A Political Thread

[TRF_Olyy]

Will herd immunity even work with coronavirus? Last I heard people were getting re-infected?

 

[Which Tyler]

No-one knows, it's too new.
No immunity is 100%, and yes, some have been re-infe red, with at least one we're confident not being down to a false-positive or false-negative.

What we really don't know yet, is how long immunity is conferred for. Exposure grants lifetime immunity for Measles. Common cold grants a few months of immunity for the same strain.

 

[Yoshimitsu]

Sigh.

I fear we're in uncharted territory.

The Chinese, South Koreans, Japanese and Singaporeans embarked down a road of tracing and elimination. Following the same process they went down with SARS which effectively eliminated that virus.

https://www.cdc.gov/dotw/sars/index.html

That virus was contained and effectively eliminated.

The U.K. have determined rightly or wrongly that this approach will not work and have determined that mass infection and "herd immunity" is the way to approach this challenge. In my humble opinion they didn't even try containment. That's not to say it's not the right call.

We know the former approach was effective. there is NO science that confirms that the latter will be.

The approaches are also incompatible without closing the world down. If the U.K. come through this relatively unscathed and defacto kings of the post Corona world. How does that affect our relationships with the rest of the world and especially Asia? Unless the Chinese think "ooh! That's a good idea! We should infect approximately 1 billion people" how do we do business with them? They can't come here and we can't go there without stringent measures to avoid exposure.

Honestly without going to a very dark place indeed it's difficult to express how concerned I am about what's going on here. This isn't the flu. I'm a natural contrarian and like to do my own thinking. However in this scenario, my wants and needs mean not a jot. Boris, Vallance, and Whitty have rolled the dice. Time will tell if they have called it right and potentially even if they haven't, they may be beyond reproach. My greatest fear is a conversation with right side of the bell curve people that went like this:

Question: "What can we do?"

Answer "Now? Nothing. It's too late. You can manage the message and build capacity but it won't be enough"

Question "Surely there's something more?"

Answer "No, not scientifically anyway"

As I said previously. This will require social cohesion that is beyond what the U.K. has managed since Dunkirk. I hope to whatever deity you subscribe to that we rise to the challenge.

On edit. There's some imprecision in here which I'd want to avoid. "Science" and "published science" are different things. I have to hope that those at the top have access to facts / figures that I don't. I'm just a naturally curious analytical sort. I know nothing about virology and less about pandemics.

 

[Reiser99]

No-one knows, it's too new.
No immunity is 100%, and yes, some have been re-infe red, with at least one we're confident not being down to a false-positive or false-negative.

What we really don't know yet, is how long immunity is conferred for. Exposure grants lifetime immunity for Measles. Common cold grants a few months of immunity for the same strain.

This is really worrying because the Conservatives were hoping to let it spread a bit more than other countries with the hope that Britain starts developing towards herd immunity. It also highlights what people have said about a lack of data. Unfortunately some of the language used by the government has me worried because they are making decisions because there is no data instead of being cautious.

 

[Amiga500]

Loads, ignore Amiga's nonsense about vaccines it's got sod all to do with it apart from that's how we normally accomplish it as you don't actually infect people with something like full blown polio. All herd immunity is that people who have had the disease are terrible carriers for it once a certain amount of population has had (I've seen varying figures) the disease instead of increasing rates decreases and eventually becomes virtually zero. Meaning some people never actually get it.

Ignore Amiga's nonsense then go ahead and repeat it.

In fact, worse - herd immunity works when the herd is largely immune to a recurrence of a disease. While acquiring that herd immunity from a novel source, if 60% of the population need to develop immunity, then its almost certain that >90% will be exposed to it.


As I said, "herd immunity is flat earth science as far as dealing with an novel outbreak is concerned."

 

[Which Tyler]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...l-spring-2021-and-could-see-79m-hospitalised?
PHE are expecting 7.9M hospitalisations, and that we'll still be dealing with this in 12 months time

 

[Amiga500]

For the record - the more I think about it, the more sympathy I have for the governments position - in terms of cold, hard calculation. It may also be a case that it's already too late for other options to actually work, which may well explain Wednesday's delay.

Wednesday was far too late.

It was why I was getting so agitated about it two weeks ago. The writing was on the wall then.

 

[Amiga500]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...l-spring-2021-and-could-see-79m-hospitalised?
PHE are expecting 7.9M hospitalisations, and that we'll still be dealing with this in 12 months time

Yep, using the best comparison, the Spanish flu, this thing is likely to drag on for 18+ months (or until a vaccine is developed and distributed).

 

[Amiga500]

Oh, and I can see Whitty/Vallance's plan, basically:

1. Expose as many people to it as possible
2. Make a play of locking down elderly
3. Accept whatever losses comes

They are going to wait 2 (at the moment) further weeks before issuing directives on elderly lockdowns. By which time most of them will likely have it.

So it won't work in terms of protecting the elderly.

But, they are balancing that against an 18 month lockdown, which will cause all sorts of problems within the economy and even basic living.



We are where we are now, so there is no point saying what I think they should have done differently. Right now there are pretty much two grim choices:
1.
(i) Lock down the country for minimum of probably 3 months, maybe 1 month would do, but could extend to as many as 12 or beyond if conditions @ (ii) are not met.
(ii) Upon numbers of new cases shrinking to manageable levels, ease internal lock down.
(iii) But there won't be herd immunity within the country, so strict border control is still required.
(iv) Maintain (iii) until vaccine is available.

