The UK is often held up as a cautionary tale regarding covid and re-opening.

Let's have a look at what happened in the UK and see if there are parallels to what is happening in Australia.

Thread.
1/🧵
At the beginning of 2021 the UK was fighting a crushing wave of alpha with months of lockdown. As that wave receded, the UK began to release restrictions.

2/🧵
Restrictions were released at a very early stage of the vaccination program:

The UK "picnic day" and end of local-area restrictions to movement occurred on 29 March at 5.6% of total population vaxxed.

Outdoor dining/pubs opened 12 April at 11.5% vax.

3/ 🧵
Household visits and indoor hospitality re-opened 17 May at 30.1% vax.

Importantly, cases continued to fall through this period of relaxing restrictions.

On 17 May, daily cases were less than 4% of their January peak, 33 cases/M/day (equiv to 270 cases/day in NSW)).

4/🧵
Then delta came. By the end of May, the delta variant made up 73% of UK cases.

Cases started to rise again.

Restrictions were never reimposed, though "Freedom Day" was delayed from 21 June to 19 July.

5/🧵
The entirety of the UK's delta wave occurred with public health settings much lower than NSW's planned settings at 70% double vax, and also at lower vaccination.

6/🧵
By the time Freedom Day finally arrived (at vax 45.95%), the delta wave was already cresting.

In fact, cases declined after Freedom Day--no one really knows why but there are several theories.

7/🧵
I find it hard to identify any parallels to the Australian context.

Current situation in NSW has no parallel anywhere:

NSW has brought case growth to a halt during a large delta outbreak, using public health measures and vaccination. No other country has done this.

8/🧵
The UK never tried to contain delta. Relaxing restrictions occurred during the tail of alpha wave, and were never reimposed for delta.

Australia has fought to contain delta with months of lockdown plus vaccination at higher speed than UK ever achieved, and it is working.

9/🧵
This doesn't mean we know how to re-open safely in Australia!

But it does mean that comparison to the UK is completely unfounded.

Australia is not following the path of the UK, and there is zero reason to expect the same outcome.

10/🧵
Do we have any evidence from other countries that delta CAN be controlled with vaccination and public health measures, without lockdown?

Stay tuned for the next thread!

11/11🧵
Addendum:

As stated in the thread, the vaccination levels for the UK are as percentage of the total population.

NSW's 70% target is for 16+ population, corresponding to 56% of total pop. (Though inclusion of 12+ will make it higher.)

12/11🧵

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More from @MichaelSFuhrer

13 Sep
Some first impressions from the OzSAGE model (ozsage.org/icu-modelling/):

1)Not enough info is given to understand how the model works. They don’t explain how R_eff is calculated, for example, from the restriction settings.

@RichardfromSyd1 @OrinCordus @RageSheen @Globalbiosec
2)They don’t explain their assumptions about ongoing vaccination beyond 80%. This is key to understanding the model and it’s left unstated.
3)They say they adapt a peer-reviewed model, but that model was not used to model time-varying restrictions, and in fact did not include masks or lockdowns at all.
Read 12 tweets
1 Sep
Here is a long/technical thread on my attempt to reverse-engineer the assumptions from the Doherty Institute report to the National Cabinet (linked) regarding delta severity, PHSM effectiveness, and vaccine effectiveness to match observations.
1/🧵
doherty.edu.au/uploads/conten…
Here are the figures from the Doherty Institute report. Note that there are a couple versions of these figures in the report; these assume the “all adults” strategy for vaccination.
2/🧵
The figures attempt to show graphically the effect of various interventions on the transmission potential (TP). TP is in essence R_eff, but calculated on the population level, as I understand it. When TP>1, cases grow, and TP<1, cases decline.
3/🧵
Read 34 tweets
28 Aug
This blog post has received a lot of attention.

A thread.
🧵
In short, the blog post takes public misconceptions about the technical report from Doherty, makes a cursory read of the report, repeats misconceptions, accuses Doherty of intentional scientific misconduct to lead Australia to disaster.

Crackpot stuff.
2/🧵
Not really worth taking apart. But it’s been retweeted by a number of figures who should really know better. So let’s take a look.

Doherty Institute report is here if you want to read along.

3/🧵
doherty.edu.au/uploads/conten…
Read 24 tweets
23 Aug
It is mind-boggling how fast one’s worldview needs to adapt to changing reality during this pandemic.

Taking stock of some new realities:
🧵
1) Delta is tougher than we thought. It is now safe to say that, even at current vax, delta is marginal to escape optimal TTI + lockdown. Some outbreaks fizzle out. But when they don’t, short/sharp lockdowns have become long at best, uncontrolled outbreaks at worst...
...This is ultimately inevitable, and your risk analysis for vax should account for the fact that everywhere is either in outbreak now or only months/weeks from outbreak. Get whatever vax is available to you, as soon as possible, and encourage everyone you know to do the same.
Read 11 tweets
21 Aug
10 days ago it was conceivable that NSW could control delta and reach low covid (by int'l standards) well before 80% vax, safely open and reduce covid simultaneously.

Now appears that NSW will barely control covid, at high caseloads (~500/Mpop/day) when reaching 80% vax.
1/ Image
Lines on the graph are extrapolations from 9, 14, and 20 August. In 11 days the extrapolated date of effective* 80% vax of 16+ has moved forward 15 days, and the date of achieving R=1 through vax has moved backwards by 22 days. Separation has gone from 6 weeks to 4 days.
2/
This is a result of the higher observed R, which seems robust.

Likely scenario: NSW will achieve 80% vax of 16+ in October after 3.5 months lockdown, with cases in several 1,000s/day. Pressure to remove lockdown will be intense.
3/
Read 6 tweets

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