Do 10,000 extra infections matter?
JoNova — cheaper and faster than a Parliamentary Report — said two months ago that it was baffling that the UK locked everyone down, but kept flying in the virus. Now British MP’s are saying the same.
UPDATE: Given Boris Johnson suddenly changed policy on flights from Spain last week, immediately adding a mandatory quarantine, what’s the bet someone told him this report was coming?
No 10’s ‘inexplicable’ decision to lift quarantine at height of pandemic: MPs’ damning report condemns ‘serious mistake’ that allowed 10,000 infected people into the UK
David Barett, DailyMail
Delaying quarantine measures at the border was a ‘serious mistake’ that allowed 10,000 infected people into the UK accelerated the virus spread, a major report by MPs says.
The cross-party inquiry is highly critical of the Government’s ‘inexplicable’ decision to lift its initial quarantine measures in mid-March, ten days before lockdown.
Experts from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine calculated that up to 10,000 infected people, largely from Spain, France and Italy, imported the virus into the UK.
Viruses can only survive in people temporarily, so to beat a rogue chemical code, we just stop feeding it new bodies. The cheapest, natural gap between networked, gregarious humans is at international borders. Every smaller border partition is harder, more complicated and more expensive. If state borders are a headache, suburban borders are a migraine. And when they fail we have to put a border around every single house.
More flights speeds up the peak… and the death toll.
The sheer size of the UK air traffic is something to behold:
Arrivals by air to the UK totalled 7 million in January, 6.8 million in February and 3.8 million in March before falling to just 112,000 in April, the report says.
Nearly every other nation in the world closed borders. Haiti, Cuba, Nigeria, Eritrea. Pick a country, nearly any country. They almost all closed borders.
A hard border is the first lesson in baby epidemiology classes. But somehow the two greatest nations on Earth both failed to get this right. Which brings me to my Swamp hypothesis — namely that the two oldest, strongest democracies on Earth also have the most mature Swamps. They have the most red tape, the most complex incentives, and the deepest well of conflicts of interest. All of which makes possible, the dumbest decisions.
In this case, the clues suggest it was the 1918 flu model and the quest for herd immunity that led the UK down this deadly path.
The publicly funded Swamp may feel more incentive to help leaders who hand out more public funding.
… 67 million people are living under expensive and strict lockdown conditions, and the thing stopping that from eliminating the virus are the 10,000 or so people who arrive daily without quarantine.
For people who want strong borders, this is the biggest chance to get them since WWII. Where are the sovereign battlers who want border controls?
—————————————————–
- Quarantines work: 12 days after lockdowns, quarantines and isolation, Coronavirus slows. This is text book microbiology.
- Coronavirus can affect brains, may increase stroke risk.
- Solve Vitamin D deficiency first to help beat Coronavirus.
- Coronavirus may be man made. Why did the CCP destroy the evidence?
- Looks like we can extinguish Coronavirus: Australia and NZ tracking to zero.
- Read Crush the Curve — save the economy