COVID-19

[JQH]

People arriving in the UK will have to stay isolated for two weeks

Couldn't they just have a test?

Something that should have been done 2 months ago.

[Woodchopper]

People arriving in the UK will have to stay isolated for two weeks

Couldn't they just have a test?

It can take a few days between when someone is infected and when they pest positive with a PCR test.

[Aitch]

People arriving in the UK will have to stay isolated for two weeks

Couldn't they just have a test?

Depends if they have to stay in quarantine while they await the results. And how long that takes...

[Gfamily]

There's a nice new podcast from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine on viruses which covers the coronavirus epidemic, the latest episode has a long chat with Peter Piot (who think it'll likely hit pandemic status).
https://anchor.fm/lshtm

Good article by Peter Piot who then fell ill with Covid-19.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05 ... h-covid-19#

[veravista]

I was actually gobsmacked that there was no quarantine at all when I found out the other day. What the f.ck has been going on? So people from the States or China or anyone who'd been there could just come in with a cursory temperature check? And now the airports and airlines are whining.

Jesus christ on a bike.

[Trinucleus]

People arriving in the UK will have to stay isolated for two weeks

Couldn't they just have a test?

Depends if they have to stay in quarantine while they await the results. And how long that takes...

I'd rather be tested and be quarantined for a few days than wait for two weeks, now that we have mass testing capacity....

[jimbob]

There's been a lot of the bizarre no-excuses lately. Things they rush out in the hope people won't think about the implications. "It's NHS Bureaucracy" - as if the Government was somehow unable to access private sector capacity directly, or "It's not that we have no PPE, it's just the logistics aren't in place to actually deliver it" - as if they, the government, were not responsible for those logistics. Blaming it on a system for scientific advice they have presided over for a decade with advisors they appointed is another one.

Lots of "It's not X, it's Y", when X and Y are both the responsibility of the government.

ETA: Kind of as if someone were saying "It wasn't my drunk driving that caused the fatal crash, it was my failure to maintain my car in a roadworthy condition"

... Which I didn't spot because I was drunk...

[Woodchopper]

Paper on lockdowns in SIR models
https://benjaminmoll.com/wp-content/upl ... _notes.pdf

[Woodchopper]

The Robert Koch institute estimates that R in Germany is circa 1.1
https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/N ... cationFile

If that rise keeps up they’ll have to lockdown again.

[raven]

I was actually gobsmacked that there was no quarantine at all when I found out the other day. What the f.ck has been going on? So people from the States or China or anyone who'd been there could just come in with a cursory temperature check? And now the airports and airlines are whining.

Jesus christ on a bike.

There was quarantine initially.

Well, I mean, we had signs up in airports telling people coming in from affected areas that they should self-isolate for I think it was 14 days & there were stations set up to check temperatures but these weren't always in use. But we didn't as far as I know do so much as note down anyone's name, or check that they understood the instructions, or ask where they'd be staying or anything like that, much less do any enforcing. It was up to the traveller to do the right thing.

Hence a fellow student who'd come back from Hubei attended a social event with son#2 in February with a mask on when they should really have been self-isolating. Luckily, they were fine.

[sTeamTraen]

I don't see the point in quarantine for new arrivals now. It might have made sense two months ago, but if you have, say, 2% population prevalence then that's 1.3 million people walking around the UK with the virus, so the 4 infected people on a 200-person flight (of which there are not many per day landing) won't make much difference. Plus right now, almost everybody who is landing is an expat returning to the UK, probably having been in lockdown for the last 6-8 weeks in a country that might well have a lower prevalence of the infection. I don't see what telling such a person not to go food shopping for a fortnight gains anyone, other than a bit of comfort for those who think it's all the furrins fault.

[Millennie Al]

Wouldn't it make more sense to quarantine people on the way out of the UK?

No. We wouldn't benefit from that.

Note that it's better that a country implementing a measure is the one which stands to gain and lose from it as that means that the consequences of bad judgement fall on those doing the judging. This makes things better for everyone as people have enough difficulty learning from their own mistakes, and find it almost impossible to learn from others' mistakes.

[Martin_B]

Wouldn't it make more sense to quarantine people on the way out of the UK?

No. We wouldn't benefit from that.

