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1. What is the government's current #COVID19 strategy?
Here is Chris Whitty on 4th March explaining the government's strategy was late intervention and early release.
But what is it now? https://twitter.com/adamhamdy/status/1303616514457767941?s=20
Here is Chris Whitty on 4th March explaining the government's strategy was late intervention and early release.
But what is it now? https://twitter.com/adamhamdy/status/1303616514457767941?s=20
2. The UK government and its scientific advisers believed it was appropriate to use the influenza pandemic plan to respond to a human coronavirus. This BMJ editorial examines why the UK's response was so deeply flawed.
https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/369/bmj.m1932.full.pdf
https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/369/bmj.m1932.full.pdf
3. It seems we're making the same mistakes. #SARSCoV2, the virus that causes #COVID19, is not influenza. Flu is highly contagious and a containment strategy for flu would fail. #SARSCoV2 transmits differently as this excellent article by @zeynep explains. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/
4. Other countries have shown that not only can #SARSCoV2 be contained, it can be eradicated. Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, China, New Zealand, and many others are all in the winners' circle. They've protected public health and their economies. https://twitter.com/adamhamdy/status/1311580939668119552?s=20
5. They've done this by treating every case of #COVID19 as a serious incident. It seems the UK government would have us believe thousands of cases per day is a norm we should get used to - a 'bumpy ride'. https://twitter.com/adamhamdy/status/1312715972793585664?s=20
6. #COVID19 differs from influenza in another important way. It seems to affect more organs and cause more damage than flu, even in young people. Flu can cause similar issues, but in a much lower proportion of people, usually those hospitalised. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/04/long-covid-the-evidence-of-lingering-heart-damage
7. Another important difference between #SARSCoV2 and influenza is immunity. Most people develop almost lifelong protective immunity to individual strains of flu. We've known for some time that human coronaviruses elicit temporary protective immunity. https://academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiaa392/5868459
8. For reasons that elude me, some academics and politicians believed immunity to #COVID19 would be long lasting, but this does not seem to be the case. A number of confirmed reinfections have now been proved, and there are even more anecdotal reports. https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/08/covid-19-reinfection-tracker/
9. Allowing the spread of influenza on the basis that those who catch it and survive will be immune is a defensible strategy. Allowing the spread of a coronavirus without knowing the nature, duration or characteristics of protective immunity always seemed reckless to me.
10. We live in simplistic times. The battle of the slogan and the soundbite. The #COVID19 crisis is presented as a conflict between those who want lockdown so they can hide behind the sofa, and brave souls who want to take it on the chin and open up.
11. In the absence of an effective vaccine (if such a thing is possible) or treatment, we have to learn to live with this virus. We can either do that with the virus widely circulating within our community, which seems to be the approach taken by Sweden, the US, Holland & others.
12. Or we can live with the virus as a rare occurrence - the #ZeroCovid approach taken by China, Vietnam, Thailand, New Zealand & others. Lockdown is not a strategy. It is a blunt instrument designed to give authorities time to prepare for the implementation of a strategy.
13. The UK had a lockdown that seemed to work, but it opened up too soon and didn't implement the measures that would have helped keep transmission low, such as effective testing & isolation and universal mask use. The government squandered a national sacrifice.
14. Since then, the UK nations have committed to suppressing the virus to the lowest possible level while striving to return life to as normal as possible. There is inherent conflict in these objectives. https://twitter.com/adamhamdy/status/1309428143720194048?s=20
15. We're seeing this conflict played out in a muddled response that is giving us the worst of both worlds: high levels of infection and serious damage to the economy. The remedy needs to come from the top. https://twitter.com/adamhamdy/status/1312548771218284544?s=20
16. The government needs to decide on a strategy and then clearly communicate it to people. Instead of the Mad Hatter system of guidance and advice that almost no one understands, it needs to enact simple, easy to follow measures to support the strategy it chooses.
17. It needs to do these things quickly to avoid making autumn and winter much, much 'bumpier' than necessary.
