Independent sage: circuit breaker lockdown needed now

[XmasGoose]

I see Independent Sage have said that an immediate circuit breaker lockdown is needed to protect the NHS.

This would involve a total ban on household mixing, all bars, restaurants and indoor venues closing and schools shutting early for Christmas.

Is this needed now to protect the NHS and save lives? Personally I wouldn’t comply with another lockdown.

twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1471160024005324804?s=21

@MarshaBradyo

What’s the difference

Four weeks v two but the two will work better because it has a different name

The only war this will be slowed down is if they lockdown for about 4 months but then the same will happen again…. No end in sight for this shit

The concept is that it breaks the exponential rise just enough to diminish cases a lot. So hopefully you'd get a lower spike.

So a targeted intervention.

How you persuade the politicians to go along with it and then work out the optimum point to stop, is another question.

Though hopefully when everyone has they’d booster it’ll stop hospitalisation

@salemcat

As a nurse in the NHS I can say where I am, we can't hold out for much longer. I don't know what the answer is, but there really isn't much more we can give. A&E is over run at 9am on a week day, staff are ill from not just covid, but stress. Only a matter of time before we break completely.

I am so sorry @salemcat

The idea, as Vallance said, is that you go earlier than everyone thinks you need to - but getting politicians to agree to that is very hard.

@herecomesthsun

The concept is that it breaks the exponential rise just enough to diminish cases a lot. So hopefully you'd get a lower spike.

So a targeted intervention.

How you persuade the politicians to go along with it and then work out the optimum point to stop, is another question.

Why don’t the cases just rise again as before after it’s lifted?

Personally I wouldn’t comply with another lockdown

why what would you do? Break into the hairdressers and gatecrash a closed pub?

Why would a two week lockdown do anything apart from delay fast rise until directly after?

According to Prof Hunter on the BBC it won't. I'd say they could do with him at Indy SAGE, but he probably wouldn't want the company

In fairness he did suggest they can make sense if you're waiting for something like the jabs to be developed, but also that it's hard to make a case for that now - perhaps because that was said last time and he knows it won't fly again, especially with more coming to realise there'll always be another variant

The concept is that it breaks the exponential rise just enough to diminish cases a lot. So hopefully you'd get a lower spike.

Whether you consider it too late is irrelevant, if it wasn't a circuit break it was a lockdown both have Same effect.

You are being deliberately obtuse.

Presume will give time for more people to get boosters

I understand the time delay but not the claim the subsequent spike will lower

I think it’s to give more time for the vaccination drive?

@beatrixpotterspencil

Personally I wouldn’t comply with another lockdown

why what would you do? Break into the hairdressers and gatecrash a closed pub?

No, they might mix freely with friends and family.

Well, as regards circuit breakers, even Chris Whitty, who would have supported the proposed one in September 2020, has said "there is a lot of uncertainty in these things"

Vallance: "The advice in September was about a circuit breaker with the intention of driving the numbers back to how they were in August, going back to the discussion on test and trace, because that means you have a greater chance of test and trace being effective. That takes more of the load in managing the disease and you may have to do fewer in terms of other non-pharmaceutical interventions. That is the logic behind that suggestion […].195"

p 52 here committees.parliament.uk/publications/7496/documents/78687/default/

@Trixiefirecracker

I think it’s to give more time for the vaccination drive?

Yes you’d get a delay but this part:

The concept is that it breaks the exponential rise just enough to diminish cases a lot. So hopefully you'd get a lower spike.

The last bit. The spike will get just as high after you release. It’s only two weeks so delay slightly then fast growth to similar spike?

@Againstmachine

The concept is that it breaks the exponential rise just enough to diminish cases a lot. So hopefully you'd get a lower spike.

Whether you consider it too late is irrelevant, if it wasn't a circuit break it was a lockdown both have Same effect.

You are being deliberately obtuse.

no, it is a different idea

…but more people will have been vaccinated so hopefully less hospitalisations?

I want Christmas this year.

I in no way want another lockdown, but I feel (from my place of privilege) like I could deal with whatever they throw at us afterwards. But god I am so looking forward to Christmas this year.

Indy Sage can't really lose, though. They predict what's going to happen. If they predict right, they take the glory. If they predict wrong, they just keep their head down and say nothing. They get no comeback for it. Last summer they made dire predictions over what would happen as a result if govt decisions. They were practically all wrong.

Going back to that Vallance quote I’d say indie Sage can’t use test and trace as a reason due to how much more transmissible Omicron is. We struggled to get on top of it for original version, let alone alpha, then delta, now this

Oh dear. I see Cosplay Sage is at it again.

Could be a number of reasons for having a targeted time limited intervention and various ways of implementing it. You'd still have to convince the politicians.

I think there needs to be more obviously understandable ones first.

There seems to be an assumption that lockdown would be an effective tool to control omicron. I can't see the basis for that and think lockdown advocates would need to be very clear on what they were hoping it might achieve.

Very harsh long lockdowns earlier this year and last year struggled to keep the R value below 1. It frequently hovered around 0.8-0.9. It took weeks for cases to begin to fall. This was in the context of significantly less transmissible variants. In April 2020 the lockdown included shutting dentists, shutting opticians and vets except to emergencies and shutting nurseries, restaurants couldn't even allow takeaway customers, there were no bubbles, social workers and health visitors did very few in person visitors. Many of these measures were outright dangerous and I just can't see us going back to that level of lockdown. Other measures used in March 2020 like closing building sites and estate agents have massive economic impact by restricting long-term housing supply.

So I don't think we could go back to a March 2020 lockdown. So how, with a variant which is between 3 and 8 times more transmissible than Delta, could a lighter lockdown than March 2020 be expected to reduce case numbers. Omicron is meant to be doubling every 1.8 days and currently be at 200k cases per day. That is a phenomenal growth rate and I don't think we can expect measures we have used previously to work in the same way. Even if lockdown halved transmission (seems quite optimistic) cases would be doubling every 4 days. I think there is a real question as to whether lockdown could take us out of exponential growth.

Now of course cases might naturally peak at some point and that doesn't really seem to be factored into the graphs showing never-ending exponential growth. But I think lockdown would be huge cost to everyone to buy days at best and to get to the same point anyway after those few days. We just say omicron cases go from a handful to probably hundreds of thousands in a couple of weeks. It seems a reasonable guess that that is exactly what would happen at the end of a lockdown if the lockdown did manage to suppress cases at all.

Masks, vaccine passports etc. seem even more of a drop in the ocean.

I wonder how many people commenting on this thread have lived in or experienced a country with a completely inadequate healthcare system. Eg. Your child has a seizure or gets hit by a car or your mum has a heart attack or sister goes into early labour. You ring an ambulance and you’re told there isn’t one. Sorry. No one can come and help you. So you drive them to the hospital and they say sorry, we’re full. There’s nowhere to put them. All our doctors are busy, we don’t have any more. People are literally queuing out in the street to access medical care for hours and hours. That is how people die.

This is what could happen if many people in this country become ill from Covid at the same time. Most people will be fine but our hospitals will be full because it is a numbers game. 0.5% of a big number is also a big number. You probably still don’t have to worry about Covid but you really don’t want to need any sort of medical help because there will be none. And it’s only then that people will start to get it, and understand why scientists who model data for a living to make predictions have called for a lockdown, but by then it will be too late.