Worst Excess Death and Economic stats in Europe

That point about Chris Witty isn't true Rav, I watched a panorama documentary, and the lockdown fatigue theory was never documented in any report and seems to have developed almost on it's own, the behavioral insights team deny ever mentioning it. I understand why you would think that though as I did for a long time.

Are you suggesting that they never mentioned lockdown fatigue in the early stages? - or have I misunderstood that bit.

I absolutely remember watching one of the Coronavirus briefing type programmes, and them talking about lockdown fatigue, so it's certainly not a figment of people's imagination.
 
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Just to clear a few things, our country being heavily dependant on the service industry doesn't mean we get hit more because people can't go to restaurants. Every other country has restaurants too. It means we provide services, be it IT service industry, ISO audits, London Stock Exchange and banking services, logistics services, travel, and whole bunch of other services. Our restaurant culture is no different to anywhere else and equally impacted.
 
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That point about Chris Witty isn't true Rav, I watched a panorama documentary, and the lockdown fatigue theory was never documented in any report and seems to have developed almost on it's own, the behavioral insights team deny ever mentioning it. I understand why you would think that though as I did for a long time.


The British medical Journal would disagree...

What did officials say about the timing?
Speaking at a live televised briefing on 9 March, England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, said, “It is not just a matter of what you do but when you do it. Anything we do, we have got to be able to sustain. Once we have started these things we have to continue them through the peak, and there is a risk that, if we go too early, people will understandably get fatigued and it will be difficult to sustain this over time.”
On 12 March he added, “An important part of the science on this is actually the behavioural science, and what that shows is probably common sense to everybody in this audience, that people start off with the best of intentions, but enthusiasm at a certain point starts to flag.”
This idea of behavioural fatigue for measures such as lockdown was repeated in other briefings—including by the prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the UK’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance—and it has since seemingly been treated as fact.
The deputy chief medical officer, Jenny Harries, told the US news outlet NBC News on 11 March,1 “Just because a lockdown is imposed doesn’t mean that that is the right thing to do. Timing of an intervention is absolutely critical. Put it in too early, you have a time period [where] people actually get non-compliant—they won’t want to keep it going for a long time.”

Link to confirm accuracy: https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3166.full.print
 
The British medical Journal would disagree...

What did officials say about the timing?
Speaking at a live televised briefing on 9 March, England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, said, “It is not just a matter of what you do but when you do it. Anything we do, we have got to be able to sustain. Once we have started these things we have to continue them through the peak, and there is a risk that, if we go too early, people will understandably get fatigued and it will be difficult to sustain this over time.”
On 12 March he added, “An important part of the science on this is actually the behavioural science, and what that shows is probably common sense to everybody in this audience, that people start off with the best of intentions, but enthusiasm at a certain point starts to flag.”
This idea of behavioural fatigue for measures such as lockdown was repeated in other briefings—including by the prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the UK’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance—and it has since seemingly been treated as fact.
The deputy chief medical officer, Jenny Harries, told the US news outlet NBC News on 11 March,1 “Just because a lockdown is imposed doesn’t mean that that is the right thing to do. Timing of an intervention is absolutely critical. Put it in too early, you have a time period [where] people actually get non-compliant—they won’t want to keep it going for a long time.”

Link to confirm accuracy: https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3166.full.print
I'm fairly sure it wasn't in any Sage report and was dismissed by the behavioural scientists reporting to Sage. Seems to have been made up by Whitty/politicians/special advisor.
 
I work with a couple of Dutch lads and they reckon the Netherlands is managing the pandemic pretty similar to the UK. The UK Government have been poor at times, but it's hardly the easiest situation to deal with.

As for the reduction in GDP. It was always going to happen. Shutting down the Economy and shutting people at home is bad economic activity. The an economic model where services is huge, it was always going to be bad.

1) Netherlands GDP fall is predicted to be less than half of ours

2) The fall in GDP in Q2 was not driven by the services/non-services split of the UK economy.
 
I'm fairly sure it wasn't in any Sage report and was dismissed by the behavioural scientists reporting to Sage. Seems to have been made up by Whitty/politicians/special advisor.

I'm not a behavioral scientist, but I can definitely see 'lockdown fatigue' being a real thing. (Especially given the nature of a lot of British people).

Do you not think that people would eventually become more slack about lockdown measures if they went on and on bear66?
 
I work with a couple of Dutch lads and they reckon the Netherlands is managing the pandemic pretty similar to the UK. The UK Government have been poor at times, but it's hardly the easiest situation to deal with.

As for the reduction in GDP. It was always going to happen. Shutting down the Economy and shutting people at home is bad economic activity. The an economic model where services is huge, it was always going to be bad.

I was actually out last night for a family meal and the restaurant is booming again. That will be replicated in all towns and cities. Hopefully the country bounces back strongly.

i am sure you are aware of why restaurants were full last night and the previous two nights? Its not yet a sign of economic recovery but an attempt to haul the hospitality industry off the floor. Lets see if September has similar number eating out on a Wednesday. If so then that is grounds for hope.
 
I'm not a behavioral scientist, but I can definitely see 'lockdown fatigue' being a real thing. (Especially given the nature of a lot of British people).

Do you not think that people would eventually become more slack about lockdown measures if they went on and on bear66?
I was commenting on Sage advice. Those countries who locked down early came out months before us. So short lockdown, no fatigue.
 
Are you suggesting that they never mentioned lockdown fatigue in the early stages? - or have I misunderstood that bit.

