UKH

With WHO speculating on a 2 year duration for CV19, 2 years in and out of lock down, 2 years of economic uncertainty, 2 years a lot of our elderly rellies just don't have: what does the UKC hive mind reckon? Is 2 more years doable or would you rather lift all CV19 measures and leave transmission reduction up to individuals acting in a sensible and socially responsible manner?

I’m wondering if it’s mutated to be less virulent. Despite increasing numbers the hospitalisations and deaths are dropping. Very few people seem to be getting seriously ill with it. 

This has been suggested for one of the most common mutations noted recently. 

I thought main reason the case numbers were up but bad things down was testing. Back in March people were seriously ill with it and not getting tested, now there's testing of asymptomatic folk. Plus, people at high risk of serious illness are now much better protected from it, e.g. people with covid are no longer being turfed out of hospitals into care homes.

People who think we can "go back to normal" (e.g. Toby Young, the ultimate bell-end) just don't understand what they're talking about. As far as I can see, the current level of restrictions are pretty workable in most sectors and are successfully keeping R below 1. R above 1 isn't an option so "lifting all measures" is impossible and stupid and would just result in another full lockdown after a couple of months. We need to find ways to ease the restrictions in sectors that are having serious economic impact, while keeping in place effective measures that we can live with while getting on with life.

I think wearing masks indoors in public and infection control procedures where we're all touching stuff are sensible. I don't think random 2-week quarantines are. The balance will have to be struck.

No. it's not mutated in a meaningful way. There's a similar pattern emerging across many developed countries: infection rates are rising, probably due to increasingly relaxed social mixing. However, this is tending to be among the young (<50) who are at less risk of severe disease (always make the distinction between disease -- the effect of an infection -- and the risk of being infected). The elderly and those most at risk of severe disease should they become infected are more reticent to socialise (with good reason), and consequently are getting infected much less. Complications to this narrative are indications that the risk of death given hospitalisation (case fatality ratio) is decreasing due to improved treatment and care, and also an increase in testing effort would potentially also identify more cases (particularly if in response to a localised outbreak). 

The lethality of the virus depends on a  lot of external factors, such as how full your hospitals are and what drugs are available. These things are not intrinsic properties of the virus, it can become less lethal without it having mutated. Seeing as much spread is now in younger people and most countries have hospital capacity available now, and we have drugs like dexamethasone, the lethality (case fatality ratio) has decreased. Maybe it has mutated as well but we can explain the changes without resorting to that yet (we will see soon enough if it has changed).

Beat me to it. Something that is often overlooked is that r0 and case fatality ratio aren't intrinsic properties of the virus but depend on external factors, which is what the lockdown was all about I suppose.

For example, case fatality ratio of beubonic plague in 1360 was 40% ish, now it is 0% as, while people still catch it, it is cured by antibiotics.

Do you have a source for it having mutated to become less lethal? This would be published in the scientific journals pretty quickly should it happen, or at least a preprint.

Or many of the most vulnerable have died or been seriously ill already and it's now circulating amongst the younger, healthier parts of society.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by seriously ill. Hospitalised? I know at least 2 (relatively young) people who's quality of life isn't what it was but were never hospitalised. I do not want to take my chances as they are pretty depressed and currently life limited.

But...I do hope you are right and it is less dangerous!

(it's a Friday night, it's the internet!) I would argue nearly all of the aspects  or characteristics of infectious disease are a function of both the biology of the pathogen and the societal response to it. Actually, I don't think I can identify one that isn't. Maybe incubation period. 

Maybe if it hadn't been for this brave new world of 24 hour media creating and stoking panic to fill hours of repetition, social media channels on a world wide scale and available in an instant, this pandemic could have come and gone as one of those bad year's of flu that crops up once in a generation or two.

Life just plods along.

And once the crappy face masks at work have worn my ears ragged, then I hope the NHS can get a supply of these snazzy masks.

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2020/aug/20/burberry-launches-coronavir...

Three points to counteract the "mutated/less virulent” take.

1. To qualify your "increasing numbers"; in the UK, there is an increasing number of detected cases - which could be down to more cases, or better testing.  The independent ONS pilot infectivity survey suggests "around 2,400 new cases per day (95% credible interval: 1,200 to 4,200)." [1].  Currently testing in the UK is identifying around 1,000 new cases per day.  So, "numbers" can increase more than 2x as a result of better test and trace, rather than rising infections.  Tentatively I think the last few weeks of PHE and ONS report support the rise in numbers being due to improved testing, not rising cases.  
2. In several countries (parts of the USA and Europe) a genuine rise in cases without associated deaths appears to be down to the mean age of the infected having decreased significantly which given the highly age dependant fatality rate means far fewer deaths per infected.  
3. Extensive genotyping of samples is going on e.g. in NZ, and I'm not aware of published data on a less lethal mutation.  Could be wrong...

Edit: I've not seen much discussion of this, but from the start it's looked like perhaps viral load can link to severity of infection.  A combination of fewer acute cases (better protection of the elderly) and increase protective measures by people (hand washing, distancing, masks etc.) means people are probably getting smaller viral loads, which may also reduce severity.  I've also seen some suggestions there is no viral load effect though...

[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/con...

You've fallen for the prevention paradox: the more sucessful the methods used to reduce deaths from an outbreak, the more people think they were an over-reaction.

March: We must lock down or it will kill many times more than flu:

August, after lockdown: Why did we lockdown for something that has only killed 3 or 4 times more than flu?

This kind of thing doesn't happen in a 'bad flu year'

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-burial-pits-iran-grown-so-fast-...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-spain-madrid-ic...

Apart from the Hong Kong flu in the 60s but we didn't lock down for that. If Covid kills a similar amount with a lock down then imagine what it would have been like without.

No, I don't think so.

I just hope, blindly and ignorantly, that I've worked my way through the worst of it.

I'm ever the optimist.

Doesn't bother me, but a lot of the less anti-sociable people I know are either increasingly struggling or have basically abandoned the guidance already.

But, I don't think it's doable.  I don't think enough people have it in them to do it.

It would be great if we could leave it up to people to be sensible and socially responsible.  I don't think it's going to happen.

The next few months are into the great unknown.

I have just been rebuked by the in house virologist for quoting the BBC without checking with an expert! Several mutations exist, these are likely to result in increased transmissibility and lower pathogenicity, but this remains unproven. 

I will now stand on the naughty step!

A reference if you are interested is available here
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32750338

OK sorry I didn't mean to sound so preachy! I've been wound up by the 'it's just a flu' brigade so might have over-done my reply sorry. I think we are through the worst of it now and, now the case fatality rate is falling so much, we will be able to live with it with a few compromises. I don't think that was the case in the first wave though as we weren't ready but things have changed now.

Thanks, when I asked for a source I wasn't saying I didn't believe you, I was just interested in finding out more. That paper you linked does say "although there is currently no definitive evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is undergoing further adaptation," though.

"Several" is the understatement of the century - https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global

In New Zealand they're now sequencing every identified infection as part of their contact tracing to understand where each case came from (community transmission, geographic region etc.)

I think a lot of the mutations are in noncoding RNA, the purpose of which is still a bit opaque.

Hmmm.

What's changed exactly?

And lets not forget the next big thing to hit us, namely a No deal Brexit.

A lot has changed:

1) We know a lot more about the virus

2) We know more about how to treat the disease it causes

3) We have drugs that reduce the case fatality rate

4) We have the nightingale hospitals ready, further reducing case fatality rate

5) We have more PPE than we did

6) We have massive testing capacity ready

7) We have some kind of track and trace set up

8) People are wearing masks

9) More promising drugs are in the pipeline

10) We may have a vaccine in a couple of years

11) We have more CPAP machines and ventilators ready (taking case fatality rate down even further).

And probably a few other things!

Fair comment.

