(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

This thread seems to make sense of what the government is trying to do:
https://twitter.com/iandonald_psych/status/1238518371651649538?s=21

I just hope it works...

ETA: ‘hope’ does not imply confidence.

Comments

[kaberett]

I would also really very like it if issued guidance included "and if you're in high-risk groups..." as it currently... doesn't. For obvious reasons.

[legionseagle]

I do not have faith in the Government, though. The use of the term "cull" in the Telegraph (the paper of Government) scared me (as a partner of a high risk individual) rigid. They are being proper Malthusian about this, and ++Welby and your other leaders need to speak out, and quickly

[zeborah]

That's. That's not a strategy I've seen any experts recommend. At all.

What.

You can't just let it run rampant through a large section of society and then "turn the tap off".

Oh sure let's get all the children infected at school because it doesn't affect them badly GREAT, guess who's also at school? their teachers. So teachers all get sick, the school has to shut, parents still have to work to keep food on the table so who looks after the kids all day? grandparents. The ones who are most at risk of death. And they all get sick at once and hospitals get overloaded.

If the UK government is trying to do that, then. Well. I really hope they're not.

[highlyeccentric]

It goes against WHO advice, and is likely to undermine everyone else's containment strategies (and, in turn, be undermined by everyone else's slower peak), so... I don't think it can be called a good policy choice.

[nineveh_uk]

Indeed, my fundamental concern with this is that it's put forward by a Prime Minister who has neither the competence nor interest in putting the people first. I'm not saying total shutdown is necessarily right, other countries aren't all doing it (Sweden and Finland) and some that are have far higher rates per head of population (Norway and Denmark) and are thus at a comparably later stage than the UK. But I can't trust Johnson, especially when unlike all other leaders he talks not about everyone playing their part to protect the nation, but that some people will die. But not, I note, some of "you" will die.

The Telegraph is ghastly, though at least haemorrhaging readers. The remaining ones may not have grasped that they themselves are a high risk group and that private hospitals have very few ICUs.

[tree_and_leaf]

++Welby seems a bit too keen to presume good faith in chaps like him, which is yet another reason why it’s not brilliant that they picked an Old Etonian to be Archbishop. ++Williams had his faults as Archbishop, but he was from a completely ordinary background, and a CND campaigner, and therefore perhaps less prone to it.

The Telegraph article was disgusting, but I’m not convinced the government wants a bunch of elderly people to die given the demographics of their support. On the other hand, perhaps I’m giving them too much credit for logic.

[tree_and_leaf]

No, I don’t trust him - for one thing, I don’t see how you can control the speed of spread without a much more vigorous testing regime.

Mind you, given the news this morning, we may have already had a bit of a rethink.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, indeed.

[antisoppist]

Yes.

[antisoppist]

They have redefined the weak as being all the people who aren't them so it makes perfect logical sense.

They will survive - they can't envisage not doing so - and think everyone else who has also survived will support them because they are obviously superior.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yeah, you might well be right about that, unfortunately.

[tree_and_leaf]

Mind you, if the stuff I've just been reading about survivors not acquiring immunity/ resistance to MERS or SARS also apply to corona virus, then the strategy is stuffed whatever their intentions and competence.

Thinking about it, it's closely related to the common cold, and no-one's immune to that....

[tree_and_leaf]

Mind you, if the suggestions that it's not possible to acquire immunity to the damn thing I've been seeing are right, then their intentions are completely academic and everything is comprehensively stuffed.

[molniya]

Gosh, it's worse than I thought. This is complete insanity.

[tree_and_leaf]

But just think what fascinating epidemiological data we'll be able to provide! /sarcasm

[molniya]

I (and most of my friends) work in a hospital, and I am dreading the terrible decisions about rationing care that are going to be made soon. (Thankfully not me personally, but still.)

[tree_and_leaf]

Yeah, my thoughts and prayers are with them and everyone in their position. It's going to be very hard, I think.

[molniya]

Prayer feels like the only thing we can do at this point - though I suppose it is hardly 'only' prayer.

[tree_and_leaf]

<3

[nineveh_uk]

The issue with colds isn't that we don't get immunity to ones that we've had, though. We do. It's just that there are a hundreds of different germs cause colds, they spread widely, and mutate, so you don't get the same cold again, but there are a lot out waiting for you to get next. In a way, the common cold is an umbrella term for a type of illness, rather than a specific germ. That said, I don't think we know enough about this specific coronavirus to know whether patients or don't acquire immunity, and that in itself makes the strategy stupid. It could well be that the vast majority of people do acquire at least short/medium term immunity, but gambling a strategy on it doesn't seem great.

[tree_and_leaf]

Ah yes, good point re the cold. But your second point is good too.

[serriadh]

Even if nothing worse, Johnson is fundamentally the sort of populist who wants to be liked. He wants people to think he's clever and funny and likeable. And he's a short-termist who thinks everything can be managed like a pre-tute essay crisis: as long as you get something good enough to blag through the tute itself, you're golden. (I don't think his career as a columnist helped him control those impulses, either!)

So he's absolutely psychologically incapable of taking a difficult long-term decision that will directly cause people to moan about him.

[a_t_rain]

FWIW, the idea that people don't acquire immunity to this seems to be way overblown -- it's based on a small number of reports of people who have tested positive after testing negative, and an even smaller number who showed symptoms. It's few enough that it's most likely accounted for by some combination of false positives, false negatives, and people with some sort of immune system glitch -- people in general are not getting sick from this twice, and scientists have tried to reinfect monkeys who had recovered without success.

I recommend https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/ for science-based and non-panicky discussion.

[tree_and_leaf]

Huh, that's somewhat reassuring.