I find myself in agreement with this article:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... s-outbreak
China has 1.3 billion people. It contained its outbreak at 80K cases - a mere 0.006% of its population.
South Korea has a population of 51 million - comparable enough to the UK - and it's brought its outbreak under containment at 8K cases, which is only 0.015% of its total population.
Hong Kong and Singapore are also largely succeeding to contain their outbreaks.
Yes, when they loosen up controls and re-open the gates, there's potential for new outbreaks to erupt. But they have systems in place - that worked successfully when they were not prepared for it at all, which should run even more smoothly for any future outbreaks - to stamp out those fires as they happen.
They're following WHO recommendations, which is basically to "flatten the curve" and keep things under containment until drug treatment and, eventually, a vaccine are available.
Because the whole point of a vaccine is to deliver "herd immunity" to everyone with a harmless jab. With drug treatments, we can potentially reduce the mortality rate.
We contain - "flatten the curve" - for a year or so, until the vaccine arrives, and then we immunise everyone and we can actually give the population "herd immunity" with a jab - rather than Boris's insane plan of trying to obtain it, for 65 million people, from the wild virus itself, including all the illness, death and unnecessary death (because it's beyond the health service's ability to cope), and the catastrophic damage to the economy.
The argument against this seems to be "but it'll re-emerge next Winter". Yes, very probably. But then we do it again next Winter and contain it, at relatively low numbers, once more. Then we have a vaccine eventually and can directly give everyone "herd immunity" - with a harmless jab that doesn't cause vast amounts of illness and death.
This is the route - the WHO recommendations - that EVERYONE ON THE PLANET IS FOLLOWING but Boris. That is the world consensus from scientists.
Meanwhile, Boris is saying that he's "following the science" and has got "data modelling"... but then refuses to show his "workings out" to anyone, and is not publishing them publicly for "peer review" from all the other scientists. This is NOT how science has ever worked. It's the original "open source". Show your data to everyone and "a thousand eyes" will test it, review it, improve on it, point out the problems, and so forth.
Yes, with terrorists or other nations, you keep your "national security" secrets hidden, because you don't want your enemies to know what you're planning. But this is a virus, you idiot, it can't read. There's no "we must keep the science and data modelling secret, so that the virus doesn't find out what we're planning". You can scream it from the rooftops through a mega-phone - viruses have no ears nor a brain to comprehend it, even if they did.
What the hell is the justification for not openly revealing the science and data modelling that this contrary-to-the-entire-rest-of-the-planet policy is based on?
And I don't get the defeatist "surrender mode" of throwing our hands up in the air and letting the virus take us, when we've got countries like China and South Korea managing to contain their outbreaks at only 0.006% and 0.015% of their populations. Mere hundredths and thousandths of their total population.
It's just weird to declare "total surrender" so early and without even trying, while other nations have shown that, by being proactive, you can contain it at fractions of a percent of your total population.
And it's fundamentally incompatible. If the rest of the world is containing it until the vaccine arrives, while the UK is throwing "let's all catch the virus!!" parties then they'll have to travel ban all UK citizens to everywhere else in the world, because the entire nation becomes the biggest "transmission vector" on the planet. Cut them off completely.
Like, a few weeks ago, while China was struggling and Italy was exploding in numbers, then I can see the "let's prepare for the worst" planning. This might be un-containable, so we need a "plan B" for that eventuality. But then China contained it. South Korea contained it. Iran's exponential curve is now going linear - and their initial response was atrocious.
If you understand what an exponential curve should look like, look at South Korea's graph:
That's a textbook exponential ogive, as expected. But it's a really, really shallow one. The upward curve barely gets going before it's curving into a plateau.
Containment is possible. And we can keep containing until there's drug treatments and eventually a vaccine. Then we directly give everyone on the planet "herd immunity" through a harmless jab, without vast amounts of illness and death. As the WHO recommends, and every other country on the planet is following.
Or we follow Boris's plan where we all start sneezing in each other's faces, the NHS collapses, businesses can't cope, millions are sick and hundred of thousands die, in order to achieve "herd immunity" the monumentally stupid way of utilising the wild virus itself...
...only for, a few months later, the vaccine to arrive and the rest of the world, who contained things at no more than a fraction of a percent of their total populations, just get their jabs and are fine.
The history books will have a special chapter for us on this pandemic, labelled "Idiot Island".
And it's also quite unnecessary. Because, you know, "herd immunity" would inevitably happen anyway. You might as well try the WHO "containment until vaccine arrives" policy, because if it doesn't work then we implicitly end up at Boris's plan anyhow.
TRY to contain it - because if you can't, then you're automatically back to "well, when enough people get this, it'll stop being a problem" anyway, as the natural thing that'll inevitably happen, whatever you do.
It's like Boris and COBRA struggled really hard a week or so ago to come up with a "worst case scenario" plan. But now that evidence from multiple other countries demonstrates that, actually, you can contain it within a fraction of one percent of your total population, with proactive measures, they're just being pig-headed. "No, I spent a lot of time on this plan. We're doing it anyway. I refuse to revise the plan to match what we're actually seeing out there, because it was such a headache to work this one out in the first place and I don't want to do it again".
(Oh, and if the virus spreads to millions in the UK, this greatly increases the chance of mutation. Then all bets are off - the vaccine and drug efforts are undermined, and Boris's "herd immunity" starts from square one again, because now we've got a new strain, so it all starts from scratch again. Boris could have us do this - which greatly increases the chance of mutation - and then, after it all, it doesn't even work. It mutates and no-one has any immunity to this new strain all over again. Containment is also about containing the chances of mutation, by keeping the numbers low so the chance is small, so that when we eventually have a vaccine for this strain, it's still useful.)
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
- which I DID NOT take )
