OK guys, I think I need to explain how the virus thing works. I have been saying this for like a year, but it bears repeating.

https://twitter.com/HeracleanVision/status/1365404115023638530

The virus replicates exponentially. That means that on the upside, it can get out of control very quickly indeed.

E.g. start with 1000 people infected. Assume it doubles every week. After 16 weeks it will infect almost every person in Britain. That's less than 4 months.

If that happens, we would take casualties of about 4% across the country, mostly older people but not just older people. A non-negligible number of young people would be permanently disabled in various ways such as loss of smell or long-covid.

So we have to either stop the virus, or somehow find an acceptable way to surrender to it.

Let's put surrender to one side. How to we defeat #COVID19?

To defeat #COVID19 we have to stop the exponential and drive it to 0. Once there are 0 cases (or close to 0, say 50 cases in the whole country), it can be kept there with tracking, testing and tracing.

If you want to defeat the virus, you have to clamp down hard. That means lockdowns, vaccines and travel bans. All at the same time.

And you have to 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 doing it. That's the nature of exponential growth. If you reduce #COVID19 by 75%, you have only delayed it.

When does a successful eradication effort end?

It ends when your country gets down to a small handful of cases, with regular testing and tracing to keep that handful of cases down in the tens or hundreds.

Right now, Britain is nowhere near that. This becomes clear on a logarithmic scale:

The worst-case scenario for #COVID19 is a sort of permanent losing battle. Britain keeps yo-yo'ing in and out of lockdown. People keep dying (especially older people). Younger people keep having their lives curtailed. This could go on for YEARS.

It is now becoming clear that the winning move against #COVID19 would have been to vaccinate people between June and August of 2020, in combination with continued testing, tracing and social distancing.

We can pull this winning move off this year, in 2021, if we stay in lockdown until August with schools closed and people working from home.

The combination of lockdown/social distancing + vaccination + travel bans + a final test/trace system will likely send #COVID19 to 0.

If countries open up quickly at the same time as vaccination, there is a risk of vaccine escape variants dominating the epidemic. This is not something to mess around with. #VaccineEscape happens gradually of course, and it has already started.

Finally, let's talk about surrendering to #COVID19. It's not a crazy idea.

BUT

You don't want to flip-flop on this. The decision to surrender must be weighed carefully and followed through on.

If we were going to surrender, the best time to surrender has already passed. We have vaccines! We have already spent a year in lockdowns!

Surrender would cost lives, but it would earn back a lot of freedom, wealth and life-years for the young.

But again, it's a matter of strategy. With vaccines in hand we should be aiming to fight, and fight hard. We might even be able to send it to 0 by June.

"Eat out to help out!" is an insane policy in the context of trying to fight covid. We should be paying people to stay home.

Discounted delivery food, discounted TVs and computer games, etc. That's what the government should be subsidizing. NOT MIXING PEOPLE. NOT STATE-SPONSORED SUPERSPREADING.

I would literally support vouchers for OnlyFans over this. Every single male gets a £25 OnlyFans voucher.

"Simp out to help out"

What will happen if we screw this up?

#Permacovid with #VaccineEscape mutations. This is the ultimate losing equilibrium. You locked down for 18 months, you procrastinated the vaccine, and then you end up losing anyway.

Why can't we just stop the lockdowns? As I said, this is the surrender option. You don't half-ass this. Surrender is not a good option, but sometimes you have to pick the least bad thing. https://twitter.com/ManOnThaStreet/status/1365413839160901640