd immunity.
- grey-area 7y ago
  They’ve never had a message of rapid herd immunity, unless by rapid you mean spread out over 6-8 months. The whole point is to avoid either a slow burn (where it comes back at the worst time in winter) or a fast burn (where health services are overwhelmed). Maybe their models are wrong, maybe other approaches will work better, but I like they are having an honest grown up discussion about it instead of insisting eradication is possible, or that there are no tradeoffs to be made and total global lockdown of society for 6 months is the answer (which apart from being of questionable efficacy would certainly cause another Great Depression and more deaths from poverty).
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    6-8 months is rapid! That's 40+ million cases during that period and impossible to manage for the health services. This is actually a fast burn. Everyone agrees on that. Whether eradication is possible or not, the FACT is that 6-8 months is extremely fast and can only lead to a collapse of the health services.
    - grey-area 7y ago
      I agree it is far more rapid than we’d like, but the options are not clear cut, there is no good choice with a guaranteed outcome, as this article indicates, experts disagree significantly on how to approach this, and due to a lack of data we will not know till after the fact.
      - mytailorisrich 7y ago
        One option leads to the inevitable collapse of the health services. That much is clear cut.
        grey-area 7y ago
        The UK gov and their scientific advisors disagree with you or they’d be taking a different course. This really is not clear cut, if we’re being honest, nobody really knows at this stage, there are too many unknowns.
        mytailorisrich 7y ago
        It is clear cut and the government does not necessarily disagree with me. Handling that many cases over that short period is simply mathematically impossible considering the health care resources available. That is not an opinion, even the Health Secretary acknowledged that today. They took the course they took knowing that.
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    The fact they haven't published their models worries me. At a minimum, I'd like to know what their models are optimizing for. Is it "Minimum number of deaths" or "Minimum economic cost", or "Minimum economic cost taking into account a cost of $XM per death". Minimum number of deaths probably isn't a smart metric, because the solution to that is to tell 99% of people to stay home in bed for the rest of their lives. Hard to catch a disease if you never leave bed. Minimum economic cost (with a factor for cost of a death) is hopefully the model they've used, but it's politically suicide to accept that grandpas life was 'worth' $X.
    - sgt101 7y ago
      It's pretty challenging to get a model published in the time span required - I believe that the team at Imperial College are racing to do this, but given the behaviour of the virus is still a topic of research it's unsurprising that they are not out there at this time.
      - londons_explore 7y ago
        A model can begin as a spreadsheet with a handful of guesstimates in. You can start making decisions based on such a model. Then in parallel, you get teams refining the model and making it more accurate, while other teams work on implementing those preliminary decisions, potentially changing course if newer, more refined, models come up with different results. There's no reason the crude model can't be published 1 hour after it was made. If anything, publishing the model will help localized branches of government make their own decisions ('hmm, looks like we'll be expecting lots of ambulance use at the end of march, that isn't a good time for the fleet inspection!'). Private companies would also benefit from the model, and can better schedule logistics. Even a hugely inaccurate model is better than "who knows! panic!".
      - tigershark 7y ago
        A model has nothing to do with the underlying data. If they thought that the model was good enough to justify the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people they should release it right now, so we all can take a look at that abomination and decide for ourselves if they should be prosecuted for mass murder in a couple of months.
  - nullc 7y ago
    > fast burn (where health services are overwhelmed). To reach 'heard immunity', if it is even possible at all for sars-cov-2-- there is good reason to expect that it won't be-- without overwhelming critical care will, unfortunately, take years. Unfortunately, too great a percentage of cases need critical care. Even with places trying to mitigate-- with the exception of the few places where it was actually contained-- their ICUs are going to be (or are already being) overrun. > , but I like they are having an honest grown up discussion about it There is no evidence of this. Experts have been calling on the UK to publish their models and so far they have declined to do so. I would take a sizable bet that no such models exist which support their initial stance (which they are slowly and quietly backing away from, and moving to a position much more like other western countries).
  - tigershark 7y ago
    In wuhan it was eradicated, in South Korea it is well under control, in Italy it’s still exploding as of today even if they locked down everything last week, but in about 1 week we should see the effects of the containment. Uk was two weeks behind Italy, they already could see the future and they decided to throw away that fundamental advantage that they had by not doing anything at all.
- sgt101 7y ago
  I think that a great deal of attention is focused on a few words. The fundamental focus in the UK is on Delay - that is even the title (hence the uppercase) of the reaction phase the UK has entered. From the official plan [1] "If the disease becomes established in the UK, we will need to consider further measures to reduce the rate and extent of its spread. Based on experience with previous outbreaks, it may be that widespread exposure in the UK is inevitable; but slowing it down would still nonetheless be beneficial." and "Action that would be considered could include population distancing strategies (such as school closures, encouraging greater home working, reducing the number of large-scale gatherings) to slow the spread of the disease throughout the population, while ensuring the country’s ability to continue to run as normally as possible. The UK governments’ education departments’ planning assumptions include the possibility of having to close educational settings in order to reduce the spread of infection. We would consider such measures in order to protect vulnerable individuals with underlying illnesses and thus at greater more at risk of becoming seriously affected by the disease. The effectiveness of these actions will need to be balanced against their impact on society." [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-action-plan/coronavirus-action-plan-a-guide-to-what-you-can-expect-across-the-uk https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-actio...
stevenwoo 7y ago
Starting on about page 14 - a sizeable majority of USA voters who claim to prefer the GOP or claim to be independent do not think this covid-19 pandemic is a big deal. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6810602-200149-NBCWSJ-March-Poll-Final-3-14-20-Release.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6810602-200149-NBCWS...

