[JamieG]

Sorry this probably isn't exactly the right thread to put this in but I thought this was a fascinating break down of all the challenges that young people face in Britain today. And Covid is likely only going to exacerbate that problem unless we have significant shifts in policy post lockdown and during the recovery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=195&v=ZuXzvjBYW8A&feature=emb_title

[TobyD]

That kind of thing won’t do Teestub. This forum’s posters demand blame to be ascribed. Never mind strength or evidence. Blame!

Pete I think you are being slightly unfair to "this forum's posters" there by folding several issues into  the "lack of evidence" category.

The main concerns I have read (and posted) on here have been:

Lack of PPE
Slow on testing
Lack of clarity from the government on strategy and actions
Care homes

I would say those are pretty well evidenced, and internal UK matters, and therefore people should be held to account for it. Regardless of any data inconsistencies in deaths between countries, which is a totally separate and unrelated issue. It may be seen by some as being terribly unfair on the poor old party in charge but I'll live with that.

On international comparisons, I will freely admit that overall no-one knows what the right strategy long term is. Who knows, maybe "herd immunity" was right all along once we take into account repeated waves? Perhaps those countries like New Zealand who have aced it in terms of deaths so far will be storing up epic problems for the future? This will become clear in the fullness of time, but it doesn't negate the fact that if you concentrate solely on the UK there have been definite deficiencies in the response. E.g. not implementing the recommendations of Operation Cygnus (nb not yet published - "maximum transparency"?). Not to mention that the UK response changed 180 degrees at one point, which seems to suggest a lack of preparation and muddled thinking despite the forewarnings. I could go on. If we had been better prepared as a nation then we might not need to be in lockdown.

It seems an odd bit of fatalism to just say lets leave it to play out for a couple of years and come back to it when we know a bit more. But if that's what the government would rather we do as a nation i.e. nothing, then they should tell us soon, showing their reasoning.

I agree with almost everything you say Nigel, they're all fair criticisms and the government needs to have a full independent inquiry as soon as possible when the situation stabilises.
But might not have needed to be in lockdown? Really? Social distancing seems to be the best way to limit spread, and doesn't seem very effective without some degree of coercion.

[ali k]

do you really think the people and media wouldn’t be howling in self-righteous protest if the government had chosen NOT to put up some arbitrary graph comparing us to other countries?! No matter how inaccurate that comparison really is?
...if the government had truly been transparent and told the people that they weren’t showing comparisons because the graphs were apple-to-pear bullshit, the howls of outrage would then be about incompetence instead...

The trouble is Pete, government ministers themselves have chosen throughout this to use comparisons with other countries when it suits them (i.e. to defend their record). So they've been fuelling the fire. Even Johnson just yesterday in the press conference said "We have so far succeeded in the first and most important task we set ourselves as a nation, to avoid the tragedy that engulfed other parts of the world".

So I don't see how you can blame 'the media' or people being 'wilfully ignorant'. If the government wants to argue against international comparisons then fair enough. But don't expect me not to criticise them for being hypocritical twats when they then go and make international comparisons to spin their narrative.

[Fultonius]

I agree with almost everything you say Nigel, they're all fair criticisms and the government needs to have a full independent inquiry as soon as possible when the situation stabilises.
But might not have needed to be in lockdown? Really? Social distancing seems to be the best way to limit spread, and doesn't seem very effective without some degree of coercion.

Your last point seems to miss the countries who've had a much, much lower death rate that the UK, while not shutting down nearly as hard. We don't even need to go to South Korea - check the "total excess deaths" graphs on here:

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps

Germany is already looking at relaxing measures, and managed to keep excess death's "almost" flat. Compare and contrast that to the UK.

Social distancing seems to be the best way to limit spread, and doesn't seem very effective in the UK?? without some degree of coercion.

When we were recently in Berlin, we noticed quite how different it is there, in regards to following official rules. I remember once having a frank conversation with German about why they followed a specific rule (something like not crossing the road on a red). They looked totally bewildered and said something along the lines of "well, of course, rules are there for a reason, why would you not follow them". I'm somewhat of a "follow the rules that are logical" kind of person, rather than a slavish rule follower, so it took a bit to get my head around.

[tomtom]

Ha - Berlin is the only place in Germany where I have regularly encountered people giving the middle finger to rules (including crossing the road!) :D

I have certainly found the attitude you describe in many other places in Germany though!

Its the old adage that in the UK Policing is via consent rather than an order.

