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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 restriction

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.
- Traster 5y ago
  I agree that we're never going to totally irradicate this, but the UK government has consistently opened up too much, too quickly and then responded to the wave of new cases too slowly. The goal of the lock downs wasn't just to prevent excess deaths due to hospital capacity, it was to prevent deaths due to COVID until we had the systems in spread to stop the worst of the outbreak - that is testing capacity, track and trace, and the vaccine.
- freddybobs 5y ago
  "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. " The actions seem to follow this pattern not because of some well balanced and thought through strategy, but more the governments constant shifting attempt to move past the current mistake/scandal. It's actually quite amazing how effective this is in terms of public perception. Just because it's possible to have a reasonable plan that looks something like "open / close / open a little / close back a bit more" doesn't mean that is what is going on. As previously touched on, a chaotic constantly moving "get out of the latest mess" can also. I could give examples such as the initial 'herd immunity' plan. There is also the recent revelations from internal government documents that show the a pandemic was identified as the biggest risk to the uk from 2016 (ie the governments 'who could hanve known' ploy is empty). Or that it was recommended early on that elderly patients who had covid be returned to old peoples homes. Leaving all that aside - look at the results: the UK has one of the highest death per 100k people in the world.
  - IMTDb 5y ago
    > the governments constant shifting attempt to move past the current mistake/scandal It's only the case because you see roll backs of previous relaxation as a sign those were "mistakes" proving that those were "scandals". Th strategy is balanced and thought throught if you consider that: a) Not a single entity anywhere in the world has been able to come up with any model that accurately represent COVID-19 infection rates and evolution. b) As a consequence, the only way forward is "test and see". Understand that some tests will be successful, and some won't c) As a consequence, calling failed tests "scandals" works wonder for bumping read count on tabloids articles, but does accurately represent what's going on. The initial herd immunity plan was one of those tests. That's how humanity has gone through all epidemics before - with various degrees of success - and how most of humanity will go though COVID. When it became clear that the tradeoff between covid death and society impact was not where the government wanted to go, they reverted the decision - before hospitals reached full saturation. Overall, the UK has a bit more covid direct death than most (not all) western european countries, and had a bit less lockdown days (and with overall less restriction) than those same countries - which results to less suffering/death due to those measures. The tradeoff made by the UK government was a bit more on protecting the economy/societal model rather than focusing on COVID alone. You could argue that they could/should have made different choices, but it's certainly not the rolling mess that you are trying to paint.
specialist 5y ago
Yes, and: Still too early to be doing the post mortem. The Economists' blathering at this stage is very irresponsible. I'm keenly interested in comparative analysis of "natural experiments". Like maybe Norway vs Sweden, South Korea vs Singapore. Twins where the only, at least major, difference was their policy. But that kind of analysis takes time. -- I'm a germaphobe (transplant, immune compromised). I'm anxious every flu season. I was on alert about coronavirus in Dec 2019 and self-isolating, masking by Feb 2020. I share this TMI to explicitly state that I'm not the right person to weigh in on these public health policy questions. I will always be over cautious. A few of my relatives obsess over every hiccup, misstep. Like inaccurate count of deaths attributed to COVID-19. Infuriating. They too are not objective commentators. I keep telling them "It's too early. People will write books about this for years to come. Then we can figure out what happened." But they're more interested in the fight.

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.

Traster 5y ago
I agree that we're never going to totally irradicate this, but the UK government has consistently opened up too much, too quickly and then responded to the wave of new cases too slowly. The goal of the lock downs wasn't just to prevent excess deaths due to hospital capacity, it was to prevent deaths due to COVID until we had the systems in spread to stop the worst of the outbreak - that is testing capacity, track and trace, and the vaccine.
freddybobs 5y ago
"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. " The actions seem to follow this pattern not because of some well balanced and thought through strategy, but more the governments constant shifting attempt to move past the current mistake/scandal. It's actually quite amazing how effective this is in terms of public perception. Just because it's possible to have a reasonable plan that looks something like "open / close / open a little / close back a bit more" doesn't mean that is what is going on. As previously touched on, a chaotic constantly moving "get out of the latest mess" can also. I could give examples such as the initial 'herd immunity' plan. There is also the recent revelations from internal government documents that show the a pandemic was identified as the biggest risk to the uk from 2016 (ie the governments 'who could hanve known' ploy is empty). Or that it was recommended early on that elderly patients who had covid be returned to old peoples homes. Leaving all that aside - look at the results: the UK has one of the highest death per 100k people in the world.
- IMTDb 5y ago
  > the governments constant shifting attempt to move past the current mistake/scandal It's only the case because you see roll backs of previous relaxation as a sign those were "mistakes" proving that those were "scandals". Th strategy is balanced and thought throught if you consider that: a) Not a single entity anywhere in the world has been able to come up with any model that accurately represent COVID-19 infection rates and evolution. b) As a consequence, the only way forward is "test and see". Understand that some tests will be successful, and some won't c) As a consequence, calling failed tests "scandals" works wonder for bumping read count on tabloids articles, but does accurately represent what's going on. The initial herd immunity plan was one of those tests. That's how humanity has gone through all epidemics before - with various degrees of success - and how most of humanity will go though COVID. When it became clear that the tradeoff between covid death and society impact was not where the government wanted to go, they reverted the decision - before hospitals reached full saturation. Overall, the UK has a bit more covid direct death than most (not all) western european countries, and had a bit less lockdown days (and with overall less restriction) than those same countries - which results to less suffering/death due to those measures. The tradeoff made by the UK government was a bit more on protecting the economy/societal model rather than focusing on COVID alone. You could argue that they could/should have made different choices, but it's certainly not the rolling mess that you are trying to paint.

specialist 5y ago

Yes, and: Still too early to be doing the post mortem. The Economists' blathering at this stage is very irresponsible. I'm keenly interested in comparative analysis of "natural experiments". Like maybe Norway vs Sweden, South Korea vs Singapore. Twins where the only, at least major, difference was their policy. But that kind of analysis takes time. -- I'm a germaphobe (transplant, immune compromised). I'm anxious every flu season. I was on alert about coronavirus in Dec 2019 and self-isolating, masking by Feb 2020. I share this TMI to explicitly state that I'm not the right person to weigh in on these public health policy questions. I will always be over cautious. A few of my relatives obsess over every hiccup, misstep. Like inaccurate count of deaths attributed to COVID-19. Infuriating. They too are not objective commentators. I keep telling them "It's too early. People will write books about this for years to come. Then we can figure out what happened." But they're more interested in the fight.