UK Politics: Life in the Johnsonian Dystopia

[Heartofice]

Where has this idea that I can’t go to a supermarket and buy something non essential? Who would define that? 
 

If we weren’t allowed to buy non essential items why would anyone be allowed to even sell them.

Nonsense.

[Werthead]

The definition of non-essential is also a bit bizarre. If you're a parent at home with three kids and a garden, then buying three water pistols, several discounted Easter Eggs and a selection of cheap animated DVDs might be deemed as extremely essential. If the shops aren't supposed to be supplying "non-essential" items, why not just ban them and tell them to take them off their shelves?

Meanwhile, at least one senior civil servant seems to be saying that herd immunity is still the long-term plan and they don't believe a vaccine can be delivered fast enough for lockdowns to be effective. That's interesting because a survey this morning shows more than half of Brits actually believe we are in this for the long haul, 6-12 months at least.

[Heartofice]

8 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Meanwhile, at least one senior civil servant seems to be saying that herd immunity is still the long-term plan.

I’m not sure this is news. I think we have all accepted we will at some point get it, and I don’t see what other possible strategy is possible as you can not eliminate the virus. Unless the plan is for everyone to sit at home and wait for a vaccine I dont see what else you can do but try and flatten the curve to make sure health services aren’t overwhelmed 

[BigFatCoward]

We have no powers to check your shopping. If you are in Tesco and fancy 15 easter eggs and 3 litres of gin, knock yourself out. 

[Werthead]

48 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I’m not sure this is news. I think we have all accepted we will at some point get it, and I don’t see what other possible strategy is possible as you can not eliminate the virus. Unless the plan is for everyone to sit at home and wait for a vaccine I dont see what else you can do but try and flatten the curve to make sure health services aren’t overwhelmed 

It is news in the sense that the government said they had abandoned this plan once they realised it would kill (at least) a quarter of a million people, or almost matching British deaths in WWII.

Right now we have 65,000 confirmed cases and 8,000 deaths, and that has pushed the NHS to almost breaking point. There is a tiny amount more flex in the system, but not much. So at the moment we have the NHS in crisis with just 0.1% of the population confirmed infected at one time. An enormous number more people are clearly infected, possibly several times that, but the key figure is the confirmed infected and the number of people in hospital.

The original herd immunity plan was also built on two faulty premises. The first was that the death rate would be far lower than it is (based on pneumonia figures rather than actual COVID-19 figures from other countries, for some reason) and the second is that although health care workers would get sick, being of working age would ensure that the majority would recover and get back to work and be immune to further infection after a few days to a couple of weeks. The later premise has been challenged by the viral load problem, that even relatively young and healthy doctors and nurses are dying in statistically anomalous numbers because of the amount of virus they are being exposed to, and the recovery time for even a moderate dose of the virus now seems longer than first anticipated, stretching out to a month or more, so even if a health care worker recovers from the virus they are out of commission for a significant period of time.

At this point it appears from the numbers that "flattening the curve" to keep the numbers below the NHS maximum threshold may involve the lockdown lasting significantly longer than the time it takes for a vaccine to become available. The "herd immunity" strategy is not viable as a solution to the crisis in a reasonable timeframe, as you can't get enough people infected at any one time to make a vast amount of difference without overwhelming health services. If the virus becomes more flu-like and adapts, then you face the problem of huge numbers of people who are ostensibly immune getting reinfected a few months to a year later. Fortunately coronaviruses are apparently very slow to mutate, so this might be more a problem for several years from now than next year.

[Heartofice]

I don’t think they abandoned the plan, it’s more that they realised they needed to flatten the curve a lot quicker. Herd immunity is still the only real strategy in the long term without a viable vaccine

[Maltaran]

I was wondering last week why Starmer hadn’t given Jess Philips a frontbench role, but I see now she has a junior post focusing on tackling domestic violence, which has always been one of her major personal campaigns. It looks like quite a few of Corbyn’s critics have been given junior roles.

