Seems obvious now but there is an explicit change in strategy now.
We want to keep the epidemic down but the focus is no longer on reducing case numbers but in keeping serious illness down. I heard a few journalists make this claim last week, and now I've seen SAGE members say the same. It makes sense because the bottom line is that the only thing that matters is serious illness but I have one concern..
If we accept that the epidemic will grow as we re-open and we continue to re-open as long as hospitalisation numbers are kept in check, what happens with the growth of new variants? In a couple of months they could represent a significant fraction of the virus depending on what their rate of growth is in a vaccinated population. This seems to me a bit of an unknown. Had it not been for the variants, I'd be comfortable with what was being proposed but they make me nervous because if they start replicating significantly we could be storing up a problem for the future. I've seen journalists ask pointed questions to people like Dr Susan Hopkins and their answers were evasive or we don't know. This to me seems a bit of a gamble. I'd open up but retain the R rate and new infections as a control because I dont think we know what the potential risks are of the variant viruses are. Can they lead to a more resistant strain that can generate significant illness? If we can't answer that, shoul we be relaxing control on growth of the epidemic?
We want to keep the epidemic down but the focus is no longer on reducing case numbers but in keeping serious illness down. I heard a few journalists make this claim last week, and now I've seen SAGE members say the same. It makes sense because the bottom line is that the only thing that matters is serious illness but I have one concern..
If we accept that the epidemic will grow as we re-open and we continue to re-open as long as hospitalisation numbers are kept in check, what happens with the growth of new variants? In a couple of months they could represent a significant fraction of the virus depending on what their rate of growth is in a vaccinated population. This seems to me a bit of an unknown. Had it not been for the variants, I'd be comfortable with what was being proposed but they make me nervous because if they start replicating significantly we could be storing up a problem for the future. I've seen journalists ask pointed questions to people like Dr Susan Hopkins and their answers were evasive or we don't know. This to me seems a bit of a gamble. I'd open up but retain the R rate and new infections as a control because I dont think we know what the potential risks are of the variant viruses are. Can they lead to a more resistant strain that can generate significant illness? If we can't answer that, shoul we be relaxing control on growth of the epidemic?