Ricky1985 wrote:
Klaus wrote:
It just says that given unlimited resources and no corresponding risks, such and such might be the best course of action. As such it's just one more input for people making decisions, and it has to be weighed against estimates of a thousand other risks and costs.
The report goes much further than that:
Perhaps our most significant conclusion is that mitigation is unlikely to be feasible without emergency surge capacity limits of the UK and US healthcare systems being exceeded many times over. In the most effective mitigation strategy examined, which leads to a single, relatively short epidemic (case isolation, household quarantine and social distancing of the elderly), the surge limits for both general ward and ICU beds would be exceeded by at least 8-fold under the more optimistic scenario for critical care requirements that we examined. In addition, even if all patients were able to be treated, we predict there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in GB, and 1.1-1.2 million in the US.
In the UK, this conclusion has only been reached in the last few days, with the refinement of estimates of likely ICU demand due to COVID-19 based on experience in Italy and the UK (previous planning estimates assumed half the demand now estimated) and with the NHS providing increasing certainty around the limits of hospital surge capacity. We therefore conclude that epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time. The social and economic effects of the measures which are needed to achieve this policy goal will be profound. Many countries have adopted such measures already, but even those countries at an earlier stage of their epidemic (such as the UK) will need to do so imminently.
Imperial College COVID-19 Report, page 15.
The UK government's approach has changed because their modelling was flawed, and the report leaves no confusion or doubt about what is going to happen next.
We've always known what's going to happen next in general terms, Ricky. I repeat, it's one report making a bunch of predictions that is ultimately going to be weighed in with everything else. Circumstances and data change constantly and we adjust to it. We have constantly changed and reevaluated most predictions since this began, because that's what you do as a scientist, and neither interpretations of the situation nor the results of proactive measures undertaken have been the same across the board as you're well aware.
You're making the mistake of thinking this is the blueprint for the apocalypse just because it gels with your gut feeling regarding the situation, but that's not what the study says. It also says that the effect of intermittent social distancing creates intervention relaxation in the short term, and simply that measures need to be reintroduced to avoid the virus rebounding. Listening to epidemiologists discussing it this morning, it's clear that we lack data and understanding of what so many things might look like going forward. There are no hard truths, right methods or absolute answers, and timing plays a massive role. To bring up one example that was mentioned is how things like paid sick leave and employment rights impact social distancing positively where they exist. People can actually afford to self-isolate when they get sick. Those are measures that third world countries like the US probably will need to look at in the immediate, because there's indication that it limits spread more effectively than a lot of the more draconian methods. The most quoted conclusion is the one we were aware of the minute the outbreak in Wuhan happened: that this pandemic is going to take a huge toll on most societies and the people inhabiting them.
