Hypotheses - Rate of infection is too high. A second wave is inevitable.? I don't want a bun fight. Is it possible to discuss this constructively?,

[bumblingbovine49]

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/28/coronavirus-infection-rate-too-high-second-wave]

This article summarises how I think things will go. The article suggests that track and trace on its own will.only stop about 15% of cases because our numbers are still so high.

I wanted to ask people who are really keen for things to go back to normal as quickly as possible ( which I completely understand , I am desperate for that too), would you be happy to have the things they are saying here such as compulsory PPE.for some workers , face coverings track and trace, self isolation if ill, restrictions on travel to other areas or.abroad etc ?

Does normal for you mean none of these things. Just literally go back.to what it was like before or do you think some of these things are necessary. Which if any would you comply with ? Should any of them be compulsory?


I really don't know the answer but I am worried that our excess death rate at the end of the year is going to.be phenomenal, we already have close to 60,000 excess deaths for this time.of year. That is one on a thousand EXTRA deaths in about 4 months . That seems a lot to.me.

[deydododatdodontdeydo]

People on here and twitter were calling for us to copy Spain and lock down hard like them.
One comment I saw was "why aren't we locking down hard like Spain? They have the army out on the street enforcing it".

[Drivingdownthe101]

@deydododatdodontdeydo

People on here and twitter were calling for us to copy Spain and lock down hard like them.
One comment I saw was "why aren't we locking down hard like Spain? They have the army out on the street enforcing it".

I know. I can’t believe people actually wanted kids to be locked in their houses for 2 months.

[0v9c99f9g9d939d9f9g9h8h]

driving

I could be wrong but I think they wanted to see 50 000 people (including many grandparents) live.

[Drivingdownthe101]

Once care home deaths are accounted for, Spain’s numbers will look extremely similar to our own. So it seems locking children away didn’t achieve that.
It would be interesting to see how many deaths in the uk could be attributed to children going for a daily walk at a 2m distance from other people.

[IcedPurple]

I could be wrong but I think they wanted to see 50 000 people (including many grandparents) live

Nice attempt at emotional blackmail there.

What evidence is there that locking millions of children in their apartments for weeks kept anyone alive? Particularly relevant given that Spain has one of the highest death tolls in the world.

[IcedPurple]

Some posters on here don't have a good word to say about the UK and England in particular.

Yep, to read MN, you'd swear that assorted 'other countries' were full of law-abiding, socially responsible citizens with highly competent, caring governments. In reality, peole in most of these 'other countries' have similar complaints about the behaviour of their fellow citizens and governments.

[0v9c99f9g9d939d9f9g9h8h]

iced Not at all. It's done now-what could I be trying to blackmail anyone to do, exactly? They suggested a motivation (the desire to lock children up) and I suggested an alternative motivation (the desire to save lives). As the discussion was about goals rather than outcomes, your question isn't relevant.

[0v9c99f9g9d939d9f9g9h8h]

But if you do want an answer, I think there is a reliable pattern of death tolls peaking a few weeks after lockdown. The finer details of what lockdown strategies were most important and are what point they were needed wasn't understood very well two months ago and we don't know a huge amount more now. So I'm not going to make a case for closing schools being essential, I'll just say we had to act somehow and only Sweden has done less, as reflected in our horrific death toll, of which we ought to be ashamed. Comparing that with other countries who locked down sooner and have effective test and trace systems, it's clear that we've blundered massively somewhere and it probably shouldn't have been necessary to lock down for as long as we did-but Boris isn't known for punctuality, attention to detail or efficiency.

[Drivingdownthe101]

We weren’t talking about schools closing, we were talking about children being literally unable to leave their houses for 2 months in Spain. They weren’t even allowed out to exercise.

[IcedPurple]

They suggested a motivation (the desire to lock children up) and I suggested an alternative motivation (the desire to save lives). As the discussion was about goals rather than outcomes, your question isn't relevant

Of course it is, unless you think critical thinking isn't important because you want to 'save lives'.

[IcedPurple]

So I'm not going to make a case for closing schools being essential

Who's talking about closing schools though? We're talking about shutting children up - mostly in small apartments - for weeks on end.

[Namenic]

@effingterrified - if they can build nightingale hospitals in a few weeks, I’m pretty sure they can block an area and check traffic in. They can then lift restrictions and concentrate testing efforts as they do this. Why we want to lift restrictions in the listed places where infections are going up I have no idea.

@Drivingdownthe101
S Korea is seeing a spike in cases as it has relaxed restrictions (whether you count this a 2nd wave is terminology really). They have people who call and contact quarantined people regularly and good testing. Yes we do have some testing facilities, but why not test it out on a low risk area first?

[Drivingdownthe101]

Why was that aimed at me Namenic? I haven’t said whether I think we’ll have a second wave/peak/ripple/outbreak/whatever you want to call it. I have no idea, I’m not an epidemiologist. I just said it’s incomparable to the Spanish flu, and that banning children from leaving the house is inhumane.

