Covid: What will happen in the UK in May and June

[jack]

Several countries got the number of infected people almost back down to where they started, and are cautiously considering relaxing restrictions. This means they need to *quickly* lock down any areas with a new infection until they've traced and tested any contacts, but hopefully they will be able to do so.

I can't help but wish more countries had been able to jump to that point from the start without having an infection get out of control and need a more serious lockdown first. I guess that's similar to what Taiwan and New Zealand did?

Conversely the number of infected people in the UK has levelled off but not really gone down. And now the government is talking about relaxing restrictions. It seems like even sensible, desirable relaxations, or proposed future relaxations, will overall make people less cautious, which in this situation will make the number of infection go up again. Which will make it take that much longer to get down to a safe level again even if effective measures are found. So any plans or June need to be based on, "when the infection rate goes up, will the government reverse direction and lock down harder again? Or will they go on pretending everything is fine while the situation gets even more out of hand?"

I hope that's wrong. Fiends I trust to be sensible ARE talking about what will happen in June. I agree lockdown can't last forever. But where is it wrong? What will happen instead?

What would I do if I were in charge? My best guesses would be:

* Have regular announcements announcing advice stricter in some ways but less strict in others. E.g. allow people to go to the park with relatives 2m apart, but offer more precise restrictions in other areas to show "we need to take this seriously" not "ok, relax".
* Have different advice for different regions.
* Don't focus on the minutiae of people working from home and mostly not seeing people. Work out what's supposed to happen for the biggest obstacles, companies that need people to work safely, what guidance is there? People with children, don't wish away the problem, offer government support to work part time, or allow people to share childcare within a small, fixed group of families.
* Hand a big check to someone in the NHS and say "sorry we fucked up procurement for treatment and testing. go organise it however you would usually organise it".
* Have a series of milestones for relaxing lockdown. E.g. "infection rate below X", "test and trace infrastructure is working"
* Have a plan for phased return to normal life. Pay attention to the people for whom the current situation is most difficult. Make it transparent. You could just copy France's.
* Stop hinting contradictory things. Decide what the strategy is. Decide what messaging communicates that. Communicate that clearly through all channels, regular announcements, adverts. Force newspapers to communicate it clearly, and not to communicate confusing hints.

What happens after that? I don't have an "after" yet. My best guess is that a sufficiently effective test-and-trace infrastructure will slowly allow normal life to resume with local lockdowns when necessary. Or maybe some other scientific breakthrough. Probably not a vaccine, but maybe quick home tests. Or some research breakthrough in how it spreads and can be prevented. Etc.

Comments

[vyvyanx]

You say "the number of infected people in the UK has levelled off but not really gone down" but I don't think we can really know this, since our testing regime has not been consistent throughout the outbreak. Certainly the number of confirmed cases is pretty flat from day to day now, but since the number of tests available and the sets of people permitted to be tested have been increasing during lockdown, that suggests to me that the actual number of infected people must have been declining. The daily death figures seem more reliable, in that they seem to have peaked in early April, implying a peak of infections in late March, perhaps just before lockdown, and a gradual decline since then.

(But I quite agree the current relaxation seems a bit premature, and could easily lead to a second increase in infections.)

[silveradept]

At times, it seems like the best thing that any government could do to ride out the epidemic is "here are the scientists that know best, so what they tell you, and we'll provide them and you with the resources needed to achieve this."

Which is the worst thing for anyone who wants to be seen as A Leader, but is probably the best thing for someone who wants to be remembered as having done a good job with handling the issue.

[hairyears]

Treat it as an engineering problem, and look for the failure modes.

One of them is three celebrities and a Conservative Party donor being rushed to hospital on the same day...

[mair_in_grenderich]

"Have regular announcements announcing advice stricter in some ways but less strict in others."

Masks, ffs.

"Fiends I trust to be sensible"

hm, are fiends sensible by definition?