There must be a public inquiry

[Haplap]

And criminal charges. This government will have been responsible for so many avoidable deaths:

UK is projected to have over 3 times as many deaths as Italy by August (66 000 V 20 000):

covid19.healthdata.org/united-kingdom

They took all the wrong decisions despite the scientific advice:

www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-path-speci-idUSKBN21P1VF

Stop clapping, start scrutinising!

Of course there was never a herd immunity strategy.

Thank you for illustrating exactly what the government will do when held to account - lie.

They made a mistake and u-turned, but their initial geared towards herd immunity actions meant vital time was lost and we went into lockdown too late.

To plan for 60% of the population to naturally acquire a disease which is this fatal would mean a huge number of deaths.

In any case a quick google reveals hundreds of articles about the UK’s initial strategy of which this is one:

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/15/epidemiologist-britain-herd-immunity-coronavirus-covid-19

There never was a herd immunity strategy from the government

Jesus Boris, you up to posting on MN now, you must be feeling better!

I clearly remember the herd immunity policy, the number of people being flamed and dismissed for scaremongering when they disagreed with it, or told patronisingly that they weren’t scientists. Being told how it would work using the same words that show how it won’t work.

I mean yes, herd immunity is the end goal, but with vaccinations and effective treatment, not by sitting back and waiting for it all to kick off.

I’ve included a screenshot from another thread a few days ago. It seems to fit here.

This is the least most helpful type of post at the moment, we don't know anything for sure yet, so looking to blame and make people pay is hardly going to help. No doubt things could have been done much better (hindsight really is a wonderful thing) but banging on about that now is really not the answer!

I disagree.
Peoples lives are directly affected by the government’s ineptitude.
We need to remember this, and the fact that this situation has highlighted the poorly paid, badly treated members of society who are right now holding the country together in a way that BoJo can’t even dream of.

People are scared, we’re not all cocooned by savings in the bank. If government decisions are on their minds now it’s fine to talk about it, and hopefully when this is all over people will stop voting for the ones who have made those ill formed decisions.

Talking about current government decisions is one thing, but looking at decisions now, that have been and gone and can't be changed is not helpful in my opinion and not productive, lessons will be learned and changes made when we have all of the info. I understand that everyone is scared at the moment I just don't think looking to blame right now helps with that.

we went into lockdown too late

I disagree. We went into lockdown at the same phase as everyone else. We couldn't have gone into lockdown earlier, it was not tenable. Read the BBC interview with the Italian PM. He wouldn't have done anything different either, he states that if he had locked down earlier, people would have called him mad. It is a really difficult call, and you have to bring society with you. Would you have been able to do that OP, and against all other countries experience, and against scientific advice?

COVID-19 will not die out because we have prevented transmission by any other means than by immunity.

The similarity of the other infectious diseases I mentioned isn't the point, but if you want a closer example, take polio. Similar level of infectiousness, similar problem of being spreading it whilst asymptomatic. In the decades before a vaccine existed, numerous polio outbreaks were brought under control without infecting enough people to achieve herd immunity.

We're not talking about eradicating COVID-19, we're talking about ending the epidemic. And if you can find any examples of an epidemic that's been stopped due to herd immunity from everyone being infected (instead of vaccinated), please do share.

The plague, although still active in some parts of the world, did eradicate much of it's potency by killing off most of it's hosts. Wasn't there also the "sleeping sickness" of the middle ages/early Tudor that came and went and then disappeared? I think there are other examples of particularly nasty viruses which have been so successful in killing their hosts that no-one was left to pass it on, but there haven't been many.

How comparable are polio outbreaks pre-vaccine though? Wasn’t polio vaccine available in the 50’s? The world is a different place now, 60+ years on. We move about much more and the containment would therefore have been easier when hardly anyone even in developed countries owned a car.

This situation is completely unprecedented.

@Sosadandempty I didn’t see anywhere in the video the mention of a herd immunity strategy. The approach outlined was to contain, and protect the vulnerable.

In any case a quick google reveals hundreds of articles about the UK’s initial strategy of which this is one.

Yes, but the expert writing in your Guardian link (15th March) says the UK should copy South Korea instead;

"You should instead look to the example of South Korea, which, through a combination of intense surveillance and social distancing, appears to have gained some semblance of control over the virus."

This BBC article written 10 days earlier describes this intense surveillance in detail:

"As I sit at home, my phone beeps alarmingly with emergency alerts."
""A 43-year-old man, resident of Nowon district, tested positive for coronavirus," it says."

"He was at his work in Mapo district attending a sexual harassment class. He contracted the virus from the instructor of the class."

"A series of alerts then chronicle where the men had been, including a bar in the area until 11:03 at night."

"These alerts arrive all day, every day, telling you where an infected person has been - and when. You can also look up the information on the Ministry of Health and Welfare website."

"No names or addresses are given, but some people are still managing to connect the dots and identify people.The public has even decided two of the infected were having an affair."

"And, even if patients are not outright identified, they're facing judgement-or ridicule-online."

"When you search online for a virus patient's case number, related queries include "personal details", "face", "photo", "family" - or even "adultery".

"Some online users are commenting that "I had no idea so many people go to love motels" - the by-the-hour hotels popular with couples."

"One recent alert concerned a woman, aged 27, who works at the Samsung plant in Gumi. It said that at 11:30 at night on 18 February she visited her friend, who had attended the gathering of religious sect Shincheonji, the single biggest source of infections in the country."

"City mayor Jang Se-yong further revealed her surname on Facebook. Panicked Gumi residents commented on his post: "Tell us the name of her apartment building." ...

