Quicker?! stats update for those who asked…
The progress through these times is about stats but also about people and economics, and how these interact.
Last time we said we were entering more fully the ‘blame’ stage of the change process – and we certainly are. Party politics aside, for those who study the process of change after a deep shock and loss, have a look at the classic Kubler-Ross curve. The next stage (massive blame will continue too as some things are shown to have gone wrong and people focus their loss on rightful accountability, but also scapegoating and demanding of blood) is now happening, where people test to see whether it’s possible to ‘just go back to how things were before and all will be well’. Hence all the indiscipline as people come out of harder lockdown. They just want things to go back to what we used to call ‘normal’. It’s called ‘bargaining with the change’. The bargainers/testers will be proved wrong – things have changed and cannot go back to the way things were – so nostalgia and forlorn hope leading to indiscipline on social distancing will only make things worse. The virus is not eradicated, and it is not negotiating. This is where a second wave flare will happen.
So to reiterate what we said last week, “The politicians won’t be able to make any other economic choice than lockdown-lite for remainder of 2020 with the goal of no less (yes no less, not no more) than 50-80% of NHS capacity taken up with new cases as we move slowly towards ‘herd’. The remainder of NHS can do some non-Covid work.” Hence the de-lock is to regain some economy and to take up the newly-constructed Nightingale capacity around the country – potentially 10,000+ extra beds, but that stretches our NHS and key workers hugely near this level. There is no doubt in my mind that ‘go back to work’ will inevitably create an increasing rate of new infections (R>1). In my town our biggest manufacturers are now seeing internal outbreaks. Nature, eg ‘herd’ and ‘sunlight’ alone is not nearly enough yet to slow it below R=1. And forget a vaccine for a long time – wishful thinking in the very short term, and remember we still don’t even have one at all for the common cold.
“Looking back, new hospitalisations were doubling every 3-4 days until we got to 1,000 fatalities per day (that’s 30,000 per month and rising, if allowed to continue), which was only slowed by 23 March lockdown with a 3-6 week lag. The R-slowing factor now will be millions of individual decisions to ‘Stay Alert’ and just being personally careful, plus the more middle-class ability to do so. I expect it will now become a jungle of virus in the populated indoor or crowd environments out there. And so the risk of bringing the virus home to vulnerable loved ones. With original R=2.5-3.5 (=doubling every 3-4 days) and individual avoidance now bringing new effective R down, by June it may become R=1.5-ish. But no chance of less than R=1 in my view despite the Government’s optimism on this. I hope I’m wrong. So no doubling of new hospitalisations every 3-4 days again, but perhaps a doubling every week or two during June and July. But with a low current base, that buys the Government and statisticians until maybe 31 July to observe and suffer a steep-ish incline in cases, which may well delay further openings of the economy. There are only 24 new cases per day in London now, they say. Sounds like we’ve beaten it? No. With a doubling of infections each week (slower than before) that’s still enough to gradually fill all the Nightingales through July-September once the genie is out of the bottle again.”
I’m just wondering now whether we will even get as far as 31 July before it some re-tightening is warned about or necessary.
So stay as safe as you can and look after your loved ones while the ‘bargainers’ do their experiment and the virus is flying around out there.
Have a good week.