Interesting...

[New Judge]

The architect of Sweden's coronavirus strategy has claimed that the UK's lockdown has been largely "futile" in containing the virus:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/06/britains-lockdown-futile-says-swedish-epidemiologist/

You may not be able to read the full article because of the DT's paywall. Mr Jieseke claims that the lockdown strategy does not prevent severe cases but only pushes them further into the future. He suggested that once restrictions are eased, cases will reappear. In particular he has been critical of the modelling produced by the team led by Prof Ferguson. You remember him. He was the one who told the PM that without a lockdown the country could see half a million deaths. He then encouraged his married lover to visit him because "he thought he was immune." His team's research forecasted that Sweden's approach would take its R number above three and would lead to 40,000 deaths by May 1st. Yesterday (May 6th) that number stood at 2,941. To be fair, Prof. Ferguson did not say which May 1st he was referring to.

[woofgang]

I think that Mr Jieske has missed the point. It was clear, at least to me, that the point of the lockdown WAS to push a good percentage of the the severe cases into the future...to make sure that there was sufficient of the facilities needed to give those people the best chance and to allow time for research and development of treatments, a vaccine and so on.

[bednobs]

I agree woofgang. The point was to take any huge numbers out of the winter period when the NHS is overstretched already with "winter" illnesses, and then lift lockdown slowly so that the NHS does not become overwhelmed all at once

[jim360]

I suspect there's also more than a little bit of internal politics playing into this. Sweden's politicians and advisers are more accountable to Swedes than to us, and are obliged to defend their own policies. Apparently they use more or less the same strategies as we do.

None of which is to say that Prof. (not Mr) Jieseke's take is wrong, but the context is clearly important. An impartial observer he is not.

[ToraToraTora]

deaths per million = 291 v 446 that's an equivalent of 20000 deaths v 30000, ie 2 thirds of UK so 2941 does not tell the proportional picture. TBF though I'm not convinced of this lockdown malarkey either but the idea was basically to stop the NHS from getting overwhelmed and it's done that.

[tomus42]

//Mr Jieseke claims that the lockdown strategy does not prevent severe cases but only pushes them further into the future.//

That was the whole point of it surely? Flattening the sombrero as they put it. I don't think anyone thought staying at home would make the virus magically disappear.

[Old_Geezer]

It was supposed to push (some of) them into the future, to spread out the hump so it was manageable (plus hopefully have cures/preventatives by the time some of the delayed cases are due to get it). As I understand it, that was the strategy. And is why restrictions need to be lifted gradually with the ability to reapply them if necessary.

[Old_Geezer]

Ah, I now see everyone else has said the same.

[drmorgans]

I am probably wrong on this but one of the main reasons that the number of deaths in the UK is tragically high is because hospitals discharged patients into care homes without testing them for coronavirus. That allowed coronavirus to run rampant in care homes housing some of the most vulnerable people with complex health issues.

[Mozz71]

I'd like to know what Poland have done differently. Their deaths per million people is 19.4. I expect what they've done differenly is not report c19 deaths accurately, but it that is a correct figure, that's a success story.

[fiction-factory]

That may be a factor but I think when we look back and compare what different countries did we will say that with the benefit of hindsight we allowed too many people to fly in/home from affected regions, particularly China, Italy (lots on skiing trips) and Spain.

[fiction-factory]

^in Feb/March

[jim360]

Quite a few countries did "evacuations" of their own citizens. I'm not sure there was that much choice, really. Seems unreasonable to tell your own citizens that they can't come back to their homes.

[tiggerblue10]

Didn't other European countries also have stricter lockdown measures? As far as I have observed through the media, many in the UK have flouted the rules right from the start and still are.

[fiction-factory]

I realise that jim and I've always queried those who insist we should be testing/quarantining Brits automatically when they fly home now, but with hindsight back then, unlike now, people were flying in from places that had many more cases than us and we should with hindsight have quarantined or tested (with it's limitations) or at least insisted on self isolation for Brits returning home, and we should have stopped all non-Brits from flying in from high risk countries. After all the cases here were brought in during that first quarter.
Australia were much stricter about allowing people in and they attribute their low rate mainly to that. (Yes other factors affect the spread in Australia too but there's no doubt they acted quickly to minimise the import of the virus).

[fiction-factory]

Yeah- rogue apostrophe on its (in case Baldric is looking in)

[Gromit]

Johan Giesecke (for it is he) is well aware that the UK and other countries slowed down the spread so as to not overwhelm the medical services. He is not disputing that.
What he is saying is that in 1years time, the virus will have affected every country more or the same. In the end, a country that has imposed a lockdown at great economic loss, will be no better than another country that didn’t lockdown.
He reckons nearly everyone will get it, lockdown or not, but proportionally, the same number of deaths will occur everywhere.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31035-7/fulltext

[jno]

Mozz, I think death reporting would have to be hugely divergent to account entirely for Poland's low figure. Besides, it's not just Poland. There's a look at the low figures across all eastern Europe here - it suggests early lockdown may be the key factor

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/05/why-has-eastern-europe-suffered-less-from-coronavirus-than-the-west

[tomus42]

It seems fairly obvious to me that the time to evaluate what was the best approach and who did what, when and whether it should have been done sooner or later, is when we're on the other side of this.

That way every country can be better prepared for the next time it happens.

Bickering while we're all in the middle of it just looks like political point scoring.

[fiction-factory]

I partly agree, tomus, that a lot of these things should be reflected on later but the issue of whether lockdowns are effective is worth investigating, discussing/debating and forming a view on now as it may inform those planning a lockdown unlocking strategy

[jno]

politicians may choose to do just that, waiting till the worst bits have faded from memory. But I can't see why other people shouldn't be able to carry out a continuing assessment of how different approaches - Swedish, Australian, Taiwanese, US and British for example - are panning out.

And if the outcome is that those who acted quickest did best - well, that's looked the likeliest outcome all along. And it can inform official responses right now, for example in preparing for the possibility of a second wave of infection.