[Derfel Cadarn]

PPE still a problem in hospitals. Masks that are meant to be disposed off after use are being cleaned for re-use.

[Spockydog]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I’m not sure this is news. I think we have all accepted we will at some point get it, 

Oh, fuck off with your unsubstantiated bollocks.

I'm a 51-year-old former smoker who had quadruple bypass surgery a couple of years ago. If I get this, I'm toast. As is my Mum, and, in all likelihood, many of the people that I care most about.

I do not want to die.

[Heartofice]

8 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Oh, fuck off with your unsubstantiated bollocks.

I'm a 51-year-old former smoker who had quadruple bypass surgery a couple of years ago. If I get this, I'm toast. As is my Mum, and, in all likelihood, many of the people that I care most about.

I do not want to die.

I’m sorry to hear that but it doesn’t change fact that it’s not just going to ‘go away’

[ants]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

It is news in the sense that the government said they had abandoned this plan once they realised it would kill (at least) a quarter of a million people, or almost matching British deaths in WWII.

Right now we have 65,000 confirmed cases and 8,000 deaths, and that has pushed the NHS to almost breaking point. There is a tiny amount more flex in the system, but not much. So at the moment we have the NHS in crisis with just 0.1% of the population confirmed infected at one time. An enormous number more people are clearly infected, possibly several times that, but the key figure is the confirmed infected and the number of people in hospital.

The original herd immunity plan was also built on two faulty premises. The first was that the death rate would be far lower than it is (based on pneumonia figures rather than actual COVID-19 figures from other countries, for some reason) and the second is that although health care workers would get sick, being of working age would ensure that the majority would recover and get back to work and be immune to further infection after a few days to a couple of weeks. The later premise has been challenged by the viral load problem, that even relatively young and healthy doctors and nurses are dying in statistically anomalous numbers because of the amount of virus they are being exposed to, and the recovery time for even a moderate dose of the virus now seems longer than first anticipated, stretching out to a month or more, so even if a health care worker recovers from the virus they are out of commission for a significant period of time.

At this point it appears from the numbers that "flattening the curve" to keep the numbers below the NHS maximum threshold may involve the lockdown lasting significantly longer than the time it takes for a vaccine to become available. The "herd immunity" strategy is not viable as a solution to the crisis in a reasonable timeframe, as you can't get enough people infected at any one time to make a vast amount of difference without overwhelming health services. If the virus becomes more flu-like and adapts, then you face the problem of huge numbers of people who are ostensibly immune getting reinfected a few months to a year later. Fortunately coronaviruses are apparently very slow to mutate, so this might be more a problem for several years from now than next year.

Surely at some point we start deliberately giving people very mild doses as a form of vaccination to start managing herd immunity?

[Spockydog]

On 3/27/2020 at 2:45 PM, Heartofice said:

26 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I’m sorry to hear that but it doesn’t change fact that it’s not just going to ‘go away’

 

I didn't say it was. I was taking issue with your bone headed assertion that we have all accepted we are going to get this thing. 

[Heartofice]

14 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

I didn't say it was. I was taking issue with your bone headed assertion that we have all accepted we are going to get this thing. 

Just cut out the language yeah.

So what do you expect it going to happen? 

[Spockydog]

24 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Just cut out the language yeah.

I'll cut out the language when you cut out the unsubstantiated bollocks, 

 

 

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I don’t think they abandoned the plan, it’s more that they realised they needed to flatten the curve a lot quicker. Herd immunity is still the only real strategy in the long term without a viable vaccine

I think that was the initial thought process, but the experience of other countries has rapidly changed that.

The die-off of the virus once it is denied the ability to spread seems to be remarkably faster than some were originally estimating, although in hindsight this is maybe not surprising as SARS had a similar effect. In China and South Korea they seemed to be estimating that the lockdown would continue longer than it has. The curve seems to be flattening in many countries faster than anticipated and maybe even starting to decline faster than thought possible.

