Covid: What will the blockade of England achieve?

Here we go again.

The blockade is the measure that nobody “wanted”, but now several European countries have decided that they “need”.

Some people predicted that this moment was unavoidable even before summer. Others hoped that the second wave was not a significant threat, that the increase in cases was only due to more testing being done, and that since the cases were concentrated in young people, it didn’t really matter.

But on saturday

the prime minister told the nation that without closure there would be a medical disaster, the NHS would be overwhelmed and for the first time in our lives it would not be there for us.

And yet, while the locks can be effective in suppressing the virus for a time, they do not solve the Covid-19 problem and can create a whole new series of problems.

So what is the government trying to achieve? Will it save Christmas, what happens after the lockdown is lifted and could we get caught in a permanent cycle of lockdowns?

The goal is simple: prevent hospitals from sagging under the weight of Covid patients, and prevent people from dying.

While your chance of surviving Covid has been transformed with better treatment, it still requires a hospital bed and staff.

The government says that with current trends, hospitals in some parts of the country could run out of space within weeks and the NHS as a whole, including additional nightingales, by Christmas.

If that happens, deaths, from Covid and other diseases, would skyrocket and doctors wouldn’t be able to treat everyone.

The answer is almost certainly yes, but how much is a difficult question.

We cannot expect the same results as the first lock because it is not the same as the first lock. The role of schools in particular remains an important unknown.

Millions of children were banished from classrooms in March and this will not be repeated in Lockdown 2.0.

But the Office for National Statistics has reported that infections are “rising sharply” in high school kids. What exactly this means is still debated.

There are predictions that the four-week lockdown could reduce infections significantly, possibly to only a quarter of their current level.

But in the worst case, four weeks of pain could lead to a 10% drop and we would still be in a tough spot.

It will be about two weeks after closing before we can know how well it is working.

Blockages prevent us from spending time with other people.

The coronavirus thrives on the fact that we are social and the only tool we have to stop the virus is to reduce the number of people we meet in our daily lives.

Everything we are doing has an impact. The R number, the number of people to whom each infected person transmits the virus on average, was around 3 in March.

It is now around 1.2, but anything above one means that the number of cases will continue to grow exponentially. The block should push the R number below one.

Reducing infections would reduce the number of deaths with Covid, but there would be a delay before the effect kicks in.

Deaths from Covid are likely to continue to rise during lockdown due to the long delay between people who contract the virus, need hospital treatment and die.

People who die with Covid in late November probably already have the virus today.

But the confinement will also cost lives. Last time, some people who needed emergency care, including those who suffered a stroke, did not seek help.

And there will be an economic impact that will impoverish people and affect long-term physical and mental health.

If nothing else changes and we go back to the restrictions we have today, then yes.

The goal of blocking is for fewer people to get infected, but this means that fewer people build up immunity to the virus, although this remains a hotly debated area.

It means that a high proportion of the population will remain vulnerable to infection and that is why some scientists hope that a third or more waves of the virus will be controlled by repeated lockdowns.

It is this problem that means that some groups argue that a completely different approach is needed.

Just buying time may seem useless and like delaying the inevitable, but it allows scientific progress.

The first blockade gave UK researchers the opportunity to discover the first life-saving drug from Covid-19, dexamethasone. We are now in a better position than we were.

It has also led us, hopefully, to the pinnacle of a vaccine. Data on the first trials are expected imminently.

The government also says massive testing is on the horizon. The details are still unclear, but China has been using it to test entire cities of millions in order to eradicate the virus.

It also brings us closer to spring. The seasons turn contrary to the moment.

The virus persists more easily in the cold, we tend to gather inside than outside and even close the windows because it is cold it facilitates the spread of the virus. All of that changes in our favor once the weather starts to warm up.

The government’s Test and Trace program is struggling a lot.

It is like a stool that needs three legs to stand. You need testability, the ability to quickly trace contacts, and people to isolate themselves in order to work.

One leg is fine as the UK has dramatically increased testing capacity. The problem is that the other two are broken – contact tracing is too slow and not everyone is isolating themselves, so the program is on the floor.

It should work best when cases are low, but there are no guarantees that the lockdown will make cases low enough and even Germany’s widely praised testing program has been unable to keep up with the virus.

The lower the levels of the virus, the closer we’ll get, but the government is planning for the entire winter not just for one day.

It is remarkable that Boris Johnson, who in the past promised “normalcy for Christmas” acknowledges that this year may, in fact, be “very different.”

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