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Comment by jacobwilliamroy | Hacker News Reader

They didnt say that the most least at risk people should get infected. I interpreted their guidence to be more in line with what you just said "Avoid infection, because we do not yet know if this virus induces long-term immunity, as many other similar viruses do not."

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Yes sorry I didn't make it clear I was bashing the govt response, essentially agreeing with this open letter.

Got it

I think GP was referring to the government's plan, not the suggestions in the letter.

Yes I was thanks for the clarification.

Given the ambiguous use of pronouns, it seems you may be talking past one another. GP seems to be criticizing the UK government's approach whereas parent seems to be summarizing TFA's guidance.

Whaaaat? U.K. government health officials are asking strong healthy people to get infected?

Rather, accepting that people will get infected and proposing that if it's limited to healthy people, the community will develop a "herd immunity" due to the healthy people's new immunity.

They actually said that? That's some next level fuck-it-I-don-t-want-to-be-in-charge-anymore attitude. Wow. Where's Churchill when you need him?

Edit: yes, he said that. And more. Wow.

https://www.ft.com/content/38a81588-6508-11ea-b3f3-fe4680ea6...

I can't understand your reading of what is being said. Here is the quote :

'In another interview with the BBC, Sir Patrick said: “If you suppress something very, very hard, when you release those measures it bounces back and it bounces back at the wrong time.”

He added: “Our aim is to try to reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely; also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission, at the same time we protect those who are most vulnerable to it.”'

Churchill was very much in favour of making callous tradeoffs if he believed it had long term benefits, e.g. the Bengal famine. Churchill incidentally happens to be one of Boris Johnsons great heroes.

Churchill is not exactly a good example of solid decision making.

Bit of a trolley problem, when "accepting it" means "not trying very hard to stop it".

Absolutely not, there is still strong advice in terms of regular handwashing etc. Rather the government is saying that you have to time strong lock down procedures correctly. They are saying that outdoor gatherings such as you get at football matches don;t present a high risk (as long as you are washing your hands) compared to the risk of catching the disease from family members in doors.

Moreover they argue that demanding a long-term lock (14 weeks for schools, according to their modelling) is problematic if you go too early - they want to time it to be just before the peak. Basically is playing chicken with an unrushing truck, but a game of chicken with a purpose behind it.

The Chief Medical Officer Chris Whittey is an epidemiologist and I've only heard good things about him. I'm willing to take his advice. They government says it will be publishing the models.

Also worth noting that in his previous role in DFID Whitty coauthored papers advising the UK government funding isolation centres in Sierra Leone for Ebola, so it's unlikely that he has any particular radical bias against the efficacy of isolation as a disease prevention method.

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