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It's a reasonable opinion piece and I agree with a lot of it -- particularly not having Cummings in SAGE meetings and the embarrassing state of PPE, but; "he f

It's a reasonable opinion piece and I agree with a lot of it -- particularly not having Cummings in SAGE meetings and the embarrassing state of PPE, but; "he floated an approach to “build up some degree of herd immunity” founded on an erroneous view that the vast majority of cases would be mild, like influenza" as far as anyone knows, they are. the (limited) data we have is making a strong case for that. and in any case, 'some degree of herd immunity' wasn't the policy, it was (and still is) an inevitable outcome we'll need to wait on Roche's antibody test to have a robust sense of how succesful our delayed lockdown (or sweden's complete lack of lockdown) worked

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
You've just written off 50,000 excess [1] deaths in the UK and 90,000 deaths in the US as "limited data." And also repeated the lie about "herd immunity" somehow being a thing that magically happens because of exposure, and not because of vaccines. (It doesn't. Ask any surviving polio victims how "herd immunity" worked out for them.) [1] Excess meaning those people would not have died for some time yet - decades for those front-line workers who were in their 30s/40s/50s.
- butler14 6y ago
  Raw death counts is only part of the picture. My reference to 'limited data' relates to the other side of the coin -- the long tail of people who have had it and who haven't died. We have solid projections of what number that might be based on random sampling and extrapolation. But we need a decent antibody test (and frankly, time) before drawing any conclusions. And all the evidence I've personally seen suggests that SARS-CoV-2 trains your immune system -- and that consensus is that it will. And if you accept that, you accept that some degree of herd immunity is an inevitability.
DanBC 6y ago
> 'some degree of herd immunity' wasn't the policy, It was the policy. They were pursuing herd immunity. They were talking about cocooning vulnerable people so everyone else could go about their normal activity, get infected, and develop herd immunity. We have government advisors saying this.
- butler14 6y ago
  I disagree. The UK strategy was to not pull the trigger on lock down too early, and then to flatten the curve in a way that fills our front line health service's capacity without overstretching it. All while increasing numbers of beds, ventilators and distributing PPE as widely as possible. That's broadly what's happened.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    https://twitter.com/BBCMarkEaston/status/1237694665824047111 https://twitter.com/BBCMarkEaston/status/1237694665824047111 "There's going to be a point, assuming the epidemic flows and grows as we think it probably will do, where you'll want to cocoon -protect- those at-risk groups so that basically they don't catch the disease, and by the time they come out of their cocooning herd immunity has been achieved in the rest of the population". It's clear from this that the policy was to achieve herd immunity. Without a vaccine the only way to get herd immunity is to let everyone catch it. You don't want vulnerable people to die so you cocoon them, but you want everyone else to get it as soon as possible. This is why mass events (eg, cheltenham gold cup) were allowed to go ahead; this is why the lockdowns were late and weak; and this is why so many people in the UK have died.
    - butler14 6y ago
      that's a pretty cynical interpretation that confuses the practical and biological inevitability (herd immunity) with one of the many method(s) by which we get there (shielding vulnerable groups) a great many things have gone wrong -- but I don't think the overarching UK strategy, or even the timing of executing it -- has necessarily been one, based on existing data

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

You've just written off 50,000 excess [1] deaths in the UK and 90,000 deaths in the US as "limited data." And also repeated the lie about "herd immunity" somehow being a thing that magically happens because of exposure, and not because of vaccines. (It doesn't. Ask any surviving polio victims how "herd immunity" worked out for them.) [1] Excess meaning those people would not have died for some time yet - decades for those front-line workers who were in their 30s/40s/50s.

butler14 6y ago
Raw death counts is only part of the picture. My reference to 'limited data' relates to the other side of the coin -- the long tail of people who have had it and who haven't died. We have solid projections of what number that might be based on random sampling and extrapolation. But we need a decent antibody test (and frankly, time) before drawing any conclusions. And all the evidence I've personally seen suggests that SARS-CoV-2 trains your immune system -- and that consensus is that it will. And if you accept that, you accept that some degree of herd immunity is an inevitability.

DanBC 6y ago

> 'some degree of herd immunity' wasn't the policy, It was the policy. They were pursuing herd immunity. They were talking about cocooning vulnerable people so everyone else could go about their normal activity, get infected, and develop herd immunity. We have government advisors saying this.

butler14 6y ago
I disagree. The UK strategy was to not pull the trigger on lock down too early, and then to flatten the curve in a way that fills our front line health service's capacity without overstretching it. All while increasing numbers of beds, ventilators and distributing PPE as widely as possible. That's broadly what's happened.
- DanBC 6y ago
  https://twitter.com/BBCMarkEaston/status/1237694665824047111 https://twitter.com/BBCMarkEaston/status/1237694665824047111 "There's going to be a point, assuming the epidemic flows and grows as we think it probably will do, where you'll want to cocoon -protect- those at-risk groups so that basically they don't catch the disease, and by the time they come out of their cocooning herd immunity has been achieved in the rest of the population". It's clear from this that the policy was to achieve herd immunity. Without a vaccine the only way to get herd immunity is to let everyone catch it. You don't want vulnerable people to die so you cocoon them, but you want everyone else to get it as soon as possible. This is why mass events (eg, cheltenham gold cup) were allowed to go ahead; this is why the lockdowns were late and weak; and this is why so many people in the UK have died.
  - butler14 6y ago
    that's a pretty cynical interpretation that confuses the practical and biological inevitability (herd immunity) with one of the many method(s) by which we get there (shielding vulnerable groups) a great many things have gone wrong -- but I don't think the overarching UK strategy, or even the timing of executing it -- has necessarily been one, based on existing data