mytailorisrich 7y ago

The government has somewhat changed the message and they are now saying that their priority is to save lives, which does sound like contradicting their previous message of rapid herd immunity.

grey-area 7y ago
They’ve never had a message of rapid herd immunity, unless by rapid you mean spread out over 6-8 months. The whole point is to avoid either a slow burn (where it comes back at the worst time in winter) or a fast burn (where health services are overwhelmed). Maybe their models are wrong, maybe other approaches will work better, but I like they are having an honest grown up discussion about it instead of insisting eradication is possible, or that there are no tradeoffs to be made and total global lockdown of society for 6 months is the answer (which apart from being of questionable efficacy would certainly cause another Great Depression and more deaths from poverty).
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  6-8 months is rapid! That's 40+ million cases during that period and impossible to manage for the health services. This is actually a fast burn. Everyone agrees on that. Whether eradication is possible or not, the FACT is that 6-8 months is extremely fast and can only lead to a collapse of the health services.
  - grey-area 7y ago
    I agree it is far more rapid than we’d like, but the options are not clear cut, there is no good choice with a guaranteed outcome, as this article indicates, experts disagree significantly on how to approach this, and due to a lack of data we will not know till after the fact.
    - mytailorisrich 7y ago
      One option leads to the inevitable collapse of the health services. That much is clear cut.
      - grey-area 7y ago
        The UK gov and their scientific advisors disagree with you or they’d be taking a different course. This really is not clear cut, if we’re being honest, nobody really knows at this stage, there are too many unknowns.
        mytailorisrich 7y ago
        It is clear cut and the government does not necessarily disagree with me. Handling that many cases over that short period is simply mathematically impossible considering the health care resources available. That is not an opinion, even the Health Secretary acknowledged that today. They took the course they took knowing that.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  The fact they haven't published their models worries me. At a minimum, I'd like to know what their models are optimizing for. Is it "Minimum number of deaths" or "Minimum economic cost", or "Minimum economic cost taking into account a cost of $XM per death". Minimum number of deaths probably isn't a smart metric, because the solution to that is to tell 99% of people to stay home in bed for the rest of their lives. Hard to catch a disease if you never leave bed. Minimum economic cost (with a factor for cost of a death) is hopefully the model they've used, but it's politically suicide to accept that grandpas life was 'worth' $X.
  - sgt101 7y ago
    It's pretty challenging to get a model published in the time span required - I believe that the team at Imperial College are racing to do this, but given the behaviour of the virus is still a topic of research it's unsurprising that they are not out there at this time.
    - londons_explore 7y ago
      A model can begin as a spreadsheet with a handful of guesstimates in. You can start making decisions based on such a model. Then in parallel, you get teams refining the model and making it more accurate, while other teams work on implementing those preliminary decisions, potentially changing course if newer, more refined, models come up with different results. There's no reason the crude model can't be published 1 hour after it was made. If anything, publishing the model will help localized branches of government make their own decisions ('hmm, looks like we'll be expecting lots of ambulance use at the end of march, that isn't a good time for the fleet inspection!'). Private companies would also benefit from the model, and can better schedule logistics. Even a hugely inaccurate model is better than "who knows! panic!".
    - tigershark 7y ago
      A model has nothing to do with the underlying data. If they thought that the model was good enough to justify the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people they should release it right now, so we all can take a look at that abomination and decide for ourselves if they should be prosecuted for mass murder in a couple of months.
- nullc 7y ago
  > fast burn (where health services are overwhelmed). To reach 'heard immunity', if it is even possible at all for sars-cov-2-- there is good reason to expect that it won't be-- without overwhelming critical care will, unfortunately, take years. Unfortunately, too great a percentage of cases need critical care. Even with places trying to mitigate-- with the exception of the few places where it was actually contained-- their ICUs are going to be (or are already being) overrun. > , but I like they are having an honest grown up discussion about it There is no evidence of this. Experts have been calling on the UK to publish their models and so far they have declined to do so. I would take a sizable bet that no such models exist which support their initial stance (which they are slowly and quietly backing away from, and moving to a position much more like other western countries).
- tigershark 7y ago
  In wuhan it was eradicated, in South Korea it is well under control, in Italy it’s still exploding as of today even if they locked down everything last week, but in about 1 week we should see the effects of the containment. Uk was two weeks behind Italy, they already could see the future and they decided to throw away that fundamental advantage that they had by not doing anything at all.
sgt101 7y ago
I think that a great deal of attention is focused on a few words. The fundamental focus in the UK is on Delay - that is even the title (hence the uppercase) of the reaction phase the UK has entered. From the official plan [1] "If the disease becomes established in the UK, we will need to consider further measures to reduce the rate and extent of its spread. Based on experience with previous outbreaks, it may be that widespread exposure in the UK is inevitable; but slowing it down would still nonetheless be beneficial." and "Action that would be considered could include population distancing strategies (such as school closures, encouraging greater home working, reducing the number of large-scale gatherings) to slow the spread of the disease throughout the population, while ensuring the country’s ability to continue to run as normally as possible. The UK governments’ education departments’ planning assumptions include the possibility of having to close educational settings in order to reduce the spread of infection. We would consider such measures in order to protect vulnerable individuals with underlying illnesses and thus at greater more at risk of becoming seriously affected by the disease. The effectiveness of these actions will need to be balanced against their impact on society." [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-action-plan/coronavirus-action-plan-a-guide-to-what-you-can-expect-across-the-uk https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-actio...

stevenwoo 7y ago

Starting on about page 14 - a sizeable majority of USA voters who claim to prefer the GOP or claim to be independent do not think this covid-19 pandemic is a big deal. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6810602-200149-NBCWSJ-March-Poll-Final-3-14-20-Release.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6810602-200149-NBCWS...