"Please do not spread my personal information," the woman later wrote on Facebook."

"I am so sorry for my family and friends who would get hurt, and it's too hard for me psychologically, more than (physical pain)." ...

"Goh Jae-young, an official at the Korea Centers for Disease Control Prevention, told BBC Korean."

"At first we interview the patients and try to gather information, emphasising that this affects the health and safety of the entire people."

"Then to fill in the areas they perhaps haven't told us, and also to verify, we use GPS data, surveillance camera footage, and credit card transactions to recreate their route a day before their symptoms showed."

Sorry, but how exactly is the UK going to implement this strategy?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-51733145

If there is any kind of enquiry it needs to be into why the Chinese Government tried to keep this secret and hush anybody who tried to raise concern. We are damn lucky this is a fairly mild respitatory illness and not a plague. If anybody should be answering questions its Xi not Johnson.

Genuine question - to all of those against the idea of herd immunity (either via vaccination or subsequent infection and recovery), what is the other option? Realistically, we cannot stay locked down for years. Once this lockdown-lite finishes, there are more than likely going to be peaks of re-infection. This may or may not instigate another lockdown. Then once we are again free from said lockdown, people will again go about their day to day business and eventually infections will once again start to peak. There are going to be peaks and troughs over the next few years I should think.

If it mutates as time goes on then surely any vaccine is going to end up like the seasonal flu vaccine - only effective against the latest strain however other strains out there will be ready and waiting to find a host. Perhaps a change in lifestyle is going to be the only way to deal with this.

Herd immunity is the end goal.

It’s not a tool to contain/slow a novel virus.

I don’t think I’ve seen anyone against the idea of herd immunity per se, but against the government’s initial approach, which they then u turned on and seem to be denying.

We can’t stay in lockdown until there’s a vaccine, but the government should be taking a close look at countries who handled it well and are now well on the way to normality - like Singapore and Taiwan.

A stricter lockdown may be necessary for a while.

Far more testing needs to be done - even now frontline medical staff are struggling to be tested.

More tracking of cases and selective quarantines.

It’s possible to contain, as other countries have shown, but currently many governments seem to think they have better ideas that fly in the face of what is known about the virus, then face the shit show that is now going on here, the US, etc.

Herd immunity is not an end goal. There is not a single virus that I’m aware of, in all of human history, that the population has reached the level of herd immunity for without vaccination. If you know of any do please let me know.

I don't think it was inevitable that we are in the position we are in now, so soon.

My problem is that there was virtually nothing done, until a series of drastic controls within a short space of time when they could not ignore it any longer.

Eg I am not one who thinks they should have been closing all schools in early February.
But they could have cancelled large national/international events much sooner! They could have done more targeted school shutdowns (where cases had been confirmed). They could have done more checks on people flying into the UK from hotspots. The insistence that employees and pupils do not come into work/school with symptoms could have been introduced much earlier. Discouragement of unnecessary close social contact (handshakes etc).
Proper contact tracing and testing would have helped enormously, rather than our half hearted attempts.

There is a lot they could have done while cases were low that was short of a full lockdown which would still have had a big impact (might even have made lockdown psychologically easier to be eased towards it).
Maybe, eventually, we would still have ended up where we are now - but we would have had time to stock up on PPE and equipment, and we would have more time to learn lessons from other countries on how to treat the virus.

Some people say the purpose of this lockdown is to take the numbers down to a point where contact tracing etc is once more possible - ie all these sacrifices and £billions to turn the clock back to the point where we DID have some control. When all we did was "wash hands and sing Happy Birthday".
Let's hope that if we do (by some miracle) manage to buy a second chance we don't squander that too!!

Nobody knows for sure how the virus is transmitted, who some get it worse than others and what helps recovery. If it is subsequently found that fresh air, sunshine and vitamin D destoys the virus or prevents infection then the lockdowns will be viewed very differently.

I am probably alone but I am rooting for Sweden to show us how to manage living with this virus.

Sweden has a population density less than a fifth of that of Denmark. Sweden already has double the number of deaths per million that Denmark does. The evidence is already very very clear that Sweden’s approach isn’t working. Will it be worse there than in more densely populated countries with less well-funded medical infrastructure like the UK? Possibly not. But it is clear that people have died in Sweden who would not have died if they had followed the example of Denmark.

I wondered how long it would be before the finger pointing would start.

And then how long it'll take for the report.....

For the last few weeks I have been watching the WHO press conferences and our own press conferences and it is very clear to me that our government has acted extremely negligently and that they continue to do so. Dr Harries was asked at a press conference fairly recently why we were not following WHO recommendations and she basically said that WHO was for poor countries and as we have a good public health system we don't need to follow WHO advice.

Now is obviously not the right time for a public inquiry but this notion that we should just 'get covid done' and save all questioning for afterwards will cost a lot of lives. We need to learn everything we can, as fast as we can, from countries that are dealing with this much more effectively than we are.

It's not all about the lockdown. We need lockdown measures now because we have fucked it up but WHO have been consistently clear that lockdown achieves nothing in itself, it just buys us some time to start doing what we should have been doing in the first place.

It is far too early to say who's stratergy is working and no-one will know which was the least destructive until the end of the pandemic. What is true is that despite the very strict and long lockdown there were still over 4,000 new cases in Italy yesterday.

It's a long road and I remain rooting for Sweden.

This is just a dry run for the big one, all countries should collaborate to gather as much information as possible about how this could have been handled more effectively, yes people must be held accountable but this is a time for learning and getting it right next time

Oh do bore off and stop shit-stirring.