[effingterrified]

No idea why some posters are fighting an imaginary strawman about locking children in houses, which is not what this thread is about.

Hmm, one might almost think some people were trying to derail the thread!

[effingterrified]

Also, it's nonsense to suggest that Spain's mortality rates will be as bad as the UK's once all the figures are in.

The excess death figures, the only reliable measure, show clearly that the UK's mortality rates have been much higher than Spain's.

[Namenic]

@Drivingdownthe101 - I think it was in response to the WHO Dr comment. Experts can think all kinds of things, but even if we are not epidemiologists, we can look at the facts, look at what epidemiologists as a whole are saying, evidence of good practice in other places.

If we are NOT SURE (as with a lot of things with corona), I would suggest it would be prudent to take a CAUTIOUS approach - ie rather keep lockdown longer while we gather more evidence rather than assume that it will be ok and react only when we see a surge (by which time it will be too late - as we saw with the first time).

[Sunshinegirl82]

@Namenic

The difficulty is that lockdown is not benign. It causes harm of its own and there is a cost in continuing to do it.

If your only goal is to stop being dying of COVID then you would act differently than if your aim is to minimise harm (including deaths) resulting from all causes. There is a balance to be struck.

I don’t know that the government have got the balance right and there are things I would not have done but it’s not a simple choice.

[Drivingdownthe101]

If we are NOT SURE (as with a lot of things with corona), I would suggest it would be prudent to take a CAUTIOUS approach - ie rather keep lockdown longer while we gather more evidence rather than assume that it will be ok and react only when we see a surge (by which time it will be too late - as we saw with the first time)

Oh yes, I agree we should take a cautious approach. I don’t agree that we should stay in lockdown longer though. I think we should lift lockdown slowly and cautiously. As Sunshinegirl82 says, lockdown is not benign. In fact it is extremely harmful in a lot of ways. It needs to be lifted, in a slow and careful way.

[Namenic]

@Sunshinegirl82
Excess deaths higher than other countries suggests that the govt is not doing well managing mortality from all things.

There is no reason why they couldn’t keep lockdown in certain regions with high numbers of infections or keep lockdown and allow more ‘elective’ medical treatment which improves long term mortality. Allow school for a slightly wider range of key workers. Lifting lockdown too quickly (like I think the govt is doing) risks further lockdowns in the future, more hospital resources devoted to Covid due to infections going up.

[Namenic]

Why not pilot lifting lockdown in 1 or 2 areas first rather than for the country as a whole? Why are people allowed to do long-distance travel? Seems unnecessary. If there are problems, we have more time to mitigate them and open up more testing capacity etc.

[Sunshinegirl82]

As I understand it a third, maybe even half of excess deaths have taken place in care homes. That is the area that needs very specific and concentrated attention in my view. If we had kept better control of the situation in care homes the figures would look very different.

They could have trialled the easing in some areas but the government have chosen not to do so. I can understand why to an extent, the U.K. is a small country geographically and if there is concern that Dominic Cummings breaking the rules will lead people to think “to hell with it” I’d imagine that would’ve been amplified by whole areas of the country being released earlier than others. It leads to feelings of unfairness.

[Al1Langdownthecleghole]

I think it is likely that there will be further waves, particularly going into winter and crossing with seasonal flu, but I’m hopeful there will be lower peaks and any outbreaks will be more regional.

Whereas Spanish flu affected younger people, Covid has predominantly affected older populations and those with underlying health conditions. I believe that We should be providing more support to those in vulnerable groups whilst enabling and indeed encouraging, those who are at lower risk to work and support those who still can’t go out and about.

A further group at long term risk is the elderly well, those who were previously fit and active, but who have become less active in lockdown and risk becoming frail with declining health & mortality. The impact upon them won’t necessarily be seen within the official Covid data, but still exists.

[Drivingdownthe101]

A further group at long term risk is the elderly well, those who were previously fit and active, but who have become less active in lockdown and risk becoming frail with declining health & mortality

Indeed. My 87 year old grandmother was fit and well pre lockdown. Walked a mile to the village every day, chatted with the butcher and the woman at the charity shop, went to the library and walked home.
Now she is out of breath walking from her lounge to her bedroom, has developed severe health anxiety (she was a children’s nurse for 30 years and used to be extremely pragmatic about health issues), and quite frankly I don’t think she will live beyond lockdown.

[Drivingdownthe101]

And she lives in an area that has had 22 confirmed cases in a population of 400,000. 1 death.

[effingterrified]

I wouldn't think that would be very common, given that everyone was allowed to continue exercising during lockdown.

Unless an elderly person had the virus, I can't see why they would not have been going out for their regular mile-long or whatever walk as usual?

If your grandma chose not to exercise, that can't be blamed on the lockdown, as it was very clear that exercise was allowed.

It's not necessary to lift lockdown for everyone to get your grandma walking again, so I don't really get your point.