The UK has “turned a corner” for the worse and is on course for up to 50,000 new daily cases of Covid-19 by mid-October, which could lead to 200 deaths a day by the following month, the government’s chief scientific and medical advisers have warned.
It was unclear whether this was 50,000 proven positive cases with the real number of cases being several times higher or 50,000 cases in the whole country but either way if it’s projected that leads to 200 deaths then the case fatality rate atno more than 0.4% is much less than we have thought up until now.
So why not let the bar frequenters of Aix and Marseille exercise their responsabilité as to whether or not they go drinking? I thought France had been fairly tough in its restrictions. Obviously in France they are wise precautions in the UK nanny state interventions.
For me, the big difference is that France has been pretty consistent and reliable, whereas the UK is all over the place.
Early on, when there were more unknowns, France locked down hard, then very gradually eased off as understanding of the virus, and better treatments emerged, and it is now moving to almost completely devolved regulation - very sensibly as there are huge difference between the cases and transmission rates in different areas.
The UK, on the other hand, has continually wavered about - as I pointed out earlier in this thread, a few weeks ago actively encouraging, indeed incentivising people to get back out to the office, bars and restaurants, etc, then completely reversing this - not to mention the ludicrous geographical inconsistency - I saw one area, for example, complaining that it was under the same regime as another even though it had less than 1% of the cases.
It’s much the same as the UK government’s approach to brexit - eg. agreeing a withdrawal agreement, then a few months later saying they didn’t agree with it! - whereas France (and the EU in general) has been consistent and reliable throughout.
Well it’s all future speculation so not clear you can conclude that the CFR is lower, just that they are using a lower estimate to go from cases to deaths, and the 50,000 was supposed to be a worst case estimate based on week-on-week doubling. I must admit the doubling period seemed more like 2 weeks when I looked at it (but I’m less confident of that now and it might well be shorter).
0.4% is at the very low end of previous estimates of CFR rather than “much lower”, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that we are better at treating patients which will lower the CFR; I need to dig out the paper but weren’t they reporting ICU outcomes basically having shifted from 60% → 80% survival with introduction of dexamethasone and holding back on ventilation?
Well, the “tous responsable” may not be working so well given the 16000 cases reported yesterday. I do not post this as an exercise in who is doing better - everybody is suffering. As to the “consistent” approach, is there not some merit in an approach with flexibility to change tactics? I don’t know which way to go on this. I believe they are going to allow 5000 to watch Racing 92 play Saracens in the European rugby. There will be none at the Exeter Toulouse game.
Surely simpler to hand everyone a weapon as they enter and if challenged claim it’s a hunting party (plus, chance of a group of 30 people with weapons being challenged is fairly small).