[Nigel]

But might not have needed to be in lockdown? Really? Social distancing seems to be the best way to limit spread, and doesn't seem very effective without some degree of coercion.

Yes fair point that does need clarification! I don't mean no lockdown at all, just not *this* lockdown. There are certain things that we might have been able to do back in February that may have meant that the current lockdown could have been less stringent. E.g. screen all international arrivals, and properly test, trace, and isolate early cases. The government didn't do that, hence the general population now have to do the work instead, by staying at home. And let's face it they were slow on asking for that too.

I'm not saying that this would have been the best option long term as I don't know, but in terms of the short term headline numbers of death rates then it is clearly a better strategy - see NZ, Taiwan, South Korea. At present we seem to be in a hybrid strategy of herd immunity for a month or so until they smelt the shit approaching the fan, then flip to total lockdown. And maybe now moving to test, trace, isolate, as recommended months ago by the WHO, but when the virus has already become well established rather than just a few cases, requiring a massive step change in testing numbers. It is clearly confused - the inconsistencies are glaring. The irony is I strongly suspect there was a political rather than medical / scientific motive for doing nothing at first, which was probably to keep the economy running. The other alternative is that we were simply so under-prepared due to years of penny-pinching that it wasn't even a workable option to do anything meaningful quickly enough. I will also grant the (claimed) possibility that this actually what the science said, but in that case why have they not persisted with the original "do nothing" strategy? The end result of the whole flawed process is that now we are locked down and the economy has taken a massive hit anyway.

I suppose my ultimate point is that if the conservatives are as worried about the economy as they claim, then a few quid spent on thermometers at airports and community testing teams a couple of months ago might have meant that we could all still be working, and have deaths in maybe triple figures instead of tens of thousands. Instead they are paying people to do nothing at home, which although I'm glad they have done, is the sort of thing they almost certainly wanted to avoid. As well as presiding over a death rate which is already well beyond what they called a "good result". They fail even on their own terms, and yet they still manage to get away with it.

[tomtom]

I'm not saying that this would have been the best option long term as I don't know, but in terms of the short term headline numbers of death rates then it is clearly a better strategy - see NZ, Taiwan, South Korea. At present we seem to be in a hybrid strategy of herd immunity for a month or so until they smelt the shit approaching the fan, then flip to total lockdown. And maybe now moving to test, trace, isolate, as recommended months ago by the WHO, but when the virus has already become well established rather than just a few cases, requiring a massive step change in testing numbers. It is clearly confused - the inconsistencies are glaring. The irony is I strongly suspect there was a political rather than medical / scientific motive for doing nothing at first, which was probably to keep the economy running. The other alternative is that we were simply so under-prepared due to years of penny-pinching that it wasn't even a workable option to do anything meaningful quickly enough. I will also grant the (claimed) possibility that this actually what the science said, but in that case why have they not persisted with the original "do nothing" strategy? The end result of the whole flawed process is that now we are locked down and the economy has taken a massive hit anyway.

I think this sums up what I feel too (more or less). I appreciate that all strategy will adapt/change according to the latest evidence and how things evolve - but it does seem that the countries that have fared better (Germany, Korea, NZ) had a firm strategy - kept to it - and it worked. Even Sweden to an extent.. We seem to have flipped about from one 3 point plan to another 3 point plan etc...

Trying to add some balance - what we have done right:

1. Re-organised our hospital system so they were not over-run. Brilliant.
2. Got testing up to 100k per day (probably) in a pretty short period of time. Good.
3. As a population pretty much abided by a softly softly lockdown.
4. Had what at first blush seems like a pretty good financial/jobs compensation/support package (certainly better than some places in the world). 

[Fultonius]

Ha - Berlin is the only place in Germany where I have regularly encountered people giving the middle finger to rules (including crossing the road!) :D

I have certainly found the attitude you describe in many other places in Germany though!

Its the old adage that in the UK Policing is via consent rather than an order.

Ha!  To be fair, Berlin was just the last place we were in, and have been round a few other parts. Can't remember if we noticed it was more obvious elsewhere. The fact no-one seemed to ever check subway tickets, no automated barrier, yet most people still pay (as far as I'm aware) was one of the things we noticed.

[Nigel]

Trying to add some balance - what we have done right:

1. Re-organised our hospital system so they were not over-run. Brilliant.
2. Got testing up to 100k per day (probably) in a pretty short period of time. Good.
3. As a population pretty much abided by a softly softly lockdown.
4. Had what at first blush seems like a pretty good financial/jobs compensation/support package (certainly better than some places in the world).

