Thread by @moybius

A thread on just how astonishingly dangerous the new UK "herd immunity" approach to #CoViD19 could be.

1/5

#coronavirus #HCoV19 #SARSCoV2 cc @MackayIM

So the UK government has decided to aim for "herd immunity" by allowing 60-70% of the population to be infected. Not at all what the WHO recommends, and the opposite of what every country that has had some success in dealing with the #coronavirus has done so far.

2/5

Just pause and consider for a moment. In Wuhan, epicentre of the initial outbreak and site of the most intense level of infection and social disruption we've seen so far, the total number infected has been about 50,000 - less than 0.4% of the population of the city.

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Even in a modern metropolis with a world-class health system, hospitals were completely overwhelmed and - until the outbreak was controlled via extreme measures - deaths rose to 4.8% of all cases, mainly because the health system was under impossible pressure.

4/5

Less than 0.4% infected.

Apparently, the Malcolm Tucker-appointed "weirdos and misfits" seem to think that the UK health system can handle 60-70% being infected.

If they stick to this plan, it's not going to be pretty.

5/5

Some very rough numbers on how impractical this idea is. Supposedly, the UK plan is to gradually allow the population to be infected, keeping the new infections at a rate which the health system can handle, until 60-70% has had it.

1/n

Let's pretend that they can control the infection rate to be whatever level they want. Available adult critical care beds in the NHS system vary between 600 and 1000 - let's say 1000. #CoViD19 has around 4% to 6% of its cases needing critical care (ICU) - let's say 5%.

2/n

These cases take a median of around 25 days to resolve. So the system can handle 20k new infections every 25 days (best case scenario - ignoring non-critical hospitalisations, impacts on health care staff etc etc etc), or 800 per day. The UK has around 52 million adults.

3/n

So at this "sustainable" infection rate, for 60% of the adult population to get it takes 39,000 days, or 106 years.

4/n

Fantasy land, of course. Inevitably it will infect a large fraction of the UK population, and it will overwhelm the health system. The question is how fast.

The officially relaxed stance will make infections happen faster than in countries taking it more seriously.

5/n

Source for the available NHS adult critical care beds number: england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-…