Note that it's better that a country implementing a measure is the one which stands to gain and lose from it as that means that the consequences of bad judgement fall on those doing the judging. This makes things better for everyone as people have enough difficulty learning from their own mistakes, and find it almost impossible to learn from others' mistakes.

Also, you don't want to quarantine for 14 days and then travel and pick something up in transit. Western Australia has had just 1 new case in the last week, and it was a woman who was travelling back to Australia. Hadn't had symptoms during the last ~6 weeks in wherever she was, but symptoms started ~1 week after she came home. So either she picked up the only community transmission case in the state within a day of landing, or she contracted it getting from one safe spot to another.

[Squeak]

It is very notable that Australia has had mandatory 14 day quarantines for all new arrivals and for people traveling between states (so a total of 28 days of isolation for my step sister and her two little ones coming home from a Pacific island) for the past two months. If you're eligible for home isolation, they send round soldiers to spot check that you're home. Another friend managed to get herself locked out of her quarantine hotel room while putting her rubbish outside the door. She was visited by a squad of police and told that if she did it again, she'd cop an $11,000 fine.

A reminder that Australia and the UK got their first cases within a few days of each other. Australia's total case load (which is probably pretty accurate because we have the resources) is about 22% of recorded covid deaths in the UK. Our case load is about 3% of the confirmed cases in the UK. And, again for emphasis, our numbers are pretty reliable, unlike yours.

I wonder if the complete failure to track, test, and quarantine arrivals to the UK might have had a little bit to do with the disparity.

[Woodchopper]

Britain could suffer more than 100,000 deaths by the end of the year if ministers relax the lockdown too far and too fast, a scientific adviser to the government warned last night.

[...]

Warnings about the potential death toll were sent to the government’s Sage advisory committee early last week by researchers from the London School of Tropical Hygiene, Imperial College London and other centres.

They modelled different lockdown exit policies “to evaluate which were viable and which were not”, a scientific adviser said. “There is very limited room for manoeuvre.”

The source said more than one model had put the death toll in six figures in some scenarios.

Johnson and his senior ministers — Michael Gove, Rishi Sunak, Matt Hancock and Dominic Raab — met on Wednesday evening to approve a less aggressive plan than many ministers had been calling for to lift the lockdown.

They did so after being told that the real rate of new Covid-19 infections was 18,000 a day when the government’s target rate is 4,000 a day. The 100,000 figure was not discussed in that meeting. But it exposes the dilemma facing Johnson as he comes under pressure from MPs to move more quickly.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news ... -rqqbf956g

The FT estimates that current excess deaths are circa 55 000, so getting to 100 000 would require circa 225 deaths per day (last week excess deaths must have been much more than double that).

If there are currently 18 000 new infections per day then that gives us 180 deaths at a 1% IFR. So it wouldn't take a major increase to get up to those levels.

And after that all Britain would still be a long way from herd immunity.

[shpalman]

In that discussion about the censored Covid-19 advice, what seems to have gone relatively unnoticed is what the censored part actually said according to the people who said it:

The report, from 1 April, summarised SPI-B’s discussions about how to handle possible changes to the social distancing measures that had just been introduced to slow the spread of Covid-19...

The Guardian understands the blocked text related to SPI–B’s criticism about possible government proposals around that time.

SPI-B is the Sage subcommittee providing advice from behavioural scientists on how the public might respond to lockdown measures.

“The impression I’m getting is this government doesn’t want any criticism.”

These included the idea of reducing the amount of time Britons could spend exercising or shopping, and stricter financial penalties for those found to be breaking the lockdown. A third proposal involved requiring people to self-validate their movements, as was occurring in France, where citizens were required to complete permits before leaving home.

Experts on SPI-B, which includes professors in psychology, epidemiology and anthropology, said they felt the proposals were too punitive and more likely to result in unfair treatment among people in deprived economic circumstances.

So the government wanted a stricter lockdown (self-validation also happens in Italy) and the scientists were arguing against that.

At the beginning of April.

So the cases which got infected around that time, thanks to the lockdown not being strict enough because the scientists argued against it, would have been the ones which pushed the UK into overtaking Italy.

We should be criticising this government for all sorts of things but not, I don't think, for making the lockdown too strict.

[Woodchopper]

In that discussion about the censored Covid-19 advice, what seems to have gone relatively unnoticed is what the censored part actually said according to the people who said it:

The report, from 1 April, summarised SPI-B’s discussions about how to handle possible changes to the social distancing measures that had just been introduced to slow the spread of Covid-19...

