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No, the worst thing is that this was avoidable and the rest of the world pleaded with the a UKGOV to abandon its criminally insane herd immunity plan, take its

No, the worst thing is that this was avoidable and the rest of the world pleaded with the a UKGOV to abandon its criminally insane herd immunity plan, take its head out of the sand and take evasive action. This is nothing less than a complete failure of leadership. Apologies for being strong worded and political, but it really boils my blood.

arcticbull 7y ago
The herd immunity plan was probably the most rational plan any government put forward. Instead, due to the irrational panic of the population, we've got this. I'm fairly confident time will show leadership was right, and the people wrong, as they tend to be in times of overwhelming uncertainty. The average age of COVID-19 fatalities in Italy is 80, median 82.5, and 99% of them had co-morbid conditions (an average of 3 comorbid conditions). In China the average age was mid-high 70s. Almost nobody outside a risk category has died so far. [1] These folks were on death's doorstep as is. If I'm not mistaken the plan was, rationally, to lock them inside while the problem sorted itself out. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-tho...
- disgruntledphd2 7y ago
  The only (small) problem with the herd immunity plan was that it would overwhelm the capacity of the NHS to deal with it.
  - dijit 7y ago
    The other (small) problem with herd immunity is that it assumes immunity for a long period, which has no evidence to support it. Another (small) problem is that there is permanent tissue damage in the lungs in those that recover.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      > The other (small) problem with herd immunity is that it assumes immunity for a long period, which has no evidence to support it. True that we don’t know that conclusively here yet, although I wonder if we could base it off other similar viruses. Nobody to my knowledge has been reinfected. Speaking of no evidence... > Another (small) problem is that there is permanent tissue damage in the lungs in those that recover. There is no evidence of that in COVID-19 yet. That doesn’t mean it won’t show up, but it doesn’t mean it will. You’re referencing something that happened in related SARS and MERS diseases which killed over 35%, not 0.35%, of those infected. It’s easily a 2 orders of magnitude worse disease. If you have data or studies share them. Otherwise, stop fearmongering.
      - dijit 7y ago
        Succinctly; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtN-goy9VOY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtN-goy9VOY Their very nice citations: https://sites.google.com/view/sourcescorona https://sites.google.com/view/sourcescorona Mine: Coronavirus' (common cold) and immunity: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=819038431 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=819038431 COVID-19's permanent impact to the lungs: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/24/coronavirus-what-happens-to-peoples-lungs-if-they-get-covid-19 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/24/coronavirus-wh... -- On a more personal note: "fearmongering" is preferred over loss of life here. We will never know if we did too much to prevent this. But we will definitely know if we did too little. Obviously I'm not asking people to panic, in fact, the opposite. Calm, reasonable and responsible actions do not preclude worry and having a healthy amount of fear for you and your loved ones.
        arcticbull 7y ago
        > Obviously I'm not asking people to panic, in fact, the opposite. Calm, reasonable and responsible actions do not preclude worry and having a healthy amount of fear for you and your loved ones. Out of the 4 links, I skimmed the YouTube video, read the citations, and both of your links. Neither of your links refer to permanent effects after recovery. The only thing in the citations they're referencing to back up their claim is a one-line exerpt from the WHO report: 'Quote: “Lung tissue also displayed cellular and fibromyxoid exudation,desquamation of pneumocytes and pulmonary oedema.”' This appears to describe the actual condition of people with the disease as they have the disease, not after. They they go on to cite a study about the much more dangerous SARS-COV-1. As I said, nothing so far indicates that we will see permanent lung damage, certainly not in the vast majority of cases. It may happen, it may not, but it remains too soon to know for sure. > On a more personal note: "fearmongering" is preferred over loss of life here. As you may have noticed people tend not to react well in panic/fear situations, saturate very quickly and become very much irrational. It isn't always true IMO that fearmongering should be the go-to in difficult times when we have to make life or death decisions with limited data.
- pjc50 7y ago
  How many dead are you expecting?
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    I think he's not expecting the dead to include himself. So he's okay with it.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    Depends where you slice the group to go out as normal. If it's under-40s, then 0-0.1%, which is likely a blip compared to things like smoking, driving, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, etc.
    - DanBC 7y ago
      It's a simple question and it deserves your honest answer. How many dead people are you expecting?