7) Track and trace

Not really. The central government one doesn't really work.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/aug/04/english-councils-with-highe...

We've had approaching ten meals out. I have been asked for name, email and mobile number once.

I don't get it. What can't they do? I'm now going to work, pretty much as normal; seeing my family, pretty much as normal; going climbing indoors and out, pretty much as normal; seeing my friends and going to the pub, pretty much as normal.

Are these people who just can't survive without house parties, cinema, theatre, clubbing, gigs or what? 

Look at the list of illegal raves the police have struggled to shut down.  Today I saw 5 young lads pile out of a small car - windows closed, no masks on - and into the local Weatherspoons.  If infections start rising these will be prime transmission pathways...  

I was more generally thinking about adherence to the stricter distancing as we had around April/May - if we have a return to that I don’t think it’s going to have such good compliance...

The biggest change is social distancing, hygiene and masks (hello 1918, welcome back) so that R is closer to 1ish rather than 3ish as it was in March.

It means outbreaks grow far more slowly which makes them far more manageable, fingers crossed.

Just how many is 'most'? All I'm seeing is people in desperation losing jobs, burning through their savings, with huge uncertainty over job stability afflicting most others. This then knocks on to spending across all sectors of the economy before we even get to deaths caused by lockdowns and how the two trillion will ever get repaid. 

This doesn't feel like a 'balance' is being struck. It feels like a slow destruction of people's livelihoods and living standards with no end in sight. Then add in the tough-to-measure intangibles of lost educational opportunities, weddings put on hold, funerals not attended, and basic social interactions curtailed. Our suppliers in Asia and Africa, being hammered by a lack of demand, are laying of swathes of staff with no safety nets and savings. All for something which is variously described as being 'here to stay' or 'the new normal'.

Probably half the people I know, if given the choice, would say sod it, let there be no hard decrees on behaviour, let us exercise our common sense, and those of us who want to take our chances should be allowed to. Those who are really scared can be the ones to lock-down and isolate. The point Toby Young and others are trying to make is that decreeing whose livelihoods get eliminated (despite having every desire to keep working), who couldn't visit dying relatives (despite being able to do so safely), and a media circus that only ever hypes the risk (in keeping with all media reporting these days) should be challenged. This isn't helped when the goalposts are being moved.  Before it was flattening the curve so we didn't face hundreds of thousands of deaths, then with fewer than anticipated dying the rationale is being pumped by making an issue of the prolonged recovery, and now the justification is zero deaths. All in the hope that vaccine is around the corner while daily death counts are a tiny fraction of other causes we don't pay any attention to.

Ever thought that the lack of deaths might just be due to some of the measures that were introduced? 

How bad do you think the economy would be if it were left to run rife and the predictions were true? 

A lot of people are critical of the building of the nightingale hospitals, I 100% guarantee those people would be the most vocal if we had run out of hospital beds. 

We have all seen the footage from hospitals in Italy that were so overwhelmed they couldn't cope. 

It's awful that so many people are losing their jobs and in a lot of cases have no savings to rely on but one of the things that this virus has highlighted is our the lack of Resilience in our business and private finances. 

Basically we have spent decades building a house of cards in a sand pit and it's coming back to bite us. 

We learned nothing from the 2008 recession and as soon as possible we started borrowing heavily again to fund our lifestyles and our businesses. 

Hopefully the perfect storm of a pandemic coming off the back of a recession with brexit for dessert will wake people up to the buy now pay later lifestyle. 

On the subject if letting those who want to crack on as normal and use common sense, what a selfish attitude. Let the young and fit run round as they please whilst spreading it more through the not so fit, doesn't matter its only killing off the old and weak. 

It was a good call. Can't find the news article I was remembering now, so suspect it was on the BBCs coverage of the papers or I am going crazy (probably the latter). 

The D614G mutation is dominant and is linked to increased transmissibility. This is a spike protein so at the moment this is thought to be unrelated to how severe the disease is (more computer modelling that cellular studies).

Looking at one paper this mutation is associated with higher viral loads, but not with increased disease severity, so I suspect that is where the concept of reduced pathogenicity could have come from, but that is a leap. Theoretically pathogens should change and infectivity and reduced pathogenicity is the norm, but that pressure would often be most obvious in an immune or partially immune population. 

How many are important? In a flu phylogenetic tree often only the HA or NA is described as other coding differences are not relevant.

However the other mutations although non-encoding are very usefully used to track the passage of virus in a population. That graph is very detailed, but also seems very 'European' type, particularly with the confidence limits shown.

I fully endorse some aspects of the way you run your company (eg no debt) but you are attaching too much importance to your narrow notion of resilience. Before the pandemic I encouraged you to bring on a right-hand person to take some of the strain of day-to-day management and allow you to explore ways to grow your business or improve its products and services within or outside its niche. Your choice to keep your hands on all the reins is your decision to make but it potentially puts a cap on the career development of your workers and actually lowers the resilience of your business by putting your workers at greater risk of redundancy, should you be incapacitated by the virus or otherwise.

Meanwhile, you can’t put the job losses in the hospitality sector down to a lack of resilience. It’s the continued and complete shutdown of their part of their economy that is at fault. At the large scale, resilience has actually been good. Greggs, McDonalds and their ilk are still solvent and so are the world’s major hotel chains. And the reason: access to debt and equity, the very evils you decry. On the smaller scale, businesses have gone to the wall, not because they are indebted, but because they, understandably, choose not to become indebted. Elsewhere, in retail, chains have collapsed, not because consumers have stopped purchases, but because they have failed to embrace online channels as in-store became compromised. The pandemic has simply accelerated the inevitable and boosted those who invested for the future, quite possibly using debt.

As for the consumer, debt has actually reduced during the pandemic while the latest figures show that spending has recovered to pre-pandemic levels. That sounds pretty resilient to me.

Meanwhile 70% of the economy has adapted to lockdowns by moving online and WFH. Seems astonishingly resilient to me.

Resilience remains a worthy strategy, and I repeat my endorsement of your prudent philosophy. I have similarly strict rules about debt in the companies I invest in. However, in the 1-2% that are struggling (travel sector) I’m very glad of their access to debt markets. So it would be an error to hold yours up as the only model or to define resilience with such a narrow perspective.

I hate the idea of the elderly losing so much that brings them joy when their time on Earth is so limited (wish I'd taken a photo of my two kids hugging my parents last week while wearing silk bag liners). At the other end, teenagers are having their lives and life chances hugely limited at that fleeting point where life is at its most intense and ultra vivid. Neither of these demographics are ever getting this time back.

Unfortunately I agree. If people could just manage masks, hand sanitising and not coughing all over each other whilst in public then I'm sure we'd be having a very different pandemic. Too many people are just too thick, selfish or ignorant. 6 months in and even pedestrian one way systems are beyond many.

This is my biggest dread. Hospital A&Es were absolutely rammed in the run up to Christmas, it looked like we were coping with some huge natural catastrophe. If we get the expected second spike hand in hand with a Winter influx like we experienced last year, we're f**ked.

It's more personal preventative steps that a large section of society can't get their heads round: covering their mouths when coughing (let alone coughing into a tissue), frequent hand washing/sanitising, not touching your face when out and about, not breathing directly onto your customers food/drink when serving, maintaining social distance, pedestrian one way systems, etc, etc

There seems to be a good 20 or 30% (?) of the population that can't get their heads around these measures and the result is going to be a lot of deaths and a huge amount of economic chaos. 

The current number of deaths per day does not justify the economic, social and emotional damage. 

The potential for the current deaths per day to explode exponentially to a thousand or  thousands per day does justify the economic, social and emotional damage.

Letting the disease run its natural course to kill a few hundred thousand or half a million would have huge economic, social and emotional costs.

The only thing preventing the explosive growth of the disease are the behavioural changes we have seen since March that come at great economic, social and emotional cost.

