Back when the Prime Minister first announced the roadmap to ending the COVID-19 lockdown, the modelers who provide numbers to SAGE, its science advisory board, produced a few graphs showing what could arrive in case of UK opening.
These models are, to a certain extent, ancient history.
They happened before the Delta / Indian variant arrived on these coasts, and some of the scenarios assumed a reopening a little faster than what was envisioned at the time.
All the same, it is worth considering what these models said, as such things tend to guide government policy and in this case there is a glaring difference between the projections and what happened. really happened.
At the time, the Imperial model suggested that we might be faced with a total COVID England’s hospital population of nearly 60,000 – well, far more than in previous waves of the disease. Even their mid-range scenario indicated that the number of hospitals would currently be close to 15,000.
So what is, please, the latest hospital population – how many to compare with these projections? Only 1,290 people. Now that number is certainly on the rise, but it’s worth saying that it’s currently a little better than even the best-case scenario offered by Imperial, and not far from the best-case scenarios put forward by the epidemiologists at Warwick.
The point here is twofold. First, things are going well, very well, compared to what we expected at the beginning of spring. There are probably some explanations: the vaccination schedule is exceeding expectations, the lockdown is going a little longer than expected (although the latter factor is probably too recent to be reflected in the numbers). The second is that everyone expected a rise in cases this summer.
What is happening now – with cases steadily increasing – is no surprise. Indeed, this is the plan.
Keep this in mind when you see the business figures in the weeks to come. Yes…
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Source: news.sky.com
This notice was published: 2021-06-21 17:04:00