      - arcticbull 7y ago
        Well, based on this chart aggregating data from South Korea, China, Spain and Italy [1] (and while from Twitter, I have verified the data points line up) People under 10, nobody has died yet. In the 10-19 category, the CFR is between 0 and 0.45% In the 20-29 category, the CFR is between 0 and 0.31% In the 30-39 category, it's between 0.1 and 0.3%. So let's say they decide anyone under 40 with no co-morbid conditions should go out while the rest remain indoors. I'd say we're looking at a CFR of 0 to 0.1% so in terms of numbers, that would be between 0 and (33% of the population * 0.1% * 66M) ~20K people, max. That's in line with the ~15K flu deaths per year in a bad flu season in the UK. And that's assuming young people with co-morbidities do a bad job of staying inside. [1] https://twitter.com/AndyBiotech/status/1241741127205572609?s=20 https://twitter.com/AndyBiotech/status/1241741127205572609?s...
    - bonzini 7y ago
      That % assumes a perfectly functional healthcare system. If it gets clogged, the ICU % is a much better proxy for how many people would die. Do you have stats for the frequency of hospitalizations in the 20-50 years old range?
- lordnacho 7y ago
  Irrational panic, signed by hundreds of experts? It's clear that if we'd just allowed the disease to take its course, the hospital system would be overwhelmed.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    Are experts not human, and therefore immune to panic?
    - lordnacho 7y ago
      Really? Hundreds of them? Writing and signing a letter together, based on years of research? But the cool heads in charge who studied classics are right of course.
      - arcticbull 7y ago
        > But the cool heads in charge who studied classics are right of course. Clearly not, as evidenced by their lack of proceeding with the plan. That's my point.
        addicted44 7y ago
        Random HNers though are obviously the best authorities though.
  - Malcx 7y ago
    How many of those experts were epidemiologists or virologists? Iirc there was 1 microbiologist there but mostly people from math and physics departments. 20% or so were still PhD students...
    - Daishiman 7y ago
      All the pandemic experts who studied and worked with other SARS varieties have the message. I'm not seeing any of those guys saying the threat of COVID-19 is overestimated.
- bonzini 7y ago
  It was the most rational. However it also involved the death of hundreds of thousands of people in the process.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    It did not involve the death of hundreds of thousands. They did not elect Thanos prime minister.
    - bonzini 7y ago
      Sure it did. Let's assume the infected population grows as s(x)=1/(1+e^-x). About 99% of the curve lies from -5 to 5, so let's ignore the rest to simplify the math. Let's then assume that 99% of the people are infected over the course of 180 days, so 1 day is h=10/180=0.055 on s(x). That's a decent attempt at "flattening the curve". The curve goes from 0 to 1, so if for example s(h/2)-s(-h/2)=0.014, this tells you that around the peak of the infection, 1.4% of the infected population will get the disease in a single day. With 70% of the population getting infected, that's a lot of people (about a million in a single day). Let's be super optimistic and say that 70% of people getting it means 7% having symptoms and 0.7% needing an ICU bed (younger people also get bad cases, even though the median age of death is high; they just survive thanks to the treatment). Problem is they will need it for 3 weeks (~20 days) so you need a lot of beds. Specifically s(10h)-s(-10h) = 0.27, that is, 27% of the infected population will get the disease in the 3 weeks around the peak. At this point 27% * 70% * 0.7% of the UK population needs ICU beds at the same time. That's 80000 people, but the country has just 4000 ICU beds. Those that couldn't be treated would die, and that's just in the 3 weeks around the peak. It's safe to say that for most of those 6 months the NHS would be so overwhelmed that close to 0.7% * 70% of the UK population would die. It's a back of the envelope calculation, only the order of magnitude makes sense. But still, it's in the hundreds of thousands. So yes, unless Johnson could find tens of thousands of ICU beds in the next few weeks (because the numbers would reach 10000 or so long before that peak point) those many people would die from lack of treatment. And the NHS would be completely clogged, so more people would die preventable deaths due to lack of room for treating non-COVID-related patients.
    - 7y ago
- ben_w 7y ago
  It is not rational to ignore entirely predictable parts of human crowd dynamics. Even if you could override human behaviour, there is still concern that the virus will mutate to fast for anything remotely similar to herd immunity to be possible.
