If we could go back do you wish we went down the herd immunity route?

[Sakalibre]

Just curious

YABU - no
YANBU - yes

Are you nuts? No, that would be ridiculous and appalling.

I presume anyone who voted that they think it's a good idea is happy to think that they and their loved ones would have been some of the at least 250000 deaths we would get.
That's presuming a 80% needing to catch it for herd immunity and a 0.5% chance of death, which is lower than the generally considered death toll.

Going down a route or having a plan would be a good idea at some point.

How 6 months into this they’re still flying by the seat of their increasingly thread bare pants I’ll never know.

We truly have a government of mediocre yes men.

I’m sure Jonson will have resigned in 6 months and leave someone else to sort his shit shows.

No definitely not - not even going to vote because it’s a ridiculous question - why would I want more people to have died?

I do wish we had gone down the same road as some countries though - who avoided having to lockdown for as long or at all by having really good track and trace and quarantine in place.

But our government is utterly incompetent so we are where we are now.

Well fuck me, over a quarter of those voting seem to have voted for the mass slaughter route where the duration of any immunity is uncertain at best and which no country in the world - not even Beloved Sweden, Brazil or the US - has gone down.

I don't know what "The herd immunity route" means. Everyone will define it in a different way.

I'd be happier to be living under Dutch or Swedish strategy.

[quote AlrightTreacle]@SheepandCow

New Zealand population: 4.9 million
Size: 243,610 sq km

Australia population: 25 million
Size: 7.692 million sq km

UK population: 66.65 million
Size: 242,495 sq km

We've got way more people and way less space, and our borders are a lot more accessible than theirs. I don't think our government has done a good job, but don't think our starting situation is comparable to New Zealand or Australia.[/quote]
Totally agree with this, and let’s face it Victoria in Australia is hardly living a footloose and fancy free existence right now.

You cannot stop a virus with a Lockdown, as the virus is still there when the lockdown is lifted.
The destruction of our economy is far more serious.
Personally, I think we should have gone down Sweden's route. Sweden DID impose some restrictions, such as no large gatherings over a certain number, and I believe schools and universities were closed for those over the age of 16, but for younger children remained open.
People in Sweden voluntarily social distanced, and avoided going out to the pubs, etc as much as before.
All this micro management of people's lives here in the UK, is far more damaging.
I suspect a lot of people will ignore the new ever changing rules, anyway.

I'd have been happy going down the same route as Sweden.

No because it wouldn't work. But I'd go back to get a proper track and trace and testing system working a lot sooner.

Not living in the uk but I believe we are having more younger people get it here the second time around and we have far less deaths, so higher numbers of Covid again, and I think we had one death, but people are self isolating if they were traced to the Covid contact. No lock down so far.

We've got way more people and way less space, and our borders are a lot more accessible than theirs. I don't think our government has done a good job, but don't think our starting situation is comparable to New Zealand or Australia.

The UK, Australia and NZ all went into lockdown at around the same time - the difference was that the virus had only just arrived in the second two countries. The UK would have surely been in a better state if they had tackled the issue earlier.

We don't know that immunity is lasting, so we may never have an immune herd (unless regularly topped up vaccine)

So we would have seen something approaching the 'reasonable worst case' planning assumption.

That's not just more deaths in the extremely vulnerable population, it's collapse of the NHS - because the peak would have overwhelmed it, and so many HCPs were dying. Staff sick absences would have been even higher (over 25% in places anyhow) and all other treatment would have stopped chaotically (rather than planned as happened) , which would have caused more deaths / life changing effects, and be harder / take longer to restore.

Businesses would have collapsed chaotically too - and the economic damage from that would have been severe. Because it wouldn't have been a tidy series of failures, it would have been a huge smash. Outages in supply chains would have been really problematic.

Not to mention the extra convalescence needed

And the extra suicides from (even temporary) major social collapse

And it would have been pretty much to no avail as immunity seems to wane considerably, and it would peak every 2-3 years.

So next peak could come just as society was adequately mended

@milveycrohn

You cannot stop a virus with a Lockdown, as the virus is still there when the lockdown is lifted. The destruction of our economy is far more serious. Personally, I think we should have gone down Sweden's route. Sweden DID impose some restrictions, such as no large gatherings over a certain number, and I believe schools and universities were closed for those over the age of 16, but for younger children remained open. People in Sweden voluntarily social distanced, and avoided going out to the pubs, etc as much as before. All this micro management of people's lives here in the UK, is far more damaging. I suspect a lot of people will ignore the new ever changing rules, anyway.

The Swedes also told those 70+ to stay home and told people of working age to WFH.

However, I think your last paragraph demonstrates that people here might not have behaved as the Swedish did! Johnson initially tried to go down the route of asking people to be sensible and they weren't.

Also, there are huge differences between us and Sweden (such as population density, household types etc), which means a semi lockdown might not have worked.

I think it's still far too early to say whether lockdowns were the right thing to do or not.

@RightYesButNo

Sorry I wrote a novel below; I have relatives in the US and this is a constant topic. Can you tell I’ve lost it?

