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Have to marvel at the complete incompetence of the UK government, and the dangerous approach to managing COVID-19. Essentially while saying that it isn& #39;t sensible to lift lockdown, because they haven& #39;t met the basic tests, they appear to be doing just that. Thread.
Boris has essentially announced that people who can& #39;t stay home and work & #39;can& #39; go to work. This essentially means that many employees who aren& #39;t key workers are likely to be forced back to work as they will lose any protections if they don& #39;t, given the change in govt policy.
Let& #39;s remember that this decision has been made at a point where the PM himself confesses that the R is & #39;just below 1& #39;. Not only is this the case, we know from SAGE that R isn& #39;t even trending downwards - 3 days ago in the daily briefing it was confirmed that R is on the rise.
So let& #39;s recap - we& #39;re still at a point where we have a subatantially large number of new cases & deaths/day, our R is rising due to the care home crisis, which shows no signs of abating, and we& #39;re currently & #39;just below 1& #39;.
To make matters worse, we still don& #39;t have test and trace in place. We are still not testing all key workers, forget community testing. The digital app has run into huge issues - legal, security, and compatibility with apple & google phones.
There is no sign that any community test, trace & isolate strategy will be in place soon. We still don& #39;t have enough PPE for care homes and healthcare workers. Deaths in care homes are rising day on day. And we& #39;re talking about letting people go back to work, and opening schools.
Countries that took steps to ease lockdown in Europe, and even consider opening schools were at a completely different point in their trajectory & response. R in Denmark was 0.4-0.6, and when they opened schools it rose to 0.9. What& #39;s going to happen here?
This is a mistake. The govt has said repeatedly that it& #39;s guided by scientific evidence - I& #39;d really like to see the evidence guiding this. I can& #39;t see any scientist in their right mind advocating this, at this point in the UK outbreak. This is dangerously negligent.
They said they wouldn& #39;t lift lockdown until five pillars were met. While they aren& #39;t calling this lifting lockdown, this is a big change, and will very likely increase transmission of virus in workplaces, and communities.
The PM says today & #39;we are testing literally hundreds of thousands of people every day. We have made fast progress on testing – but there is so much more to do now, and we can& #39;. Where are these & #39;hundreds of thousands of tests& #39; every day? Fast progress?