- throwawayspain 7y ago
  You have no clue whats going on in Madrid right now. The worst is yet to come. Learn from your neighbour's mistakes. Exponential is real bitch.
- jskrablin 7y ago
  No it wasn't. Your own scientists came forward with numbers on the cost. And it was too high. Health care system would (it might still) crash, leading to a lot of extra deaths and other unpleasant consequences like backlog of non urgent checkups which can turn out to be urgent several months later. And please f*ck off with 'only old people die from COVID-19'. Old people with 3 comorbid conditions deserve better than to be left to die because some smartasses feel like it. And there are other groups of people risking dire consequences of COVID-19. Like people with weak immune system. Or ones with diabetes. Or ones being treated for cancer. Should we write off them too?
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    > And please fck off with 'only old people die from COVID-19'. Old people with 3 comorbid conditions deserve better than to be left to die because some smartasses feel like it. And there are other groups of people risking dire consequences of COVID-19. Like people with weak immune system. Or ones with diabetes. Or ones being treated for cancer. Should we write off them too? Nobody said that, you didn't read my post. (1) People in risk categories are at risk. One of which is being old, and another is having a comorbid condition, and a huge one is having 3 comorbid conditions while being 82.5. That's a risk category for getting out of your bed in the morning. (2) Those people, the old, and with comorbid conditions, were to isolate, as they are doing literally right now. (3) The whole point behind the process was to create a protective buffer around them, otherwise they wouldn't be calling for their isolation. Take a deep breath.
    - DanBC 7y ago
      Where "risk category" includes "has diabetes and high blood pressure" -- these are not what most people think of as high risk conditions.
      - arcticbull 7y ago
        Yeah. Did you not think someone was going to tell them before they kicked off the plan?
- PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  > The herd immunity plan was probably the most rational plan any government put forward. It was rational in a parallel world free & infinite healthcare workers + ventilators.
  - dingaling 7y ago
    Or rational where ICU beds and ventilators would only be used for those with a chance of survival. Brutal, but rational. Tying up resources on an 82yo with two underlying health conditions is not rational.
    - dijit 7y ago
      I'm trying to find a polite way to word this and failing: The moral stance you are taking here is abhorrent and I disagree with it to my very core.
      - arcticbull 7y ago
        As do I, as that was never their plan. Their plan was to isolate the aged and the at-risk, well away from those who may infect them, and send everyone else who wouldn't get horribly sick out. This would create a protective barrier around the old and sick. Nobody has proposed what dingaling has suggested.
- DanBC 7y ago
  People keep banging on about who dies. That's not the point. Hospitals become overwhelmed with people who need an ICU bed, and a ventilator, and oxygen, and intubation, for weeks. Sure, they go on to recover, but while they're in those beds it means the health system can't provide other treatment. All those hips and knees go un-replaced; a bunch of cancer care gets cancelled; people involved in accidents go without care. Even if you ignore anyone over 80[1] you still have hospitals full of people who need intensive care. Watch this video. It's not 80 year olds lying on the floors. This is in Spain, a country with a world-class healthcare system: https://twitter.com/shuja_2006/status/1242161754768953344?s=20 https://twitter.com/shuja_2006/status/1242161754768953344?s=... This video shows a mix of ages. https://twitter.com/WellingMichael/status/1241452198426484743?s=20 https://twitter.com/WellingMichael/status/124145219842648474... Here's Spain building a field hospital to cope with the numbers: https://twitter.com/VOANews/status/1241882351115939847?s=20 https://twitter.com/VOANews/status/1241882351115939847?s=20 Herd immunity hasn't worked. It's been a catastrophic failure that's flooded hospitals with very ill people.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    > People keep banging on about who dies. That's not the point. That's 100% the point. If you know who they are you can isolate them. > Herd immunity hasn't worked. It's been a catastrophic failure that's flooded hospitals with very ill people. I assume that you know many people with Polio then?
    - DanBC 7y ago
      > That's 100% the point. If you know who they are you can isolate them. What do you do with everyone else?
