Septic Sceptics how the anti lockdown folks got it so wrong and poisoned the debate.

[vera99]

A comprehensive and polemical account of how the poisonous right wing tributaries of 'truth' got it so wrong and are so unable to do a mea culpa and have so poisoned and contributed through their half baked half assed opinions a rational evidence based response particularly in the vital early days and the September/Christmas debacle that we have one of the highest death rates in the world. the-free-press.co.uk/2021/01/26/septic-sceptics-toby-young-allison-pearson-and-the-art-of-being-wrong/

@PrincessNutNuts

If a "credible" epidemiologist or doctor declared themselves against lockdowns when due to governmental mis-management in the U.K. there has been nothing else left to do three times now it would remove their "credibility" for me.

How many more British people dead do they want? The 1.3 million from the SAGE papers from February?!

@RafaIsTheKingOfClay

I don't think anyone is pro repeated lockdowns except for our government who choose that path time and time again.

@mrshoho they've done lots of things differently, some of which may be considered stricter. I don't know if a curfew counts, it depends what you compare it to.

My sources are anecdotal, colleagues and family in different states. And comparisons are hard, but I think it's clear they haven't had such restrictive blanket measures for so long, yet they've had broadly similar results.

So I'm not anti-lockdown, but I don't buy this idea that it's the only thing that works.

Chameleon
After the last ten years listening to climate deniers and now covid sceptics, I honestly don't afford equal weight to both sides unless there is equal credibility.

There are many credible reports, studies, facts on how disproportionate and damaging lockdowns are but I guess to you they will be all 'misinformed'. Whatever fits your narrative.

I am no Covid denier. It exists and kills people.
However there is vast evidence to show how unreliable the statistics of death and positive cases, how it has been greatly exaggerated by the media and how damaging lockdowns have been.

Just because I believe this, I'm along the sides of conspiracy theorists and deniers?

You have absolutely no ability to see anyone else's point of view. It shows your arrogance and immaturity.

[quote oldwhyno]@mrshoho they've done lots of things differently, some of which may be considered stricter. I don't know if a curfew counts, it depends what you compare it to.

My sources are anecdotal, colleagues and family in different states. And comparisons are hard, but I think it's clear they haven't had such restrictive blanket measures for so long, yet they've had broadly similar results.

So I'm not anti-lockdown, but I don't buy this idea that it's the only thing that works.[/quote]
It clearly isn't the only thing that works.

But when your government has allowed a massive iceberg of covid infections to build up over several months it is the only thing that will bring that down.

I'm not totally convinced it was ever possible for the UK to do a New Zealand and suppress this effectively.

Note, this is not the same as saying I think the government did a good job.

It's saying that, given the feasible range of policy and institutional levers any reasonable British government could have taken, there's likely nothing it could have done to prevent a significant outbreak in the UK.

If we're playing fantasy football country, on the other hand, where the UK is a completely different set of cultural tolerances and institutional capabilities, then sure, we could have done what China or South Korea did.

To be clear, the UK has made a ton of mistakes. I think many of them were immaterial to the epidemic's progression in the UK.

The one major, preventable mistake, I think, was the delay in the initial lockdown (by perhaps a week or two later than it should have been). I largely blame SAGE for this - we were clearly massively overconfident in our estimation of prevalence in the UK in Feb / March 2020, and by the time we locked down we were in the ramp up of the exponential, doubling every few days.

I kept hearing about the unimpeachable superiority of UK public health professionals, and we largely bought our own hype. We fucked that up, and it probably needlessly doubled our deaths from the first wave.

That mistake is what separates us, more or less, from France / Italy / Spain in terms of our deaths per 100k.

@Dissimilitude

I'm not totally convinced it was ever possible for the UK to do a New Zealand and suppress this effectively.

Note, this is not the same as saying I think the government did a good job.

It's saying that, given the feasible range of policy and institutional levers any reasonable British government could have taken, there's likely nothing it could have done to prevent a significant outbreak in the UK.

If we're playing fantasy football country, on the other hand, where the UK is a completely different set of cultural tolerances and institutional capabilities, then sure, we could have done what China or South Korea did.

I think Chris Whitty is used to working within the limitations of the local government even if it's corrupt, profiteering and has no respect for the law or the lives of its citizens.

