Was the scientific advice for lockdown flawed?

[Northerner]

As coronavirus began spreading around the world at the start of 2020, in the UK there were weaknesses in the expert analysis of its likely impact, according to a BBC documentary.

"There is going to be a lot of criticism of the scientists - because it's easy to have hindsight.

"It's easy to say if only we'd done this a week earlier we'd have saved 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 lives. But if you look at where we were in February, would you really have made these decisions any differently? I don't think you would have."

Those are the words of Prof Calum Semple of the University of Liverpool, one of the key scientists advising the government on Covid-19.

Ever since the novel coronavirus arrived in the UK, ministers have repeatedly said they were "following the science".

But the UK has ended up with one of the worst death rates in the world - coronavirus has killed more than 50,000 people so far.

So how good was the scientific evidence provided in the run-up to lockdown?

Was the scientific advice for lockdown flawed?

A BBC documentary highlights weaknesses in the expert analysis of the likely impact of coronavirus.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[mikeyB]

The advice from scientists was ignored by the government, so the question is the wrong one. The scientists advised lockdown at least a fortnight before the government did anything in the first wave. That led to several thousand extra deaths.

This time round they waited three weeks after the scientists recommended a short (2 week) lockdown as a firebreak. As a consequence, we have an indefinite lockdown.

 

[pm133]

The advice from scientists was ignored by the government, so the question is the wrong one. The scientists advised lockdown at least a fortnight before the government did anything in the first wave. That led to several thousand extra deaths.

This time round they waited three weeks after the scientists recommended a short (2 week) lockdown as a firebreak. As a consequence, we have an indefinite lockdown.

Scientists were talking about 500,000 deaths this year.
They were absolutely wrong about that with several flaws in their modelling. It's not the first time the Imperial scientist has made enormous mistakes like this. He made similar mistakes with Bird Flu I think 15 years ago or so.

It was on the back of that erroneous estimate of deaths and the associated mass panic that the NHS would be overwhelmed that the government locked down. I'm not yet persuaded fully that lockdown worked anyway. There's a very strong case for saying that cases and deaths would have followed the same trajectory had there been no lockdown and there is no shortage of scientific experts who have taken that view. The second it was crystal clear that the NHS would not be overwhelmed and that we were never facing 500,000 deaths in one year, all restrictions should have been lifted in my opinion.
Now we are stuck in this endless farce with countless cancer and other patients dying early because of restricted treatment, businesses dying in their thousands, millions facing financial ruin and a generation of kids having their entire careers wiped out overnight. And all this to save a relatively small number of people who are predominantly in their 80s.

Like I've said before, none of this sits well to me.

 

[mikeyB]

I wouldn’t disagree with any of the above comments. Maybe I should have added “when the government said they were following the science”. They’ve stopped doing that now.

And the fault with the operating and cancer lists isn’t due to Covid, because Covid patients aren’t treated by oncologists or surgeons. It’s due to NHS England being pared to the bone - there is no slack. You may remember right at the beginning there was talk of dividing hospitals into red and green zones, with Covid patients only in the red zone to avoid the current problems, but as I said, the hospitals don’t have the wherewithal to be able to do it.

There is, of course, an argument for not having lockdowns. If you don’t, you need a compliant population. Let’s look at Sweden, who did not impose any lockdowns, just advised on social distancing, hand washing and masks, and an effective track and trace system. They did have a considerably higher infection and death rate than other Nordic countries, but much lower than the UK. Why was that? Because the population was told the gains and the losses of not keeping to their advice. The people were assumed to be able to understand that. And they fully understood that pandemics such as this will cause deaths.

The problem the English government has is that there is a significant proportion of people who regard lockdowns or restrictions as an impsition, but generally stick to it to avoid fines. As soon as you start doing that, there’s no stopping, because as happened after the first lockdown, that was taken as a return to normal. After this lockdown the same will happen. This will become an endless cycle if all you want to do is stop the virus. But if the people don’t give a toss, you’re in trouble.

There is no need to stop the virus. The virus just wants to multiply itself, and it can only do that if it doesn’t kill the host. Spanish flu died out because it killed so many, it eventually couldn’t spread, and didn’t get the chance to mutate into something less deadly. This Covid virus is nearly there, but it needs to infect a lot more people, like its cousins who give us colds.

We just have to suck it up and wait for an effective vaccine. Pandemic viruses do cause deaths, so try and avoid catching it. Even now, it has only allegedly killed less than 0.001% of the population. That’s 1000:1 against you dying in this pandemic. Those odds change if you are a physical wreck anyway, or very old, but that’s just the way of infections.

Get used to it, and use your common sense.