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October 15, 2020 - 3:00pm
It’s just been announced that London is moving into Tier 2 restrictions, meaning (in short) that people can no longer meet people from outside their household or bubble indoors. Which means my plans to play Warhammer in a bar in Stratford next Tuesday night are off. Won’t anyone think of the real victims, etc.
But here are two other points for consideration. First, I’ve seen people talking about “lockdown” — one of the Google autocomplete results for “Tier 2…” is “Tier 2 lockdown”. It’s really worth remembering what lockdown actually involved.
For months, we were only supposed to leave our house for exercising outdoors (once a day) and essential shopping (as rarely as possible). I sometimes would go for a run in the mornings and take my kids for their walk in the afternoon. If a police officer (or a busybody neighbour) had noticed me doing that, the police could have stopped me; I don’t think it was quite breaking the law exactly, but I was definitely aware that it was not permitted, and I am almost uncomfortable even now admitting that I did it. That rule remained in place until 11 May. Pubs didn’t open until July. Some schoolchildren went back part-time in early June, but most weren’t back until the new school year started in September.
Now, even under Tier 3 restrictions, schools — along with pubs and bars if they serve food — are remaining open. We are, as yet, nowhere near the stringency of full lockdown. It’s amazing how quickly the sheer weirdness of that period has faded: it has a kind of dreamlike quality when I think about it.
The other thing that’s worth mentioning is that we should be thinking in terms of a kind of coronavirus transmission budget. Imagine you have £20 for the day. You need to buy lunch, but you also want to buy a T-shirt and a video game. Your lunch costs £5 and the T-shirt and game cost £10 each. You’re just going to have to drop one of them, even though they’re the same cost; you’ll have to decide which you want more.
Similarly, we need to get R below 1 — or, if you like, we have an R budget of 1. If we want to keep schools open (and we do), and we need to keep essential work carrying on (and we do), then we already have a certain amount of transmission that’s going to happen: that gives us a minimum spend on R that we can’t avoid. So even if, say, two households mingling indoors is no worse than keeping restaurants open, we might not be able to afford both. We just have to pick which is more important from a social and economic perspective.
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SubscribeNo Tom. The real question is not whether it goes far enough. The real questions are, why, when we know that lockdowns don’t work are we carrying on with them? Why does the government and much of the media close down informed, reasonable and scientifically based arguments for different strategies?
The way I see it, there are 2 possible results with these restrictions:
1) They don’t work
2) They suppress the numbers of viral infections
If, in reality, it is number 1, we should stop them right now
If, as I’m sure the authorities believe, it is number 2, then the only way to stop the virus spreading is to maintain the restrictions and maybe even increase them.
The trouble with number 2 is the sticky issue of “and then what?” Regardless of how many people are dying of this thing (currently not huge numbers), indefinite restrictions are less sustainable than dealing with the disease (as proven by Sweden). Therefore, lockdowns are self defeating as, if they are successful, all they do is prove that they are not sustainable and that we will have to deal with the issue at some stage.
This is now beyond a joke if not beyond parody. How anyone can even suggest lockdowns or even restrictions after what we now know beggars the comprehension of common sense. Honestly I’m beyond staggered. The very fact that Leicester is STILL in restrictions is enough. I saw a so called expert called Gabriel Scally suggest the reason the NW is having the problems it is currently is, is because the lockdown was lifted before the virus was under control!!! So a 3 month lockdown didn’t supress a virus with a 5-14 day incubation and a 23 day average time from infection to death? What are these people on? An oncologist said yesterday that it was “like setting your house on fire to kill a wasp” Go figure…….I’m done.
ONS figures for R are solidly 0.8 all the way through opening up after lockdown. It was only late August or early September that they started changing.
You would expect that if R was at 3.5 and then our lockdown behavior made it go to 0.8, that when we reverted our behavior it would go back to 3.5. But it stayed at 0.8 all the way through the summer.
So there was little apparent effect on R from our behavior and a change which looks much more like seasonality rather than anything else.
The fact that the effect was replicated across other parts of Europe also indicates seasonality. Did everyone get careless come August? Seems unlikely.
The problem with concentrating on lockdown behavior is that, while it is an attractive and common sense target, there is actually little evidence that it works the way we think. And while we fiddle Rome burns.
This is not a radical point of view indeed it’s much the same as that held by the Oxford Uni Centre for Evidence Based Medicine. Theory and simulation is all very well but reality tempers all.