The Guardian understands the blocked text related to SPI–B’s criticism about possible government proposals around that time.

SPI-B is the Sage subcommittee providing advice from behavioural scientists on how the public might respond to lockdown measures.

“The impression I’m getting is this government doesn’t want any criticism.”

These included the idea of reducing the amount of time Britons could spend exercising or shopping, and stricter financial penalties for those found to be breaking the lockdown. A third proposal involved requiring people to self-validate their movements, as was occurring in France, where citizens were required to complete permits before leaving home.

Experts on SPI-B, which includes professors in psychology, epidemiology and anthropology, said they felt the proposals were too punitive and more likely to result in unfair treatment among people in deprived economic circumstances.

So the government wanted a stricter lockdown (self-validation also happens in Italy) and the scientists were arguing against that.

At the beginning of April.

So the cases which got infected around that time, thanks to the lockdown not being strict enough because the scientists argued against it, would have been the ones which pushed the UK into overtaking Italy.

We should be criticising this government for all sorts of things but not, I don't think, for making the lockdown too strict.

Different committee, but one Professor of Sociology who is a member of Nervtag has been critical of the lockdown (eg: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ssage.html https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/25/two-metr ... -12609448/)

[lpm]

Only 100,000 deaths by the end of the year would be a great result. If he achieves it, I'll clap for Boris one Thursday evening.

It's mad they're presenting this as a disaster to "warn against".

We're at 55,000 now. The painfully long decline will mean the first wave will end at 70,000 in a hopeful scenario. Suppose we manage a South Korea and have a lull for the rest of the year to give a best possible outcome of say 75,000 at the year end.

It would only take a pretty small second wave to knock it above 100,000. More likely is a couple more waves, taking us to the 200,000 region.

I don't believe we will be able to get this first wave down to a South Korea style lull, let alone prevent a second wave. If Johnson manages it that would be world class leadership.

[shpalman]

Oh and was it SPI-B who insisted that you couldn't actually have a lockdown anyway "because people" or was that just Whitty reckoning that people would get bored of it because his patients can't always be bothered to finish their prescriptions?

At the time: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51892402

In a separate letter to the government, more than 200 behavioural scientists have questioned the government's argument that starting tougher measures too soon would lead to people not sticking to them just at the point that the epidemic is at its height...

... The scientists said "radical behaviour change" could have a "much better" effect and could "save very large numbers of lives"...

... The second letter called on the government to reconsider its stance on "behavioural fatigue" and to share the evidence on which it based this stance.

More recent: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... rus-crisis

The Guardian understands that Halpern’s Behavioural Insights Team, or “nudge unit”, was also opposed to this view that people would tire of restrictive measures. One senior Whitehall source said Whitty himself was the main advocate of the “fatigue” notion, based partly on his own experience of patients in medical practice who do not see drug prescriptions through to their completion.

[EACLucifer]

Going to add that by April, the government had plenty of real world case studies of how people behaved in lockdown, and they don't exactly seem to align with the behavioural scientists saying it is impossible. I have to wonder, are these the same specific behavioural scientists that were quite recently citing Wansink?

[Aitch]

So the cases which got infected around that time, thanks to the lockdown not being strict enough because the scientists argued against it, would have been the ones which pushed the UK into overtaking Italy.

We should be criticising this government for all sorts of things but not, I don't think, for making the lockdown too strict.

Ah but according to, I think, Dr Fox on Radio 4 this morning, we're only 4th or 5th if you use standardised figures - ie deaths per total population.

I failed stats a long time ago, so I don't know how truthful he was being.

[shpalman]

Different committee, but one Professor of Sociology who is a member of Nervtag has been critical of the lockdown (eg: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ssage.html https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/25/two-metr ... -12609448/)

He gets an -ology and he says he's failed! You get an "-ology" and you're a scientist!

"Mostly it isn't" killing people.

Well if it only kills 100,000 people this year, most of the UK will still be alive.

I mean, without the lockdown, maybe 99% of the UK population would have survived anyway. That seems fine? Only about 660,000 excess deaths? (I was originally going to say 99.9% but the deaths are already more than that. This figure would basically double the death rate for this year as compared to last year, if I've googled correctly.)

