Johnson And The Guinea Pigs

by Les May

EARLIER this afternoon I watched the Minister for Care, Helen Whately, trying to give a reassuring message that the government had an effective strategy for dealing with the SARS-02 virus which when it infects humans causes the disease now known as Covid19.  What she did not explain is why the UK is following a strategy which differs from that being followed in Spain and Ireland, recommended as good practice by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and vigorously pursued by China.  That it works is evidenced by the massive decline in new cases in China in recent days and the fact that the it is now advising Italy about the measures to be taken to defeat the outbreak.

Following WHO guidance other countries affected by the disease are pursuing a policy of ‘contain the disease and eliminate the virus’.  That’s not easy and it is expensive.  As well as hospitalising and treating those who are suffering from the disease you have to find the people they have been in contact with and isolate them until they either show signs of the disease or you can be sure that the incubation period is over.

Boris Johnson and his government prefer the cheapskate option of letting the virus infect at least 60% of the us so that the survivors will no longer be at risk from infection and so transmission of the virus will come to an end and it will disappear. It has the grandiose title of ‘herd immunity’ which makes it sound a medically respectable strategy.

A more honest appraisal of it is that Johnson and his government are proposing to use the UK population as guinea pigs and are quite prepared to see a lot of people die as ‘collateral damage’. This is a purely political decision. If it really is ‘science based’ as is claimed then that evidence needs to be placed in the public domain so that it can be independently evaluated by people who are less close to government than Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Valance and Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty. These two seem happy to provide cover for the political decisions being made by Johnson.

As I pointed out in an earlier article if 60% of a UK population of 60 million people become infected with the virus causing the disease Covid19 that is 36 million people. The mortality rate for those infected is 1%, that translates to 360,000 deaths. Not everyone infected with the virus will show symptoms, but as the mortality rate for those who do show symptoms is about 4% we can estimate that the total number of people who will be infected and show symptoms, will be about 9 million people. Of these 80% will recover without hospitalisation, 15% will require oxygen and 5% will require to be artificially ventilated. In other words 1.8 million of those 36 million it is assumed will be infected, will need hospitalisation.

If we assume that the virus is with us for 18 weeks of the summer and the infection curve is fairly flat that means there will be a requirement for space for a 100,000 patients of which 75,000 will need oxygen and 25,000 will need to be artificially ventilated EACH WEEK. If the infection curve is not flat and is sharply peaked these figures will be much higher for a short time.

I have based these figures on the information provided by the WHO and UK government assumptions about the proportion of the population who need to be infected to produce ‘herd immunity’. If you don’t like the message don’t shoot the messenger.

If you are sceptical about whether the NHS will be able to cope with 100,000 high maintenance patients a week for much of the summer you are not alone.

When the weekly death toll starts to move into four figures Tory MPs will get jittery: when granny and grandad die gasping for breath, Johnson’s ‘Red Wall’ will be rubble.

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