On the other hand, countries that tried to go for a herd immunity strategy even more than we did - Sweden and arguably Japan - have been forced to backtrack once it became clear it was completely unviable. Sweden's mortality rate is through the roof.

The new strategy which several countries are now following is "quashing the virus," simply starving it into non-existence, and this is the stated strategy of New Zealand (where to be fair geography and a small population allows the country to take these steps more readily) and it looks like Germany (which is neither a small nor unpopulous country) is now looking at following the same model. South Korea and Taiwan are much deeper into that model and it seems to be working for them (bumps in the road excepted). Test, isolate, quarantine and keep doing that until the virus stops propagating, hold the lockdown in place, start easing it in areas where there have been 0 infections (not 0 deaths, but 0 actual measured infections) and then you can look at easing restrictions.

No country apart from China has moved out of the crisis into a real recovery mode yet, and we may see problems with that strategy emerging and it may indeed prove non-viable in the very long term, but in the medium term it appears to be a more credible solution that it was a few weeks ago. In particular, it is insane that we are still letting people into the country at will by air and sea without then quarantining them. Until we do that, we can't get a handle on the virus as someone can fly in from the USA or somewhere else at will and restart the infection.

[williamjm]

7 minutes ago, Werthead said:

No country apart from China has moved out of the crisis into a real recovery mode yet, and we may see problems with that strategy emerging and it may indeed prove non-viable in the very long term, but in the medium term it appears to be a more credible solution that it was a few weeks ago. In particular, it is insane that we are still letting people into the country at will by air and sea without then quarantining them. Until we do that, we can't get a handle on the virus as someone can fly in from the USA or somewhere else at will and restart the infection.

That seems to be where Singapore have gone a bit wrong. They were doing a great job of controlling it for a couple of months but then seemed to have had lax controls over people arriving from other places with the virus and now it's ramping up there.

It is a bit ironic that the Tories can now be criticised for making it too easy for people to come into the country.

[Fez]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I don’t think they abandoned the plan, it’s more that they realised they needed to flatten the curve a lot quicker. Herd immunity is still the only real strategy in the long term without a viable vaccine

Not necessarily. Another long term strategy would be that a safe, effective therapeutic is identified, so that for most people it simply doesn't matter if they contract the virus. It's magical thinking to base all your planning on that, the way Trump seems to be, but it would not be that surprising is something is identified. And that would likely be something available quicker than a vaccine.

Quashing the virus may also be possible, although I think it requires a level of discipline that most countries simply don't have. And even if they do, how many can isolate themselves enough from the outside world, because there's a lot of countries that won't be able too.

[Heartofice]

12 minutes ago, Fez said:

 

Quashing the virus may also be possible, although I think it requires a level of discipline that most countries simply don't have. And even if they do, how many can isolate themselves enough from the outside world, because there's a lot of countries that won't be able too.

Quashing the virus in specific locations temporarily is possible but for how long and what happens in a world with global travel and open borders. Unless you test every single human it will flare up again and we go through the whole process once more. 

[Werthead]

19 minutes ago, Fez said:

Quashing the virus may also be possible, although I think it requires a level of discipline that most countries simply don't have. And even if they do, how many can isolate themselves enough from the outside world, because there's a lot of countries that won't be able too.

In countries with land borders, yes, but in countries which are islands and where everyone has to fly in or take one single rail connection (which can be shut down), no, you can seal off those countries rather easily.

If you said to the average British person that they can leave lockdown and go where they like on the island of Britain (or even the islands of both Britain and Ireland, as this would have to be joint effort because of the RoI-NI border) but they wouldn't be able to travel abroad for 2 years (or even 3-4), they'd probably take that in a heartbeat right now. We're lucky in that respect.

[Zoë Sumra]

3 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

We have no powers to check your shopping. If you are in Tesco and fancy 15 easter eggs and 3 litres of gin, knock yourself out. 

Don't tempt me...