There is no easy answer. They all have economic, social and emotional costs.

At the moment we have to pin our hopes on a vaccine.

Every winter the NHS is precariously close to collapse. Last winter was mild and there was very little flu, but waits in A&E were the worst on record, 20+ ambulances were stacked outside for hours and I'd given up on arranging admissions via ambulance as they'd wait for 8+ hours. 

Things are returning to "normal" now. I've had people saying they've waited 8hrs in A&E, in the middle of summer.  Old people are lying on the ground for hours after a fall because the ambulances aren't able to offload again. 

If we have a cold winter, normal flu levels and covid it's going to be awful. 

That's a difficult question to answer!  What does "important" even mean?  Causes a significant change to the harmfulness of the virus?  Disrupts the keying of antibodies or T-cells?  It's almost impossible to gather enough data to do a sufficiently controlled analysis to determine the effect of most mutations.  

Only two years of economic uncertainty?The B word hasn't gone away.

Indeed.  I think the disruption to everyone in higher and further eduction has been significant as well, and that disruption it going to carry on significantly even with a "best case" virus scenario; some of the disruption is going to rumble on through the systems for 3-4 years even if the virus disappears tomorrow.  One consolation is that a lot of those affected will be voters by the next election...

My outlook is a mixed bag -

• Happy: We have a testing capability of much more than 5 cases/week now, test and trace is perhaps 50% effective and rising as local authorities take over (*).  
• Happy: On average people in public and the workplace are using significantly more risk control measures than in Feb/Mar.  
• Happy: We are now doing a soft quarantine on inbound travellers where appropriate.  
• Worried: Undergraduate term returns nationwide.  Last time the outbreak came here during term time; this time we're going to shuffle ~2.5 million young people around the country over a 4 week period, with probably a couple of thousand infected in there in an age group quite likely to have long, symptom free infective periods.  These people then go in to "compact" halls of residence and densely packed privately rented homes with little to no adult supervision, and with the nightclubs closed.  Supermarkets still sell cheap booze though...
• Worried: Gavin Williamson effectively lied his arse off with his big news story of "no evidence of transmission in schools".  The schools were largely shut or running at < 5% capacity with enhanced distancing and risk control measures.  It's like saying there's no evidence of Russian interference when you haven't looked for it.  The "respiratory outbreaks by setting" plot in the weekly PHE surveillance reports tell a very different story.  Jr starts school the week after next and that becomes the biggest risk of entry in to our household and we may have to stop the outdoor visits with Granddad. 
• Unknown: As mik82 says, "normal" flu levels and a covid resurgence would be very bad; I'm been quietly contemplating the flu season.  It's possible that there's a large overlap between the pandemic deaths and those who would otherwise have died of flu this winter; nature doesn't do "double counting" so perhaps between that, enhanced flu vaccination and all the risk control measures in place for covid (which also control risk for flu), it will be a mild flu season

It could be that we go in to some sort of winter meltdown with universities cancelling all in-person teaching by mid-August, a lot of soul searching questions over schools and risk vs benefits, the Nightingale hospitals re-actived and the NHS split into "pre-screening" and "Covid-free" wards on the normal estate and covid wards on the Nightingale sites, a lockdown of social measures like house visits, pubs and possibly restaurants.

Or it could be that we keep a lid on it.  We may have been terribly slow in the UK to get a lid on it the first time round, but unless we start disbanding critical public health bodies and replacing experienced management with clearly political appointments from unrelated industry (**), everyone will be much better at responding this time round.

I can't see how pubs can remain open when schools and universities return; it seems R is about one now, and there was significant slack created by schools and universities being shut I think.  We've had an outbreak from a local drinking hole, others have made the news.  

* I am not sure where local authority funding is coming from for this though or how sustainable it is, and the plan to replace PHE with a new central executive agency suggests the government aren't willing to devolve more back to a local level as with the pre-PHE days.

** That would never happen...

There's a gang of chaps putting telecom cables in outside my house now. One wipes nose with hand, picks up a shovel his mate was using a minute ago, and that his other mate will be using next. I visited a construction site a few weeks back and it was very similar. Although in fairness to them if I was young again and doing hard-graft like that I'd probably be doing the same. I went to an informal work-related meeting a while back and certain people seemed to take pride in ignoring all the COVID guidance/regulations.  Personally, I'm avoiding, where possible, anything that may lead to me having to self-isolate as I have people who rely on me to visit them for care. So, no climbing, no holidays etc. and limited human contact. But going back to the 20/30%, I think that's inevitable, unfortunately.

On a more positive note, I took my car in to a Ford garage the other day for MOT. Their measures were top-notch, even asking you to bring your own pen to sign documents, and wiping the key pad on the card reader before and after you'd used it to pay.

There's no need to make this a binary argument. There are many nations that took substantially fewer measures than we did and come out more or less unscathed. All I am questioning is the top-down imposition of current measures, especially when looking at the virus in terms of its direct impact on the working-age population (I think we're at <6k deaths for under-65s and of them the numbers that didn't have pre-existing conditions appear minuscule). 

Even if people have savings they stand to lose them entirely. Not because they don't want to work. Not because their jobs weren't resilient. But because of national decrees that the entire economy is essentially shut, or forced to operate under conditions that are unworkable, as a precautionary measure.

So, you constrain your annual spending, put aside a nest-egg, all at substantial personal effort and cost. Then because of a national policy change you lose everything with no certainty about a return to normal. Encouraging savings is a good idea. But thinking a savings plan will cover you against covid is like foregoing home insurance in favour of a savings account in case your house burns down. Hugely inefficient and unlikely to help you when everything falls apart.

I think that's unfair. Plenty of people live within their means. If anything, the covid crisis and the impact of our response incentivised short-term thinking; you'll potentially lose everything anyway so don't plan for the future, live deeply in debt, and if it all hits the fan declare yourself bankrupt.

Or somewhere in between. Isolate those who absolutely need to be isolated and put in place measures that deal with those a few degrees of separation between them and everyone else.

I'm not saying the answers are clear. But I take issue with Jon Stewart's argument that people disputing the necessity of our measures are head-cases. There are a number of highly educated individuals, with expertise as good as any, who have been questioning the stats, questioning the outcomes and questioning the measures taken, who have been ready to admit when their own predictions didn't measure up, but have also been on the money much of the time. There is a fair argument to be put forward that the measures being taken are OTT, may do more harm than good, and that we have become exceedingly comfortable with acting on vastly over-inflated worst-case scenarios and unable to countenance incorrect, but far more accurate, lower-end estimates.

I disagree.  R is currently about one and so is lining us up for a winter problem, so there is a fair argument that current measures are not sufficiently effective - especially for the return of university and school combined with the onset of flu season.

”Over the top” means more than necessary.  If we had OTT measure we would have more than we need to control the virus.  We currently have just about sufficient measures which will soon become insufficient.

It may well be that some measures did not justify their use in terms of efficacy vs cost, but that doesn’t make them OTT, it makes them inappropriate.

I would far rather we gamble with excessive measures and then progressively relax - as we eventually did - than start with insufficient and then have a panic driven tightening - as we initially did.  Both are sub-optimal but possible when the optimal isn’t known.  The first is more reversible than the other in terms of outcomes.  The first teaches us a lot more about where each control measure lands in terms of societal costs vs efficacy, the other doesn’t.

Its to late to go back now and start with a tougher lockdown in early March and then a progressive relaxation under much better circumstances than we ended up with.  It’s not too late to realise our hands were tied by lockdown by how desperate the situation was, and that we shouldn’t rally against the severity and duration of that lockdown but against the mistakes that forced us in to it, one of which ironically was not embracing more risk control measures sooner.

My problem with that is that they don’t just take a chance with themselves but with the whole of society by becoming a link in an ever expanding infection chain.  They risk directly the health of those down the chain from them, and they - on average - contribute to raising R and requiring more socially and economically damaging risk control measures.

