Thread by @ewanbirney

There are a variety of ultimately “don’t worry about the trajectory of COVID in the UK arguments” from mainly right wing commentators that are either plain wrong or missing the point for me. A list and key rebuttal arguments:

1. Observed cases are false positives due to higher testing levels. Plain wrong - false positives exist but they are at a low level and managed well by the system.

2. COVID as a disease has replaced influenza as the winter virus and should be handled in the same “tolerate elderly deaths” way. Wrong in that the death rate and other long term disease is far higher. Influenza levels have dropped due to the measures to stop infection generally

3. Hospital capacity for COVID treatment across the NHS is not at critical levels. Missing the point. If the growth rate in COVID cases means one passes capacity levels, which is far below 100% as one needs other healthcare delivery then ... one has a crisis.

Infection rates are very likely to get worse not better in the winter and we don’t have a major change in management that a vaccine for example would have. Using up capacity is building a bridge but it has to be a bridge to somewhere

Arguments from right wing commentators that make more sense and how they are used

1. The impact of broad restrictions on lives, livelihoods and liberty is high and should be taken into account. Absolutely- ideally we should have more nuanced, item driven duscussions about this publically but it is lost in the heat

Broadly this weighing seems to happen somewhere - schools being declared the last to close is one example of this logic in action. The principle of this trade off is there - the details are a mess in the public sphere.

But we must have a package of measures which, along with an increasingly efficient TTI, control the transmission of the virus. Otherwise simply many people will die and many people will have a bad long term disease.

2. The change in transmission is regional. This is obviously true globally. It is also true nationally (noting the quaint UK federal system which means there is two interpretations of “national” here - UK or 4 nations). It goes all the way down - regionally, locally, individual

The Tiering system is the most obvious acknowledgement of this, but, channelling my inner Chris Whitty, just doing more in some regions (Tier3) is not a solution if, again the aggregate transmission is not down.

I view this as a titration problem to come to the package that works and it is better to “over control” and then cautiously relax rather than cautiously add addition control and see if it works - the inherent lagginess of the system really is against you