Was there a better approach to tackling the spread of SARS-CoV-2 (virus that causes COVID-19 disease) across Western countries, especially the UK and US? Last week, I challenged the notion that science was immutable, dictating only one path. And I had my doubts about the British government’s softly-softly approach.
All that changed yesterday with a shift in strategy delivered by a persuasive Boris Johnson. For more details of how this emerged, read Alex Wickham’s eye-ball popping report after this essay.
A new paper produced by Neal Ferguson and colleagues at the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis essentially argues that the mitigation strategy that Johnson-and-crew were recommending last week was ten times worse (in terms of deaths) than a suppression strategy. The paper is readable and in the interests of being an informed citizen, of any country, I suggest you do. Ultimately, it is about needing to go further than “flattening the curve”. (As I pointed out in #261, we…