Two points -

according to the nhs flu website, flu season is dec to March.

December being over three months away. Schools and universities will have been back for a long time by then so we’ll have a good idea of how the r rate is progressing before flu has a chance to make a major impact.

Secondly, will flu season actually be an important factor given that many older people, those worse affected,  are still taking precautions to avoid COVID which I presume will also help them avoid the flu?

The other factor is that it takes young and healthy people longer to die and hospitals can hold it off longer when their intensive care units are not overloaded.     There will be a multi week delay between seeing the infection number going up and seeing the death statistics fully reflect the new infections.

Those two months between universities and “flu season” isn’t so long if the virus starts with a smattering in individuals (I estimate a couple of thousand infected students) shuffled around the UK in the return to campus and then spreads somewhat asymptomatically in the young student population, who then return to their family homes in another great reshuffle in... December.  Wham Bam.  

The upcoming term generally results in a giant spread of vile diseases through the student and staff body dubbed “freshers flu” as all the different respiratory diseases in circulation get shuffled round, butted up in close quarters and lubricated with a lot of alcohol.  At least this year there will be fewer diseases imported internationally and staff will have much reduced teaching contact with the students. 

I wondered the same in a previous message along with a couple of other reasons why it might be milder.  It seems prudent to plan for an average to bad flu season. 

Or they’ll be ommited from the daily PHE death stats entirely if it takes them more than 28 days to die from their infection.

I'll level with you before I go on, I think Toby Young is an absolute crank

That said what he and others don't seem to grasp is the relationship between public health and the economy.....there are plenty out there who seem to think if we didn't lock down the economy would have just carried on normal, we'd just have had a load more deaths but everyone would have been going to work, socialising, spending money as normal...even the most basic analysis shows that this would have not happened when he had our hospitals overwhelmed and whole health care system on the verge of collapse.

Moving onto now there is narrative out there that seems to go along these lines:

Virus out of control > lockdown to reduce R0 beow 1> works > infections drops > deaths drop to a trickle (in pops a Toby Young type at this point) > look everyone COVID-19 is no longer serious, hardly  anyone is dying any more > lets just go back to normal!

.....and the idea that you can just shield the vunerable and elderly or expect them to voluntary isolate whilst everyone else goes back to normality is absolute nonsense.....for a start how would you keep it out of care homes and the NHS? How do you think they are going to feel in this two-tier society?

Speaking personally, I could possibly handle 2 more years of weirdness (one should see how weird my life used to be ), but suicides and reported instances of depression have gone up, it doesn't seem like it would be helpful for people's wellness in the scheme of things.

Increasing ventilation of buildings and having people wearing masks inside may be a plan towards life becoming partly normal, but they don't stop airborne covid from being inhaled if they're not the ones to filter out viruses.

Which nations in Europe took fewer measures and came out in a better position....I know you are going to come back with Sweden......however those who purport Sweden to be some success story never compare it to their Scandanvian neighbour who locked down. They are predicted to come out with a similar level of economic damage with a fraction of the deaths because they locked down quickly. Our biggest mistake in terms of both deaths and economic damage was not the fact we locked down, but the fact we locked down too late.

You also seem to have made it binary here by focusing on the impact on the working population, we live in a society and making it some of two tier system doesn't seem fair to most of us.

What do you mean by isolate? everyone over 70 or 75 stick to their homes? all the younger vunerable people as well, they can all just stay at home indefinitely? 

As per my other post how do propose keeping it out of care homes and the NHS when the workers are living a normal life with everyone else and the virus is spreading exponentially? You can't....

They might not be head cases but in every debate I have had with them there is a real lack of critical thinking or logical thought process.

If you think the current measure are OTT what easing do you propose beyond the simplistic 'lock the elderly and vunerable up'?

Totally agree with your points.

The other thing I keep coming back to is that everyone is talking about the death rates (indeed important to consider), but largely ingnoring the fairly large number of people living with long covid. People who can still barely function months later. This is happening in young people with no underlying conditions who have been previously fit and active. If we let the disease rip through our young people, what percentage will be long-term affected? And we don't yet know how long this effect lasts. My friend is 5 and a half months into it!

Combined some times with an over-reliance on references of questionable quality and carefully constructive emotive arguments built on false pretences such as the ability to trade lives for the economy.  So, some of them seem clearly driven by either a deep misunderstanding or a dogmatic ethos.

Agreed. There are lots of people with long covid. Probably in the tens of thousands in the UK. Mostly young, fit 30 to 40 year olds. I am one of them although a little older. I am happy to be alive but optimistically I am looking at a year of post viral fatigue. In reality that means no running, no cycling, no climbing, a change to part time working and all the issues surrounding that, pacing myself to do the simplest things, having maybe 40% of my daily energy levels.

On good days, its fine. On bad, well, its grim, where will it end, is it a permanent state of new being?

I am as torn as to how people should or can behave as the next person. I have young friends and children who need to get on. I am not about to lose my livelihood. And yet, this virus, for my little world at least, is life changing. Temporarily, I hope. 

Sorry to hear you are going through this. I hope you start to get more energy soon. It must be so hard to be the "test case" and have no real idea of what it might look like long-term.

Thank you. I am in a position of reasonable financial security. I feel for folk who have far more at stake and who are younger and with young children. We should have a far better safety net for people. But that is a political discussion for another day. 

There has been very little to no flu surveillance this year, so this is a big unknown. The lack of circulation due to COVID lockdown gives some hope that there is nothing very different our there. 

I agree with everything you say with 1 exception  I don't need or want a right hand person. If I wanted to grow faster than I would need one but I'm happy where I am. 

My employees are not at risk if something happens to me. I may be the only one that can do everything that we do but I have people who are veery good, in some cases better than me in specific areas of our market. For the last year or so I have been grooming a couple of the younger guys too, my ultimate plan is to give the company to my first apprentice on the understanding that I get paid a pension. I have no kids to leave anything to so my business will be left to the employees. If they are lucky I will pop off withing 6 months of retirement, that is the trend in my family. 

It's sectors that can't operate with SD and travel restrictions like hospitality and entertainment that are really hit by current restrictions. 

Yes, the economic impact of covid is huge. That's the impact of the pandemic, influenced hugely by the failure to control it when we had chance. It's not the impact of the current restrictions in place to keep R below 1, which are necessary because we allowed the virus to get f*cking everywhere. 

And that would be utterly idiotic, because the issue isn't one of what risk we fancy taking within our own lives. The issue is how do we continue to live as a society without all catching a really bad virus at the same time, because the impact of that isn't something we can handle. 

You speak as if there's an option of us just all getting covid, and that'll be better economically than restrictions. That's a mistake. You can't have an economy when everyone's got covid at the same time! 

Toby Young just doesn't know anything and simply spouts whatever useless drivel arises in his tiny, inadequate mind. Sure we can challenge the details of the policies, but we can't just decide, on the basis of total ignorance, that we know that any given policy is worse than the "do nothing" alternative he promotes, to support our retarded libertarian worldview. He is the ultimate bell-end. 

That's just not true. The justification for current restrictions is keeping R below 1. We know what happens when R>1 and it's a f*ck of a lot worse than current restrictions. People need to get their heads around this. 

The current level of deaths is OK in my view and that of policymakers. The level is low because of lockdown (too late, hence the economic carnage) and continued restrictions. 

If we could just "go back to normal" and not much would happen except a few old people dying, don't you think that's exactly what the government would do? 

In Wales we are currently working with NYE call volumes and management have had to up the escalation level. Covid and lockdown was a 'nice' break with a much reduced volume of work. 

Why isolate those who are vulnerable for ever and a day ?

Wouldn't it be better, both morally and practically, to isolate those who are disregarding social distancing, mask-wearing, and so on ? These are the people who must (logically) be passing on the virus. Stop them mixing with society and you reduce the infection rate.