I actually agree that those are things we appear to have done well on. Credit where its due. If I was to continue being a moaning minnie though (!), you could say that we wouldn't have had to do any of those things at all if we had followed a  clear strategy from the start, as per the other countries you mention.

[tomtom]

you could say that we wouldn't have had to do any of those things at all if we had followed a  clear strategy from the start, as per the other countries you mention.

Yes - esp the testing....

One thing other 'positive' about this government is - that they do actually change their minds and direction (for the better) when they need to - not too much of the dogma tail wagging the dog... but of course if they got it right in the first place etc.. etc..

[mrjonathanr]

I will also grant the (claimed) possibility that this actually what the science said, but in that case why have they not persisted with the original "do nothing" strategy?

This phrase really bothers me. There is no bearded man, high on a mountain, labouring down with stone tablets inscribed with 'The Science'.

There is no such thing as 'The Science'.

There are however, multiple scientific inputs of varying degrees of reliability. Once collated, the leadership elects a strategy. This is 'The Politics' for which No 10 appears very determined to avoid accepting responsibility.

The scientific output from SAGE looks compromised by political input too, which makes foisting responsibility onto neutral advisers like Whitty and Vallance even more egregious. Are either of them PM now, to dictate decisions to the country??

Boris needs to own his own decisions.

[TobyD]

I'm not saying that this would have been the best option long term as I don't know, but in terms of the short term headline numbers of death rates then it is clearly a better strategy - see NZ, Taiwan, South Korea. At present we seem to be in a hybrid strategy of herd immunity for a month or so until they smelt the shit approaching the fan, then flip to total lockdown. And maybe now moving to test, trace, isolate, as recommended months ago by the WHO, but when the virus has already become well established rather than just a few cases, requiring a massive step change in testing numbers. It is clearly confused - the inconsistencies are glaring. The irony is I strongly suspect there was a political rather than medical / scientific motive for doing nothing at first, which was probably to keep the economy running. The other alternative is that we were simply so under-prepared due to years of penny-pinching that it wasn't even a workable option to do anything meaningful quickly enough. I will also grant the (claimed) possibility that this actually what the science said, but in that case why have they not persisted with the original "do nothing" strategy? The end result of the whole flawed process is that now we are locked down and the economy has taken a massive hit anyway.

I think this sums up what I feel too (more or less). I appreciate that all strategy will adapt/change according to the latest evidence and how things evolve - but it does seem that the countries that have fared better (Germany, Korea, NZ) had a firm strategy - kept to it - and it worked. Even Sweden to an extent.. We seem to have flipped about from one 3 point plan to another 3 point plan etc...

Trying to add some balance - what we have done right:

1. Re-organised our hospital system so they were not over-run. Brilliant.
2. Got testing up to 100k per day (probably) in a pretty short period of time. Good.
3. As a population pretty much abided by a softly softly lockdown.
4. Had what at first blush seems like a pretty good financial/jobs compensation/support package (certainly better than some places in the world).

All good points, with some of the provisos that others have added. I feel that balance is important. Our government hasn't exactly excelled itself, but neither has it done appallingly.
Re Testing.  The figures look good, but what use is testing if you don't trace contacts? A snapshot of whether someone has it isn't actually that useful, as surely they could have caught it by the time they get the results even if they tested negative? I suppose it tells you how widespread it is in the population but not useful as a preventive measure.

[tomtom]

Its a start - and with those numbers begin to give us data like this. Though yes - a strategy rather than WE MUST MEET MY 100K DEADLINE - TEST ANYONE!!! would seem to be more sensible... (ahem - not saying this is what is happening - of course.....)

Hopefully the above works. Really nice animated gif of the results from the CV19 app that 2.8 million people are reporting symptoms (or not) on in the UK.

Link to page below if image above doesn’t work.

https://covid.joinzoe.com/data#levels-over-time

[mrjonathanr]

WE MUST MEET MY 100K DEADLINE - TEST ANYONE!!! would seem to be more sensible... (ahem - not saying this is what is happening - of course.....)

Not even that TT

The cheque's in the post 

[tomtom]

That does not surprise me....

Good grief - why can't they just mea culpa this... I think many people would understand and see that we'll be at 100k soon....

[ali k]

I'll be a moaning minnie too!

