4 ms·

Broadly after seeing some of the material coming out of the UK "think tanks" in early 2020 this was really "govt, starched collar, upper class" thinking that th

by rob_c 5y ago

Broadly after seeing some of the material coming out of the UK "think tanks" in early 2020 this was really "govt, starched collar, upper class" thinking that the proles will start eating themselves if we even mention that there's a chance they could die. I think projected compliance with a lockdown in the UK was initially estimated and serious attempts were made to model it at 40% compliance. When govt got near 95%+ compliance during the first lock down other idiots took over behind the scenes, patted themselves on the back and decided why not go for "zero-covid" in 2020... Edit: (I'm not joking there is a statement on record from politicians reacting to the suggestion with "this is not Asia, people would not stand for a lockdown", aka we expect that as policy to not be able to function) AKA the first lockdown being a success in the UK was a great statement of how the people behave that had damming effect on the direction of health policy. Heard immunity would have been reached much quicker and the 2020 winter less bad had more healthy people been exposed in the start and summer of 2020. The fact that lockdown and rules were followed so well actually made the winter worse than the initial (sensible) projections predicted.

mulvya 5y ago
> there is a statement on record from politicians reacting to the suggestion with "this is not Asia, people would not stand for a lockdown" Fauci said that in Feb 2020. -------- Q. How confident are you that the Chinese are doing what needs to be done? A. They're doing things that have completely broken the paradigm of how you respond. They have been, in a draconian way, shutting down everything. They have locked down 50 million people, including the entire 11 million-person city of Wuhan. They will not allow anyone into Beijing unless they have a 14-day quarantine. They're essentially locking people who test positive in their houses. I mean, they're doing things that are almost unheard of in the annals of public health. Q. Will it work? A. As unusual and extreme as it is, it might actually, ultimately, have an effect. There's this report that the number of new cases for the last couple of days in China has gone down. I don't put much strength in that unless I see it really start to come down and down and down. A few days of going down doesn't mean anything to me. But if it continues to go down, that might be a signal that they're having an effect of what otherwise would be extreme means. Q. That would never happen here, would it? Locking down 50 million people? A. No, not a chance. It would never happen. -------- https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/02/17/new-coronavirus-what-dont-we-know-dr-anthony-fauci-q-a-opinion/4790996002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/02/17/new-corona...
- JamisonM 5y ago
  I mean, there was never an intervention in the USA comparable to the lockdown in China - right? Is there an instance where 50 million Americans couldn't travel to a neighbouring city without suffering criminal penalties?
- rob_c 5y ago
  Trust me. Not just Faucci and not just the UK. As for dates I think the UK one was in Jan or Feb when we refused to attend an EU meeting on the situation as it was developing in Italy
notahacker 5y ago
We still haven't reached herd immunity in the UK, and we have 49 of 67 million people vaccinated (plus some of the rest previously infected). The idea we'd have had fewer COVID casualties by allowing it to spread more easily before the winter is not one supported by evidence.
- rob_c 5y ago
  Please. The nonsense here is how herd immunity is estimated/measured. There is no/little consensus on how this is defined and given how polarised this is it probably never will be. The reality is that the UK adult population is heading to 90% vaccinated. If you want to measure immunity to death from the disease as immunity we're at about 90%. Please don't ever pretend that's not enough. I cannot fathom a model even as bad as that used in report 9 where this doesn't lead to the virus effectively dying out in a population. This will be one of the _many_ reasons with high cases in the UK we're not seeing bodies being piled high outside hospitals. As for actually stopping the spread of the disease itself, this would have happened much sooner had people caught it and have a _full_ immune response which makes them less likely to transmit the virus. The point of this is that govt. expected that the virus would spread during lockdown 1 (early 2020) because people wouldn't follow the rules (it spread more due to insanely bad policy and it getting into nursing homes and hospitals and hitting the at-risk). The initial plan was to open-up once the 'first wave' dropped reached numbers the NHS could cope with and that there would be an open/close/open/close approach as numbers rose to keep the hospital cases at manageable levels. After seeing the high compliance we kept the lockdown and aimed for a zero-covid policy which is where Australia and New Zealand are... We didn't see the first wave really hit. We shut down too early and too hard in lockdown 1. This led to the amount of people building an immunity being very low. During the relaxing in summer-2020 the places that returned to normal the most ended up with higher case numbers during summer and typically this led to a slower spread and lower peak hospitalisations during the winter of 2020-2021. This is backed when comparing the high number of cases during the summer by region with England and the initial rate of cases in the same regions at the start of winter. This diverges once winter properly set in as other factors became dominant. This is not rocket science In the winter of 2020-2021 the UK locked down too late and more people at risk died. This being too late was a combination of factors "it only kills over 80s" from Boris, the lockdown being too effective, the vaccine being around the corner and so on...