A 14 day spell (locked up) in isolation for being dangerous to society at large just might lead some of them to actually change their selfish behaviour.

How can you say that about the associate editor of this shining beacon of humanity?

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quillette

I don’t think he’s a crank.  I think he’s an immoral, self serving **** who couldn’t care less about the lives he’s trying to destroy with his self serving perspective.  

Given its a flu I'm not sure much will have changed in just 2 years.  Won't we just being going through another 'winter flu' (Covid-22.5 perhaps), or given the huge number of infections  in some other countries like India, perhaps we'll have to call it Indian flu)

If in two years there are vast swages of populations where covid-19 is still present, such as India, then there's always the opportunity for it to re-emerge unless we can 'lock up' one or two less fortunate countries?, 

(Its a bit ironic that a couple of years ago, the wearing of  Burkhas and similar face coverings were the subject of so much dispute in several countries including the UK.  Now we all have to wear face masks whether we like it or not)

Measures _are_ totally OTT.

The most vulnerable should self isolate. Everyone else should get on with life as per the pre covid normal.

If and when the NHS is being swamped, then very short term measures could be put in place to alleviate that pressure and then removed immediately. 

And how does that work when carers live in the community? Do you expect all carers to isolate too, with their whole families? Suddenly a profession which is hard at the best of times will lose a lot of people. Who is going to care for our vulnerable?

And what about the extra long term pressure on NHS and welfare state of all the people who were fit, healthy and productive but are now living with long covid? We currently don't know what percentage this affects (but we know it's a big enough percentage for it to be a recognised phenomenon) and we don't know how longterm it is. 

Yes mate it's that simple, I wonder why our government and every other in Europe have not taken your approach.....ffs.

The massive problems with this have been explained to you about a dozen times over the last few months; I don’t know why you show no sign of acknowledging them; there are two very different possibilities I can see, and each would be quite insulting if I spelt them out.

Needless to say you are totally wrong.  I know you think that your opinion and mine are equally valid but I think that’s total bollocks.  I’m not going to trot out the reasons I disagree yet again as no doubt you’d ignore them.  You can ignore the other posters who are spelling it out instead...

I don't agree with the 'massive problems'. I don't agree with the reasons you put forward. 

Ok, so how do we shield the vulnerable while letting the virus rip through the population then?

Have you asked yourself why no other government in Europe has taken your approach. Are they all seeing the 'massive problems' that you don't see?

Sweden

edit (and my final say for today):

What 'I' don't understand is how 'you' (plural) don't understand that there might be another point of view on the issue. That you are so aghast that someone thinks differently. That they might prioritise differently.  I'm not alone. I know lots of people who think they way you do, and lots of people who think the way I do, about the impact of covid and what needs to be done. 

BTW, the latest R number range for the UK is 0.9-1.1. In parts of London, the North West, and the South West it's 1.1.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-number-in-the-uk

I know there are other points of view.  

Some for example thought that we wouldn’t get hit as hard as Italy, despite us doing less preparation.  They thought that various nebulous  factors including “genetic differences” and demographic would mean we got hit less bad.  They couldn’t have been more wrong yet show no sign of reevaluating their positions; this does rather flag their opinion as “not very useful” to me.

Most of the people who think more on your side are coming at it from a perspective of personal risk, and seem to think that we can magically isolate the vulnerable which both ignores what “vulnerable” implies and that we don’t yet know the risk factors that are killing or long term laying low a fraction of young, healthy people.  It ignores a great many other things that we’ve been through on here - largely around personal choices forming a link in chains of infection that end with others dying - not just covid victims but anyone else who needs healthcare if things get out of control.  

Thankfully we’re not as bad as the USA in terms of government and ours are still taking a collective view (economically as much as socially I’m sure).

Again, all the reasons you think that point of view is invalid. You can't acknowledge it exists as one side of the argument without trying to dismiss it can you. 

Higher deaths than their neighbours for, it seems, little to no economic benefit.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2251615-is-swedens-coronavirus-strateg...

You still haven't explained how we can sheild the vulnerable while letting it rip through the population

Covid-19 isn't  flu. Coronaviruses and influenza viruses are completely unrelated. Just because some of the symptoms are similar doesn't mean that the viruses are at all similar. Covid has nothing to do with flu. And the 19 in COvid-19 doesn't mean coronavirus number 19, it means it was identified in 2019.

I'm not going to respond to every niggle. Especially as this is your pet concern. Your glee at the people having to quarantine after being on holiday was palpable. 

But long answer short, I don't see what the issue is. Shield them. 'Do what it says on the tin'. Use distancing, isolation, PPE gear etc etc. 

But far greater maintenance of individual liberty. 

You seem to have this weird idea that every point of view is “equally valid” bordering on the dangerous concept that this makes every PoV “equally right”.  

I obviously acknowledge your POV’s existence - every time I reply to it I acknowledge it.   I don’t really know how you can say I haven’t acknowledged it...

That doesn’t mean I think it’s right.  I think it’s as dangerously wrong as your previous PoV back in early March that deaths and cases in the UK were not bound to follow those in Italy despite our failure to implement risk control measures, because of genetics and demographic differences.  Anyone who took solace in your view back then and didn’t start taking serious risk control measures likely contributed to the rapidity of the spike in cases that forced us into a chaotic and highly damaging lockdown.  

I acknowledge your PoV.  If you need to hear it (it seems like you do), I acknowledge your right to hold whatever PoV you want.  Unless Alan gets sick of my verbose rants and bans me you’ll have to deal with my right to call out what I consider a dangerously wrong view whenever I see it.
 

This provides an excellent example to my comment on the validity of two different points of view. One comes from someone who has spent the last six months working in care homes during the  pandemic, and the other comes from someone who hasn’t.   I, as a bystander, have strong reason to take girlymonkey’s view above yours.  I can also engage my brain and think through the daily mechanics of it and reach another point of view.

What reasons do you have for the reader to assign any validity to your POV here?  

Unless we live in a democracy where enough people hold a point of view and vote in accordance. 

(case in point Brexit. I think people who voted for Brexit are mad, but they voted and that's what we've got.)

These points of view are equally valid. It is perfectly reasonable, other than to you, to hold the point of view that the liberty of the majority is more important than protecting the most vulnerable of society.

I don't really care about the reader, validity is not the point.  I'm providing a foil to the concept that mass protection at all costs because COVID is so horrific is the only stance to take. It isn't. 

I must have missed the democratic vote on how we respond to Covid?

No they aren’t.  Because you propose giving some people more liberty at the expense of others, apparently wilfully blind to how this will close the loop and deprive us all of more liberty when the chickens come home to roost.  Just like arguments for not locking down delayed it and forced us in to a much longer and more damaging lockdown.  You’re arguing for the moon on a stick without a plan to get it, and just disagreeing with anyone who has evidence, logic or experience to back up their perspective.

There we have it ladies and gentlemen.   I’m not quite sure how our liberty is being restricted any longer other than being asked to wear masks, sit a bit further apart than normal, quarantine after holidays etc but the lives of the most vulnerable are currency to remove those restrictions on our liberty.  In my view a society that gives up on the most vulnerable has a toxic rot at its core and is doomed.

We are not doing it at all costs, perhaps if we had back in March for a shorter period things would be better now, but that is water under the bridge – well water and 60,000 dead. Now we are not doing much protection at all costs, or anywhere near. No one has said that there are not other ways of doing this – they just point out the flaws that you overlook when suggesting alternatives. I am, and I think others, do not think they would happen as you think.

Sweden are not doing what you propose...

The problem you have and it is a very big problem is that when serious problems with this policy are highlighted to you, you have no answer on how to deal with them......

Wow...f*ck the vunerable..... I want my liberty back!

There has been a virus/pandemic scare every 2-3 years for quite some time. 

