Woodchopper wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 7:11 pm
The quote seems to make sense if he assumes that the act of ending restrictions will lead to extra social contact - eg lots of people holding ‘end of lockdown’ parties. If so it would be better to get that over during the summer. No idea whether it’s a real effect or not.
I'm still trying to figure out the reasoning behind the quotes from Boris, Whitty etc about "better to unlock now, rather than in x months". Based on some reporting, there seems to be a reasonable scientific consensus on this (at least, based on some of the modelling that has been done).
If you assume that when restrictions are lifted, many people celebrate, go to the pub, and over-compensate in various ways, then there is additional risk of the virus spreading at that point. Doing this in summer (fewer indoor interactions) helps reduce this risk compared to the autumn. But surely the higher proportion of vaccinations that will be in place by autumn helps to balance this?
And if we assume that with no change in restrictions on July 19th, the current rapid rise of infections is likely to peak in the next couple of months, if unlockdown happened in the autumn, it would probably start at a point where cases were somewhat lower (compared to now). So you would be throwing the same amount of fuel but onto a smaller fire. Wouldn't that also help make the case for lifting restrictions somewhat later?
The only other reason I can think of that might push the balance back towards doing it sooner is the extra natural immunity that might arise from all the cases, but compared to the stronger immunity from more vaccinations, is that really a decent scientific argument?
Would be really interested to see a summary of the modelling and scientific arguments that were used to justify the "summer unlockdown" vs "autumn unlockdown". Have these been published?