Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

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Greenbank

Compare the UK's approach of lockdown and then "Exit lockdown when R goes below 1" with Australia's:-

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-54768038

Australia has recorded its first day of no local cases of Covid-19 in almost five months.

The state of Victoria - epicentre of Australia's second wave - recorded zero cases for the second day in a row after a 112-day lockdown.

Health officials say more restrictions may be eased in the coming days.

The nation of 25 million adopted an approach of using lockdowns and proactive testing and tracing to contain the virus, and Victoria - where 90% of Covid deaths occurred - imposed some of the severest stay-at-home and curfew rules in the world.

Proactive testing and tracing. It'll never catch on.

Victoria and its largest city Melbourne began to reopen earlier this week after recording no new community-transmitted cases since June.

So, rather than reopen things when R goes below 1 (which could easily become R > 1 a few weeks of reopening things) they decided to reopen when R was effectively 0. Big difference.

Imagine the UK being expected to remain in lockdown until community-transmitted cases dropped to 0.

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mashton in reply to @Greenbank

, rather than reopen things when R goes below 1 (which could easily become R > 1 a few weeks of reopening things) they decided to reopen when R was effectively 0. Big difference.

Imagine the UK being expected to remain in lockdown until community-transmitted cases dropped to 0.

And the corresponding action to this is to (re)start a lockdown as soon as R went over 1. Which would have been back in August, I think.

We could have had three or weeks of lock down to get shit back down again. Whilst schools were on holiday. With no real increase in death toll.

Instead, we had Eat Out to Help out, which had the opposite effect.

Then two months of procrastination and inaction.

It just seem so obvious that very fast, early lockdowns mean shorter lockdown, less economic impact and fewer deaths.

Instead of squashing these waves, we've been bloody surfing them.

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