ShivaX
4383
Meanwhile in TN:
We’re fucked because even though Trump has done a 180, a sizable group of his disciples are sticking to his original position.
Why do I get the sense that we are about to see Herculean feats of goalpost moving on the part of certain posters?
Enidigm
4386
I actually don’t care, this time, about rubbing into the noses of conservatives that they only believe it when Trump (or whoever) says it’s true. Many conservatives have been epistemically closed for years anyway. We just need everybody on the same page.
Interesting analysis (it’s an statistical estimation):
They estimate that prior to lockdown, in Wuhan 86% of cases were undocumented (not detected).
They also estimate that after lockdown only 35% of cases were undocumented.
If this is valid, it would mean China’s number would be about 50% to 100% higher. It also means true mortality in China would, at most, half.
JD
4389
No, no. I’ve been assured it’s all part of the plan. Timing and such. Ahem.
No, I can believe it. If so I’d expect a full lockdown tomorrow, in that case.
But it would make sense; the published pandemic plan has a similar death count - if they’re changing their minds now, they’ve cost thousands of lives through a failure to read their own damn plan.
Seattle/King County announced 6 more deaths. That brings Washington State to about 48 total.
68 new cases in Seattle/King County.
KevinC
4394
On the plus side, I believe we have the highest number of ICU beds per capita.
Oh shit, Tormund’s got it!
Well, that’s a shit sandwich.
Aceris
4398
Literally just published:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/news--wuhan-coronavirus/
Clearly the research team shares the perspective of SAGE so this is an insight into the modeling behind UKgov policy.
The interesting bit from the politics side is the conclusion though - until a few days ago when they got more info from Italy and the cases here, they thought the herd immunity strategy (R0 > 1 for the first wave) was practical (I’m guessing they thought the CFR and number of ICU beds needed was a lot lower). Now they predict it will overwhelm capacity many times over and cause 250k deaths in the absolute best case scenario.
It sounds like herd immunity really was the government plan until at some point in the last week the scientists came in and sheepishly admitted that the numbers were off.
Other interesting obsevations which make it clear where the government is getting their ideas:
- Mass gatherings are, in their opinion, near-irrelevant.
- Closing schools cripples the mitigation/herd immunity strategy. They don’t say why, but I presume it removes a strong focussing factor that focuses the cases on younger people.
So the options are
-
fully suppress, and introduce SKorea/China style monitoring (and the implication is that this was something that the authors had previously considered impossible in the UK, and now only consider because of the dire nature of the alternatives) - the problem is they don’t even know if this works long time without turning into (2)
-
Suppress in waves, keeping infection levels low at all times. All adults practice social distancing during infection waves. Two variants of this policy, one with schools open, one with schools closed. Comparatively few deaths, but extensive restrictions over most of a 2 year period (and potentially longer if no vaccine shows up).
-
Mitigate, take 250k-500k+ deaths over a few months. Afterwards you have herd immunity, at least until this thing mutates (but even then people might have some resistance to the mutated strain, and the mutated strain might be less lethal).
-
[Not discussed in the paper] Suppress first wave, mitigate second. This would entail a massive expansion of critical care capacity, but we would have 7 months to do it. [I can’t see the government pulling this off]
The government’s announcement of general social distancing today makes it clear they have moved from track 3) to track 2).
Speaking to my mother today I’m wondering how many 70+ year olds would prefer to roll the dice than 2 years of staying isolated for 70% of the time, hoping for a vaccine that may never come.
This does all make option 1) (and the accompanying massive state surveillance apparatus) more appealing. Because this social distancing thing won’t be for months - it will be for most of the next two years.
As discussed, not necessarily. A “full lockdown”, Spain and Italy style, isnt required for the “suppress in waves” policy. It’s required if you’re going to blow through your ICU capacity in the next three weeks and therefore need to start reducing cases as rapidly as possible so that as few cases as possible are coming into the ICU after that.
Actually, starting the first restrictions a little late doesn’t kill that many people. And the previous recommendations were (rightly) based on COVID specific estimates rather than the pandemic plan, which is for a different type of diease. The estimates proved to be wrong when there was still time to course correct, and that course correction is being made.
That’s like saying they only realized in the last few days that head butting a wall will give you a headache. This virus may be new, but epidemiology and crisis management are not.
