gilesgoat wrote:@Klaxoncow : ok they did not start early, they started late, ok they done something, maybe not the best but they done/are doing something.
The question still remains "how/when all this is going to end ?".
Yes, indeed, accepting that they did already fuck this up very badly by starting far too late, how / when is this going to end now?
The "we are where we are" question.
Truth is, it's all down to the numbers, really. The graphs have to look a lot better than they do, before we even contemplate lifting the lockdown.
One of the scientists advising the government has given his opinions on this:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52308201
And the point is that, right now, what's keeping this in check and avoiding the exponential increase is the lockdown.
So he, logically enough, argues that, to lift the lockdown, we'd need something else in its place.
Such as a vaccine (being rushed, but still long way off because if you're going to give it to everyone in the world then it has to be 100% safe), a mass testing and contract tracing scheme (we eventually scale that up to German levels - the 100,000 tests per week that's been promised for the end of the month, at least) or, you know, some kind of treatments that can significantly reduce the chance of death (various drugs are being tried, Cardiff University has a plan to get blood from covid-19 survivors who have the antibodies, create a plasma and then essentially give a blood transfusion to patients, in the hopes that the donated antibodies can "block" the virus - a reliable treatment that can stop it being quite so lethal - but the grand problem with this is that no-one can give an ETA on when such things might happen, as it's all "trial and error". Maybe the next thing that they try works, or maybe we've still got nothing useful two years later).
Otherwise, "social distancing" has to remain in place, to some degree, because it's, right now, the only thing stopping this thing going wild with exponential growth.
More positively, if one imagines an ideal lockdown - where it absolutely 100% cut off all spread of the virus - then, roughly two weeks later, it should be well on its way to eradication in the population. The idea being that the virus, outside a host, can't last more than 72 hours (and viruses have no inherent ability to metabolise or reproduce on their own). Inside a host, the person either recovers - which, in the midst of all this, must be remembered is actually the most probable outcome, even amongst the oldest age bracket - or they die, but either way, the virus is gone.
In reality, of course, you'll never get a perfect lockdown, so it's going to take a lot longer than that, but other countries show that new cases can be brought down to small numbers (South Korea had 27 cases yesterday) and then the "testing, tracing and isolation" thing becomes very practical at keeping a lid on what little remains.
Another thing to consider is how many people out there have actually had it with "mild symptoms" and recovered, having the antibodies to keep it at bay (we don't know how long for, but at least some months). Because we're not testing these people at all. In fairness, even in other countries where they are testing for these things - like Germany - they're still nowhere near having enough testing to really know how big that "iceberg" is under the surface (Germany has done 1.7 million tests but, like, more than 80 million people live there).
Because we don't know, everyone is being kept under lockdown. The presumption has to be that people haven't had it yet, as that's the presumption that keeps people safe and stops this spreading. But there are people out there now that defy this, as they've had it and have antibodies against it.
We can even explicitly name a few of them right now: Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, Prince Charles, etc.
Now, as mentioned before, we don't know quite how good the antibodies are - how long they last, how strong / weak they are against re-infection (does it bounce off you, completely unphased by it? Or do you still get a bit sick but at a much reduced "very mild symptoms" level?) - so I'm not proposing that Prince Charles or Boris Johnson should go around hugging and kissing everyone. But their bodies have fought this bugger off once before and now has the antibodies to see it off again. SARS 2 is no longer a "novel" coronavirus to their immune systems. We don't know how robust that immunity is, but they must have it to whatever degree those antibodies are good for.
This is why I've been keeping an eye on those "antibody tests". They would be the "game changer". Because they can be produced in the millions fairly easily, they're a 15 minute thing (like a pregnancy test) rather than having to be sent off to specialist labs to be analysed taking days, and so if we had a reliable antibody test, we could start feasibly considering the concept of testing in the millions, at a rapid pace, to get a good "snapshot" of what's really going on.
The massive problem - necessitating the lockdown - is that we don't know who is and isn't infected, who has or hasn't had this already (so have the antibodies). Thus, the lockdown has to be total and has to be for everyone.
