part 2 An Ill Wind

[Charles Lindsey]

On 17/03/2020 11:22, Peter Fairbrother wrote:
> An Ill Wind
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XRc389TvG8
> 
> So now we know: the UK government is planning to deliberately infect 60% to 80% 
> of the population, over 40 million UK citizens with COVID-19; causing, on their 
> own figures, 400,000 deaths. It has already begun.

You are talking Rubbish.

Until a large proportion of the herd get infected, the disease will not go away. 
So you try to arrange that the younger part of the herd catch it first, because 
they don't get it so badly. In fact, it seems children show almost no symptoms 
at all, so keeping schools open is a good strategy.

So you build computer models, using the best data available, and the models show 
that if you do nothing, it escalates rapidly, and that is where that 400,000 
figure comes from. If you try to stop it too quickly, the NHS gets too many 
cases all at once and it overlaps with the flu season. If you get it just right 
(that is the "squashed sombrero") then, according to the Government's figures, 
which clearly you have not studied properly, it comes out at 20,000 deaths.

The last thing we want is amateur computer modellers, who do not have all the 
latest data available, publishing wildly inaccurate predictions obtained from 
the backs of envelopes.
> 
> But the Chinese didn't do that. They implemented strong containment and 
> isolation and stopped the virus dead. They didn't "lessen the peak", they 
> obliterated the peak.

No they didn't. They did the proper modelling and put in the resources where 
they would be most effective. But their geography is different from ours, and 
being a totalitarian regime, they could control things much better (which the EU 
clearly can't). So in China, there are many separate herds, and the Wuhan herd 
has probably got its immunity by now, and the rest are following their own 
sombreros and will all die down at their own particular rates.

> Second, if it does return next year, it will have mutated - and like flu, it is 
> reasonably likely that this year's herd immunity, so dearly bought, will not be 
> effective against next year's version, if it happens.

Once you have a basic working vaccine, then you can easily tweak it to fit the 
mutations as you observe them. They have been doing that for the flu vaccine for 
the last 20 years, so the experience is already there.
> 
> There is also concern about people in China who seem to have gotten the disease 
> twice. We don't know why that is, whether it is two different strains [2] of the 
> virus or people getting the same disease twice - however either would lower the 
> usefulness of any herd immunity.

It is rare, but not unknown, for a small proportion of people to get infected 
twice - depending upon the particular virus. That proportion, if you know it, 
can be build into the model, but is is unlikely to change the overall shape of 
the curve much.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At my New Home, still doing my own thing------
Tel: +44 161 488 1845                    Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: chl at clerew.man.ac.uk              Snail-mail: Apt 40, SK8 5BF, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5