Graham – we have indeed had a lot of drama about the state of the NHS, and I know a collapse was not quite as imminent as made out. I know quite a few people locally who work in the NHS and aslo in London and Liverpool so I feel I have some first hand experience of the state of play which leads me to conclude that if measures had not been taken then we would have been in real trouble. Measures were taken, and we were not. However, there is no doubt even at the numbers we had it has taken a severe toll on staff. There is I am aware a trend to say they knew what they were going into and are paid to do the job, but some of the demands on some were well beyond the expected call of duty.
As you can tell my concern is about the commonly held assertion that Covid should have been allowed to run its course, and the assumption that x % of people would have died, and they would have been mostly elederly with comorbidities. As I have said, I think this is a dangerous argument, because it misses the real reason intervention was necessary.
Sorry that link is behind a paywall, but it’s a good point – I didn’t know that and I’m sure most people don’t either. The NHS are doing the work though, and there are a lot of political ‘optics’ around that.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
As you can tell my concern is about the commonly held assertion that Covid should have been allowed to run its course, and the assumption that x % of people would have died, and they would have been mostly elederly with comorbidities. As I have said, I think this is a dangerous argument, because it misses the real reason intervention was necessary.
‘’If the only tool you have is a hammer, you will start treating all your problems like a nail’’ is the quote that comes to mind. That’s the problem with these recurring lock downs. Governments need to start focusing their efforts on building an entire toolkit so when we start having a real problem (COVID is not a real problem for 99.8% of the population as far as viruses go) we have the flexibility to adapt our response and we don’t always have to use the hammer.
I get all the UK backslapping about how great the UK is doing with the vaccine roll-out.
Well, can you blame it? The major mainland countries are hugely proud of being the best, having the best institutions, the best governments, best industry, best technology, best double glazing, best ovens and fridges and showers (the UK is full of five digit priced German kitchens and bathrooms) 
The UK isn’t proud of anything really. Maybe the Vauxhall Viva? Pride is a dirty word here, equated with patriotism (also a dirty word nowadays, right across the spectrum from BLM all the way to the champagne socialists) and then with nationalism which has a rather dark and very recent history in Europe. Not to mention a resurgence in some places. The country is so sorry for itself that we even have the mob pulling down 200 year old statues – that would get the tear gas out on the mainland. It’s not often the UK does something right
And it wasn’t poor old Boris who is largely a “figurehead” and on a good day a motivator; it was probably Hancock who is famously reported as having watched that film Contagion and realised, correctly, that vaccines will become a totally nationalist issue so the UK better does something about it because, especially with the post-brexit hate of the UK among the mainland governments, not to mention among self proclaimed intellectuals everywhere (so transparently shown in the final days of 2020 by the “we will empty your supermarket shelves, so you better sign on the dotted line” Channel Tunnel blockade) it isn’t going to get help from anybody whatsoever.
So they spent 3BN on nonexistent vaccines, and the bet paid off. To be fair, that job was done by a standalone team of very clever people, from the industry, not by civil servants, and they were pretty sure about what was possible. 3BN is peanuts on the scale of the damage done by CV19.
Recent statistics show that disdained Sweden is well in the bottom half of excess deaths among European countries in 2020 with most of the “proper lockdown” countries much worse off.
As per the article I posted above, probably the population health is a big factor there. Vietnam did even better…
I know of no-one who thinks that a 6.00pm curfew will save any sensible person from either contracting or dying of Covid. The non sensible will find ways around the curfew
Peter wrote:
So they spent 3BN on nonexistent vaccines, and the bet paid off. To be fair, that job was done by a standalone team of very clever people, from the industry, not by civil servants, and they were pretty sure about what was possible.
I’ll be very interested if and when the full story on who put that plan together emerges. All we really know is that (1) the UK govt placed a large, early bet with every manufacturer who looked like they might be in the race, and (2) Hancock was in favour of same, and of a UK-developed solution, because of what he inferred from Contagion. We don’t know whether he drove it, or just agreed, or what else may have happened. A lot of advice may well have come from industry, but ultimately a politician or senior civil servant must have owned the plan and pushed it through – someone has to sign on behalf of the government.
It’s an excellent example of the sort of situation I see daily at work where the fact that you make a decision and act now is more important than which decision you make. We have terrible trouble trying to convince pharma companies of this, and as you may all have read in the media recently most of the time in the drug development process is spent umming and ahing over what to do and whether to spend the money.
The irony is that if the UK hadn’t left the EU then their procurement programme would probably have been delayed even more. In that scenario then the decision on what to order would have been an argument between 3 big voices and 25 smaller ones, as opposed to the 2 big and 25 smaller that it ended up being!
Peter wrote:
So they spent 3BN on nonexistent vaccines, and the bet paid off.
Indeed, it was a bet, and particularly a bet on the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.