This is absolutely correct. I suspect there is a doubling down going on because they are too far down this direction of travel and too scared to change. The MSM are complicit as they drive the same narrative without any balance through allowing opposing views any space at all. Result is the population row in behind it as they are in general informed by these charlatans.
Nicely put. Add in the fact that HMG are the biggest spenders year to date on print / online advertising and MSM’s execrable complicity and lack of balanced scrutiny or proper analysis becomes easier to understand. Bad news sells better, better still not to bite the hand that feeds…
Yup, and the old adage in journalism seems to remain…”If it bleeds it leads”
It will make a difference in the sense that:
– It will put more pubs, hotels, gyms and beauty parlours etc out of business. But the politicians and all the non-jobbers in the public sector don’t care about that. They get their salary and pension anyway.
– It will make the govt even more hated than it already is by those of us who should be Conservatives (not that I’ve ever really voted for them or anyone else) but now despair of everything they do.
– It will lead to a few more suicides.
– It will hasten the decline of the West a little bit more.
– More people will drink inside homes that are less well ventilated than bars and restaurants, leading to more Covid cases.
And you can to that a number of other malign effects. Really, there is no limit to the evil and incompetence of these people.
5.01pm
If the Swiss can vote to end this Covid nightmare, why can’t we?
While the Brits get a parliamentary stitch-up, where nothing can be done about ’emergency’ powers, Switzerland offers much more freedom
In Switzerland ““ a country which has direct democracy – a referendum bid has now been launched against Covid-19 restrictions, as reported by thelocal.ch. If the Swiss can have this option then why can’t you? How fit for purpose is British democracy and its Mother of Parliaments anyway? Ironically, Switzerland has been less restrictive than many European countries but even rules put in place appear too much for many. While the Brits get fudged parliamentary stitch-up, where nothing can be done about ’emergency’ powers, the Swiss have the chance to end this nightmare for good. Don’t you want that as well?
Telegraph /politics/2020/10/15/swiss-can-vote-end-covid-nightmare-cant/?li_source=LI&li_medium=li-recommendation-widget
Foreseeable consequences are not accidental. The fallout from the first round of lockdowns is evident in the number of jobs lost, businesses closed, increases in addition and abuse, and so forth. Has the political class not inflicted enough damage on its subjects yet?
When actions have predictable outcomes, Occam’s Razor strongly suggests that those outcomes are a goal, not an unhappy result or coincidence. A goal.
Yes, I cannot help but think you are right. Human beings need to flourish. We can’t be bottled up like this for much longer. The only entities doing well out of this lockdown are news media and big tech.
The political class will never decide that it has ‘inflicted enough damage on its subjects’ because the political class exists to inflict damage on its subjects. That is what they do. The raison d’ etre of the sort of people who seek power is generally to inflict damage on people.
We do not need Tier 1, 2 or 3. We need Tier Sweden. Or, even better, Tier Florida (no restrictions for some weeks now and no spike that I am aware of). What we do not need are the crocodile tiers (sic) of disastrously misled and evil politicians who care nothing for the sanity and livelihoods of millions of normal working people.
I notice that in a poll the general public would support a short lockdown. I wonder how the question was framed? I’m minded of the Yes Prime Minister scene around national service where Sir Humphrey demonstrates to Bernard how to form survey questionnaire to get the answer you want.
In this case if the question was “Do you support a short lockdown to save lives?” then probably YES would be the answer….If the question was “Do you support a short lockdown that will cause unemployment and cancer patients to die” then maybe it would be NO.
I don’t know anyone who supports a lockdown, short or otherwise. As always, they are lying to us.
Fraser Bailey does not know anyone who supports a lockdown. Most of the people I know do not support one either. The few I know who support a lockdown are the ones who will pay only nominal attention to the restrictions in the belief that it is required for the masses but that wealthy and intelligent individuals such as themselves are capable of making their own risk management decisions.
I am firmly of the belief that the public is completely fatigued by restrictions, unconcerned by case numbers and generally prefers to live with the risk. The few people I know who would be regarded as vulnerable have made it absolutely clear that if life is to continue under these conditions then it is really not worth living for very much longer (which is probably the saddest thing I have heard for a very long time)
I couldn’t have spoken for myself any better than you have here.
Very much agree. I commented on another post that I have an 80yr old neighbour who is not prepared to sit locked in his house waiting for the grim reaper. He is prepared to take the risk in order to live his remaining time to the full. I suggest anyone proposing to tell the elderly who are reasonably fit otherwise go “tooled up!” This generation have dealt with worse personal risk than this.
