Banquo wrote:morepork wrote:Donny osmond wrote:Yeah, sorry, I wasn't approving, just thought it was an interesting point of view. I guess we won't know how effective their strategy has been until after the 2nd or 3rd wave has been and gone and see what the final stats are. I did see something last week from Sweden saying they had failed their elderly population, so I guess its all pretty subjective right now.
Only thing I would say is the phrase "herd immunity" has become a kind of dread phrase that should not be uttered, but it is actually the desirable end result, we're all just going on slightly different paths to get there.
Herd immunity is achieved via vaccination, not triaging the susceptible in a population.
Yep- anyone who watched the Beeb's documentaries at the Royal Free/Barnet hospitals will be under no illusion that herd immunity is remotely viable without a viable treatment for the very ill, let alone a vaccine.
Definitely preferable to the herd immunity method employed by Europe during the black death.
Ultimately time will tell, but I'd bet a lot of money that Sweden won't finish above South Korea in the "best strategy" league.
For the UK, it seems that we're relaxing the lockdown significantly while 1) R is probably a little below 1 (so that's good), but 2) with the number of infected many times too high for new cases to be dealt with by testing (and with no contact tracing happening, even now). So (unless the people ignore the "return to work" instruction) we surely will be seeing R and the cases, and then a little later, the deaths, rising again.
An open question is whether this strategy has come about through:
a) incompetence + wishful thinking, or
b) callousness + mendacity (ie deliberately aiming for herd immunity whilst denying it)
Who knows? Perhaps in Boris's head there's room for all these things.