Isn’t that essentially what the US is doing, in all the states that refuse to have mask mandates, social distancing mandates, or any kind of lockdown? Their cases are rising at a ridiculous rate for their populations. I just read about a wedding in Maine (which is a fairly rural state) that didn’t follow social distancing rules (they were allowed 50 guests but had 65, “checked temperatures” but didn’t wear any masks while they ate, drank, and danced indoors for hours) and now two areas that only had 150 cases in six months are up to 147 cases and 3 deaths caused by ONE WEDDING. The people who have died didn’t even go to the wedding.

And the US claims it isn’t just letting herd immunity run rampant. Imagine if everyone was. This disease spreads SO quickly, and it’s spread from asymptomatic carriers. It would be like the worst month we had here, when we lost 29,000 in April alone. Of those 29,000, 6% were between ages 40 and 60. ( www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=%2fpeoplepopulationandcommunity%2fbirthsdeathsandmarriages%2fdeaths%2fdatasets%2fdeathsinvolvingcovid19englandandwales%2fjune2020/referencetables.xlsx )

SIX PERCENT. Imagine six percent of everyone you know between 40-60 dead. That includes a lot of MNers’ parents and a lot of MNers themselves, I would assume. It’s insane. The fact is that if you catch COVID, even without underlying conditions, you might die. And even if you have a mild case, you could face VERY serious complications, like brain disorders ( www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/08/warning-of-serious-brain-disorders-in-people-with-mild-covid-symptoms ) or heart damage ( www.livescience.com/covid-19-causes-heart-damage-healthy-people.html ). We have no idea yet if children will be facing these problems for life. And I hate to say it, but we really don’t know enough about the infant mortality rate. Here, mothers shielded infants and they were much less likely to catch it. In the US, there have been several infant COVID deaths. I think we should not assume infants are “immune” to serious complications like young children seem to be. Herd immunity would be a very fast and horrible way to find out.

This is why I really don’t know what to say when people say they “just can’t bear” the COVID rules for much longer. I understand those suffering from mental health issues really do need extra support; I feel terrible for them. For others, though, you really do have to think about which you can bear more easily: these “rules,” which are not forever, or possible life-long heart damage (my friend’s husband is facing it) or death (another friend is now a widow). So yes, it’s still vitally important that you do as much as you’re able to make sure you do not catch this disease at any age. Herd immunity is a dreadful plan.

^ Good post.

The long term affects cannot be understated. I know two very fit people, one in their 30’s and one in 40’s who will not work again. One, ex-army, has significant brain problems all COVID related. Other can just about walk.

Viral load seems to be a factor.

We, like NZ and Australia, are an island. That makes border control extremely easy.

Australia is NZ's nearest neighbour (apparently) it is 1000 miles away. How close are the U.K's neighbours? You can't just compare countries like that.

Personally I wish we had had much stricter measures and kept them up for longer. The minute you were allowed to see 6 people at a 2m distance I saw groups of up to 12 crammed onto one picnic blanket (and I don't think they were families), and when they finally got around to requiring people to wear face coverings in shops, any attempt at social distancing in most of them went straight out of the window. We could have had this licked by now.

No, but I do wish we had acted sooner, restricted movement in February when everyone came back from the Alps, grounded flights etc. I think we would have further flattened the curve and probably had less disruption to education.

..."an island"

Except for that pesky land border with RoI.

6% fatality rate?

I’m in a Sydney suburb with a large Chinese population.
Some Chinese Australians started wearing masks on the street and at the shops during January.
Drs and all reception staff wore masks that in my area since January as well as requiring notification of anyone who had returned from China (and was unwell) at the time of booking appointments so they could be isolated from other patients.

Australia had its 1st notified cases in returned travellers in January who were isolated in Hospitals at the beginning then returning flights from wuhan were quarantined.
We were still having a really terrible fire season. It was still Smokey here (Plus it was too Smokey and awful to be out and about from October-mid jan)

We had a huge fuck up of letting a covid infected cruise ship of people off in Sydney who returned to all parts of Australia which drove our lockdown.
It was a fuck up if epic proportions and pure luck that it wasn’t worse than it was.

(which was expected to happen at any time, it wasn't really a huge suprise).

It was to me!

No. We should have locked down earlier, stopped all the big events going ahead and implemented an internal travel ban and/or quaranteening before february half term.

Absolutely no.

Viral load seems to be a factor

That has been said from early on, and was one theory which accounted for why HCPs tended to become seriously ill.

There has been some recent discussion that masks reduce the viral load at transmission. And that might be a factor in why cases are milder in some locations

@Madein1995

30 people have died today, which while sad for the families isnt comparable to 1000plus in April. We dont hide in fear of flu we get on with it. A vaccine wont be anytime soon and unleas the plan is to go back and fp for the nest 2 years, pissing us all off and fucking up the economy then we need to get on with it. All articles ive read say majority of those died were over a certain age or had health conditions which msde them vulnerable. Ive not read anything saying a young healthy perspn died of it

I'm curious as to how you can have lived through seeing a virus with exponential growth and yet not comprehend exponential growth?

Left unchecked 30 dead today would be 1,000 dead in a few weeks as it was in March. Surely you can see that?