‘And, of course, the real question is whether it goes far enough.’ Seriously?… Well… let’s say that one of the big qualities of this platform is that different opinions usually are respected. But after half a year of disastrous lock downs worldwide one can hardly expect someone with a scientific background to ask this question seriously… I am shocked. Actually I am even inclined to say that people like Tom Chivers can be considered as the biggest danger for public health. But that’s the problem is it not? Public health is narrowed down to an average age of 80+ years old, the only group (together with middle aged people who have a severe disease already) that is really susceptible to Covid-19. The rest can go f* themselves, that is the hidden message behind the article.
Well, it might delay the peak of the ‘2nd ripple’ a bit, such that it coincides with the absolutes peaks of norovirus and flu incidences, hence cause many more unnecessary deaths.
SAGE appear to to be utterly obsessed with covid. I cannot understand why so many apparently intelligent people are recommending such unintelligent actions.
The failure is to understand that it is not possible to separate the economy from our lives. Too many of us believe that we are special animals and somehow exempt from the natural world and it’s iron laws of survival and reproduction. We are not. We are like every living creature and what we do defines our lives and our survival. The beaver builds his dam. The salmon makes his way back to the river of his birth and the wolf is part of a clan and hunts as part of it. We have our work . We plant and make and dig and build and trade. . It is how we survive and this is how we have always been.
Lockdown has disrupted this probably fatally. In the West it looks terminal . But in the East and especially in China it is not. Now where did the virus start?
There are upwards of 60 million on this small island. The future looks dire.
We have broken the basic law of existence.
“The failure is to understand that it is not possible to separate the economy from our lives.”
I am thinking that this is very well understood and in fact may be the point of the whole exercise.
Please share 3.52pm
7 Armed Police Officer Attend Liverpool Gym To Fine Them £1000
you tube com/watch?v=WpTrsqPNRaY
I thought it was a joke but then I understood it was for real. What can any rational man say?
Hello Unherd
Approximately 1500 people die a day in Britain – yesterday the recorded Covid deaths were 138
(died of any cause 28 days after a positive tests according to the Government own website)
Last 3 days 143, 137 , 138 death . For this we are killing the economy and freedom
Crucial Viral Update 15th Oct: Why are the Media Undermining Science and Data???
Ivor Cummins: Terrifying stuff. Truly incredible car-crash TV on last night, on a top reputable current affairs show no less!
What in the name of God is going on here? Wtf is happening…to science itself?
You Tube Watch watch?v=CPmWYFlUK54
From Ivor Cummins
Crucial Viral Update 15th Oct: Why are the Media Undermining Science and Data???
Ivor Cummins
Terrifying stuff. Truly incredible car-crash TV on last night, on a top reputable current affairs show no less!
What in the name of God is going on here? Wtf is happening…to science itself?
You Tube watch?v=CPmWYFlUK54
In Trump’s town hall on Thursday, Trump claimed that Americans “are a winner on the excess mortality” when the moderator tried to ask about the high number of COVID deaths per capita for the US in the pandemic. The moderator, Savannah Guthrie, didn’t seem to know what he was talking about. But excess mortality deaths per capita would seem to be a fairer metric for judging how successful a country was in handling the pandemic from a public health perspective than COVID deaths per capita. What good does it do if you reduce the number of deaths from COVID at the expense of increasing the number of deaths from suicide or from opioids. I suspect that any excess deaths measures cobbled together would only give a lowball estimate of deaths due to lockdown: cancers that are detected later rather than earlier may only lead to death years down the road.
Just in case anyone missed it I thought I’d add this……ONS report today shows 26000 excess deaths in the home between beginning of lockdown and 11 September (only 3.3% from covid19). I’ve been banging on about this for months as excess deaths in hospital and care homes have been well below (to a similar level of homes being above) since June. Add this to the 16000 deaths caused by the lockdown according to the ONS and we have 42000 deaths. This is scarily close to the 43000 or so reported covid19 deaths and dwarfs the 1400 or so covid19 deaths without any comorbidities.
From Daily Telegraph 5.01pm
If the Swiss can vote to end this Covid nightmare, why can’t we?
While the Brits get a parliamentary stitch-up, where nothing can be done about ’emergency’ powers, Switzerland offers much more freedom
In Switzerland ““ a country which has direct democracy – a referendum bid has now been launched against Covid-19 restrictions, as reported by thelocal.ch. If the Swiss can have this option then why can’t you? How fit for purpose is British democracy and its Mother of Parliaments anyway? Ironically, Switzerland has been less restrictive than many European countries but even rules put in place appear too much for many. While the Brits get fudged parliamentary stitch-up, where nothing can be done about ’emergency’ powers, the Swiss have the chance to end this nightmare for good. Don’t you want that as well?
