Burnwinter wrote:
Ricky1985 wrote:
Edit - another point worth mentioning is that the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, was very adamant that the fatality rate for this disease is 1%, not the 3-4% we're seeing elsewhere. I think it is this belief that is shaping the government's approach; Burnwinter linked to the article by Robert Peston in the Spectator this morning and it seems he knew what he was talking about: sacrificing 1% of the many, many thousands that catch the disease in order to build up herd immunity. That seems to be the idea behind their approach.
It strikes me as an extremely callous approach.
With a spread of 2.68 (New South Wales estimate) the herd immunity threshold is around 60%, so about 40m people infected by the time you get there. The reality is however that the UK will be deep in crisis mode before that level arrives.
NHS doctors are predicting ICU facilities will already be overwhelmed in a fortnight. If Johnson's bureaucracy pursues this approach to its limits, you're looking at tens if not hundreds of thousands of people, mostly over 65, dying, potentially with many of them denied hospital care.
Containment can't stop the problem but it could prevent this scenario for an awful lot of families, which is why many countries are adopting much more decisive measures.
I don't think an approach based around the UK population developing herd immunity through exposure will be politically tenable. The reality's going to be "late containment" ...
I'm in complete agreement.
40m people is also the figure here that is predicted to reach herd immunity, so if the 1% mortality rate is correct, that's 400,000 people that the government are condemning to death with their inaction. What if the mortality rate is higher at the 3-4% being seen elsewhere? Or the 6.7% seen it Italy? What if the fact that the NHS is completely overwhelmed by the number of people that need treatment means many more die as a result of insufficient or non-existent medical treatment? So we end up at a mortality rate of 5%, 10%, or who the hell knows what percentage, when all is said and done. What happens if it works and Britons do develop a herd immunity, but because this disease is in every corner of the world, there are different strains, as we see with winter flu, and there is no built up immunity to those? Do we build a wall?!
Not to mention the notion that by doing nothing the peak is pushed nearer to the warmer weather appears nonsensical to me. Without any kind of social distancing in place, except vague ideas about people self-isolating if they feel ill--which will just mean those that they live with will catch it and spread it because the government haven't even put out vague recomendations about other household members also isolating: they say that is still to come--this is going to spread at a pace greater than it needs to. I see their approach as bringing the peak forward rather than pushing it back.
The quote Goon posted from Boris about the mayor in charge of the town in Jaws is genuinely terrifying. If he gets this wrong, no one will pat him on the back for not panicking, and say "you were right in principle, old bean". He'll be the man responsible for a huge number of people dying that did not need to, or, at the very least, had a much greater chance of survival if he had taken some action when there was still time. And the fact that I strongly believe action should have been taken weeks and weeks ago, in my view, does not bode well for efficacy of the decisions they are now taking.