      - arcticbull 7y ago
        Well, everyone's isolated now, so you let the young ones out.
        zozbot234 7y ago
- makomk 7y ago
  Possibly. The press keep pushing South Korea as a better alternative, but to be honest I'm not sure even the South Korean government believes their model is sustainable or viable. New clusters of cases that have escaped contact tracing keep popping up no matter what they do and are causing concern, folks are starting to worry about an autumn second wave there, and I don't think their testing has been as extensive as media reports have implied in important areas like nursing homes and hospitals. (There was a 75-person cluster at a nursing home in Daegu, probably the most heavily tested city in all South Korea, that they only discovered some time around Thursday.)
- maverick2007 7y ago
  Honest question (I initially reacted strongly against their herd immunity idea but I've started to rethink my position): Isn't there evidence that a high enough proportion of those low risk people would require hospitalization too and that would overwhelm the capacity? That's my only remaining concern about the idea.
  - addicted44 7y ago
    Of course they would. I won't even claim that severe lockdowns (which is not what anyone in the US or UK is facing) is the best solution. However, in the absence of almost any reliable knowledge, it's probably the ONLY rational plan based on the fact that the one thing we do know is the method of spreading, and locking down will prevent that spread.
  - alexisread 7y ago
    From what I've read of the statistics yes. In addition, 38% of hospitalizations in the UK are in the 20-54 age range, and this is also ignoring the fact that there isn't enough aftercare to discharge certain patients, again reducing capacity. FWIW I don't think herd immunity will work given that other corronaviruses (the common cold) mutate frequently, it is too early to tell, but TBH a risky move for any government which can see positive results from other approaches elsewhere. The current approach is really bourne out of a failure to act early - that $1 antibody testing kit was overlooked by ministers until it was pointed out to them by a journalist. That airports weren't locked down immediately with a 2 week mandatory quarantine, drafting ex-NHS staff only last week was 3 weeks late etc A cynic might point out that this virus is likely to kick the can down the road wrt pensions /ageing populations /finding an economic model not based around GDP/having more kids. There is a rumour that a senior MP made comments about collateral damage, if you were really cynical it might be pointed out that this constitutes a large portion of some parties' voter base. There are some silver linings- after all of this teachers are likely to be appreciated as is a national health service (Medicare anyone?), remote working will be easier, and there are some amazing stories of compassion out there!
  - patrec 7y ago
    Great, then you must be the perfect person to alleviate the following additional concerns I still have: - Isn't there a significant risk that immunity after infection might wear of too soon after infection for herd immunity to be practicable, at least without driving up the deaths yet further? - Isn't there a significant risk that we end up with a lot of people who survive but have long term health problems? - Wouldn't the fact that no one else seems to think herd immunity is such a hot idea any more mean the UK faces a high risk to be completely quarantined off by other countries? Brexit probably doesn't reduce the chances of that happening either. Could that not have a few bad economic and other effects? - Isn't there a significant risk that isolating vulnerable people or the infected in ICUs may not work as well as intended? What if a lot of nurses and doctors get infected and pass it on to other people who have no chronic problems but are temporarily weakened? What if it turns out that seeing a lot of people die miserably without being able to do much about it for weeks on end takes its toll on the current crop of health care professionals or the UK's ability to recruit future generations? - Wouldn't that most likely mean giving up on eradicating Covid-19 completely? Is it really desirable to permanently reduce life expectancy by keeping it around forever? - What if the virus changes in an unanticipated direction? Would the herd immunisation strategy not put exactly the type of evolutionary pressure on the virus that you don't want? Namely to become more virulent? Is that not a bit risky?
- patrec 7y ago
  Most people who compare Italy (and soon the UK) to say, South Korea or Taiwan would probably disagree with you. Also, whilst you might not mind a few hundred thousand or million dead pensioners, I assume at least some of them would rather spend time with their grandchildren than slowly suffocate amidst the remains of a collapsed health care system. Shouldn't the whole overwhelming uncertainty thing predispose you to not trying to infect a few billion people and see what happens? Did it ever occur to you that herd immunity via mass infection might either not work or could cause a lot of long term health problems in people who are not pensioners? If not, what makes you so sure?
- addicted44 7y ago
  Except those people followed strict lockdown policies that are even greater than this. You're talking about rationality and completely ignoring the fact that your numbers are based on areas where people have already taken the policies that you're saying are irrational.