Due to the measures taken during Covid, it is likely some of these measures will a regular occurrence in the years to come until someone develops technology that is deemed to prevent such things from being considered dangerous. 

I don't see them as problems, as you may have noted in your next reply.

You can't distance and isolate carers from people who need intimate personal care. PPE reduces viral load but does not stop infection, hence many dead nurses and care staff. 

It seems to me that if people have gotten through this period without a huge strain on their family wellbeing they think we're doing fine.

On the other hand, if you've lost your livelihood, your mental health, your future, your family and/or your social life then you think perhaps we've gone too far.

It is simplistic, perhaps overly so, but you could say we've chosen to protect the elderly and vulnerable at the expense of jobs and working people. Children and young people have largely been abandoned.

I certainly feel like we should by now, be in a position to protect our vulnerable, without the life changing consequences for everyone else. Effective ppe, track and trace and targeted support (such as job retention bonuses for care workers) should be enough to get us back to 'normal'.

We cannot carry on like this.

The carers need to isolate. Create a 'caring bubble'. 

(I know you won't like that idea, but it would work)

I certainly think it's simplistic, because we chose to protect the NHS even more than we chose to protect the elderly and the vulnerable.  The second party of your simplicity is in presenting the "vulnerable" and "working people" as mutually exclusive categories.  A great many working people are vulnerable to many problems other than covid, and they need the NHS.

If we'd not protected the elderly and vulnerable and in doing so protected the NHS, many people who are suffering from the causes you list would be suffering from them for a different reason.

I agree, but the other thing that we need for all this to work is for baseline cases to be an order of magnitude or more lower than they are right now, so that if anything causes a rapid rise in case numbers the expanded numbers remain manageable for PPE, T&T, isolated hospitalisation and so on.

Looks like we screwed the pooch on getting numbers down before September.  

I certainly don't want things to cary on like this - this is why I was so frustrated back in March/April when so many people put so much effort into convincing others that lockdown was wrong; in my view that has seen us carry on like this for far too long already, to far more detriment to employment, mental and physics health, happiness and critically child development and schooling.

So that's all carers' kids out of school still, living separately from partners, not using public transport to get to work etc? Hmmm, good luck staffing care homes with that sort of regimen! They are underpaid and undervalued as it is, why would you keep going with those conditions? And it's not just carers, it's nurses, cleaners, catering staff, maintenance staff, physios etc etc.  

What about NHS staff? Have you thought about them....are they meant to 'bubble' as well?

If they are have you even thought about how this would work.....really thought about it.

My wife is a nurse on a palliative care ward. So she has to 'bubble'.....I presume that means I have to be part of this bubble and my kids.....are my kids allowed to go to school as part of this solution? 

Sure, as long as their teachers join the bubble.  I bet some of those teachers have family and/or need medical care themselves. 

Pretty soon the whole nation will be in this bubble...

No it won't...lets take track and trace for a start, the current system can't cope now, yet you are suggesting we let the virus rip through the general population...... so how will track and trace work when infections rocket?!

...and how is giving care worker bonuses going to help stop the transmission of the virus?!!!!!!

No I'm not.

Also I'm fascinated by the use of metaphor in everyday lives.

"Rip through" is an interesting one as I can't make the link between tearing of fabric and a virus. However it is commonly used as a metaphor to describe effects of fires/explosions so I assume its use is to compare the virus with these. What makes this particularly interesting is that I can't make the link between fires and ripping either. Where has it come from? It's a second order metaphor with seemingly no obvious link beyond a tenuous shared description of destruction.

I'd have thought dispersing would be a better metaphor but I guess that doesn't suggest the right level of aggression and we can't counter that with military metaphors like fight and lock down. I wonder if all the war and fire metaphors for this virus have given everyone false hope of 'containing' or 'winning' when we have no hope of doing so.

Coincidentally the news today was that polio eliminated in Africa and now only remains in Pakistan & Afghanistan. Just as well that those 'containing' polio and 'winning' maintained their hope.

You've spent a lot of time addressing my use of one word and not much else.....let's substitute rip for spread.......how will contact tracing help when it is spreading further than it is now?

... right up until they catch it

... then get really ill and struggle through 6 months of post viral fatigue, or just have long term neurological damage after a mild infection [1]. Probably their inferior genetics or sociological factors like being poor [2], we should just let them die to preserve our liberty [3].

I thought this was a risibly dumb argument 6 months ago; as we learn more about the medium and long term consequences of even mild covid infections it would need much more compelling reasoning than I’ve seen on this thread to change my mind.  

Once again I think ClimberEd is tilting at ghosts - they claim to be providing a foil to a view I haven’t actually seen expressed by anyone whilst making the case we should let the vulnerable suffer at the maximum rate that doesn’t overload the NHS [4] and that our nebulous liberty - not currently very restricted - is more important than the vulnerable. [3]

I am painting a picture of the impression I’m getting of their view.  Perhaps I am being unfair in linking it all up and really they’ve just got lots of disjointed views I disagree with individually; together i find them abhorrent.

[1] https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/08/warnin...

[2] https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/we_are_not_going_to_follow_ital...

[3] https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/itll_all_be_over_by_christmas_2...

[4] https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/itll_all_be_over_by_christmas_2...

...and then when they get it, they tell everyone that they should have taken it more seriously...

I thinking "ripping through" is fairly apt because it has connotations of rapid propagation like a tear or indeed like a self-propagating forest fire. "Dispersion" is much weaker because it suggests spreading out and dilution.

Polio has had an effective vaccine for over 50 years and we still have it now. Not great winning.

Effective contact tracing and regular testing of those in contact with lots of people or vulnerable people (health, care, education, factories) would be much better than nationwide, arbitrary restrictions. 

Interesting idea. But it's nothing like a wildfire, it's slow and enduring and spreads far from any previous cases. There is no 'front' travelling through the population, there's no front to fight.

In fact there's no really accurate simile which is why the choice of metaphors is so revealing about the intentions of language. 

Have you worked out how many tests youd need to do each week for that? , when you have come back to me.... 

Shrug. Not sure you're allowed to give me homework but I reckon about 3-4 million which is about 500k a day which last I heard was the government's testing capacity target.

I'm not sure what you're actually suggesting we do. What's your plan? Carry on with no schools? Continue to destroy entire sectors of our economy?

Humans live with disease and we have to tolerate it to some extent. There's a balance to be struck and it's a perfectly legitimate point of view to suggest we haven't got it quite right at the moment.

 Not entirely correct or wrong. But good timing.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-africa-53887947

Previous successes include smallpox. 

So you haven't got a clue, thanks.....how about track and trace, how is that going to handle a virus that is growing exponentially in the country? 

I am happy with general direction of travel....you are the one making implausible solutions to get us out of this.

I don't think we will know exactly which is the right approach for a few years. That balance between economy and deaths, but if a country isn't preserving either then it's failing!! 

Is it growing exponentially? What were the case numbers last week, the week before and before that? 

Not at the moment but the other dudes ideas would lead to this happening and very soon afterwards contact tracing would be waste of time...its only useful if the virus is suppressed across the whole community.

This one of his solutions falls at the first bit of scrutiny... 

Negligible health and economic damage for about 97% of the world's population.

Fair enough = I've corrected my original post.  Try this:-

Given its a virus I'm not sure much will have changed in just 2 years.  Won't we just being going through another 'winter virus' (Covid-22.5 perhaps), or given the huge number of infections  in some other countries like India, Pakistan & Afghanistan,  perhaps we'll have to call it  the Indian virus).

If in two years there are vast swages of populations where covid-19 is still present, such as India, etc.,  then there's always the opportunity for it to re-emerge unless we can 'lock up' one or two less fortunate countries - or perhaps lock ourselves up - or is it down?

