meltonblue
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 14 May 2013
- Messages
- 8,722
It is depressing to look back now at the media reports of when Italy was in crisis compared to how the situation here is now being reported. Likewise, looking at other countries reporting on us, it is filled with incredulity.
It does feel to me like we’ve been sleepwalking through it to an extent and flipping between different strategies without actually committing fully to any of them and doing them well. We didn’t commit to herd immunity (thankfully as it would have been disastrous, yet the message was that muddled people still think we are still aiming for it). We didn’t commit to the lockdown, implementing it far too slowly and not as stringently as it needed to be, which is why we may have to extend it further than other countries, and we didn’t commit to testing to properly analyse the spread of infection.
We’ve ended up with far greater numbers than a lot of others (which will be even higher when the care homes numbers fully come out) and yet are framing it as doing well because the NHS has enough beds to cope and made “protecting the NHS” as the main slogan rather than “protecting people”. Not having enough beds was supposedly what caused the huge numbers in Italy. Actually, what needed to happen and still does is that an awful lot more people didn’t need an NHS bed, they needed not to catch it in the first place.
Whilst focussing on that and still struggling to get PPE out to the NHS (surely critical to “protecting” it), we’ve been even slower with care homes and getting the right equipment and support in place there. We were supposed to be protecting the most vulnerable in society and instead it’s run rife in the places they should have been most protected.
There are only really two ways out of this. Stringent lockdown and mass testing. That’s the only way to get the reinfection rate below one - either limiting contact fully or mass testing of everyone as it has to include asymptomatic carriers. On the former, that will mean us continuing to keep at least the same measures in place for a lot longer if we keep with the same level, particularly as we still aren’t even in a position on the latter to test all the front line workers that need it, let alone the general public.
The only other exit strategy is to open up and allow it to continue, accepting the line that we keep it under the threshold of NHS capacity. If we do that though, then the unimaginable numbers that were spoken about to begin with will become a reality.
We haven’t replicated any of the successful methods other countries have utilised. It’s not too late to do that though, but we need a clearer direction and strategy and also an admittance that what we’ve done so far is not good enough.
It does feel to me like we’ve been sleepwalking through it to an extent and flipping between different strategies without actually committing fully to any of them and doing them well. We didn’t commit to herd immunity (thankfully as it would have been disastrous, yet the message was that muddled people still think we are still aiming for it). We didn’t commit to the lockdown, implementing it far too slowly and not as stringently as it needed to be, which is why we may have to extend it further than other countries, and we didn’t commit to testing to properly analyse the spread of infection.
We’ve ended up with far greater numbers than a lot of others (which will be even higher when the care homes numbers fully come out) and yet are framing it as doing well because the NHS has enough beds to cope and made “protecting the NHS” as the main slogan rather than “protecting people”. Not having enough beds was supposedly what caused the huge numbers in Italy. Actually, what needed to happen and still does is that an awful lot more people didn’t need an NHS bed, they needed not to catch it in the first place.
Whilst focussing on that and still struggling to get PPE out to the NHS (surely critical to “protecting” it), we’ve been even slower with care homes and getting the right equipment and support in place there. We were supposed to be protecting the most vulnerable in society and instead it’s run rife in the places they should have been most protected.
There are only really two ways out of this. Stringent lockdown and mass testing. That’s the only way to get the reinfection rate below one - either limiting contact fully or mass testing of everyone as it has to include asymptomatic carriers. On the former, that will mean us continuing to keep at least the same measures in place for a lot longer if we keep with the same level, particularly as we still aren’t even in a position on the latter to test all the front line workers that need it, let alone the general public.
The only other exit strategy is to open up and allow it to continue, accepting the line that we keep it under the threshold of NHS capacity. If we do that though, then the unimaginable numbers that were spoken about to begin with will become a reality.
We haven’t replicated any of the successful methods other countries have utilised. It’s not too late to do that though, but we need a clearer direction and strategy and also an admittance that what we’ve done so far is not good enough.