dsr wrote: ↑Mon Jul 06, 2020 10:31 am
My argument on this issue was that you weren't comparing like with like. Now that we are comparing like with like, that doesn't make it easy to draw a conclusion.
But my suspicion is that lockdown was too severe and it would have made little difference to the death toll if it had been a lot less restrictive.
Old folks' homes should have been protected and weren't. That's where half the deaths (almost) have happened. That's an easy mistake to pick out and one that should have been easy to avoid.
But more to the point - the mistakes that were made in the past can be looked at later. It's the mistakes that are being made now that matter. Specifically, schools. At the very least the government ought to be announcing that all else being equal (ie. the oft anticipated second wave doesn't happen) then schools will be open as normal next year. No need for "social distancing" by children. Teachers may wear hazmat if they so desire, but children are safe unless evidence occurs to say otherwise. There is no evidence at all that coronavirus is a danger to children; so open the schools, and if evidence comes to light that that is dangerous, take further action then. Grandparents by now have enough information to make their own decisions.
We are nearly in agreement about lockdown. My argument, which you might find a bit surprising, is that it should
not have happened at all! The problem was that we didn't have a 'containment plan' and so the government were forced to go into lockdown. The problem remains the same. If there is a second spike or wave (which no one can predict with certainty) the government will go into lockdown again unless we get an early vaccine or their advisers, scientists and technologists get their act together.
The economy would have been much more restricted had lockdown not been imposed. Many businesses (including football) were already closing down even before the government imposed lockdown. I can remember posting at the time that the 'government are jumping on the bandwagon'. People were starting to empty supermarket shelves and supermarkets were already restricting the purchasing of certain items.
France was going to close the borders to the UK immediately on the weekend that the UK announced lockdown. There was talk of the international community regarding the UK as a 'quarantine area' - a no go area for the rest of the world. This would have been disastrous for the economy? The situation in the supermarkets would have been much more severe had they not been able to import food and other products from the continent.
Internet companies would also have found it difficult to supply their goods without supply of goods from overseas. The hospitality industry would have had to close anyway. Much of it would not have been able to continue without fresh food, wine, beer and other things being imported from Europe and beyond.
From a medical perspective 'Covid and pneumonia' is currently much worst than 'Flu and Pneumonia'. The reason for this is that there is not yet a vaccine for Covid and very little to treat it. Also the medical profession knew a lot less about it in March than it does now. Once there is a vaccine I would expect 'Covid and pneumonia' to be on a par with 'Flu and Pneumonia'.
In the period before the lockdown the government were persuing their 'herd immunity policy'. COVID-19 cases would have been much higher had the government not been forced to impose lockdown. Some people, on this very website were arguing that the 'case rates' were growing exponentially. Certain Government advisers were saying that there could be half a million deaths if measures were not taken. On the weekend before lockdown case rates doubled over the weekend. Exponential growth means that you get to a very high figure extremely quickly.
Daily UK cases peaked throughout April (coinciding with delayed results from Herd Immunty policy) and then started the gradual decline through May and June (coinciding with being in lockdown for the previous few weeks). It would have been more than likely that, without lockdown and 'containment plan' that the exponential growth would have taken the daily case rates much higher than they were and for a much longer time. Certain world leaders, such as Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump kicked against this idea and are reaping the consequences now.
Pneumonia cases would also have been higher since COVID-19 causes pneumonia in many critical care patients. I think that this is where our debate got confused. You were saying that it was 'flu and pneumonia' v COVID and I was thinking that COVID causes pneumonia amongst many other causes so it should be flu v Covid that should be used for comparison.
Also the COVID cases would have been in
addition to the normal flu season. In effect, the season of viral diseases was extended from the normal 'end of March' to well into June. If there is no vaccine and Covid takes off again in winter both Flu and Covid will occur together. If there is also a bad flu season there will be a lot of increased demand for Health care resources. The government are already worried about this and are advising all 50 year olds to have a flue jab in September.
Without lockdown the NHS would likely have been overwhelmed in the same way that their counterparts in Italy and Spain were. This became evident in the weekend before lockdown when London hospitals started to be overwhelmed.
When you see modern Health Care Services being overwhelmed in a pandemic you know that it's worst than the annual flu season.
As per the point of old peoples homes. I agree that they should have been better protected. The fatalities were the result of panic! It was caused by decisions made by someone to clear hospital beds for expected incoming coronavirus patients. This also resulted in many other patients with serious illnesses (cancer, heart patients etc) being discharged when they urgently needed treatment. If no lockdown had occurred and people continued visiting Care Homes, the situation could have been worst. In fact, some care homes were locking the doors long before government restrictions.
Apart from mistakes, the key to understanding the Care Home Tragedy is that, unlike flu, there is no vaccine for COVID-19. Most elderly people receive an annual flue jab. Whilst flu vaccines are far from perfect they save many lives.
Non Covid critical treatment needed planning so that those patients could have been treated in isolation whilst capacity for covid patients was increased. This is the type of plan that needs to be in place long before any pandemic takes place. There were plenty of warnings with SARS, MERS, Bird Flue etc. Hopefully plans will be in place for future pandemics.
"The World Health Organization estimates that worldwide, annual influenza epidemics result in about
3-5 million cases of illness and about 250,000 to 500,000 deaths". Current Worldwide cases of Coronavirus in the six months since January: 11,409,797. Fatalities: 534,159 and still rising.
My conclusion from what we know is that COVID-19 is currently much more dangerous than Flu and Public Health Policy needs to reflect that. As someone above said, there is insufficient data to support your point.
This user liked this post: dsr
The natural conclusion is that you're not much interested in anything except arguing for arguing's sake. Otherwise by now you would have noticed that I am consistently referring to FLUANDPNEUMONIA, that's FLU AND PNEUMONIA, the two illnesses which are aggregated for stats purposes. FLU AND PNEUMONIA are two separate diseases as you didn't hesitate to tell me, and yet you consistently refer to flu alone when you quote me or reply to me. You can only be doing ot on purpose. Why?