(Its a bit ironic that a couple of years ago, the wearing of  Burkhas and similar face coverings were the subject of so much dispute in several countries including the UK.  Now we all have to wear face masks whether we like it or not.

OK?  

PS they said WW1 would be over by Xmas too.

You're still making a lot of assumptions and big predictions and I would guess, from your confusion with flu, that you aren't a virologist or epidemiologist etc. So how do you know all this when the world's experts don't?

I wasn't being pedantic about it not being a flu: how can you make big predictions about how Covid will play out if you don't know the basics like it not being a flu?

Not wishing to sound like a knob (I probably do), but those are my thoughts on what you propose. I'm not making any prediction because I haven't studied viruses or epidemics. 

I find it rather disturbing, or perhaps even abhorrent, that you seem to persist in searching out my old posts, and (whilst carefully watching your language) making it about me rather than the issue at hand.

I don’t need to search for your Italy thread, that’s seared into my memory from way back when.  You may note that my other links were to things on this thread and not to other old posts.  So I didn’t search out old posts, just one.  

We have been discussing your view vs mine.  I am taking your point of view and explaining why I find it abhorrent.  You have made it abundantly clear in your own words on this thread that you think we should let the more vulnerable die at the maximum rate that can be sustained without breaking the NHS so the rest of us can have our “liberty” back.  You seem to consider this a foil to a view of others that nobody else actually holds.  The Italy thread smacked of exceptionalism at the time (your easily demolished list of reasons why you thought we’d magically be spared the same consequences).  I have explained how I’m joining the dots from that to your view of the vulnerable you want to ram through the NHS to restore our liberty.  I’m more than happy for you to explain to me how and where I’ve gone wrong in joining the dots.

As I said I’ll continue pointing out my issues with your view.  I considered your Italy thread gravely misleading as it gave false comfort to people who may have then taken less risk control measures and I consider your current view that releasing all controls from most people and isolating the vulnerable until the NHS is at capacity similarly damaging - in no way would the final results of this restore the “liberty” you claim it would.  Other people have explained some reasons why to you, your responses are basically “la la la you’re wrong”.  

Duty Calls - https://xkcd.com/386/

So now you're the self-appointed abiter of what is reasonable and what is gravely misleading?! 

What arrogance.

I stand by my point of view. Lock downs are over the top. We weren't overwhelmed in the way Italy were. We need to get on with life as per the old normal, and the most vulnerable need to isolate. 

You can argue until you are blue in the face, or perhaps puce might be more appropriate, but it won't change my opinion. 

We weren't overwhelmed because we had a lockdown! The more successful your preventative measures are the more people think they were an over-reaction. And life is pretty normal now. You can go to the pub etc. as usual with a few compromises. 

Life is very far from normal. 

No.  I am pointing out what I consider to be gravely misleading.  That is my opinion. Readers are free to agree, disagree or challenge as much as they want.

I do not think so.  I am generally taking the time to explain my reasons, to link to evidence and so on.  Throughout this crisis you have stuck by your views with little to no evidence or reasoning to back them up, and when you do show reasoning it's so simplistic as to be utterly flawed; for example on this thread you put forwards the idea of isolating the vulnerable as the simple solution to all this, then when clanged extended that to isolating their carers with them.  You ignore the issues raised with this by someone who actually works in the sector - putting their health and their families health where your opinions is.  Not only do you ignore their issues, you attack them over something they said on a previous thread.  This to me is both arrogance and double standards, as you were the first to call back to a comment from another poster on another thread (09:19 Wed on this thread), yet you cry disturbing and abhorrent when I do this same with you a day later (06:18 Thu on this thread).

I think this has been stated many times before by many people but we weren't overwhelmed because we locked down. 

The normal is always changing, the old normal can never come back.  That process has been hastened significantly and hopefully temporarily by Covid.

I haven't been blue in the face, or puce, or otherwise agitated by pointing out the gaping holes in your stance.  I'm not interested in changing your opinion - no other poster has managed to with more concise and lucid arguments than I can put forwards.  I'm pointing out to anyone else bothering to read this why I think your view is so far off.

What's the testing and detection rates? Have they changed? BBC says testing increased in July but has remained static throughout August. My excel tells me the new cases per day, new case rate, and live infection numbers all reached their lowest point in the first week of July, just before 'the opening of the pubs'.....

                                     July                     now

Cases per day             ~550                      1000+

Case per day rate %     0.19%                   0.4%

Live infections             ~7800                  14,000

Interestingly Germany and France show similar behaviour of a summer lull, but are showing a more marked rise.  In my opinion the explanation is the reduction in restrictions as all three nations were probably testing enough beforehand.  Rather scarily the testing policy has changed - asymptomatic contacts aren't being told to get tested anymore (caveat - that may be the USA, but I can't find the news article again to check).

I struggle to make proper sense out of the time trends as exactly what is displayed, how its displayed and where its displayed keep changing.  The relevant dashboard [1] shows about a 30% increase in the number of people being tested since the start of July; this is less than the increase in the number of positive detections (about a 100% increase).

The fraction of tests returning positive is small, which means that there is plenty of scope for changes to the effectiveness of contact tracing to increase the returns as well as simply "more tests" doing so. There's been a lot of hints that more and more contact tracing is being devolved to the local level which is long known to be a better approach.  A counterpoint is some compelling plots VictimOfMathematics posted last week making it clear that the infection is now spreading a lot more in younger people than in older, so we could be seeing a growth of less symptomatic, less ill young people.  How much is real and how much is due to improved detection is the open question; the ONS Pilot Infectivity survey doesn't support rising circulation but has low significance.  They are looking to raise their sample size considerably...

I'd like to know if pubs are the yellow "Other" box in PHE's weekly break down of respiratory outbreaks by setting.  It certainly looks like it with timing, and has more than wiped out the gains from schools closing for the summer. 

I missed that.  Perhaps they are concerned that the many false negatives would undermine the willingness of people who may actually be infected to self isolate?  There are better ways to handle that IMO however.  

[1] - https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk

We where overwhelmed differently. The NHS coped but for a short time it was almost a one illness service. People missed appointments for other stuff, because staff were diverted or they were scared. In Itlay it was more intense but more localised. No lockdown in the UK and it would have been much worse.

It's a simple statement to trot out, but to implement is fraught with difficulties, to the point it's probably not feasible. It relies on this wrong assumption that vulnerability is a binary thing, and can easily be assessed for 60m individuals.

In reality we are all on a spectrum of vulnerability, and we don't even get know who is where. Then a politician has to , under scientific advise, decide where on the spectrum we draw the line between vulnerable/non-vulnerable. That will basically be a case of deciding how many people might die (many fatalities were in their 50s, but is that too low for your new-old-normal?).

Then you have to ensure anyone who does need to have contact with the vulnerable is also in a bubble, and anyone who does live with them... ect.

Then there's the loneliness for the isolated.

So nothing like normal, hardship for many people.... but hey, your life will be back to normal so stuff them, you're a Tory after-all!

Like many rightwingers you've fallen back onto this 'all opinions are valid' BS. It utter snowflakery. You are often wrong which means you cannot back up your arguments. It seems to me your options are put forward better arguments, or carry on but grow a thicker skin.

There are longer term issues which very few people seem to be aware of, so while we seem to be better at stopping people dying, there are still people being debilitated by it.

We weren't because of the measures we took. Can't you see that?

Countries which took more extreme lockdown measures generally did a lot better.

You're looking at the result and suggesting we didn't need to do some things, the result is BECAUSE or the things we did.

I think you misunderstand what 'all opinions are valid' means. Some people prefer a communist governmental structure, some prefer a dictatorship (?!), some prefer socialist, some prefer centrist, some prefer a technocracy etc. 

These are all valid, and someone who holds the opinion that, for example a technocracy, is the way they think a country should be run, can't be 'wrong' in that. 

To think otherwise is, most definitely, 'snowflake BS' as you put it.

