One-*** efficacy questions

[Selwyn]

Of course what you ignore is that having no lockdown measures wouldn't have prevented those deaths.

During January many hospitals in the South East and London had to take over operating theatres and children's wards for Covid patients. Hospital staff were struggling to cope.

Yet you think no lockdown magically would've meant hospitals to be fully open for non Covid treatments.

That isn't the case. We've already established covid was in decline before lockdown. And even then we threw out historical pandemic plans in a moment of panic.

Countries that didn't lockdown didn't get anything like the deaths modelled by our lockdown advisores. We did not have much in the way of excess deaths in January

 

[RobinBHM]

We've already established covid was in decline before lockdown

Wrong
Please try to avoid stating opinion as fact.

See my post in response to Rorschach, who posted the same erroneous claim.

 

[RobinBHM]

Countries that didn't lockdown didn't get anything like the deaths modelled by our lockdown advisores

I guess India is a good example

 

[Rorschach]

Wrong

Much clever people than you disagree, I think I'll listen to them rather than an unknown on a woodworking forum

 

[RobinBHM]

Much clever people than you disagree, I think I'll listen to them rather than an unknown on a woodworking forum

If Tim Spector and Tim Wood are so awfully clever how come they didn't spot the obvious fact NPIs started before official lockdown?


I will continue to listen to the evidence published in authoritative sources like nature.com
You will continue to hunt down opinions on YouTube.

 

[Rorschach]

If Tim Spector and Tim Wood are so awfully clever how come they didn't spot the obvious fact NPIs started before official lockdown?


I will continue to listen to the evidence published in authoritative sources like nature.com
You will continue to hunt down opinions on YouTube.

Yes yes of course. Had a message from Professor Spector, he is terribly sorry he got it wrong and will send out an immediate press announcement telling the country to no longer listen to him and instead get all their medical, moral and economic advice from.....*checks notes* "Some bloke called Robin on a woodworking forum"

 

[Rorschach]

Wait though @RobinBHM "if" you are right and NPI's started before lockdown, are you accepting then that we didn't need a full lockdown, the measures people were already taking were actually enough to lower the infections without mandated countrywide closures? And that the public didn't need the government to force a lockdown/NPI measures, it turns out their own personal risk assessments were already enough to curb activities enough to bring down infection. So we didn't need lockdown at all, we had it under control before the government mandated it? No, you couldn't possibly be suggesting that.......... could you?

 

[RobinBHM]

are you accepting then that we didn't need a full lockdown

No

The NPIs that form a lockdown also speed the decline of the tail and reduce numbers of long Covid sufferers.

And it's hard to actually prove decline started before lockdown started.

And you don't know what would've happened to the peak if no full lockdown hadn't happened, it could've risen higher.

 

[RobinBHM]

Yes yes of course. Had a message from Professor Spector, he is terribly sorry he got it wrong and will send out an immediate press announcement telling the country to no longer listen to him and instead get all their medical, moral and economic advice from.....*checks notes* "Some bloke called Robin on a woodworking forum"

Why did neither of them note that official lockdown date wasn't the start of NPIs

If you had a counter argument, you would provide it.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

There should always be space for a diversity of opinion even amongst eminent scientists when it comes to complex issues.

Some issues may never be capable of explicit conclusions - eg: how many non-covid deaths did lockdown cause. Excess deaths are a statistical average. Collection and recording of data may be flawed. Linking non-covid deaths to delays in diagnosis and treatment is imprecise.

However the vast bulk of scientists would probably support the general proposition that:

• the virus is spread through human interaction
• lockdown enforces (mostly) appropriate behaviours rather than leaving it to individual discretion
• without lockdown interaction would be greater with greater virus spread

Contrived and/or incorrect analysis of the data to support an alternative conclusion appears a minority view amongst scientists, and seems intuitively unsupportable.

Those putting forward sincere alternative views should of course be treated with respect. But in the absence of clear and complete evidence generally supported by the bulk of the scientific community there seems little point in reponding further.

 

[RobinBHM]

There should always be space for a diversity of opinion even amongst eminent scientists when it comes to complex issues.

Some issues may never be capable of explicit conclusions - eg: how many non-covid deaths did lockdown cause. Excess deaths are a statistical average. Collection and recording of data may be flawed. Linking non-covid deaths to delays in diagnosis and treatment is imprecise.

However the vast bulk of scientists would probably support the general proposition that:

• the virus is spread through human interaction
• lockdown enforces (mostly) appropriate behaviours rather than leaving it to individual discretion
• without lockdown interaction would be greater with greater virus spread

Contrived and/or incorrect analysis of the data to support an alternative conclusion appears a minority view amongst scientists, and seems intuitively unsupportable.

Those putting forward sincere alternative views should of course be treated with respect. But in the absence of clear and complete evidence generally supported by the bulk of the scientific community there seems little point in reponding further.

Very well put.

I would add, there is a lot to learn about lockdowns and how hospitals were turned into Covid treatment centres.

I think that the blunt instrument of national lockdown left regions with very little community infection having to follow draconian rules.

My frustration is with those that only want a simplistic binary debate on lockdown. Especially those that do it dishonestly because lockdowns are contrary to their libertarian principles ( at least in their mind) and their confirmation bias is so strong they can't accept facts and evidence

 

[Rorschach]

You are right, it does go against my principles, but that doesn't mean I am wrong.

Do you know what annoys me most though, the government had a plan that didn't involve restrictions on peoples lives and they themselves allowed for 750k deaths. Given that we are nowhere near that number of deaths, why didn't we follow the plan?

 

[Selwyn]

If Tim Spector and Tim Wood are so awfully clever how come they didn't spot the obvious fact NPIs started before official lockdown?


