OK, we need to be very very clear about what is going wrong with the policy in the UK. Boris is mortified not genocidal. #boristhebutcher is wide of the mark. 1/17
Secondly, the lack of transparency of the modellers who are advising the government is not deliberate. They are well-meaning individuals who are working very hard to predict the course of the disease and do the right thing. They have published plenty of good science. 2/17
But what happened is that they have as a group fallen into a logical error in their attempts to model what will bring this epidemic under control. They have not appreciated that the answer to this question is adaptive behavior change. 3/17
I wrote a blogpost about this two weeks ago. In China and the rest of South East Asia, society has been reorganized to push R0 much less than one. paintmychromosomes.blogspot.com/2020/02/corono… 4/17
Im sitting in Shanghai and life is perfectly pleasant. Without imports from abroad there would be no cases at all. But freedom of travel and assembly is *selectively* curtailed. Society has got its act together for this purpose. 5/17
Its actually a simple formula. The better organized society is towards this purpose, the less freedom needs to be curtailed to achieve effective control of the virus. What is happening effectively in China is this is being done dynamically in response to local conditions. 6/17
I actually went clubbing in Shanghai on Friday. Our temperatures and phone numbers were taken. They also used an app to confirm that I had not come from abroad within the last few weeks. Its a rare activity here now though (and 65000 people watched via live stream). 7/17
The same activity in Europe would be very risky, and extremely antisocial, right now. But I am confident that any local flare up here would be controlled because they have the motivation and know how to do it. 8/17
Painfully and messily, behavior change is happening in Europe and America. It will bring the virus replication under control. And then it will be possible to rebuild freedoms step by step. That is the correct answer. 9/17
The UK modellers assume that some degree of herd immunity will be necessary. This is empirically false. In the most affected part of the country, Wuhan, more than 95% of the population is naive, but the epidemic has ended. 10/17
In the rest of the country, more than 99.9% of the population is naive. But the epidemic ended there, anyway, several weeks sooner. 11/17
During the chief medical officer's testimony to the house of commons select committee, he makes very telling mistakes about this. He says that there is 20% herd immunity in Wuhan. 12/17
This is just false, for example Adam Kuchaski, one of the UK modellers involved in the government response estimates that 95% of the population of Wuhan was still naive at the end of january. 13/17
Whitty somehow implies that herd immunity helped to bring the epidemic under control. is telling the truth as he knows it and most of his testimony is accurate and informative. But he just happens to be confused on this point and making an illogical, false argument. 14/17
And unfortunately, tragically, this error is driving UK policy right now. We need social distancing measures to be strong enough and effective enough to bring R0 below 1 across Europe. As this happens, we can rebuild our freedoms again. 15/17
And the way to do this is exactly what the WHO recommends and what other countries in Europe are doing, which is to introduce strict social distance measures ASAP, with the goal of easing off later. If done well, it will be less painful than you expect. 16/17
I am really keen that people retweet this thread. I want to reach the modellers in the UK and will take other steps than just tweeting to do it. 17/17
@ZaminIqbal @AdamRutherford @AdamJKucharski @BillHanage @WvSchaik @Magda_Skipper @gil_mcvean @genemodeller @XavierDidelot @LSHTM to nudge some potential influencers off the top of my head.
