3 ms·

Even if I accept the premise that "Not a single entity anywhere in the world has been able to come up with any model that accurately represent COVID-19 infectio

Even if I accept the premise that "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." (which sounds highly unlikely especially at this point). None of this backs up your claim of... "The strategy is balanced and thought though". What is this strategy anyway? Do random 'tests' and if they produce bad results then do something else? And that's ok because 'the models are bad'? Or something. I don't see much thought or balance in that. It's not a meaningful plan. It's certainly not thought through from the point of view of coming from the minds of experts in pandemics. It might be a workable 'political plan' that causes lots of needless suffering, death and waste. I mean seriously - I'd love to see a clear articulation of the Uk strategy from the start to now and why with it's 'balance' and 'thoughtfulness' adverted disaster even though the Uks outcomes are so poor. I'd note other countries were able to do something about this and have it work - such as Japan, Australia, New Zealand or South Korea. It certainly wasn't/isn't impossible. The Uk also had the advantage of being an island nation. In Europe Germany has a competent government and it's efforts seem to have paid off in terms of the economy and having half the Uks deaths per capita, for example.

IMTDb 5y ago
The global strategy is : "We are going to minimize the anti-covid measures as much as possible, as long as there are still hospitals bed available to treat patients. If that means people get infected, so be it, as long as we can treat them. We know some are going to die, but we are prepared to accept those losses". When a vaccine got developed, the country chose to launch a very ambitious vaccination campaign and was on top of the charts wrt to injected doses per capita. You are comparing the UK with japan and Australia: I am not sure you'd prefer being in Japan right now, and Australia "0 covid" strategy looks great, but they had a lot of extremely severe restrictions as well - and their demographic and economy is much more insular than the UK. With a 14% vaccination rate, they'll have to keep living with those restrictions on for several more month. You might not agree with the UK strategy - and that's perfectly OK - but it's a consistent one, and they executed it relatively well, considering the knowledge they had of the disease at every time, of course hindsight is 20/20. Other countries have tried other methods, with various degrees of success as well, with various hidden costs which will take years to measure.
- freddybobs 5y ago
  > "We are going to minimize the anti-covid measures as much as possible, as long as there are still hospitals bed available to treat patients. If that means people get infected, so be it, as long as we can treat them. We know some are going to die, but we are prepared to accept those losses". I'm sorry that's laughable compared with what has happened. Where is your herd immunity 'test' in there? How about the old people in hospitals being returned to care homes with covid? Oh, let's not forget the brilliant Christmas 'test'. Or the eating out 'test'. Or the dominic cummings castle test. Or.. I mean it's all pretty stupid stuff. Do those fit in to this 'global strategy'? Cos it seems we can apply occams razor of a more simple explanation of failure and revisionism. No the strategy bluster, excuses, and constant pivoting. Not just in covid. In practically everything. It's not clever. It's not subtle. It's so obvious. It's actually painful to watch. And periodically deadly. Even if you believe your own 'global strategy' explanation - the terrible results speak for themselves. So either it's not a good strategy, it isn't the strategy (I believe obviously), or it's being executed exceptionally poorly. > I'm not sure you would prefer being in Japan... No. They seem like pretty good options. > You might not agree with the UK strategy - and that's perfectly OK - but it's a consistent one, and they executed it relatively well, considering the knowledge they had of the disease at every time, of course hindsight is 20/20. Just no. No! It's not a hindsight 20/20 issue. The government had plans for this drawn up years before. There was sars/mers/ebola/spanish flu after all. A pandemic was rated the biggest risk by the government since 2016. The government ignored those plans. And did something else well more unplanned and dumber. If that was their plan "executed it relatively well", then that's a terrible plan because the terrible results. But this is all too generous. This government and Boris aren't really into plans. Or deep thinking. They just wing it, generally fail (because they don't like thinking, plans or difficulty of execution) and lie and misdirect. What is amazing, is that works so effectively.

IMTDb 5y ago

The global strategy is : "We are going to minimize the anti-covid measures as much as possible, as long as there are still hospitals bed available to treat patients. If that means people get infected, so be it, as long as we can treat them. We know some are going to die, but we are prepared to accept those losses". When a vaccine got developed, the country chose to launch a very ambitious vaccination campaign and was on top of the charts wrt to injected doses per capita. You are comparing the UK with japan and Australia: I am not sure you'd prefer being in Japan right now, and Australia "0 covid" strategy looks great, but they had a lot of extremely severe restrictions as well - and their demographic and economy is much more insular than the UK. With a 14% vaccination rate, they'll have to keep living with those restrictions on for several more month. You might not agree with the UK strategy - and that's perfectly OK - but it's a consistent one, and they executed it relatively well, considering the knowledge they had of the disease at every time, of course hindsight is 20/20. Other countries have tried other methods, with various degrees of success as well, with various hidden costs which will take years to measure.

freddybobs 5y ago
> "We are going to minimize the anti-covid measures as much as possible, as long as there are still hospitals bed available to treat patients. If that means people get infected, so be it, as long as we can treat them. We know some are going to die, but we are prepared to accept those losses". I'm sorry that's laughable compared with what has happened. Where is your herd immunity 'test' in there? How about the old people in hospitals being returned to care homes with covid? Oh, let's not forget the brilliant Christmas 'test'. Or the eating out 'test'. Or the dominic cummings castle test. Or.. I mean it's all pretty stupid stuff. Do those fit in to this 'global strategy'? Cos it seems we can apply occams razor of a more simple explanation of failure and revisionism. No the strategy bluster, excuses, and constant pivoting. Not just in covid. In practically everything. It's not clever. It's not subtle. It's so obvious. It's actually painful to watch. And periodically deadly. Even if you believe your own 'global strategy' explanation - the terrible results speak for themselves. So either it's not a good strategy, it isn't the strategy (I believe obviously), or it's being executed exceptionally poorly. > I'm not sure you would prefer being in Japan... No. They seem like pretty good options. > You might not agree with the UK strategy - and that's perfectly OK - but it's a consistent one, and they executed it relatively well, considering the knowledge they had of the disease at every time, of course hindsight is 20/20. Just no. No! It's not a hindsight 20/20 issue. The government had plans for this drawn up years before. There was sars/mers/ebola/spanish flu after all. A pandemic was rated the biggest risk by the government since 2016. The government ignored those plans. And did something else well more unplanned and dumber. If that was their plan "executed it relatively well", then that's a terrible plan because the terrible results. But this is all too generous. This government and Boris aren't really into plans. Or deep thinking. They just wing it, generally fail (because they don't like thinking, plans or difficulty of execution) and lie and misdirect. What is amazing, is that works so effectively.