Why Did the UK Have Such a Bad Covid-19 Epidemic?

[Fjell]

Have you ever watched ?Yes Minister?? My Dad, who was a technical guy at Director level in the Civil Service, used to roll around laughing. It?s all true. Ministers are lambs to the slaughter, and that includes PM?s if they are not highly experienced. Theresa May would have locked everyone up and machine gunned violators in the street. It would have ended badly still I suspect.

The whole thing about Cummings is he wants to rip it all up. People have no idea how radical he is. Him and his acolytes there were all once so Marxist they thought the Communist Party of Great Britain were a bunch of sell outs. It?s why he was never going anywhere, house moves or not. The new Thomas Cromwell in his mind. Second Reformation etc.

 

[ChrisJC]

I would just like to observe that it's far too early in this pandemic to have any meaningful assessment of 'success'.
Until either we have a vaccine or the virus has been through the entire population, then all this talk of lockdown timing just changes when people die. It does not change who dies.

Chris.

 

[JoshW]

I would just like to observe that it's far too early in this pandemic to have any meaningful assessment of 'success'.
Until either we have a vaccine or the virus has been through the entire population, then all this talk of lockdown timing just changes when people die. It does not change who dies.

Chris.

Theoretically (and I'm not a biologist by any stretch) if you could prevent the spread of it, then those that get it either die or get the anti-bodies to kill it, then the virus would die out? By the time a decent proportion of the population has it, it's much harder to prevent the spread and the test track and trace type systems become defunct.

Early action is key, and I'm not saying that early action by the UK gov would definitely have done this by any stretch, there are other factors, such as time of reporting of the existence of it, which is entirely out of the UK Gov's control.

 

[Speleotron]

I would just like to observe that it's far too early in this pandemic to have any meaningful assessment of 'success'.
Until either we have a vaccine or the virus has been through the entire population, then all this talk of lockdown timing just changes when people die. It does not change who dies.

Chris.

It does change who dies though, the case fatality rate of the virus depends strongly on how full your hospitals are. If you can keep infections at a steady drip then you can give each serious patient a hospital bed and keep death rates well down, like in Korea. If, like Lombardy, serious patients come in a huge wave and you are reduced to putting them on camp-beds in warehouses, then you have a much higher case fatality rate.

P.S. case fatality rare and R0 are not intrinsic properties of the virus, they also depend on the situation the virus and the population find themselves in, which is the point of all these measures taken around the world. If R0 was 2.5 and CFR was 1% and you couldn't change that then you might as well go to the pub and no need to wear an annoying paper mask.

 

[aardgoose]

... and treatment is improving as we gain greater knowledge of the disease, again changing who dies.

 

[pwhole]

But also the wealthier, older group - some pensioners who have all the time in the world, and plenty of money, to travel around the globe on planes quickly,

?

I agree, 'some' is probably better, though I wasn't implying 'all' in my statement, just late and tired and trying to get it all in before I fell asleep. Though it's not just pensioners who do cruises either, obviously. Rob Brydon's always on one.

An interesting exercise is to watch the adverts on Sky News in the mornings, as they're nearly all aimed at pensioners with savings - it's so obvious and so one-sided that it's frankly bizarre. Several different companies selling gold, Carol Vorderman, Alan Titchmarsh and others selling equity release, funeral plans, incontinence remedies etc. etc. The cruise ads aren't on now, but there's plenty starting up in the papers, alongside ads for elevators to the bathroom instead of stairlifts. It's an awkward situation, as folks worked all their lives and were encouraged to save for the future - but now the future's here, for many the savings are getting spent abroad as their mortgages were paid off decades ago. If the companies they spend their money with are UK-based then fine, but I doubt they are.

I know not all pensioners are well-off, but there is an imbalance here between existing pension settlements and future ones, and in many countries between the relative ages of the populations and the spread of earnable income - and if world travel is going to increase for this older age group, I can only see more trouble ahead for all age groups. There aren't enough young people here, frankly, and not enough of them are having babies, so our average age is getting older and older and older.

I'm not crowing as I'm getting older and don't have much in the way of savings so I definitely won't be going a cruise anytime soon.

'It floats back to you...'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBYcyDoh-XI

 

[Fulk]

Thanks for replying, pwhole, and clarifying what you said.

(Now for the pedant's bit: if one said, for example, ' . . .cavers, who like a drink after a trip . .. ' it does, indeed, imply all cavers; if you said ' . . .cavers whos like a drink after a trip . . . ' it implies ony those cavers who like a drink after a trip.)

 

[ChrisJC]

It does change who dies though, the case fatality rate of the virus depends strongly on how full your hospitals are. If you can keep infections at a steady drip then you can give each serious patient a hospital bed and keep death rates well down, like in Korea. If, like Lombardy, serious patients come in a huge wave and you are reduced to putting them on camp-beds in warehouses, then you have a much higher case fatality rate.

I am working on the basis that in the UK at least, everybody has had access to the best care available. There were sufficient ICU spaces available for everybody who needed them.

I will concede that delaying people catching it is that treatment prospects may improve. But I have not read any evidence suggesting that is the case...


Chris.

 

[Speleotron]

We only had ICU capacity because we did a lockdown and flattened the curve (and sent older patients into care homes as a sacrifice, not commenting on whether that was right or wrong).

In other countries like Italy, and in cities such as Wuhan, the curve wasn't flattened enough so the CFR spiked.

You can't just say that the preventative measures don't change who dies on the assumption that everyone will get treatment if they need it, when this assumption is only valid if you take measures to ensure that the curve is flattened, thus allowing people to get treatment if they need it. It's kind of circular.

