obvert
Posts: 14050
Joined: 1/17/2011 From: PDX (and now) London, UK Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Sammy5IsAlive quote:
ORIGINAL: Lowpe quote:
ORIGINAL: Sammy5IsAlive For the moment I'd say that a herd immunity approach certainly wouldn't have resulted in less deaths and at this point the numbers would suggest (in hindsight) that the way to go was what they have done in Germany/S.Korea. Some pretty decent biomedical statisticians disagree. They might be right over the long term. Based on what we have now in terms of numbers the UK could either (in a best/worst case scenario where the lockdown has had no effect) be at where we are now on 299 deaths/M, likely to get up to where Spain and Italy are on about 450 deaths/M or we could be where Germany (70), Portugal (86 - with far less economic resources than we have in the UK) are at. For the time being I know which position I'd rather we be in. I agree, mostly. It could be though that the lasting effect of the delay in mitigation measures in the UK could result in a greater portion of the population of working age and younger infected. If there are more 5-65 year-old people infected who had relatively mild cases, this would allow the economy to open more quickly and stay open more fully and consistently. I imagine also the bulk of the workforce is in the 20-50 range, which statistically have had more mild cases of Covid and thus probably more have been infected since many of those cases would have had longer asymptomatic periods. I'm guessing by the mortality rates and the low testing in the UK that the newer studies showing that actual infection rates could be 50-85x higher than listed would put the UK closer to the 85x higher range. Germany's mortality rate would indicate they have been very successful in reducing the number of serious cases, but may also have reduced the number of total cases. That might make it harder going forward and into the autumn. Who knows, really? But many of their monitoring techniques for known cases should be adopted ASAP to reduce severity of individual cases. 147,377 x 50 = 7,418,850 (11.2% of the UK population) 147,377 x 85 = 12,527,045 (18.8% of the UK population) Only about half of the UK population are working, about 33 million estimated for early 2020. Targeted serology tests of representative random populations by different age groups could be useful to help with opening strategies soon, if those tests can be made reliable.
< Message edited by obvert -- 4/26/2020 7:56:11 AM >
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"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
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