On Sunday evening 10 May, PM Johnson broadcast a pre-recorded message that set out some sensible overall concepts. But his talk has been widely slated for a lack of clarity, and that consensus hadn't been developed with either the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, nor with Labour and other political parties. Frankly it looked like a Year 12 school project that had gone horribly wrong. Could it get any worse? Hold my beer! Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, did a round of media interviews on Monday morning that confused people even more. And resulted in some of the things he said having to be corrected. Later in the day, a round of briefing papers were released to Parliament, and PM Johnson appeared in the Commons to answer questions. Again not good. This is Keir Starmer, Labour leader, trying to make sense of the documents in the Commons this afternoon The story so far is set out in this damning article "Motor misfires ...
You don't understand the R rate. Lockdown never got us to 0.5 and keeping it longer doesn't mean it gets lower. Other measures are more effective at getting it down (track and trace) once infections are low enough to manage.
ReplyDeleteThe published R rate went down to 0.4-0.7. New infections couldn't have fallen rapidly unless R was significantly below 1.
DeleteTrack/Trace/Isolate is fine in theory but fraught with problems in practice. False negatives on testing of 40% or more I am reliably advised by someone working on a research project on swab tests. False positived on contacts. And without testing, this leads to false imprisonment. Plus a whole host of techincail problems with "Got it" testing, such as dealing with RNA changes in the virus. Already over 13 variants.
So I do understanfd the R rate and don't think Track/Trace/Isolate is the magic answer. Techniques to actually stop transmission of the virus are the answer