Trying to add some balance - what we have done right:

1. Re-organised our hospital system so they were not over-run. Brilliant. These Nightingale hospitals have turned into a massive white elephant largely just lying empty. And were prioritised at the expense of doing pretty much naff all with care homes which are now in crisis. Getting the army to build a few massive new field hospitals is significantly easier for Hancock to do and a hell of a lot more glamorous and media friendly than getting involved in the nitty gritty of the mess that is our disparate care system, but who cares about a few old people, right? Yes it's great that the Nightingales weren't needed, but given how many ICU beds have been available throughout the first wave it begs the question, why is our death rate so high?

2. Got testing up to 100k per day (probably) in a pretty short period of time. Good. This target was only set on April 2nd, at a time when we were doing around 10k tests a day. When "test, test, test" has been the WHO mantra from the very beginning why did we only begin to 'ramp up' testing so late in the day? It's not as if we didn't have warnings from other countries that were weeks ahead of us. There also still does not appear to be a strategy around how to link the testing to contact tracing or any other useful purpose to get out of lockdown. Not to mention the fact they're now fiddling the numbers to even reach that arbitrary target.

3. As a population pretty much abided by a softly softly lockdown. Well done us!

4. Had what at first blush seems like a pretty good financial/jobs compensation/support package (certainly better than some places in the world). Yes, agreed, it's generous to those who don't slip between the cracks. But without a very good strategy to come out of lockdown - and fast - it's going to have an unnecessarily large impact on the economy.

[stone]

ideological soap boxing about austerity endlessly helps noone. Arguably, reducing the defecit was one of the most valuable pieces of preparation they did actually do.

Is this a joke Toby? So running down public services (including NHS capacity), slashing funding to local government infrastructure which is now vital in contact tracing, avoiding stockpiling PPE for this exact scenario due to costings etc is valuable preparation?

Having a reduced deficit is unarguably a good thing. Achieving that by imposing a decade of reduced funding to vital public services (which just happens to align with your ideological aim of a reduced state) is quite another.

Please can I call bullshit on this. Please describe how reducing the deficit helped one iota towards "COVID19 preparedness" (or anything else for that matter). Please provide some sort or cause and effect mechanism and describe how lack of reducing the deficit would have manifested as some meaningful problem.

I'm not just talking about how the cuts were vandalism. I'm talking about the broader principle. I'd have liked the deficit to have been reduced by say a land-value-tax and a wealth tax and corporation tax. However I'd have wanted that purely so as to reduce inequality. Cutting the deficit doesn't figure in my wish for that.

 

[petejh]

On international comparisons, I will freely admit that overall no-one knows what the right strategy long term is. Who knows, maybe "herd immunity" was right all along once we take into account repeated waves? Perhaps those countries like New Zealand who have aced it in terms of deaths so far will be storing up epic problems for the future? This will become clear in the fullness of time, but it doesn't negate the fact that if you concentrate solely on the UK there have been definite deficiencies in the response. E.g. not implementing the recommendations of Operation Cygnus (nb not yet published - "maximum transparency"?). Not to mention that the UK response changed 180 degrees at one point, which seems to suggest a lack of preparation and muddled thinking despite the forewarnings. I could go on. If we had been better prepared as a nation then we might not need to be in lockdown.

It seems an odd bit of fatalism to just say lets leave it to play out for a couple of years and come back to it when we know a bit more. But if that's what the government would rather we do as a nation i.e. nothing, then they should tell us soon, showing their reasoning.

What has New Zealand got to do with the UK? It’s absurd to me that anyone would even consider mentioning them in the same breath when comparing outcomes from a pandemic virus that relies for transmission on THE PROXIMITY OF PEOPLE 

One is a tiny nation of 4.8million, split roughy 1/4 - 3/4 across two remote, sparsely-populated mostly rural islands in the South Pacific, its closest neighbor Australia is a 5 hour flight away and they are also similarly remote from the rest of the world and also have an extremely low number of covid cases. So essentially you have two hugely remote counties globally, still a long way from each other, with very low covid rates. The next closest neighbor of any significance to NZ is an 8-10 hour flight away.
I lived in NZ for a year and it’s the sort of place where you would seemingly be on first name terms with the whole of south island.
 
The other is the busiest international travel hub in the world, has 66 million people living in CLOSE PROXIMITY mostly in densely-packed cities and towns, it is close neighbors with 740 MILLION people on its doorstep and with who it shares myriad transport links.

I think *I*could have controlled the covid outbreak in New Zealand 

Hey Nige how’s the UK doing compared to Antarctica.   

[stone]

If the UK had done what NewZealand did when we had as many cases/capita that they had, we too would have escaped large scale deaths and we too would be able to safely come out of lock down.

