Last night, Prime Minister Johnson made a televised presentation to the UK public. The focus was on England, as the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are responsible for their own NHS and their own lockdown arrangements. GENERAL ASSESSMENT I welcome the general tone of the presentation. As I hoped in the the previous post , the intention is to ease lockdown as fast as possible but cautiously. Safety first, otherwise R will rise, infections will soar, and further lockdowns will be necessary. Economic damage would then be worse than easing lockdown carefully. But as has been widely reported today (Monday), the lack of detail has meant widespread confusion and dismay. What was my initial reaction on PM Johnson's "road map"? There are 5 "Alert levels" (hence the "Stay Alert" message). But vague on conditions for each step of the plan. Vague on timescales. Indeed the graphic for what would happen when bore n...
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