Have a look here at what the UK ordered
UK Vaccines Ordered
Had the Ox/AZ one turned out not to work, the UK would be in a much more difficult position. They took a bet on that one and the bet paid off. Luckily for Boris due to that bet paying off, everyone has forgotten about the disaster the UK was in the pre-vaccine stage of the pandemic.
In many ways, I think most governments have managed to dodge a bullet. A year ago, we were told that there was no guarantee that vaccines would work at all, and if they did it would be at least 18-24 months before they were available. Dr Fauci said that the FDA would accept a vaccine that was only 50% effective. I can’t help but think that we are very lucky that we’ve got vaccines that:
a) Were available after just 9 months (Mar-Dec 2020)
b) Are 80+% effective, and 100% effective against hospitalisation (after a period to build up immunity)
c) All the major vaccines, except Sanofi, turned out to work.
I can’t help but wonder where we would be (and what our politicians would do) if the vaccines took 24 months, or didn’t turn out to be effective or very few of them were effective.
It seems to me that the only plan B was continued lockdown, which the new strains seem to make harder to be effective and clearly can’t continue for years and years.
I think not taking a Zero Covid strategy (by which I mean, state quarantine for all international travel, eliminate it domestically and then open bridges with other states that have eliminated it domestically), and placing all bets on the vaccines was a big gamble. Thankfully it seems to have worked. But I can’t help but wonder where we would be if it hadn’t.
Incidentally, they are now saying that in Ireland, 80% of adults will have received at least 1 vaccine dose by the end of June, and 60% will have received two by that date. Maybe there will still be a chance to fly internationally before the summer is over I don’t really want much. A few nights camping on some Scottish Island would be great. I probably won’t meet anyone while there anyway!
gallois wrote:
I know of no-one who thinks that a 6.00pm curfew will save any sensible person from either contracting or dying of Covid. The non sensible will find ways around the curfew
With this reasoning you could easily “disprove” any rule: Would a rule that bans driving/flying under influence save any sensible person from dying or having an accident while driving/flying drunk? Obviously not because “sensible” persons do not drive/fly under influence anyways. And the non sensibles …
These kinds of reasoning, however, totally neglect that the vast majority of the population is neither “sensible” nor “non sensible” in your definition of these words. They are not as “sensible” that they would restrict themselves that much but also not as “non sensible” that they actively break a rule. Wearing masks is a great example for that: Most people probably would not do it by themselves but also most people have no problems to do it when it is mandated.
Graham wrote:
or feeding The Guardian material for ghostwritten articles on how badly I’m being managed then I’d be fired
But on the other hand, badly managed private sector businesses are often a self-correcting problem: they go bust. The problem with the public sector is that bad management can easily be sustained indefinitely.
There are certain things (like whistleblowing) which are protected in the private sector, too. Sure, your employer can fire you for it but then they will end up losing an industrial tribunal.
dublinpilot wrote:
Indeed, it was a bet, and particularly a bet on the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.
Have a look here at what the UK ordered
UK Vaccines OrderedHad the Ox/AZ one turned out not to work, the UK would be in a much more difficult position. They took a bet on that one and the bet paid off. Luckily for Boris due to that bet paying off, everyone has forgotten about the disaster the UK was in the pre-vaccine stage of the pandemic.
Yes the AZ vaccine was the largest order (probably because of the predicted vaccine nationalism – they needed one they had a degree of control over – and also because it was likely the one that the people making the decision had the best intelligence on) but without AZ it’s still 257m doses – almost 4x the population.
I don’t think we’ve forgotten our pre-vaccine situation. There will come a post-mortem when we look at the reasons for it. The more I examine the issue, the more I conclude that most European governments (including the UK) haven’t done anything materially differently that accounts for the different death rates. Infections are largely because the UK is testing 2-4x more per head of population than EU countries, but I think we’re going to discover that our appalling death rate was largely due to (a) a very unhealthy population, and (b) the NHS being nowhere near as good as people imagined it was.
The EU also would have been in even more trouble than it is now if one or two vaccines had failed. They placed large bets with both Pfizer and AZ, but their AZ bet was placed too late and so they weren’t the launch customer. Their present procurement figures are here (why is this published in English, an official language in just one member state?) but are largely meaningless because they are ‘up to’ numbers which include a lot of future options, most of which they have zero chance of getting their hands on this year.
dublinpilot wrote:
Incidentally, they are now saying that in Ireland, 80% of adults will have received at least 1 vaccine dose by the end of June, and 60% will have received two by that date
That looks challenging. The data here shows Ireland still below 10 doses administered per 100 head of population and largely in line with other EU countries. I don’t refer to % of population because it’s counting all doses given, so the number who’ve had at least a single dose is even lower.
The run rate in all EU countries seems to be about 4 doses per 100 head of population each month compared to about 15-16 per 100 head each month in the UK. To arrive at the target dates the UK govt mentions you just extrapolate the line and it arrives about where they say it will. For any EU country to hit similar predictions (including the Irish prediction you refer to) requires a very considerable uptick in the run rate, and soon.
