Can someone explain the Science?

[Janemarpling]

www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

I think I have got it but then I keep reading on then I don't.

So we are going for suppression? Can anyone help explain to me simply. Think I am getting thicker with age.

I read it as both so periods of suppression then mitigation until it rises so you need suppression

Only read the first page but UK strategy sounds more like mitigation then suppression.

I've copied this off FB. Might be bollocks:

The plan is to segregate all vulnerable people (older, ill, disabled and at risk) let’s call this group A

Anyone looking after the older, ill and at risk can be group B

The general population / generally healthy can be group C

Group C needs to go about it’s business keeping the country moving, kids at school, us at work

Group B looks after group A and avoids contact with C

Group C is allowed to contract the virus and because it’s generally healthy it can cope with it better than group A

Group A and B are almost self isolating without the virus to avoid putting strain on the NHS and reducing the risk of getting the virus and then needing the NHS

Group C (the generally healthy) go through the cycle of contracting the virus self isolating and being looked after by healthy family members, friends and the local community

Anyone who has complications gets looked after by the NHS while groups A and B are kept away The NHS are not strained by A and B while its looking after complicated cases in C

As group C comes full circle and recovers it divides in to groups that take group B’s position looking after group A allowing group B to go though the cycle

With B and C though the cycle, A is free to have NHS to itself because B and C are now clear from illness and infection and hopefully have a degree of immunity from getting it again this season.

Hope this helps those that are worried or not sure of the plan

Everyone has a job to do for the above to work

But it will have to go on for 18 months on and off? All of this isolation?

No-one knows at this stage, we will learn more as it goes on.

BUT The Plague and Sweating Sickness made reappearances over a few years until they finally died out............... Thomas Cromwell lost his wife to the Sweat one year, then both his daughters a year or two later.

(Although hopefully a vaccine will be developed in a year or two)

Have we left it too late?

In brief, it says if we do nothing, they predict 80% of the UK will be infected and 500k will die and the peak will be in 3 months. It also suggests that modelling attempts to mitigate the epidemic and flatten the curve, as the government was trying to do until today, will not work as the healthcare system will be overwhelmed but might reduce deaths by half. As the government has been saying, if we were to aim for mitigation, that should be delayed until close to the peak.

It concludes, however, that the only viable strategy currently in the UK is suppression, making sure that each infected person infects no more than 1 other person to keep the epidemic under control. To do that, it needs to be done now, the entire country needs to socially distance, home isolation of cases, household quarantine where there is a case, and closure of universities and schools. This may well need to be done until there is a vaccine available (potentially 18 months away) although suppression may be possible by other means in future months in the way that South Korea is managing the epidemic with intensive testing, contact tracing, quarantine, phone tracking etc. It also recognises that such long term public health intervention has ever been done before.

It is not government strategy though, it is a scientific paper that the government has used to advise them. As we saw today, most of the suppression strategy has been implemented.

It doesn't have anything to do with Oysterbabe's post.

Thanks goin

Just wow though. Heard a journo on LBC he said the press conference was shocking.

@goingoverground

Excellent summary.

Does anyone else imagine that when they're saying the science, it's capitalised, like The Science!'

Boris...Is that you?

Also, a good thread on this here:
mobile.twitter.com/kakape/status/1239694176066965505

Or this should show the whole thread?
mobile.twitter.com/kakape/status/1239694176066965505

But lots of group A have children or partners in groups C going to school /work.

Very interesting. They need to get tougher imo but good that they’ve done something.

But lots of group A have children or partners in groups C going to school /work.

This is what I feel that everyone - including the government - is missing. One of my students told me she will no longer be coming to school in case she passes it on to her mum who has cancer. Imagine how awful a child would feel if they passed it on to a vulnerable relative!