  - dijit 7y ago
    Keep an eye on the deaths not the cases (since cases depend on access to testing), and bear in mind they lag about 1-2 weeks. In 2 weeks we'll know the true extent of how much the virus has spread today. We're behind always.
pjc50 7y ago
Indeed. The Cheltenham festival went ahead, for example. Several attendees confirmed infected, including overseas visitors. Good for another few thousand infections at least.

arcticbull 7y ago

The herd immunity plan was probably the most rational plan any government put forward. Instead, due to the irrational panic of the population, we've got this. I'm fairly confident time will show leadership was right, and the people wrong, as they tend to be in times of overwhelming uncertainty. The average age of COVID-19 fatalities in Italy is 80, median 82.5, and 99% of them had co-morbid conditions (an average of 3 comorbid conditions). In China the average age was mid-high 70s. Almost nobody outside a risk category has died so far. [1] These folks were on death's doorstep as is. If I'm not mistaken the plan was, rationally, to lock them inside while the problem sorted itself out. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-tho...

disgruntledphd2 7y ago
The only (small) problem with the herd immunity plan was that it would overwhelm the capacity of the NHS to deal with it.
- dijit 7y ago
  The other (small) problem with herd immunity is that it assumes immunity for a long period, which has no evidence to support it. Another (small) problem is that there is permanent tissue damage in the lungs in those that recover.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    > The other (small) problem with herd immunity is that it assumes immunity for a long period, which has no evidence to support it. True that we don’t know that conclusively here yet, although I wonder if we could base it off other similar viruses. Nobody to my knowledge has been reinfected. Speaking of no evidence... > Another (small) problem is that there is permanent tissue damage in the lungs in those that recover. There is no evidence of that in COVID-19 yet. That doesn’t mean it won’t show up, but it doesn’t mean it will. You’re referencing something that happened in related SARS and MERS diseases which killed over 35%, not 0.35%, of those infected. It’s easily a 2 orders of magnitude worse disease. If you have data or studies share them. Otherwise, stop fearmongering.
    - dijit 7y ago
      Succinctly; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtN-goy9VOY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtN-goy9VOY Their very nice citations: https://sites.google.com/view/sourcescorona https://sites.google.com/view/sourcescorona Mine: Coronavirus' (common cold) and immunity: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=819038431 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=819038431 COVID-19's permanent impact to the lungs: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/24/coronavirus-what-happens-to-peoples-lungs-if-they-get-covid-19 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/24/coronavirus-wh... -- On a more personal note: "fearmongering" is preferred over loss of life here. We will never know if we did too much to prevent this. But we will definitely know if we did too little. Obviously I'm not asking people to panic, in fact, the opposite. Calm, reasonable and responsible actions do not preclude worry and having a healthy amount of fear for you and your loved ones.
      - arcticbull 7y ago
        > Obviously I'm not asking people to panic, in fact, the opposite. Calm, reasonable and responsible actions do not preclude worry and having a healthy amount of fear for you and your loved ones. Out of the 4 links, I skimmed the YouTube video, read the citations, and both of your links. Neither of your links refer to permanent effects after recovery. The only thing in the citations they're referencing to back up their claim is a one-line exerpt from the WHO report: 'Quote: “Lung tissue also displayed cellular and fibromyxoid exudation,desquamation of pneumocytes and pulmonary oedema.”' This appears to describe the actual condition of people with the disease as they have the disease, not after. They they go on to cite a study about the much more dangerous SARS-COV-1. As I said, nothing so far indicates that we will see permanent lung damage, certainly not in the vast majority of cases. It may happen, it may not, but it remains too soon to know for sure. > On a more personal note: "fearmongering" is preferred over loss of life here. As you may have noticed people tend not to react well in panic/fear situations, saturate very quickly and become very much irrational. It isn't always true IMO that fearmongering should be the go-to in difficult times when we have to make life or death decisions with limited data.
pjc50 7y ago
How many dead are you expecting?
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  I think he's not expecting the dead to include himself. So he's okay with it.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  Depends where you slice the group to go out as normal. If it's under-40s, then 0-0.1%, which is likely a blip compared to things like smoking, driving, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, etc.
  - DanBC 7y ago
    It's a simple question and it deserves your honest answer. How many dead people are you expecting?
