Okay so your very well versed in maths, think I've proven several times in this forum that I have a fairly competent understanding of statistics.
But here's the thing I trust those who studied modeling of viruses which is PhD level stuff and do it for a living. And I'm sure they have a very good idea of how trust worthy those models are and what level of accuracy they have.
But sure you with numbers pulled from news articles with zero model applied, no understanding of the pathology of the virus and no idea of how applied the two to raw numbers is going to prove all the experts wrong.
**** me no wonder Gove said this country has had enough of experts when supposed bright people think they know better than them.
Hold on a minute. That's unnecessarily dismissive. There are two parts to Amiga's analysis. I'm not in a position to agree / disagree regarding measures to mitigate spread (I have my suspicions regarding the relative importance of "the economy" vs human lives but that's just me). However, modelling scenarios the government has publicised is surely a reasonable action?
Let's just take the 1% mortality figure that your informed friend agreed seemed reasonable (looks low to me given the figures out of Italy but hey I'm not a virologist). Let's just acknowledge upfront that 1% is approximately 40 x more lethal than swine flu was which caused significant impacts (
https://www.nhs.uk/news/cancer/swine-flu-deaths-examined/) and approx 10x more lethal than seasonal flu. Then let's take Boris's pronouncement today regarding the worst case scenario the government believes is possible. To be honest I have no idea why he believes that's a reasonable position to take as on the face of it, it'll be catastrophic. As per Amiga's point 20% is a nice resonant figure. It could easily be picked out of thin air.............
Lets model it on ONS data (I'm assuming these numbers are good enough for you?)
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentan...mploymentandemployeetypes/timeseries/mgrz/lms
So we'll take that 33,000,000 (ish) and simply apply the 20% ill enough to be off work (benefit of the doubt, we'll assume no one is skiving). That's 6.6 million individuals. At a 1% mortality rate. That's 66,000 dead. 2% gives 132,000 3% gives 198,000
That's just the working population. Admittedly this is rough working as demographics do appear to play a significant role in the death rate as do underlying health issues. But the lower death rate in the working population may be reflected in a higher one in the elderly / vulnerable.
Public Health England have previously stated that seasonal Flu has killed on average over the past five years 17,000 per annum. It's not rocket science and you don't need to a be a world class virologist to see that Covid-19 is a different threat and it's not just "another flu".
As Amiga notes it not a case of simply being dead or alive. This virus makes a significant number of people very ill indeed. China and Italy seem to have between and 10% and 20% of active cases that are "Serious" or "Critical". Just using the lower figure that would mean that under the government's worst case scenario 660,000 people would require care. Using the NHS's own figures (
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statisti...vailability-and-occupancy/bed-data-overnight/) there are approximately 130,000 beds total in the NHS. That's including maternity, mental health etc.
If the government's worst case scenario comes to pass there is little the NHS will be able to do. My own experience indicates they struggle to run phone lines. Quadrupling bed capacity with an ailing workforce (including NHS staff)? Good luck with that. Given that's the case, the requirement to avoid the worst case scenario would seem imperative to me. That means taking measures to ensure that the virus doesn't spread. Again I don't see that happening. We're seeing gestures but mass transit still runs, large public gatherings continue, international travel continues pretty much unfettered. Compare what the U.K is doing to what China has done to effectively contain their outbreak. Waiting until things get bad to start acting? In my view that's a poor strategy. It's also a strategy that may be informed by virology experts but it's obviously political in nature. Do you honestly believe if your friends said to government we could stop this now but it'll cut GDP by 50% vs letting it run seeing a million dead but only a 10% GDP hit that the political classes wouldn't make a determination based on both elements?
Finally, I usually appreciate your stuff but you're guilty of playing the man in your previous post. People are allowed to think differently. Suppressing opposing views by appealing to authority (regardless of how valid) is not helpful imo.
