Keir Starmer May Be Right

[eve1974]

When he says lockdown should happen within 24 hrs. Boris hinted yday that lockdowns may occur anyway - so why delay the inevitable?

Incidentally I've been against lockdowns up until this point. The risk to the economy is insurmountable.. but... unless people (en masse) began using their own common sense Im not sure what else can be done.

[eve1974]

sticky bottle - esp as it's inevitable anyway...

[royfromaus]

bobbinwales
I like kier but he wants lockdown for England but also wants schools open where possible. So am not sure things would be any diffrent?
________________
Agree

What's the point of sitting in the house waiting for your kids to bring COVID home?

[Paigntonian]

Sir Keir Starmer has, on balance of probabilities, has to be right on the odd occasion rather like a stopped clock.

[jno]

Every key decision in the last 10 months has been late

spot on, Sunk.

I'm pretty sure I've said this before but can't remember if it was recent. When lockdown was imposed here, the infection count was doubling every four days or so.

That suggests that if it had been imposed a week earlier the toll would have been something like a quarter of what it is now. 20,000's not great but it would be a lot better than 75,000.

Boris imposed lockdown I think on the same day as Australia - but they'd had no deaths; Britain already had 300+.

As a result, Aussies still think they're struggling to control the disease because they had 13 new cases yesterday. We had 55,000. They saw what was coming and acted. Boris saw what was coming - it had already arrived - and dithered.

[Peter Pedant]

yeah I had got to the bit where the kids are likely to running around and screaming
so why not send them to skool
and let them run and scream in a school yard ?

[THECORBYLOON]

JNO, how did you arrive at your conclusion that starting the first lockdown a week earlier would have saved 75% of the deaths so far?

[jno]

TCL, the figures are approximate of course, and I'm extrapolating the death count from the infection count. But if the total doubled every four days then imposing lockdown four days earlier would have halved the figure. Imposing it four days before that would have halved it again.

[THECORBYLOON]

If the cases had continued at that same rate, then yes, the total to date would have been lower with an earlier lockdown but you can see from the graphs, the daily cases dropped to fewer than a thousand a day on many days after the lockdown.

[Paigntonian]

To put things in a contextual setting: When, in 1982, the Argentines invaded the Falkland Islands the then Labour leader Micahel Foot supported Thatcher's stance in the House of Commons and without reservation. Now, in a time of national crisis, the Labour leader chooses to snipe and to gain political advantage. Labour are being monumentally stupid. They won't be forgiven. And they're going to lose election Number Six. Idiots.

[jno]

sure, there are many ifs. In fact I read somewhere that the rate was doubling in three days, not four; but I've gone with the more conservative figure.

It's also possible the course of the illness would have been completely changed by an earlier start. The government might for instance have seen the value of fast action and done everything more quickly after that. (New Zealand also went into lockdown on about the same day and still have only 25 deaths altogether: imagine Britain with a mere 300 or so deaths.)

But I'm hypothesising about only one different response, to avoid overcomplication: if you start with a figure 75% lower then you've got a good chance of finishing the same way.

[jno]

Paigntonian, Foot sought no electoral advantage over the Argentine war - and got none. Miliband sought no advantage in supporting military action against Gadaffi - and got none.

How is Starmer going to do worse than that? A leader of the opposition who decides to oppose is at least doing his job; the more so when the prime minister is failing to do his.

[eve1974]

So will boris make an earlier announcement? Unlikely to be today . Let’s hope tomorrow.... every day is a day wasted. Stricter lockdowns need to begin (unfortunately)

[dannyk13]

Tigger//t in the rest of Europe the figures are fluctuating between 10 and 20k. //
Probably due to other countries having harsher rules and a compliant public.

[eve1974]

Compliance (aka common sense!) is lacking for sure

[New Judge]

//When lockdown was imposed here, the infection count was doubling every four days or so.

That suggests that if it had been imposed a week earlier the toll would have been something like a quarter of what it is now. 20,000's not great but it would be a lot better than 75,000.//

That doesn’t follow at all.

//…and I'm extrapolating the death count from the infection count.//

And that’s your fundamental error. The death rate (that is, the proportion of those diagnosed with the infection who subsequently die) is not constant. In fact it’s not even close to constant. In the early days of the pandemic it exceeded 15%. Today it is less than 3%. There’s many reasons for that – more effective treatment for one. But the biggest factor is that in April/May/June when the death rate was 15%, mass testing was not being carried out. It didn’t start until early June. Consequently the infection rate was vastly understated in that period because the only people being diagnosed with the illness were those who ended up in hospital. The vast majority of people who became infected were – and still are – unlikely to need medical treatment. To simply say a lockdown imposed a week earlier in March would have meant the total death toll would be just 25% of what it is today simply isn’t logical.

Nobody in this country had a clue how many people had been infected in the Spring. I would argue that nobody really knows now, though we can possibly make a better guess. Further than that, there is no quantifiable evidence of the effect the Spring lockdown had. You cannot assume that all transmission ceased upon its implementation and you cannot assume that all the reduction in infection rates was due to the lockdown. In fact that would be a very rash assumption because the period of lowest spread was the period the restrictions were most relaxed during the summer. To rely on extrapolation in the way you have you would have to know, at the very least, the infection rate prior to the lockdown and the subsequent rate after it had been imposed. And you don’t.

[jno]

indeed I don't, as I pointed out. None the less, I went with the figures I had.

[THECORBYLOON]

JNO, would you not think that if a week's delay had cost 75% of the current deaths, there would have have been a fair amount of discussion about that, with calls for many resignations?