From Deepti Gurdasani, Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology, re the Spectator article:Originally Posted by Muddy Retriever
"This article is misleading in many ways- we know that cases had started declining in the north West prior to lockdown, but had been increasing in all other regions at the point we went into lockdown. The ONS data, REACT data all support this.
Even the figure in the Spectator piece - on infection in above 60s shows this. It also shows that the decline in the North-West was gradual, and became much steeper after lockdown, which is supported by the inferred R value dropping further after lockdown. Why is this important?
It's not sufficient for R to be at 1 when there is high transmission, or even just below 1. To save lives, we need to bring down cases rapidly. At the point we went into lockdown we had an estimated ~55K cases a day- this would translate to ~550 deaths in 3-4 wks time.
An R of 0.9 means we would still have 40K cases in a fortnight (equivalent to 400 deaths/day in the future). An R of 0.7 means a reduction to 19K deaths in a fortnight - more than halving of cases and future deaths. The rapidity with which we reduce cases is important.
Lockdown wasn't just imposed to turn around case numbers, but to bring down cases in all regions rapidly - which was not happening with the tiered system. And even where cases were declining, R numbers were still only just below 1.
The piece appears to also completely ignore the findings of the REACT study, which showed a dip in cases briefly during end October, which was followed by an increase, leading to what looked like a double peak, possibly driven by school closures during half term.
The plateauing observed in the Zoe app towards end of October is consistent with this dip. Case surveillance the REACT study is more reliable that the symptom survey - both the ONS & REACT-1 surveys confirm that we were in a very precarious position before lockdown.
I don't support lockdown being used as a long term measure for COVID-19 control. Most countries that have successfully managed COVID-19 have only used this in emergencies, using the time under lockdown to strengthen their case finding systems in order to control infection.
And I completely understand the detrimental impacts of lockdown on society and the economy. The best way to protect our society & economy is to control COVID-19. Had the govt followed an evidence-based strategy early on, we may not have required a second lockdown.
I don't expect Spectator to necessarily understand the nuance of all this, but I would expect an epidemiologist who runs a COVID-19 study to do better than this, when communicating information to the public.
The article also seems to minimise risk to younger people- there is accruing evidence that even young people are vulnerable to long-term illness in ways we don't fully understand- and continuing high levels of infection in these age groups are also unacceptable."