I think he's a pragmatist who works within the confines of what can be done in the local political climate rather than ideal world solutions that would give the best outcomes.

That's why he was talking about how hard winter 2020 would be in Spring 2020,

And why he's talking about a third wave and all modelling showing a minimum of 30,000 more deaths now.

He knows what he can get done, and what he can't.

But when culturally similar Australia and New Zealand have handled covid efficiently, there's no practical reason why we couldn't have done similar.

He knows what he can get done, and what he can't.

I concur @PrincessNutNuts

How much of that is due to how badly he got it wrong in the first wave.... I don't think I'll ever forgive or respect him for THOSE mistakes.

There's an element of truth in the claim that the UK couldn't have done what OZ/NZ did (caveat before vaccines). For starters how would we have handled lorries coming from the continent? Locked the drivers in their cabs while they were in the UK?!??

However, we needn't have been so hell bent on spreading the virus as quickly as possible - all due to belief that achieving herd immunity as quickly as possible without overwhelming the NHS was the best plan - i.e. ramp numbers up quickly, THEN try to suppress and hold at that level. Scientifically it was complete and utter madness!!

In a different universe, the UK could easily have done what Germany did, with less effort! As an island we have a natural advantage. We could have maintained infections at a lower level, kept schools open, protected care homes and generally lost a LOT fewer lives.

Moving forward, the vaccine enables us to achieve what NZ/OZ have done far more easily. Although no vaccine is perfect at preventing transmission, they are sufficiently effective to make eradication of the virus a possibility. Much depends on future mutations and whether or not vaccines CAN be tweaked to combat them, but I'm optimistic we can now beat covid.

@Dissimilitude

To be clear, the UK has made a ton of mistakes. I think many of them were immaterial to the epidemic's progression in the UK.

The one major, preventable mistake, I think, was the delay in the initial lockdown (by perhaps a week or two later than it should have been). I largely blame SAGE for this - we were clearly massively overconfident in our estimation of prevalence in the UK in Feb / March 2020, and by the time we locked down we were in the ramp up of the exponential, doubling every few days.

I kept hearing about the unimpeachable superiority of UK public health professionals, and we largely bought our own hype. We fucked that up, and it probably needlessly doubled our deaths from the first wave.

That mistake is what separates us, more or less, from France / Italy / Spain in terms of our deaths per 100k.

I don't believe the first lockdown would have been necessary if SAGE hadn't been sleeping on the job.

The UK SHOULD have imposed travel restrictions on more countries sooner, and have been ramping up testing/building an effective trace/trace program from the end of January by which point it was clear the virus was going to come here. THAT's where we failed. If we'd got that bit right, we wouldn't have had the infection seeded across the entire country due to returning skiers from North Italy.

@notrub

Yes, I agree with that. For various reasons I don't think it was ever going to be possible to prevent it arriving, nor to eliminate it once it arrived, but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask why we were not a lot closer to German numbers.

Fundamentally, I think it's mostly about that initial lockdown timing mistake, which created a massive widespread resevoir we have struggled to contain ever since, combined with various intrinsic demographic factors.

@PrincessNutNuts well, again, the USA also had its own "massive iceberg of covid infections" (proportionately much bigger) and has since bought it down by a similar sort of scale as the UK. and they've been enjoying considerably more freedom that we have in the process.

@notrub I was agreeing with your first post, btw, I hadn't read your second when I posted.

And per your second post, agree we have always been on the back foot, and the initial mistake was the one that really hammered us, though I still don't think it was ever likely we could have prevented it from taking hold in some measure without massive draconian measures that were basically impossible for us to take.

But we could have had a much more in-control epidemic with far fewer deaths if we hadn't screwed this up at the start, agree completely.

@Dissimilitude there's no evidence that the timing of the first lockdown had any bearing on the (much bigger) autumn/winter wave.

@oldwhyno I didn't say there was, my initial point was that if you look at our death rate total per 1M, the difference between us and a lot of comparable countries is that initial wave timing, which doubled our first wave deaths.

One could also make the argument that even once the first wave subsided, we had a slow burning, widely seeded problem that was ready to take off again once conditions were right (autumn, variant emergence etc).

Though I've also seen it argued that the autumn variants are lineages derived from outside the UK (i.e. we re-seeded the country with loose travel restrictions), though I've also seen that argument dismissed - I'm not sure what the evidence points to there.