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      Well, based on this chart aggregating data from South Korea, China, Spain and Italy [1] (and while from Twitter, I have verified the data points line up) People under 10, nobody has died yet. In the 10-19 category, the CFR is between 0 and 0.45% In the 20-29 category, the CFR is between 0 and 0.31% In the 30-39 category, it's between 0.1 and 0.3%. So let's say they decide anyone under 40 with no co-morbid conditions should go out while the rest remain indoors. I'd say we're looking at a CFR of 0 to 0.1% so in terms of numbers, that would be between 0 and (33% of the population * 0.1% * 66M) ~20K people, max. That's in line with the ~15K flu deaths per year in a bad flu season in the UK. And that's assuming young people with co-morbidities do a bad job of staying inside. [1] https://twitter.com/AndyBiotech/status/1241741127205572609?s=20 https://twitter.com/AndyBiotech/status/1241741127205572609?s...
  - bonzini 7y ago
    That % assumes a perfectly functional healthcare system. If it gets clogged, the ICU % is a much better proxy for how many people would die. Do you have stats for the frequency of hospitalizations in the 20-50 years old range?
lordnacho 7y ago
Irrational panic, signed by hundreds of experts? It's clear that if we'd just allowed the disease to take its course, the hospital system would be overwhelmed.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  Are experts not human, and therefore immune to panic?
  - lordnacho 7y ago
    Really? Hundreds of them? Writing and signing a letter together, based on years of research? But the cool heads in charge who studied classics are right of course.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      > But the cool heads in charge who studied classics are right of course. Clearly not, as evidenced by their lack of proceeding with the plan. That's my point.
      - addicted44 7y ago
        Random HNers though are obviously the best authorities though.
- Malcx 7y ago
  How many of those experts were epidemiologists or virologists? Iirc there was 1 microbiologist there but mostly people from math and physics departments. 20% or so were still PhD students...
  - Daishiman 7y ago
    All the pandemic experts who studied and worked with other SARS varieties have the message. I'm not seeing any of those guys saying the threat of COVID-19 is overestimated.
bonzini 7y ago
It was the most rational. However it also involved the death of hundreds of thousands of people in the process.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  It did not involve the death of hundreds of thousands. They did not elect Thanos prime minister.
  - bonzini 7y ago
    Sure it did. Let's assume the infected population grows as s(x)=1/(1+e^-x). About 99% of the curve lies from -5 to 5, so let's ignore the rest to simplify the math. Let's then assume that 99% of the people are infected over the course of 180 days, so 1 day is h=10/180=0.055 on s(x). That's a decent attempt at "flattening the curve". The curve goes from 0 to 1, so if for example s(h/2)-s(-h/2)=0.014, this tells you that around the peak of the infection, 1.4% of the infected population will get the disease in a single day. With 70% of the population getting infected, that's a lot of people (about a million in a single day). Let's be super optimistic and say that 70% of people getting it means 7% having symptoms and 0.7% needing an ICU bed (younger people also get bad cases, even though the median age of death is high; they just survive thanks to the treatment). Problem is they will need it for 3 weeks (~20 days) so you need a lot of beds. Specifically s(10h)-s(-10h) = 0.27, that is, 27% of the infected population will get the disease in the 3 weeks around the peak. At this point 27% * 70% * 0.7% of the UK population needs ICU beds at the same time. That's 80000 people, but the country has just 4000 ICU beds. Those that couldn't be treated would die, and that's just in the 3 weeks around the peak. It's safe to say that for most of those 6 months the NHS would be so overwhelmed that close to 0.7% * 70% of the UK population would die. It's a back of the envelope calculation, only the order of magnitude makes sense. But still, it's in the hundreds of thousands. So yes, unless Johnson could find tens of thousands of ICU beds in the next few weeks (because the numbers would reach 10000 or so long before that peak point) those many people would die from lack of treatment. And the NHS would be completely clogged, so more people would die preventable deaths due to lack of room for treating non-COVID-related patients.