I absolutely remember watching one of the Coronavirus briefing type programmes, and them talking about lockdown fatigue, so it's certainly not a figment of people's imagination.
No I am saying no one knows where the idea came from, it was originally attributed to the behavoural science committee but they denied every mentioning it. It seemed to grow out of nowhere - Chris Witty says he was told by the aforementioned committee, they say he wasn't.
 
The British medical Journal would disagree...

What did officials say about the timing?
Speaking at a live televised briefing on 9 March, England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, said, “It is not just a matter of what you do but when you do it. Anything we do, we have got to be able to sustain. Once we have started these things we have to continue them through the peak, and there is a risk that, if we go too early, people will understandably get fatigued and it will be difficult to sustain this over time.”
On 12 March he added, “An important part of the science on this is actually the behavioural science, and what that shows is probably common sense to everybody in this audience, that people start off with the best of intentions, but enthusiasm at a certain point starts to flag.”
This idea of behavioural fatigue for measures such as lockdown was repeated in other briefings—including by the prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the UK’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance—and it has since seemingly been treated as fact.
The deputy chief medical officer, Jenny Harries, told the US news outlet NBC News on 11 March,1 “Just because a lockdown is imposed doesn’t mean that that is the right thing to do. Timing of an intervention is absolutely critical. Put it in too early, you have a time period [where] people actually get non-compliant—they won’t want to keep it going for a long time.”

Link to confirm accuracy: https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3166.full.print
I am not arguing that he said it, I am arguing where he got it from. It took on a life of it's own with no one admitting to first floating the idea. The Behavioral committee openly said they never mentioned it and didn't think it would be a phenomona at all.
 
Laughing. "That point about Chris Witty isn't true Rav" was your answer to my memory of him actually talking about locking down 'too early' and clearly I wasn't alone as the report from the British Medical Journal reported above. Since he was one of people directly involved and no doubt being closely listened to by the government who were following the science it does tend to somewhat puncture the idea that locking down too late was 100% the Governments fault. No doubt Sage are keen to run a mile from any suggestion that they might have been thinking along the same lines.
 
Not sure about SAGE running, their minutes are heavily redacted I believe, so we don't know exactly what the advice was in a lot of instances. On the issue of lockdown fatigue, according to the panorama documentary Witty claimed the behavioral team told him that, they said they told him no such thing, which is why I say it took on a life of it's own, someone clearly mentioned it, but it was never in a report and considered by the behaviorists, or, of course, someone is just plain lying.
 
Not sure about SAGE running, their minutes are heavily redacted I believe, so we don't know exactly what the advice was in a lot of instances. On the issue of lockdown fatigue, according to the panorama documentary Witty claimed the behavioral team told him that, they said they told him no such thing, which is why I say it took on a life of it's own, someone clearly mentioned it, but it was never in a report and considered by the behaviorists, or, of course, someone is just plain lying.

Is it being disputed as a 'thing' though? Surely not. I have observed plenty of people during this process who became sick of being locked down, and started to bend or break the rules.

I thought it was used as a reason for delaying lockdown. It seemed a reasonable theory at the time (to me). In hindsight, locking down sooner would probably have been better though, as it could have stopped the spread sooner, meaning lockdown could have probably been shorter.

Easy to say in hindsight though. Locking down an economy is such a massive thing for any government to do.
 
Cuthbert I don't doubt for a minute that if you keep people locked up in their houses for months they will eventually start to break the rules, that's human nature I would think. Some would go longer than others I am sure.

As you say the timing of the lockdown can be viewed in a few ways.

Firstly locking down sooner would have saved a lot of lives, people who died directly of the disease. Given the death rate was doubling every 4 days, if you lock down 8 days earlier you save about 30,000 lives.

Secondly, if you lock down earlier, and this is just conjecture on my part, you do not stay locked down as long so it has a smaller impact on the economy and people are more likely to be able to cope with it, hopefully reducing the secondary deaths also.

Chris Witty I think argued that locking down too early would have meant we stayed locked down for longer, I think this was when he used the lockdown fatigue argument. I cannot understand why he would say that. Other countries who had quicker and stricter lock downs opened up much quicker than the UK, their economies are not suffering as much as the UK and their mortality rates seem much better also.
 
Cuthbert I don't doubt for a minute that if you keep people locked up in their houses for months they will eventually start to break the rules, that's human nature I would think. Some would go longer than others I am sure.

As you say the timing of the lockdown can be viewed in a few ways.

Firstly locking down sooner would have saved a lot of lives, people who died directly of the disease. Given the death rate was doubling every 4 days, if you lock down 8 days earlier you save about 30,000 lives.

Secondly, if you lock down earlier, and this is just conjecture on my part, you do not stay locked down as long so it has a smaller impact on the economy and people are more likely to be able to cope with it, hopefully reducing the secondary deaths also.

Chris Witty I think argued that locking down too early would have meant we stayed locked down for longer, I think this was when he used the lockdown fatigue argument. I cannot understand why he would say that. Other countries who had quicker and stricter lock downs opened up much quicker than the UK, their economies are not suffering as much as the UK and their mortality rates seem much better also.

I think they probably believed it somewhat at the time. (About fatigue, and having to lockdown for longer).

I agree with pretty much everything else you're saying though. I think the Govt were too reluctant/afraid to lockdown the economy. You could absolutely argue in their defence that such action was extremely contrary to the freedom & liberties that we're all used to in the UK, and probably also contributed to the slowness to take the required action. However, it proved to be a mistake IMO. As you say, locking down sooner would have been better.
 
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