[quote oldwhyno]@Dissimilitude there's no evidence that the timing of the first lockdown had any bearing on the (much bigger) autumn/winter wave.[/quote]
Indeed. They just made the same "mistake" again.

[quote oldwhyno]@PrincessNutNuts well, again, the USA also had its own "massive iceberg of covid infections" (proportionately much bigger) and has since bought it down by a similar sort of scale as the UK. and they've been enjoying considerably more freedom that we have in the process.[/quote]
I think the jury is still out on how much of that iceberg they're finding.

Their vaccine effect looks real bough though.

@Dissimilitude Well you did claim that the one major, preventable mistake was the delay in the initial lockdown. I think that's massively overblown if not entirely wrong.

But when culturally similar Australia and New Zealand have handled covid efficiently, there's no practical reason why we couldn't have done similar

Not geographically similar. The UK is an international hub, like it or not.

New Zealand is a tiny country of maybe five million in the middle of nowhere. Australia only has 20 million people scattered over a huge continent. They aren’t travel hubs in the sense that nobody stops there on the way to or from anywhere. Hordes of people stop through Heathrow on the way elsewhere.

I’m old enough to remember when Trump blocked China travel, there was very, very little support for a travel ban at the time, and he was roundly criticised for it. The WHO certainly did not recommend them.

By the time public opinion swung around to travel bans, it was too late.

@UsedUpUsername

But when culturally similar Australia and New Zealand have handled covid efficiently, there's no practical reason why we couldn't have done similar

Not geographically similar. The UK is an international hub, like it or not.

New Zealand is a tiny country of maybe five million in the middle of nowhere. Australia only has 20 million people scattered over a huge continent. They aren’t travel hubs in the sense that nobody stops there on the way to or from anywhere. Hordes of people stop through Heathrow on the way elsewhere.

I’m old enough to remember when Trump blocked China travel, there was very, very little support for a travel ban at the time, and he was roundly criticised for it. The WHO certainly did not recommend them.

By the time public opinion swung around to travel bans, it was too late.

Couldn't you say the same about Singapore Changing, Hong Kong International, South Korea Seoul and Thailand Bangkok?

Aren't they all some of the worlds busiest international travel hubs?

@notrub

Regarding imports and lorries... Doesn't Singapore famously import pretty much everything?

Couldn't we do whatever they're doing?

Couldn't you say the same about Singapore Changing, Hong Kong International, South Korea Seoul and Thailand Bangkok?

Aren't they all some of the worlds busiest international travel hubs?

I don’t believe any of them cut themselves off from the rest of the world like NZ/Oz and had the mandatory quarantine facility. Hong Kong, Thailand and South Korea for sure didn’t.

I do recall Taiwan restricting people from Wuhan specifically though very early on.

@UsedUpUsername

Couldn't you say the same about Singapore Changing, Hong Kong International, South Korea Seoul and Thailand Bangkok?

Aren't they all some of the worlds busiest international travel hubs?

I don’t believe any of them cut themselves off from the rest of the world like NZ/Oz and had the mandatory quarantine facility. Hong Kong, Thailand and South Korea for sure didn’t.

I do recall Taiwan restricting people from Wuhan specifically though very early on.

Exactly.

And yet they still have some of the lowest covid numbers in the world.

And yet they still have some of the lowest covid numbers in the world

Ok but you started from, we could do what NZ/OZ did because they are culturally similar, well, no we couldn’t because we were an international hub.

Definitely didn’t do as well as East Asia, and they didn’t lock down or do early travel bans. What is the difference? It’s still a bit of a mystery.

Could the U.K. have done better? Absolutely.

As well as East Asian countries? No way.

mobile.twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1372523992918163461

Brazil is in a terrifying mess, they have a completely collapsed healthcare system now.

But sure, a lockdown would have been worse

South Korea do have mandatory quarantine facilities for people arriving from abroad. They also require testing 72hrs before arrival and on arrival with anyone positive being taken to a hospital.
And they do periodically introduce localised restrictions where there are outbreaks. The difference is they act early when the outbreaks are small and don’t go for a keeping cases low enough that healthcare isn’t overwhelmed approach. IIRC from a friend, their app/tracking devices are mandatory as well.