  - 7y ago
ben_w 7y ago
It is not rational to ignore entirely predictable parts of human crowd dynamics. Even if you could override human behaviour, there is still concern that the virus will mutate to fast for anything remotely similar to herd immunity to be possible.
throwawayspain 7y ago
You have no clue whats going on in Madrid right now. The worst is yet to come. Learn from your neighbour's mistakes. Exponential is real bitch.
jskrablin 7y ago
No it wasn't. Your own scientists came forward with numbers on the cost. And it was too high. Health care system would (it might still) crash, leading to a lot of extra deaths and other unpleasant consequences like backlog of non urgent checkups which can turn out to be urgent several months later. And please f*ck off with 'only old people die from COVID-19'. Old people with 3 comorbid conditions deserve better than to be left to die because some smartasses feel like it. And there are other groups of people risking dire consequences of COVID-19. Like people with weak immune system. Or ones with diabetes. Or ones being treated for cancer. Should we write off them too?
- arcticbull 7y ago
  > And please fck off with 'only old people die from COVID-19'. Old people with 3 comorbid conditions deserve better than to be left to die because some smartasses feel like it. And there are other groups of people risking dire consequences of COVID-19. Like people with weak immune system. Or ones with diabetes. Or ones being treated for cancer. Should we write off them too? Nobody said that, you didn't read my post. (1) People in risk categories are at risk. One of which is being old, and another is having a comorbid condition, and a huge one is having 3 comorbid conditions while being 82.5. That's a risk category for getting out of your bed in the morning. (2) Those people, the old, and with comorbid conditions, were to isolate, as they are doing literally right now. (3) The whole point behind the process was to create a protective buffer around them, otherwise they wouldn't be calling for their isolation. Take a deep breath.
  - DanBC 7y ago
    Where "risk category" includes "has diabetes and high blood pressure" -- these are not what most people think of as high risk conditions.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      Yeah. Did you not think someone was going to tell them before they kicked off the plan?
PopeDotNinja 7y ago
> The herd immunity plan was probably the most rational plan any government put forward. It was rational in a parallel world free & infinite healthcare workers + ventilators.
- dingaling 7y ago
  Or rational where ICU beds and ventilators would only be used for those with a chance of survival. Brutal, but rational. Tying up resources on an 82yo with two underlying health conditions is not rational.
  - dijit 7y ago
    I'm trying to find a polite way to word this and failing: The moral stance you are taking here is abhorrent and I disagree with it to my very core.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      As do I, as that was never their plan. Their plan was to isolate the aged and the at-risk, well away from those who may infect them, and send everyone else who wouldn't get horribly sick out. This would create a protective barrier around the old and sick. Nobody has proposed what dingaling has suggested.
DanBC 7y ago
People keep banging on about who dies. That's not the point. Hospitals become overwhelmed with people who need an ICU bed, and a ventilator, and oxygen, and intubation, for weeks. Sure, they go on to recover, but while they're in those beds it means the health system can't provide other treatment. All those hips and knees go un-replaced; a bunch of cancer care gets cancelled; people involved in accidents go without care. Even if you ignore anyone over 80[1] you still have hospitals full of people who need intensive care. Watch this video. It's not 80 year olds lying on the floors. This is in Spain, a country with a world-class healthcare system: https://twitter.com/shuja_2006/status/1242161754768953344?s=20 https://twitter.com/shuja_2006/status/1242161754768953344?s=... This video shows a mix of ages. https://twitter.com/WellingMichael/status/1241452198426484743?s=20 https://twitter.com/WellingMichael/status/124145219842648474... Here's Spain building a field hospital to cope with the numbers: https://twitter.com/VOANews/status/1241882351115939847?s=20 https://twitter.com/VOANews/status/1241882351115939847?s=20 Herd immunity hasn't worked. It's been a catastrophic failure that's flooded hospitals with very ill people.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  > People keep banging on about who dies. That's not the point. That's 100% the point. If you know who they are you can isolate them. > Herd immunity hasn't worked. It's been a catastrophic failure that's flooded hospitals with very ill people. I assume that you know many people with Polio then?
  - DanBC 7y ago
    > That's 100% the point. If you know who they are you can isolate them. What do you do with everyone else?
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      Well, everyone's isolated now, so you let the young ones out.
