I'm posting this because of the narrative on this site that all experts agree with the UK's plan. To the extent that there is a consensus, it's a consensus against it.
I really hope the government knows what it's doing. They have promised to publish their models, so hopefully that will give some more confidence.
Maybe their models are wrong, maybe other approaches will work better, but I like they are having an honest grown up discussion about it instead of insisting eradication is possible, or that there are no tradeoffs to be made and total global lockdown of society for 6 months is the answer (which apart from being of questionable efficacy would certainly cause another Great Depression and more deaths from poverty).
Whether eradication is possible or not, the FACT is that 6-8 months is extremely fast and can only lead to a collapse of the health services.
Handling that many cases over that short period is simply mathematically impossible considering the health care resources available. That is not an opinion, even the Health Secretary acknowledged that today.
They took the course they took knowing that.
At a minimum, I'd like to know what their models are optimizing for. Is it "Minimum number of deaths" or "Minimum economic cost", or "Minimum economic cost taking into account a cost of $XM per death".
Minimum number of deaths probably isn't a smart metric, because the solution to that is to tell 99% of people to stay home in bed for the rest of their lives. Hard to catch a disease if you never leave bed.
Minimum economic cost (with a factor for cost of a death) is hopefully the model they've used, but it's politically suicide to accept that grandpas life was 'worth' $X.
You can start making decisions based on such a model.
Then in parallel, you get teams refining the model and making it more accurate, while other teams work on implementing those preliminary decisions, potentially changing course if newer, more refined, models come up with different results.
There's no reason the crude model can't be published 1 hour after it was made.
If anything, publishing the model will help localized branches of government make their own decisions ('hmm, looks like we'll be expecting lots of ambulance use at the end of march, that isn't a good time for the fleet inspection!').
Private companies would also benefit from the model, and can better schedule logistics. Even a hugely inaccurate model is better than "who knows! panic!".
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...
Because the government already knew that rapid herd immunity would cause a huge number of deaths.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/16/new-data-new-p...
Rationing happens and it will be necc. in the coming months in every country, whether that is by patient income or by outcome, I’d prefer it by outcome personally.
To reach 'heard immunity', if it is even possible at all for sars-cov-2-- there is good reason to expect that it won't be-- without overwhelming critical care will, unfortunately, take years.
Unfortunately, too great a percentage of cases need critical care.
Even with places trying to mitigate-- with the exception of the few places where it was actually contained-- their ICUs are going to be (or are already being) overrun.
> , but I like they are having an honest grown up discussion about it
There is no evidence of this. Experts have been calling on the UK to publish their models and so far they have declined to do so. I would take a sizable bet that no such models exist which support their initial stance (which they are slowly and quietly backing away from, and moving to a position much more like other western countries).
We would consider such measures in order to protect vulnerable individuals with underlying illnesses and thus at greater more at risk of becoming seriously affected by the disease. The effectiveness of these actions will need to be balanced against their impact on society."
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-actio...
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6810602-200149-NBCWS...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51874084
and here was the first published version: https://web.archive.org/web/20200313155320/https://www.bbc.c...
That obviously doesn't mean it's incorrect, but try to be aware of all biases, there are plenty on all sides.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/15/uk-coronavirus...
Even if the peak is spread out over nine months, that still means setting up, equipping, and staffing around a million extra beds over the next few weeks. At a time when existing medical staff are incapacitated.
This is not going to happen. The only way it might be possible is with civil conscription - literally taking people off the street and putting them through basic nursing boot camp. Even then there would be huge issues with supplies of equipment and consumables.
So the reality is that most people who need to be hospitalised in the UK (and probably the US) won't be - at least not effectively. Italy has shown what this means: without adequate care the CFR rises from 1% to 7% or so.
Which in turn means that without aggressive containment measures to slow the spread, the actual death toll will be in the millions, heavily concentrated among the over 65s.
There are around 10 million over 65s in the UK. If these numbers are right, around 10% of them will die.
Just an observation on your Guardian link, not the numbers you've derived.