Here is the latest – essential – video from Ivor Cummins. Real facts and figures that reveal once again the lies that are destroying our society:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
“Similarly, we need to get R below 1 ” or, if you like, we have an R budget of 1.”
That is a controversial, non-obvious premise that needs to be expanded upon rather that simply assumed. Admittedly such an expanded treatment would itself be longer than a “Post”, which makes this a poor choice of topic for such a limited discussion (unless Mr. Chivers can link to something detailed he’s previously written on the topic).
As some context, UK COVID hospital census is currently at ~25% of peak levels reached in April of this year. At some R greater than 1, hospital capacity will eventually become a concern, and obviously that happens faster if R is far greater than 1. https://coronavirus.data.go…
It’s also a basic concept of epidemiology, however, that R at some point naturally declines due to acquired immunity – i.e., people in the population becoming infected. This exact point for COVID-19 is a statistical question that’s open to debate, and it’s obviously complicated by a mix of other factors such as seasonality and level of personal interactions.
Restrictions are intended to influence the latter, but it’s far from clear that they are a decisive factor. There are many comparisons across countries or regions with differing policy responses that challenge the view that restrictions are decisive. I’ll note some comparisons in looking at COVID hospital census from five warm weather U.S. states that all faced summer waves of COVID. Georgia largely continued on a path of loose restrictions on behavior, California significantly tightened restrictions (reversing some earlier re-opening), and Arizona, Florida, and Texas all pursued more of a middle ground (e.g., Texas closed bars again in late June but largely allowed businesses to remain open, including indoor restaurant dining at 50% capacity). Yet, despite these different policy responses, all of these states’ curves of COVID hospital census are broadly similar, with mid-summer peaks followed by sharp declines. https://covidtracking.com/
The government’s current partial lockdown approach is like going swimming with a leaky pair of goggles: If they keep the water out, then great! (If the lockdown worked). But if the water is getting in anyway, then they’re nothing but a hindrance and there’s no point wearing them at all!
One of the obvious problems I can see with current rules; is that we’re only getting those who display symptoms to self isolate. Which as we currently understand it, makes up <50% of those who actually have the virus and can therefor spread it.
Actually this isn’t true. Asymptomatic spread is a myth. It has never been a driver. China recognized that right away. They don’t consider asymptomatic people to be “cases”. One reason there numbers are so low. You actually have to be sick to be considered sick. And you actually have to die of disease symptoms to be considered a death by that disease. Reality. We should try it.
I don’t think there’s enough evidence available for you to make such a statement. And there are a few studies suggesting otherwise:
https://www.advisory.com/da…
I also wouldn’t be so charitable about the reasons why China don’t report asymptomatic cases…
Your analogy is flawed because R drops naturally without any intervention at all. So wait a while doing nothing after you have had your sandwich for lunch and you can have both your game and your tee shirt and probably a small cake for tea too.
I think we all like the sound of a ‘circuit breaker’. You stop the spread of the virus in its tracks. But the only sure way of doing that is what the Chinese did – put everyone under house arrest.
If we aren’t even going to have something approaching the lockdown we had in the spring – what it the point?
Yeah. The Hill & Knowlton guys are great on stuff like that. They make sure their slogans poll well too before clearing them to be digested by the drooling masses.
32,000 Doctors and Scientists around the world have come together to say Lockdowns should be halted. The World Health Organisation has said lockdowns should NOT be used. How much more evidence does our government need to get them to stop ruining our country ? https://www.rebelnews.com/t…
Technically, yes. pubs and bars are still open: however, who is going to a pub or restaurant, theatre cinema or concert if they must not meet people from other households there? Families, presumably; what about the rest of us?
I understand Tom’s menu analogy, but at the moment we are being told what we can and cannot eat, asked to pay the price, but not given any indication of what the benefits will be – in other words, the evidence about the various restrictions and their estimated impacts in reducing transmission I know many on this site are complete sceptics and I share some of the scepticism, notably on how the virus’s overall progression seems to be more seasonal than necessarily affected by any government interventions, hence the similar looking curves across different countries. But I would be willing to go along with the various restrictions if someone could provide a convincing rationale for them – how dangerous, relatively, is X compared with Y? If we had this information, the need for restrictions would anyway be reduced or removed, as people would be able to change their own behaviour if they thought they were particularly at risk or going to endanger family and friends.