I will continue to listen to the evidence published in authoritative sources like nature.com
You will continue to hunt down opinions on YouTube.

They did spot that.

 

[Selwyn]

T

• the virus is spread through human interaction
• lockdown enforces (mostly) appropriate behaviours rather than leaving it to individual discretion
• without lockdown interaction would be greater with greater virus spread

Contrived and/or incorrect analysis of the data to support an alternative conclusion appears a minority view amongst scientists, and seems intuitively unsupportable.

Those putting forward sincere alternative views should of course be treated with respect. But in the absence of clear and complete evidence generally supported by the bulk of the scientific community there seems little point in reponding further.

The evidence that without lockdown interaction there would be a greater virus speed is moot. In appears the viral load reached its peak before lockdown was enacted.

 

[Selwyn]

I guess India is a good example

The virus is curling over in India now as predicted. Without a beloved lockdown which will displace millions of Indians. If they did a lockdown a week or so ago then lockdown fanatics will have claimed lockdown did it. Thankfully they didn't and demonstrably it highlights the pro's of lockdown are not worth the cons

TB claims 1000 lives a day in India and they have reduced BCG jabs over the past year so there is a world of tears to come there. That will be 70k extra deaths.

Predicted 15% increase in child mortality in India as a result of lockdown. That's about 154k a year

You have to keep these economies going to enable people to have a better future. Covid is not going to kill everyone - we established its mortality rate early on and it basically between 0.05-0.3% depending on the country and the vulnerability of older people is well established.

Its nasty but its not worth shutting down the economy for.

 

[Selwyn]

Very well put.

I would add, there is a lot to learn about lockdowns and how hospitals were turned into Covid treatment centres.

I think that the blunt instrument of national lockdown left regions with very little community infection having to follow draconian rules.

My frustration is with those that only want a simplistic binary debate on lockdown. Especially those that do it dishonestly because lockdowns are contrary to their libertarian principles ( at least in their mind) and their confirmation bias is so strong they can't accept facts and evidence

Our well researched historic pandemic plans were chucked out in favour of lockdowns based on pictures from Bergamo and China. We shouldn't have done it because we did not consider the harm lockdowns have done, and given that the virus was curling over before these lockdowns (albeit with a huge amount of social interaction beforehand) they didn't achieve much.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

Our well researched historic pandemic plans were chucked out in favour of lockdowns based on pictures from Bergamo and China.

I can only assume this is tongue in cheek - otherwise laughable:

• completely inadequate stocks of PPE
• utterly hopeless testing capacity
• track and trace fit for an outbreak of STD, not a highly transmitable virus
• Operation Cygnus - pandemic preparedness exercise in 2016. Report finally published 4 years later. No lessons learned.

 

[Selwyn]

I can only assume this is tongue in cheek - otherwise laughable:

• completely inadequate stocks of PPE
• utterly hopeless testing capacity
• track and trace fit for an outbreak of STD, not a highly transmitable virus
• Operation Cygnus - pandemic preparedness exercise in 2016. Report finally published 4 years later. No lessons learned.

The whole world was looking for the right type of PPE at one point. There was a lot of distribution issues too.
Same for testing. PCR tests are still a controverisal way of testing for illness.
Track and trace was pretty poor, but then again the virus had petered out by then anyway. Working Track and trace wouldn't have achieved a lot anyway.

 

[Rorschach]

I can only assume this is tongue in cheek - otherwise laughable:

• completely inadequate stocks of PPE
• utterly hopeless testing capacity
• track and trace fit for an outbreak of STD, not a highly transmitable virus
• Operation Cygnus - pandemic preparedness exercise in 2016. Report finally published 4 years later. No lessons learned.

Stocks of PPE is irrelevant, you cannot stockpile good for a "maybe" event especially when you don't know what kind of PPE is needed.
Testing capacity, again irrelevant because you are dealing with an unknown. Most diseases can be identified via symptoms so testing isn't required.
Track and Trace, waste of time when dealing with an airborne virus. As you perfectly point out, perfect for an STD and if Covid was transmitted like an STD the T&T system would have worked, T&T cannot work with an airborne virus though.

 

[southendwoodworker]

You are right, it does go against my principles, but that doesn't mean I am wrong.

Do you know what annoys me most though, the government had a plan that didn't involve restrictions on peoples lives and they themselves allowed for 750k deaths. Given that we are nowhere near that number of deaths, why didn't we follow the plan?

You are talking about "plan" being a certainty and there being some weird conspiracy behind them not choosing it. One of "plan"'s definitions is "proposal" and one other "to decide upon".

750k deaths is a ghastly number, what number of people in your life are you willing to lose, or risk losing? Even cruel politicians thought that was an unacceptable number. Please quantify the number of deaths you think are acceptable.

I am really confused about the message you are trying to convey, the ultimate goal was to reduce deaths, but your arguments throughout this forum seem to suggest that you are upset about lockdowns impacted your life and that you are happy for a higher death rate of people you don't know?

The likelihood of me dying is slim, but the likelihood of someone close to me is high because I know, care, and love, more than 100 people which inturn feel the same about me. The odds were that 1 or two may pass. If I didn't have that many friends or family, lets just say it's just me and my uncle selwyn, sure thing, the chance of either of us dying would be really slim.

...
Given that we are nowhere near that number of deaths, why didn't we follow the plan?

The answer to this is: We didn't reach that number because of whatever actions government did stopped deaths rising that high. The actions they did reduced that horrific number down. The actions were lockdowns, it encouraged safe behaviours which reduced transmission. You've just argued for lockdowns dude.