by rob_c 5y ago

mulvya 5y ago

> there is a statement on record from politicians reacting to the suggestion with "this is not Asia, people would not stand for a lockdown" Fauci said that in Feb 2020. -------- Q. How confident are you that the Chinese are doing what needs to be done? A. They're doing things that have completely broken the paradigm of how you respond. They have been, in a draconian way, shutting down everything. They have locked down 50 million people, including the entire 11 million-person city of Wuhan. They will not allow anyone into Beijing unless they have a 14-day quarantine. They're essentially locking people who test positive in their houses. I mean, they're doing things that are almost unheard of in the annals of public health. Q. Will it work? A. As unusual and extreme as it is, it might actually, ultimately, have an effect. There's this report that the number of new cases for the last couple of days in China has gone down. I don't put much strength in that unless I see it really start to come down and down and down. A few days of going down doesn't mean anything to me. But if it continues to go down, that might be a signal that they're having an effect of what otherwise would be extreme means. Q. That would never happen here, would it? Locking down 50 million people? A. No, not a chance. It would never happen. -------- https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/02/17/new-coronavirus-what-dont-we-know-dr-anthony-fauci-q-a-opinion/4790996002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/02/17/new-corona...

JamisonM 5y ago
I mean, there was never an intervention in the USA comparable to the lockdown in China - right? Is there an instance where 50 million Americans couldn't travel to a neighbouring city without suffering criminal penalties?
rob_c 5y ago
Trust me. Not just Faucci and not just the UK. As for dates I think the UK one was in Jan or Feb when we refused to attend an EU meeting on the situation as it was developing in Italy

notahacker 5y ago

We still haven't reached herd immunity in the UK, and we have 49 of 67 million people vaccinated (plus some of the rest previously infected). The idea we'd have had fewer COVID casualties by allowing it to spread more easily before the winter is not one supported by evidence.

rob_c 5y ago
Please. The nonsense here is how herd immunity is estimated/measured. There is no/little consensus on how this is defined and given how polarised this is it probably never will be. The reality is that the UK adult population is heading to 90% vaccinated. If you want to measure immunity to death from the disease as immunity we're at about 90%. Please don't ever pretend that's not enough. I cannot fathom a model even as bad as that used in report 9 where this doesn't lead to the virus effectively dying out in a population. This will be one of the _many_ reasons with high cases in the UK we're not seeing bodies being piled high outside hospitals. As for actually stopping the spread of the disease itself, this would have happened much sooner had people caught it and have a _full_ immune response which makes them less likely to transmit the virus. The point of this is that govt. expected that the virus would spread during lockdown 1 (early 2020) because people wouldn't follow the rules (it spread more due to insanely bad policy and it getting into nursing homes and hospitals and hitting the at-risk). The initial plan was to open-up once the 'first wave' dropped reached numbers the NHS could cope with and that there would be an open/close/open/close approach as numbers rose to keep the hospital cases at manageable levels. After seeing the high compliance we kept the lockdown and aimed for a zero-covid policy which is where Australia and New Zealand are... We didn't see the first wave really hit. We shut down too early and too hard in lockdown 1. This led to the amount of people building an immunity being very low. During the relaxing in summer-2020 the places that returned to normal the most ended up with higher case numbers during summer and typically this led to a slower spread and lower peak hospitalisations during the winter of 2020-2021. This is backed when comparing the high number of cases during the summer by region with England and the initial rate of cases in the same regions at the start of winter. This diverges once winter properly set in as other factors became dominant. This is not rocket science In the winter of 2020-2021 the UK locked down too late and more people at risk died. This being too late was a combination of factors "it only kills over 80s" from Boris, the lockdown being too effective, the vaccine being around the corner and so on...