The second link is maybe a bit more useful; I don't think Germany ever really closed its parks. But the originally the UK and Italy didn't close the parks and every f.cker went to them so they basically said you can't play with your toys responsibly so we'll have to take them away.

Yes, it's a rule of thumb, because diffusion is an exponential process and the science about which kinds of droplets carry viable virus is still being worked on. But more distance is better than less distance, and less distance for a short time is better than less distance for a long time, so you could walk past someone in the street at less than a metre and probably have less chance of passing the virus to them than if you sat two metres away from someone and talked to them for an hour without a mask on.

The populations of some countries have mostly been able to deploy common sense, while some countries are more like ah but what if I'm jogging to the shops and on the way back I stop to have a conversation...

[shpalman]

So the cases which got infected around that time, thanks to the lockdown not being strict enough because the scientists argued against it, would have been the ones which pushed the UK into overtaking Italy.

We should be criticising this government for all sorts of things but not, I don't think, for making the lockdown too strict.

Ah but according to, I think, Dr Fox on Radio 4 this morning, we're only 4th or 5th if you use standardised figures - ie deaths per total population.

I failed stats a long time ago, so I don't know how truthful he was being.

If Lombardy were a separate country it would be way ahead on that measure. Nearly 15000 deaths out of a population of 10 million is worse even than Belgium (about 8,600 out of 11.5 million). I see 5530 for London here (population 8.9 million).

But Italy as a whole is on 30395 with about 240 per day while the UK is on 31587 with about 490 per day so not long now until the UK beats Italy in terms of deaths per total population too, especially if the government considers relaxing some of the lockdown or if everyone just decides to go and hang out at the park anyway.

I also suspect that Italy had most of its deaths-due-to-covid-which-weren't-attributed-to-covid-at-the-time back in March whereas the UK is still having them, so the UK will end up way ahead of Italy when then the final excess deaths are counted. But I'm just making that up.

[Woodchopper]

Only 100,000 deaths by the end of the year would be a great result. If he achieves it, I'll clap for Boris one Thursday evening.

It's mad they're presenting this as a disaster to "warn against".

We're at 55,000 now. The painfully long decline will mean the first wave will end at 70,000 in a hopeful scenario. Suppose we manage a South Korea and have a lull for the rest of the year to give a best possible outcome of say 75,000 at the year end.

It would only take a pretty small second wave to knock it above 100,000. More likely is a couple more waves, taking us to the 200,000 region.

I don't believe we will be able to get this first wave down to a South Korea style lull, let alone prevent a second wave. If Johnson manages it that would be world class leadership.

I agree. There is no way that 18 000 infections a day could be traced, contacted and isolated within current resources. That alone would require far more testing capacity than exists, and even with an app, there would need to be vast numbers of people working as tracers.

One option would be to keep the lockdown in place and drive down the numbers of infections to a point at which its feasible to trace them. But instead the policy appears to be to start easing the lockdown.

[JQH]

Britain could suffer more than 100,000 deaths by the end of the year if ministers relax the lockdown too far and too fast, a scientific adviser to the government warned last night.

[...]

Warnings about the potential death toll were sent to the government’s Sage advisory committee early last week by researchers from the London School of Tropical Hygiene, Imperial College London and other centres.

They modelled different lockdown exit policies “to evaluate which were viable and which were not”, a scientific adviser said. “There is very limited room for manoeuvre.”

The source said more than one model had put the death toll in six figures in some scenarios.

Johnson and his senior ministers — Michael Gove, Rishi Sunak, Matt Hancock and Dominic Raab — met on Wednesday evening to approve a less aggressive plan than many ministers had been calling for to lift the lockdown.

They did so after being told that the real rate of new Covid-19 infections was 18,000 a day when the government’s target rate is 4,000 a day. The 100,000 figure was not discussed in that meeting. But it exposes the dilemma facing Johnson as he comes under pressure from MPs to move more quickly.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news ... -rqqbf956g

The FT estimates that current excess deaths are circa 55 000, so getting to 100 000 would require circa 225 deaths per day (last week excess deaths must have been much more than double that).

If there are currently 18 000 new infections per day then that gives us 180 deaths at a 1% IFR. So it wouldn't take a major increase to get up to those levels.

And after that all Britain would still be a long way from herd immunity.

Before lockdown, a friend who works in public health reckoned we'd be lucky to get away with under 100.000 UK deaths.

Seems she was on the money.