And now you condescend to give me a score out of 10. More arrogance.

Some people think we should prioritise the economy. Some people think we should prioritise minimising the number of people who die at any cost. Others fall in the middle. 

None of them are wrong. What can be discussed is how best to achieve whatever the goal is.

Maybe that explains it simplistically enough for you to understand.

Yeah I'm arrogant, but some of the people you've accused aren't, they've been remarkably patience with you.

It's overly simplistic. The economy vs lives trade off is a fallacy. A high fatality rate would affect the economy, people would go into voluntary lockdown, many people would be off sick for weeks.

How best to manage a public health crisis should be treated as an objective question. There are uncertainties, but as we get more data we should get closer to 'correct'. Your suggestion that it is a subjective question is silly, though it is consistent with your lack of consideration of detail and consequences.

One of my younger friends caught it early on, wasn't desperately ill (home in bed not hospital) but has been suffering for months with crippling fatigue and other symptoms, he's definitely turned a corner recently though so it does seem to get better. Fingers crossed yours will too.

jk

There are many ways to manage a public health crisis. Many people will believe the priorities we have chosen are wrong.

I believe that after a necessary period of pain for everyone, we are now choosing to continue to protect society from covid beyond what is proportionate, and as a result completely failing other aspects of society. A conscious decision has been made to make certain compromises and those decisions favour certain segments of society over others. There are clear losers (poor, children, ill) and winners (pensioners, diners, businesses)

You (and others) will disagree. That doesnt make it wrong or abhorrent.

Yeah I saw your earlier posts, more fallacy. Schools were shut under pressure from parents, just one example.

How's that? Schools are going back next week. Are you desperate to go clubbing? Many people love gigs and live sport but I'd say it is too early for that. Can you give some examples?

Thanks Jk. That's thoughtful of you. I am on a bad day today but tomorrow will be better. 

Well except for the 50,000 pensioners that died and another 10,000 or so younger, often ill people who got covid and died.  They’re not really “winners” are they?  We don’t yet know how bad the long term effects are on a great many other old and/or ill people.  Many of the pensioners left standing are isolating highly from loved ones as they aren’t ready to die just yet, and as some of them don’t want to become a link in a chain of infection that could go on to kill medical staff or others.

I would note also that teachers voted in droves with their feet, we had hundreds of schools closing in our county in the week before lockdown due to apparently unprecedented levels of sick leave and staff absence.  If schools hadn’t been shut by lockdown I think the teacher action would have done so; we had let the situation get so close to meltdown that the wider public was taking action regardless.  I don’t think the government have done enough to reassure teachers in case of a winter spike.  I worry about the schools more than almost anything else over the next few months as they’re so important.

At the height of the crisis when perhaps 200,000 people were being infected every day you posted a thread titled “Stay home martyrs” or similar when you derided those who preferred not to push the bounds of the unclear government guidance but instead to stay home as much as possible whilst a lid was put on this.  The thread stuck in my mind, but was pulled presumably  for some content I never saw, or because of the nature of the OP.  Perhaps if you’d been more willing to share the less painful aspects of the lockdown in those critical few weeks I’d have more time for your view now.

I saw your post but I can understand you might want to edit it.... I've got to get going though so I'll my my points (already typed one reply!)

I can understand your frustration but I don't see we can go any faster. Opening schools is a big one, it's a case of do it and see what happens. That's the correct thing to do, there's no subjective opinion to it. If it goes ok I would argue to prioritise other things for kids.

If the situation get's out of control again, we are not choosing things as a society and government isn't governing*. They are just trying to respond to reactions, parents reactions in the case of schools.

Obviously having a shit government doesn't help, bad timing !

Can please explain to me how according the ONS and a couple of other government websites I've glanced at, they seem to state we've had approximately 330,000 cases in total.  And approximately 46,000 deaths in total.  Are you suggesting that we've had a higher number of deaths?   Has our government already  over stated the number of Covid deaths by including those who died of any reason, as long as they popped off within 28 days, of having had the illness?

That is detected cases.  In March and early April we were barely testing anyone, so we were detecting very few cases.  This is kind of an absolutely critical point to understand - detected and reported cases are not the same as actual cases.  The websites you’re glancing at all list the number of cases detected by a test.  But, even though we were barely testing back then we can infer actual numbers of cases...

Method 1: At the time of peak deaths, around 900 people were dying from covid a day in the UK.  The fraction of the infected who go on to die as a result is believed to be around 0.005.  900 people per day dying requires 900/0.005 = 180,000 people per day being infected.

Method 2: Peak seroprevalence.  Antibody testing data suggests about 8% of the population have had covid.  Much of the spread was within a month.  Split it evenly over the days - 8% x 67m people / 28 days = 191,000 people per day.  My 8% is a crude estimate from the regional plots; I’m not fussed enough to do a full weighted average.

Both methods land in the same ballpark.

So, at the time another poster started their “stay at home martyrs” thread to lay in to those who chose to stay home as much as absolutely possible for a few weeks around the peak, I reckon around 200,000 people were being infected a day, and whilst many - most - of those people were fine and a lot probably never knew that they were infected, but between 40,000 and 60,000 of those they then infected, died.  They were hospitalised and died at such a rate the NHS was taken to the brink and we were forced into what looks like the most economically damaging lockdown of the G8.  I hardly considered staying home as much as possible to be martyrdom against that.

I wouldn’t be the first.  Some have suggested the counterpoint that about 15,000 people have been hit by busses.

Same here, two people, my brother and a colleague have been struggling since they caught it mid-March. Both have very slowly been improving, not noticeable on a daily or weekly basis, but from one month to the next. Some symptoms (stomach and oesophagus pain for one person and chest pains for the other) are still being investigated as to the cause. Lung scans look clear. Light at the end of the tunnel for both...they are able to work at a desk full time and can walk briskly. Not quite able to run yet.

Thank you.  I think I'll go back into the basement and hide.*  But as I said before, I just can't see how this will all end or when - we just seem to have got ourselves into a long tunnel with no obvious way out, unless we either totally isolate ourselves from other still infected countries or someone comes up with either a magic cure or vaccine. 

* PS I was and still am able to work anyway throughout lockdown and it really hasn't effected any of my hobbies or other interests - I work outside on my own anyway.

....and this is the problem the UK and many other countries find themselves in.  They can't/won't implement restrictions to allow them to eliminate the virus and lift restrictions entirely like we have here*, yet they still require restrictions to keep the virus from getting out of control which are slowly killing their economies.  They need to send kids back to school which will inevitably increase transmission, and the weather is now starting to keep people inside which increases transmission.

*119 days covid-free here. No on-island restrictions whatsoever. Going to what is probably the biggest music festival in Europe in 2020 on Sunday https://www.valeearthfair.org/ , you can watch a livestream from it .

How’s your tourist industry going?

Surviving - plenty of staycation business, especially the other islands. There's also an air bridge with the Isle of Man which is bringing in tourists from there.  It's the only industry that's noticeably suffering though, everything else is normal.

Their economy hasn’t been shut down. People still need and want to enjoy leisure and food, they just want to enjoy it slightly differently.

And that is only thanks to the world of low rates, infinite liquidity, and direct or indirect taxpayer subsidy to large corporations we’ve created. All this to make sure the stock price of X or Y doesn’t  go down.

Small business is intrinsically resilient because failure is the norm and doesn’t create a systemic problem.

Small independent restaurants, for example, go bust all the time, pandemic or no pandemic, even before Covid the churn was brutal, just look at any city centre and how often they change... and yet I can always get a wide variety of high quality food, constantly renewed, constantly updated. It’s the constant churn and renewal that produces an economy that is in tune with the ever changing needs of the customer.

What we should see is all these horrible large business go to the ground if they have to , and I guarantee you that the space they leave behind would be a boon for small business, which, BTW, is far more agile and adaptable.