6 ms·

Boris Johnson’s gamble looks like it will pay off

22 points by forgingahead 5y ago

aktuel 5y ago
I just snorted a line of coke. It feels amazing. And I am productive like never before. Looks like it is paying off.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
addicted 5y ago
I think it’s good to see cases dropping which indicates that vaccines might be very effective beyond a certain point. But I wouldn’t start the celebrations just yet. What we could also be seeing is a drop from what was an extremely high peak caused by the Euros. The UK was seeing 50k+ cases, which is equivalent to 250-300k cases in the US, a threshold the US never reached even before the vaccine was ever created. Also, Boris Johnson had gambled many times. And it has cost tens of thousands of UK lives. Flipping heads twice on 9 tries is not something to be thrilled about.
- mrkramer 5y ago
  Allies gambled with Hitler and it costed them millions of life but history is written by the winners. It seems like politicians like to gamble in general not only with money but with people's lives.
  - loopz 5y ago
    Many countries set the example of taking precautions before risk and gamble. They've done well handling the pandemic and there's not much economic difference in the end.
- smorgusofborg 5y ago
  The trouble with giving non-technical leaders direct control and responsibilities for outcomes (as opposed to background people management roles with mostly indirect credit) is that the only way for them to demonstrate their "leadership" skills, which become the only requirement for their position, is by making decisions that stand out from ideas suggested by competent technical staff.
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    Going against expert recommendation gets attention, and that's about it. I think a good leader stands out by selecting good technical advisers getting their input, weighing the options and compromising between conflicting suggestions of those experts (e.g. doctor says shut down, economists say shut down will be disaster). And most of all, a good leader articulates the decision they made well and gets everyone in the leadership team on the same page, singing the same song, and leading by example (like wearing a mask in public) so that the people they lead follow along.
- salamandersauce 5y ago
  The US peaked at 300K cases in January. They're still trending up right now.
orobinson 5y ago
One hypothesis is this is due to schools closing for the summer holidays. The month long UK lockdown in November last year where schools remained open did not slow the rate of cases as much as the April 2020 and January 2021 lockdowns where schools were closed. Perhaps schools closing is the key to slowing the spread of the virus, especially now that the only significantly unvaccinated part of the population is under-18s.
randomopining 5y ago
Doesn't it make sense to do exactly this? Once your population reaches MAX VAX (tm) you let everybody get the variant that you still have solid protection against. They then get natural immunity to the latest and greatest. Herd immunity achieved going into the winter. The future variants (Delta+++) will probably have full escape ability against the almost 2 year old vaccine. But they will be much closer to the current Delta. Thus widespread boosted natural immunity will help carry the load as these new variants emerge. By the time the Delta-based booster gets produced, it will be too late.
Traster 5y ago
I think it's important to remember that this isn't a gamble. It's not like the UK government made some super smart carefully timed decision to relax restrictions. In March 2020 he locked down for 12 weeks, then in April he extended it for a minimum of 3 weeks, then in May he announced plans to open back up, cases soar and people die, so then they continue opening up but locking down individual cities. In August they open up restaurants and pay people to go to them, cases soar and people die, so they put in some new rules. October, they add even in more rules, but it's too little too late and we're back in a lockdown, December comes and we got to a tiered system, by mid december practically nowhere is in the bottom tier, it's becoming increasingly clear that another lockdown is needed and so they invent an even more stringent tier to lock down. Keen to have a christmas break he eases rules for Christmas and we're back in lockdown by January 6th. This isn't some careful bet by the UK government that now is the time to do this, it's a very simple pattern - be massively over-optimistic about how well you're controlling the virus, open up things too early with too few restrictions and hope for the best.
- IMTDb 5y ago
  There is not chance to eradicate COVID any time soon. Or maybe ever. It's been pretty clear for 12+ month now that society will have to learn to live with covid, including a certain amount of COVID related death. The lockdowns and measure are not sustainable on the long term, and aren't meant to be. The only way forward is to open, relax measures and see what happens. This can only work if we are ready to close back if things go south. The approach you describe : open / close / open a little / close back a bit more according to the situation is exactly how we need to handle things. It's also how the next few month will be shaped until we are in a situation where there is virtually no measure in place and the number of cases is close to 0. No european country - including UK - were "overly optimistic" enough to reach a point were hospital were completely saturated and people died due to lack of care. We got close during the hardest waves, but nowhere near what India suffered. Anti COVID measure are extremely deadly as well, something people tend to forget, governments have to walk a very fine line, and right now the number of hospital admissions really don't seem big enough to justify keeping hard measures in place.
  - 5y ago
roenxi 5y ago
The economy being partially closed and people being locked down is an emergency in itself. If it were possible to sustain a country through pure governmental will someone would have done it by now - there is a lot of work that needs to happen. There doesn't appear to be any hope of eradicating COVID at this point. There aren't any obvious options except to open everything up once most people are vaccinated/ex-infected. The alternative is we keep playing this lockdown game for the rest of our lives. The gamble paying off or otherwise is almost not relevant.