2.
(i) Let the virus run.
(ii) Hope it doesn't mutate in a bad way (re-infection or worse mortality rate).
(iii) Hope that the mortality rates of >5% as seen in Wuhan or Lombardy when the local health services are overwhelmed won't happen (for some reason) in UK.
(iv) Hope that the herd immunity acquired as a result of (i) applies to any future evolution of the virus.

The problem with 1 is it will crash the economy. The problem with 2 is it will also crash the economy but to a lesser degree and also kills a sizeable proportion of the population.

 

[Amiga500]

Further to the herd immunity problem...

As Oly points out, There are a not insignificant number of reinfections. The worry would be that the virus is mutating within the host so quickly that its evading the antibodies the body has developed to fight the original version of the virus. Which means the immunity developed so painfully is not actually immunity at all.

Of course, the above greatly complicates the vaccination effort too...

 

[Amiga500]

The utter ineptitude of the media to even grasp the most fundamental of numbers really boils my ****.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-51903319

UK 'approaching fast growth part of the virus curve'

Prime Minister Boris Johnson says the UK is approaching the "fast growth part of the upward curve" in the coronavirus outbreak.

He says without "drastic action", cases could double every five to six days.

As a result, the government is asking for people to begin avoiding all unnecessary social contact.


---------

Taking the governments own numbers, which are essentially doctored as they've reduce testing to non-effective levels - there has been a doubling of cases every 3-4 days since the start of March.

Not one "reporter" challenges him on it. Just rolls over and accepts the lies.

******* disgraceful.

 

[Bada-Bing!]

Trump now saying he knew all along that it would be a pandemic and was serious and he'd been talking about it for many years.

err

 

[Vieux Talonneur]

Whatever you think of Piers Morgan he's been totally sticking his neck out on this for quite a while on twitter challenging the politicians to explain why we seem to have been out of kilter with other countries.

Some have accused him of scaremongering, but he's a journalist with a platform and I think his constant challenging has been right. He's not saying he has the answers, but he's putting pressure on those in authority to justify their (in)action. Probably overlooked by many but he's also given credit where it's due. Behind all the pantomime stuff there's a proper journalist's instinct.

He's also taken some really vile abuse. All the Be Kind stuff didn't last long.

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

Whatever you think of Piers Morgan he's been totally sticking his neck out on this for quite a while on twitter challenging the politicians to explain why we seem to have been out of kilter with other countries.

Some have accused him of scaremongering, but he's a journalist with a platform and I think his constant challenging has been right. He's not saying he has the answers, but he's putting pressure on those in authority to justify their (in)action. Probably overlooked by many but he's also given credit where it's due. Behind all the pantomime stuff there's a proper journalist's instinct.

He's also taken some really vile abuse. All the Be Kind stuff didn't last long.

I'd say that is more Piers Morgan just always trying to argue and a case of a broken clock is still right twice a day. The guy is a monumental *** with absolutely no journalistic integrity whatsoever. I'm not inclined to give him credit for every so often stumbling in to doing the correct thing when he spends most of his time acting that way and for the wrong reasons.

 

[McTallshort]

I really don't think the 24hour news coverage is helping the situation

 

[Vieux Talonneur]

I really don't think the 24hour news coverage is helping the situation

No, but that genie's not going back in the bottle any time soon.

 

[The Seeker]

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Credit where it's due: the 80% from the Tories is far better than I ever expected from them - better than I would have expected from any government really.


I do hope they announce something for the self employed though - beyond the delay in paying taxes.
My parents own their own business and work at the big agricultural shows/game fairs etc. and all of those have been cancelled or postponed - luckily Crufts went ahead so they could work there, but it's looking like a year to rival foot and mouth for them/everyone else in the same industry.

 

[McTallshort]

Credit where it's due: the 80% from the Tories is far better than I ever expected from them - better than I would have expected from any government really.


I do hope they announce something for the self employed though - beyond the delay in paying taxes.
My parents own their own business and work at the big agricultural shows/game fairs etc. and all of those have been cancelled or postponed - luckily Crufts went ahead so they could work there, but it's looking like a year to rival foot and mouth for them/everyone else in the same industry.

Being self employed myself I hope they do too. Must say the government have stepped up

 

[Bada-Bing!]

Being self employed myself I hope they do too. Must say the government have stepped up

I deal with a lot of self-employed clients doing their self-assessment returns. It will help them that the Government have deferred the July tax payment, but it'll leave you and them with a large payment to pay next January especially as most self-employed have an accounting year-end based on 31 March 2020/5 April 2020. Even worse if your accounting year-end is say 31 December 2019 or even earlier and would have earned before this virus really impacted here.

So looks like between now and January next year when most self-employed will go into their new financial year that business will suffer a great deal and cash flow will be a problem. Then come January next year if the deadline remains the 31 and you need to pay your tax bill it'll be a big tax bill consisting of your balancing 2019/20 liability (less the first payment on account paid January only rather than previous years when you had two instalments to offset before arriving at your balancing tax bill) and also the first payment on account for 2020/21 - although for most this will be reduced because businesses will likely have had a **** year for 2020/21. So still worth planning ahead so you're not caught short when the taxman comes a calling for it next January. Although I expect HMRC to be more lenient in allowing time to pay arrangements to be put in place for longer than they usually agree to, especially if you've had one before.

Sooner or later what the Government borrow now to fund this crisis will have to be repaid back later in big tax rises. This is 2008 financial bailout all over again and probably worse IMO.