Anyway, don't a lot of the people in NewZealand live in cities? I don't see the relevance of having a vast, sparsely inhabited hinterland. The lack of population density in the Scottish Highlands didn't save the people living in central London.

[petejh]

How many people do you suppose travel in and out of New Zealand daily? How many people do you suppose travel in and out of the UK daily?

What about travel of, say, an 80 mile radius within New Zealand, versus within the UK?

Is covid transmission exponential?

If you start with higher numbers then do you extremely quickly have far higher numbers?

Is the spread of a highly infectious virus harder to manage among a population of 66 million people or a population of 4.5 million people (spread across two islands).

Does restricting the number of people travelling result in lower rates of transmission?
If so - lets hope so because it's essentially the foundation of social distancing - then would having *far fewer* people travelling in and out and within a country likely result in *far fewer* initial cases of covid and a far slower rate of exponential growth? 

[stone]

The 100k tests per day now is not some proud achievement. Granted, I feel a bit less ashamed now. But only a bit.

Earlier today I personally did I guess about 50% of the processing for 360 swab tests. The UK has huge numbers of bioscientists most of whom have been desperate to do anything to help this.  Only a tiny fraction have even now been allowed to participate. The PCR machines in the "mega-labs" are not new. They were requisitioned back in mid-March. I'm certain that if many local efforts had been allowed to get going at the start (as per the South Korean approach), not only would we have had ample testing to support an early test-trace-isolate program, the testing technology would also have come on leaps and bounds as tens of thousands of people would have got a hive-mind going.

My main take from this is that as a community we should have been a lot more bolshy when we were told to shut down. I'm a very crap scientist so I thought it imperative that I deferred to the more competent people around me. The problem is that there was a chain of deferral that went all the way up to Boris-the-Clown. The Nobel prize winners etc on the way up also meekly stood aside.

[stone]

How many people do you suppose travel in and out of New Zealand daily? How many people do you suppose travel in and out of the UK daily?

What about travel of, say, an 80 mile radius within New Zealand, versus within the UK?

Is covid transmission exponential?

If you start with higher numbers then do you extremely quickly have far higher numbers?

Is the spread of a highly infectious virus harder to manage among a population of 66 million people or a population of 4.5 million people (spread across two islands).

Does restricting the number of people travelling impact the transmission?

It's scalable. Tower Hamlets has a smaller population than NewZealand.

Don't parts of NewZealand have as high population density as some bad COVID19 hot-spots do?

The problem in the UK was internal community transmission within the UK. Doing as we did, we could have had a catastrophe as we have even if we had only had one case coming in from abroad.

[ali k]

Trying to add some balance - what we have done right:
3. As a population pretty much abided by a softly softly lockdown.

Just to add for balance, credit where it's due - the government seems to have successfully rammed home the 'stay at home' message according to the latest Ipsos Mori survey. We are now officially the most fearful nation in Europe about leaving our homes after lockdown, with 71% saying they'd feel "very nervous about leaving home" even if businesses were allowed to reopen and travel resume.

And just to balance out that balancing...I guess that's what happens when you have a party in charge with a reputation for campaigning and Isaac Levido doing your messaging. Unfortunately getting out of the lockdown might require a decent governing party, which on the evidence so far seems pretty absent.

[James Malloch]

WE MUST MEET MY 100K DEADLINE - TEST ANYONE!!! would seem to be more sensible... (ahem - not saying this is what is happening - of course.....)

Not even that TT

The cheque's in the post 

I came on to mention this. For anyone who hasn’t read the linked report I can summarise it as:

THE GOVERNMENT HAVE MET THEIR 100K TESTING FIGURE BY COUNTING TESTS WHICH THEY HAVE POSTED TO PEOPLE IN THEIR NUMBERS.

Sorry for the capitals but you couldn’t make it up. I thought they might have maybe held back on testing to have a massive push yesterday with lots of swabs ready to start work on at 00:01, but to change the way you count them like that is just ludicrous.

[petejh]

To add to the disparity / incomparably huge gulf between NZ and the UK.
I'd guesstimate 99.5% of people entering NZ enter the country via its two international entry points of Auckland and Christchurch.

The UK is a leaky sieve of entry points. Think about all the regional airports, the seaports, the tunnel. Each one a gateway to a covid case.

And how is it scalable if the growth is exponential? Over the same time period wouldn't a country starting with a higher number always end up with an exponentially higher number all other things being equal?

BTW I'm not saying comparisons are futile - but I'm interested in realistic comparisons, e.g. Germany. And having comparable data not apples-oranges.