22 points by forgingahead 5y ago

aktuel 5y ago

I just snorted a line of coke. It feels amazing. And I am productive like never before. Looks like it is paying off.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

addicted 5y ago

I think it’s good to see cases dropping which indicates that vaccines might be very effective beyond a certain point. But I wouldn’t start the celebrations just yet. What we could also be seeing is a drop from what was an extremely high peak caused by the Euros. The UK was seeing 50k+ cases, which is equivalent to 250-300k cases in the US, a threshold the US never reached even before the vaccine was ever created. Also, Boris Johnson had gambled many times. And it has cost tens of thousands of UK lives. Flipping heads twice on 9 tries is not something to be thrilled about.

mrkramer 5y ago
Allies gambled with Hitler and it costed them millions of life but history is written by the winners. It seems like politicians like to gamble in general not only with money but with people's lives.
- loopz 5y ago
  Many countries set the example of taking precautions before risk and gamble. They've done well handling the pandemic and there's not much economic difference in the end.
smorgusofborg 5y ago
The trouble with giving non-technical leaders direct control and responsibilities for outcomes (as opposed to background people management roles with mostly indirect credit) is that the only way for them to demonstrate their "leadership" skills, which become the only requirement for their position, is by making decisions that stand out from ideas suggested by competent technical staff.
- jjeaff 5y ago
  Going against expert recommendation gets attention, and that's about it. I think a good leader stands out by selecting good technical advisers getting their input, weighing the options and compromising between conflicting suggestions of those experts (e.g. doctor says shut down, economists say shut down will be disaster). And most of all, a good leader articulates the decision they made well and gets everyone in the leadership team on the same page, singing the same song, and leading by example (like wearing a mask in public) so that the people they lead follow along.
salamandersauce 5y ago
The US peaked at 300K cases in January. They're still trending up right now.

orobinson 5y ago

One hypothesis is this is due to schools closing for the summer holidays. The month long UK lockdown in November last year where schools remained open did not slow the rate of cases as much as the April 2020 and January 2021 lockdowns where schools were closed. Perhaps schools closing is the key to slowing the spread of the virus, especially now that the only significantly unvaccinated part of the population is under-18s.

randomopining 5y ago

Doesn't it make sense to do exactly this? Once your population reaches MAX VAX (tm) you let everybody get the variant that you still have solid protection against. They then get natural immunity to the latest and greatest. Herd immunity achieved going into the winter. The future variants (Delta+++) will probably have full escape ability against the almost 2 year old vaccine. But they will be much closer to the current Delta. Thus widespread boosted natural immunity will help carry the load as these new variants emerge. By the time the Delta-based booster gets produced, it will be too late.

Traster 5y ago

I think it's important to remember that this isn't a gamble. It's not like the UK government made some super smart carefully timed decision to relax restrictions. In March 2020 he locked down for 12 weeks, then in April he extended it for a minimum of 3 weeks, then in May he announced plans to open back up, cases soar and people die, so then they continue opening up but locking down individual cities. In August they open up restaurants and pay people to go to them, cases soar and people die, so they put in some new rules. October, they add even in more rules, but it's too little too late and we're back in a lockdown, December comes and we got to a tiered system, by mid december practically nowhere is in the bottom tier, it's becoming increasingly clear that another lockdown is needed and so they invent an even more stringent tier to lock down. Keen to have a christmas break he eases rules for Christmas and we're back in lockdown by January 6th. This isn't some careful bet by the UK government that now is the time to do this, it's a very simple pattern - be massively over-optimistic about how well you're controlling the virus, open up things too early with too few restrictions and hope for the best.

IMTDb 5y ago
There is not chance to eradicate COVID any time soon. Or maybe ever. It's been pretty clear for 12+ month now that society will have to learn to live with covid, including a certain amount of COVID related death. The lockdowns and measure are not sustainable on the long term, and aren't meant to be. The only way forward is to open, relax measures and see what happens. This can only work if we are ready to close back if things go south. The approach you describe : open / close / open a little / close back a bit more according to the situation is exactly how we need to handle things. It's also how the next few month will be shaped until we are in a situation where there is virtually no measure in place and the number of cases is close to 0. No european country - including UK - were "overly optimistic" enough to reach a point were hospital were completely saturated and people died due to lack of care. We got close during the hardest waves, but nowhere near what India suffered. Anti COVID measure are extremely deadly as well, something people tend to forget, governments have to walk a very fine line, and right now the number of hospital admissions really don't seem big enough to justify keeping hard measures in place.
- 5y ago

roenxi 5y ago

The economy being partially closed and people being locked down is an emergency in itself. If it were possible to sustain a country through pure governmental will someone would have done it by now - there is a lot of work that needs to happen. There doesn't appear to be any hope of eradicating COVID at this point. There aren't any obvious options except to open everything up once most people are vaccinated/ex-infected. The alternative is we keep playing this lockdown game for the rest of our lives. The gamble paying off or otherwise is almost not relevant.