If we could actually start, with trustworthy antibody tests, to "clear" people - okay, you've already had it, so you can be released from the lockdown safely - then we could begin to lift the lockdown on those for whom it no longer applies, and those people can get the economy ticking over again. Back to work. With NHS staff, they're safe on the front line. With bus drivers, for instance, they're good to keep services running.
You get the gist. If we had the means to start "clearing" people in decent numbers, then the lockdown could be safely lifted that way. Through "testing, testing, testing". If you've already had this and have good antibodies to resist it, then it would be safe to let such people break the lockdown. If they can't get it, then they can't spread it.
This is why, when they were talking about 3.5 million antibody tests "within days" at the beginning of lockdown, that was the big hope. The tests would be good, we could start testing 3.5 million people right away - ordering millions more - and start "clearing" people en masse. And that would be an excellent way to exit lockdown. Because it'd be safe. We let out those who are fine to now let out, and that keeps the economy going (albeit, sure, not at full steam, but more than this full-blown lockdown allows) while keeping everyone else "shielded", until the numbers are under control.
(This is why the UK government's weird decision to not track "recovered" is bizarre, while they also worry about how to get the economy going again. Well, mate, you know all those "recovered" people you're not tracking? Those would be the folks who can begin to go back out there and keep the economy going. You know, the people you're ignoring. They're actually the people you economically need right now.)
Unfortunately, the reliability of the 3.5 million tests they ordered weren't good enough. But, hey, those that make them can work on improving them. And I'd like to know exactly how they were unreliable. False positives are, of course, a disaster and that absolutely cannot be released on the public at large - because it'd be telling susceptible people that they can't get it, when they absolutely can. But if they generate only false negatives - fail to identify antibodies that are actually there - then I'd say that actually fine for use. All that would mean is inefficiency - people who actually do have the antibodies and could be "cleared" to leave lockdown are missed and have to stay in lockdown. That's not ideal, as we'd want such people back out there, keeping the economy alive and all that. But it doesn't send anyone into harm's way, if the test wrongly says "you haven't had it" when you have. That, I feel, in this emergency situation, is still workable. But, yes, what we absolutely can't have at all is a test that says "you've had it" to people who haven't. In that case, I wholly agree that "the only thing worse than no test is a bad test".
No, can't tolerate any false positives at all. But if it only throws up false negatives, I'd actually run with that. That's good enough. If we can get an antibody test that's at least that good - no false positives, so it never identifies someone as having the antibodies when they don't - then that's workable and better than fuck all. So, to be honest, when the government just said "we were disappointed that the tests weren't good enough", I'd have liked more details on why they weren't good enough. As the Chief Scientist himself said: "perfection should never be allowed to become the enemy of the good".
I think, right now, we'll all be happy with a "good enough" test - with some people maybe being wrongly told to stay in lockdown, who need to be tested a few times, before the test properly picks up that they're good to go - than waiting around for a 100% perfect test, that's never wrong about anything ever.
The essential problem here, though, is that, right now, our only defence is the lockdown. We need it, as that's the only thing currently stopping this shit going ballistic. We need more tools in the box - mass testing, tracing, treatments, eventually a vaccine - to replace the lockdown.
I think any talk of lifting lockdowns is totally premature, until our numbers at least start looking a bit more like Germany's. You can't really touch that dial until you're way down on cases, or this bugger will, with exponential ease, be right back up to these numbers and higher, within weeks, and you'll be forced back into another lockdown anyway.
And that, I feel, only comes from, well, "testing, testing, testing" as the WHO was saying all along.
Regards Trump, if he's seriously going to re-open the economy and they're still getting 30K cases every single day at that point, then there's no two ways about it, he will be ordering a massacre. Remember, China had 80K cases total. America is beating that every 3 days right now. To lift the lid and allow exponential growth at that level, will empirically demonstrate why "wild herd immunity" is not a plan at all.
If it happens, then we can't dither or delay this time - Canada and Mexico needs to shut their borders, and an international ban on all flights to and from America brought in immediately. Because, within a month, there'll be 300 million total cases, millions of deaths and - at that point - it will almost certainly mutate, ruining everyone else's efforts on a vaccine, treatments and any "immunity" we've managed to build up so far. And, no, I'm not just making "orange shitgibbon" jokes here, I'm deadly serious that we have to do that for basic self-preservation.
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