 

[mikem]

Only recently have they agreed that this is effective:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/cheap-steroid-first-drug-shown-reduce-death-covid-19-patients

 

[droid]

Ring them up and ask them.

No.

Lack of a direct answer from you tells me all  need to know.

 

[pwhole]

There was a very interesting, if somewhat sobering article in 'i' newspaper today, interviewing Professor Tom Koch who predicts another, even more virulent pandemic in the next 5 to 8 years, and suggesting that as our current efforts to get on top of this one are not that great, the next one could be devastating:

?When it will come and what will it be nobody knows, not really. But we know there will be one. And given the increased rate of epidemic outbreaks from a range of bacteria and viruses probably in the next five to eight years,? he told i.

?For three years I?ve lectured to various academic medical groups on ?The coming pandemic? and so am not surprised one finally arrived. As I?ve said repeatedly, all the factors promoting a pandemic event were in place.

We were fortunate that the mortality rate of this virus was below the higher threshold I had proposed for what the World Health Organisation (WHO) had called ?Disease X.? That said, there is no reason to believe the next pandemic won?t be at least equally infectious and with a greater mortality. The great pandemics of history have all been over 20 per cent ? and perhaps even more infectious."

https://inews.co.uk/news/health/world-face-another-pandemic-tom-koch-predicted-coronavirus-460702

 

[nearlywhite]

I would just like to observe that it's far too early in this pandemic to have any meaningful assessment of 'success'.
Until either we have a vaccine or the virus has been through the entire population, then all this talk of lockdown timing just changes when people die. It does not change who dies.

Chris.

It also assumes there are no negative health impacts to lockdown... which as not true. Though initially I saw it from a cancer point of view, since being redeployed there is a significant number of delayed treatments of the people coming in.

Only recently have they agreed that this is effective:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/cheap-steroid-first-drug-shown-reduce-death-covid-19-patients

Except that it is effective in ARDS, we're more confirming that Covid isn't different.

I genuinely think it will be 5-10 years before we can make head or tail of it - there will be a lot of latent effects of all of this, and it may yet prove that herd immunity was not such a foolhardy strategy, sadly. Earlier lockdowns that don't last as long are beginning to look far more appealing.

 

[Duck ditch]

10 million recorded cases world wide has been announced.  I only have ?o? level maths so check my figures.
10 million is 1% of a billion.  Let?s say the real number of people who have had or having covid 19 is 70.8 million.  So 1% of the world population.
Is this just the beginning?
So Can we say 0.5% death rate is acceptable? Open up the economy? On a personal business level certainly understandable.  Will the world economy improve while the virus is still about?

At the beginning of covid 19 nobody knew what the death rate was.
So potentially a new virus comes along.  What death rate becomes unacceptable? 1%. 5%?
Would we (Uk) shut down completely and properly without knowing what the death rate is?
Pessimistic. Horrifying.  I don?t know.

I hope Trump is right and it will magically go away.
A vaccine hopefully.  Then I think of the growing anti vaccination movement.
Smallpox was eradicated due to total cooperation.

The real hope is that we don?t all need to catch it before it peters out.  That?s why I?m still keeping in my bubble and keeping my distance from other people. 

 

[mikem]

Latest figures (2 weeks ago), show deaths having finally dropped below the 5 year average, but those at home were above, by almost the same number that deaths in hospitals & care homes dropped - some of them would have survived if they'd been in hospital, so we have to get back to some sort of normality:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending19june2020

 

[oldfart]

 

[mikem]

So, if I don't have a sense of impending doom, does that mean I'm not alive, or just not as old as Private Frazer?

 

[pwhole]

It means you're just not taking life seriously enough

I too don't have a sense of impending doom as I think ultimately this shake-up is good for all of us, and it's forcing everyone to re-think the way we've built out societies and our economies. Also partly as my lifestyle is already quite like this and always has been, so psychologically the only adjustment I've really had to make is coping with the extreme boredom and not seeing my most of my best friends. Much of the west's economy is bullshit IMO, and we do have an opportunity to at least try and come to a consensus now and work out what other folks think is bullshit too and stop doing it. Personally I think the economy depending on us having a nice coffee and a piece of cake whilst shopping for underwear is not a solid model for a long-term future. Similarly, twanging the legs of a dead chicken apart to grab its entrails while it flies past you on a hook conveyor is also not suitable employment for most people - if they hope to maintain their sanity and have a nice life. But I do like to eat chicken - it's very complicated.

Ironically after the discussion yesterday, this was shown on ITV last night:

https://www.itv.com/hub/billion-pound-cruises-all-at-sea/10a0125a0001

 

[Duck ditch]

I don?t feel an impending doom either.  It?s just that this could be just the beginning.  Nobody knows. There is no right or wrong. 
Its not just a matter of being scared of the virus.  It?s more of, I don?t want to be a carrier who passes it on.
Overall I agree with pwhole.
A bit of global shrinkage.

 

[Fjell]

It means you're just not taking life seriously enough

I too don't have a sense of impending doom as I think ultimately this shake-up is good for all of us, and it's forcing everyone to re-think the way we've built out societies and our economies.

if you were brutally honest, about 80% of all employment is superfluous - but there seems to be a societal need to feel useful (I even have books on this*). Having a grown man in their 20's (sporting a magnificent beard) spend their days making Cappuccinos seems somehow strange to me, but I am reliably informed by multiple children that I am so last week.

I personally have found it extremely easy to not do a stroke of work in recent years. Comes naturally like. Maybe it's the future?

* See summary of part one (debunking the myth of Why People Work) of:
http://dmcodyssey.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/part-one-chapter-2-p13-25.pdf

(the book is very expensive, about ?50)