      - zozbot234 7y ago
makomk 7y ago
Possibly. The press keep pushing South Korea as a better alternative, but to be honest I'm not sure even the South Korean government believes their model is sustainable or viable. New clusters of cases that have escaped contact tracing keep popping up no matter what they do and are causing concern, folks are starting to worry about an autumn second wave there, and I don't think their testing has been as extensive as media reports have implied in important areas like nursing homes and hospitals. (There was a 75-person cluster at a nursing home in Daegu, probably the most heavily tested city in all South Korea, that they only discovered some time around Thursday.)
maverick2007 7y ago
Honest question (I initially reacted strongly against their herd immunity idea but I've started to rethink my position): Isn't there evidence that a high enough proportion of those low risk people would require hospitalization too and that would overwhelm the capacity? That's my only remaining concern about the idea.
- addicted44 7y ago
  Of course they would. I won't even claim that severe lockdowns (which is not what anyone in the US or UK is facing) is the best solution. However, in the absence of almost any reliable knowledge, it's probably the ONLY rational plan based on the fact that the one thing we do know is the method of spreading, and locking down will prevent that spread.
- alexisread 7y ago
  From what I've read of the statistics yes. In addition, 38% of hospitalizations in the UK are in the 20-54 age range, and this is also ignoring the fact that there isn't enough aftercare to discharge certain patients, again reducing capacity. FWIW I don't think herd immunity will work given that other corronaviruses (the common cold) mutate frequently, it is too early to tell, but TBH a risky move for any government which can see positive results from other approaches elsewhere. The current approach is really bourne out of a failure to act early - that $1 antibody testing kit was overlooked by ministers until it was pointed out to them by a journalist. That airports weren't locked down immediately with a 2 week mandatory quarantine, drafting ex-NHS staff only last week was 3 weeks late etc A cynic might point out that this virus is likely to kick the can down the road wrt pensions /ageing populations /finding an economic model not based around GDP/having more kids. There is a rumour that a senior MP made comments about collateral damage, if you were really cynical it might be pointed out that this constitutes a large portion of some parties' voter base. There are some silver linings- after all of this teachers are likely to be appreciated as is a national health service (Medicare anyone?), remote working will be easier, and there are some amazing stories of compassion out there!
- patrec 7y ago
  Great, then you must be the perfect person to alleviate the following additional concerns I still have: - Isn't there a significant risk that immunity after infection might wear of too soon after infection for herd immunity to be practicable, at least without driving up the deaths yet further? - Isn't there a significant risk that we end up with a lot of people who survive but have long term health problems? - Wouldn't the fact that no one else seems to think herd immunity is such a hot idea any more mean the UK faces a high risk to be completely quarantined off by other countries? Brexit probably doesn't reduce the chances of that happening either. Could that not have a few bad economic and other effects? - Isn't there a significant risk that isolating vulnerable people or the infected in ICUs may not work as well as intended? What if a lot of nurses and doctors get infected and pass it on to other people who have no chronic problems but are temporarily weakened? What if it turns out that seeing a lot of people die miserably without being able to do much about it for weeks on end takes its toll on the current crop of health care professionals or the UK's ability to recruit future generations? - Wouldn't that most likely mean giving up on eradicating Covid-19 completely? Is it really desirable to permanently reduce life expectancy by keeping it around forever? - What if the virus changes in an unanticipated direction? Would the herd immunisation strategy not put exactly the type of evolutionary pressure on the virus that you don't want? Namely to become more virulent? Is that not a bit risky?
patrec 7y ago
Most people who compare Italy (and soon the UK) to say, South Korea or Taiwan would probably disagree with you. Also, whilst you might not mind a few hundred thousand or million dead pensioners, I assume at least some of them would rather spend time with their grandchildren than slowly suffocate amidst the remains of a collapsed health care system. Shouldn't the whole overwhelming uncertainty thing predispose you to not trying to infect a few billion people and see what happens? Did it ever occur to you that herd immunity via mass infection might either not work or could cause a lot of long term health problems in people who are not pensioners? If not, what makes you so sure?
addicted44 7y ago
Except those people followed strict lockdown policies that are even greater than this. You're talking about rationality and completely ignoring the fact that your numbers are based on areas where people have already taken the policies that you're saying are irrational.
- dijit 7y ago
  Keep an eye on the deaths not the cases (since cases depend on access to testing), and bear in mind they lag about 1-2 weeks. In 2 weeks we'll know the true extent of how much the virus has spread today. We're behind always.

pjc50 7y ago

Indeed. The Cheltenham festival went ahead, for example. Several attendees confirmed infected, including overseas visitors. Good for another few thousand infections at least.