Originally Posted by Hamwich
Originally Posted by Stewart S

It’s not serious to the vast majority of people whichever model you use. Some have it now and probably don’t know they’ve got it, which is why it is spreading as a pandemic

The clever part and why the British scientists are completely ahead of the game is and this clamour for closing down everything now is not the answer in that it pushes a large spike in the serious cases that need hospitalisation to whenever it’s decided to open back up again

The way it’s been handled in the UK is that it just flattens and broadens the curve so that serious cases can be dealt with better and therefore should reduce deaths


It's all very well to talk in terms like this, but let's not pretend the human cost is going to be anything other than very high. With an R0 of 3.8 or so, to develop herd immunity we would need 70% of the UK population to be infected.

So we're talking 47 million people infected, 8 million so seriously ill that they need critical care, and 1 million dead, with the impact greatly skewed towards the over 65's. The current strategy of spreading this over the next year or so isn't going to change those numbers. Even the hopelessly optimistic best-case scenario is predicting c. 250,000 extra deaths.

By contrast, the approach in China is controlling the disease without developing herd immunity, they have an infection rate of only 0.0056%.




I must say that seeing what virtually all other countries are doing, this countries approach seems to either be an experiment which puts a very large number of people...those who are old and infirm, those who have serious health issues etc...in danger, or an arrogance of “we know best”. Personally I have no desire to be experimented on.

Jays. Ex Morgan owner. 1967 MGB Roadster.,