'Critics of the U.K. strategy argue that decisive action matters more than future hypotheticals You go all in, or not at all. And not at all ends up like Italy.'
theatlantic.com/health/archive…
theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Nobody really knows whether the original British controlled infection strategy would have worked. They simply couldn't take the chance, given the experience of Italy vs South Korea.
This is the case of empirical experience vs a strategy that would be brilliant IF it worked. It's worth noting that the British experiment will be inadvertently run by other countries for lack of ability to shut down. Something can be inferred from that.
The Atlantic article very fairly points out there are two big unknowns. "Making a decent long-term strategy is hard when there are still two big unknowns... First, we don’t know how long immunity against the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, lasts."
"We don’t know how the virus will behave across the year either. Other human coronaviruses tend to peak in the winter, while lying low during the high humidity and temperatures of the summer."
Given those unknowns Johnson just couldn't risk it. This is important to remember because there's a tendency to assume the Chinese know all there is to know when in fact there is so much we don't.
I can't help pointing out that Johnson's "herd immunity" bet though risky, is less risky that the evergreen tendency to bet on socialism. That has NEVER worked but that doesn't dissuade its advocates from claiming it will work next time.
