Thursday 8 October 2020

Lockdowns and the Sherlock Holmes principle

The Sherlock Holmes principle is, once you have ruled out the impossible, the remaining explanation, however unlikely, must be correct.

Applied to the question of what degree of lockdown* to impose, first you rule out the strategy that is doomed to failure, then you adopt the one that's left by default, however slim its chance of success might seem.

There are two basic strategies:
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1. The Swedish/Brazil "hope for the best" herd immunity strategy - this might or might not have been a good strategy given the lack of clear information at the time**. But it always had a theoretical chance of working and, with the benefit of hindsight, seems to be working, especially if you take into account the economic, social and educational damage that such countries have avoided. This of course involves the elderly and vulnerable voluntarily self-isolating, and it will cost money to employ people to do their shopping etc for them, but that is a small cost compared to the economic etc damage caused by a full lock down.
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2. The "suppress infections until a vaccine comes along" strategy which cannot ever work. I can sort of see the point of "flattening the curve" but they've done that. The NHS wasn't swamped and isn't being swamped.

a) Even if they develop a vaccine that works (unlikely) at some point in the future (months? years?), are we all going to take it (no)?

b) If immunity is only a few months after having caught it (the arguments AGAINST the herd immunity strategy), then the same will apply to people who have been vaccinated. So this will require endless repeat vaccinations.

So strategy 2 can only ever be delaying the inevitable and can never succeed.
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Ergo, given a choice between a strategy that MIGHT work (and appears to be doing so, with the benefit of hindsight) and one that CAN'T POSSIBLY work, surely you choose the former?

* It is a question of degree. Some things appear to worth trying where the economic cost is minimal, for example banning large gatherings (concerts and football matches); turning down music in pubs; face masks on public transport; encouraging people to work from home. Testing people for coronavirus after they get off an airplane or boat misses the point - it makes more sense to test people before they get on at the other end and to turn away passengers who test positive. Not sure on the logistics of this, but that's the principle.

Things like shutting pubs at ten o'clock are insane. Is the virus more infectious later in the evening? I think not. People under 30 are barely affected, so shutting schools and universities is also insane. The older teachers and lecturers will just have to take a sabbatical.

** The best information we had was the Diamond Princess. That was pretty much a Petri dish. 15% of the 1,045 crew tested positive and precisely none of them died (being presumably young and healthy). Twenty percent (or should I say "only twenty percent"?) of the 2,666 elderly passengers tested positive and twelve had died between the first positive test in early February and the end of March when most lockdowns were imposed (two more died in April).

Scaled up to the UK, we'd expect to see around 50,000 deaths among the elderly in the first two months, which is not far off the actual outcome. To paraphrase Prof Michael Levitt, that was the Grim Reaper taking all the people who would have died during the previous two years' flu seasons, but didn't because they were very mild. A year ago, UK undertakers were worrying about the low number of funerals!

20 comments:

Lola said...

Y'see. You keep making the same mistake. Over and over again. Assuming that any bureaucrat, civil serpent, MP or government minister applies 'logic' or 'sums' to anything - not only because they won't but more because the ignorant bastards, can't. They are all driven by the forces of 'public choice' as it best benefits them.

Bayard said...

OK, back to the real world (that is reality as in political reality, the only reality that counts):
1. The Sweden/Brazil strategy was the government's favoured strategy, but they were howled down because of alarmists like Neil Ferguson putting out scary figures.
2. Having been panicked into imposing a lockdown, the Government will be damned before they admit that they got it wrong.
3. Big Pharma has an eye to making big money out of the vaccine. To do this they need a population that is still susceptible to the disease, by the time the vaccine is ready.
4. The longer the pandemic can be prolonged, the longer the government can get away from doing things like have the police stomp around like stormtroopers and give untendered contracts to their mates, with no real compulsion to deliver.
5. Everyone wants "something to be done" about COVID-19, therefore the government has to be seen to be doing something, even if it's pointless.
and so that's why we are where we are.

Bayard said...

Lola, all organisations end up being run for the benefit odf their employees, in particular the senior management. I suspect the civil service got to that point sometime in the reign of Henry VIII.

Lola said...

B. Yup. Which is why you need an absolutely miniscule 'government'.

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, I have never assumed that they do apply common sense. I'm saying that they should.

B, yes, agreed to all that. Was still the wrong strategy.

Lola said...

MW. WADR - same delusion. :-)

A pipe dream.

Anomalous Cowshed said...

On the last point; there's the possibility of a "dry tinder" effect; here https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3674138 or here https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3702595

Mark Wadsworth said...

AC, ta, that backs it up.

Bayard said...

L, by coincidence, I came across this today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

George Carty said...

MW, I don't follow your analysis that the "suppress infections until a vaccine comes along" cannot possibly work. To me (given what you've said) it looks like it can succeed as long as two conditions are met:

a) that a vaccine is developed before the measures taken to suppress the virus result in a complete collapse of society, and
b) that either:
   i) a vaccine is developed that confers lifelong immunity, or
   ii) the population is willing to be re-vaccinated every few months indefinitely.

Is my logic sound here? If not, please point out my errors.

Also, you say that "shutting schools and universities is insane", but didn't even Sweden close universities if not schools?

George Carty said...

Bayard: "The Sweden/Brazil strategy was the government's favoured strategy, but they were howled down because of alarmists like Neil Ferguson putting out scary figures."

What do you make of the hypothesis that the key factor in most Western countries locking down was a barrage of social media propaganda from China's "50 Cent Army"?

Mark Wadsworth said...

GC, first comment. Your logic is sound - success depends on three massive big "IFs" being met. It is likely that it will fail on at least one of those three counts. So it is a completely hare brained plan.

Bayard said...

GC, anything that credits "bots" on social media with anything is, AFAIAC, complete bollocks. Social media is effective at getting people to influence other people that they know, not getting complete strangers or algorithms to influence anything. However, the "evil foreigners on social media" meme is very useful for organisations to blame their failings on someone else.

George Carty said...

MW: "Your logic is sound - success depends on three massive big "IFs" being met"

Small correction: it depends on the first being met along with either the second or the third: you don't need both the second and the third.

L fairfax said...

@Bayard
I would say all organizations get run for their senior management but not lower employees.
I doubt anyone who is convinced by lockdown will be convinced by this post - makes perfect sense to me though.

Mark Wadsworth said...

GC, let's not split hairs, there are several "if's" and "whether's"

develop a vaccine that works (unlikely, ever)
at some point in the future (months? years?) before 'complete collapse of society' (your words)
are we all going to take it (no)?
will vaccine give long or short term immunity (probably short)
if short term, will we all accept regular repeats (no)

Mark Wadsworth said...

LF, "Mr Wadsworth, what medical or mathematical qualifications do you have to comment on this? Do you think you are in a better position that Whitty and Ferguson and their ilk?"

L fairfax said...

@Mark Wadsworth
Sadly qualifications don't seem to make any difference she seems quite qualified and she is ignored
https://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-sunetra-gupta

Mark Wadsworth said...

LF, exactly. But one side is right and one side is wrong. So us mere mortals might as well toss a coin.

George Carty said...

I see Dr Dominic Pimenta has posted on his Twitter feed a "UK locks down on March 1st" counterfactual, even though I'd regard any lockdown before March 9th (when Italy locked down) as something that would have been unthinkable to any UK government.

Does anyone here want to chirp in on Twitter?