Letters I wrote to UK Government re COVID19
Here are some highlights of letters that I wrote to my Member of Parliament and to the UK government Prime Minister, Health Minister, the Shadow Health Minister and others on the subject of CO|VID-19. I received no reply to any of them except from Philip Hollobone, my local MP, who messaged Matt Hancock on my behalf and got a fairly terse reply.
1st March my email to MP:
:
1mar:
We are now no longer part of the nonsensical "freedom of movement of people" dogma that pervades the EU. This could be a deadly conceit on their part. We will see how it pans out for them. In my view, we should look to closing the Channel Tunnel and shutting off flights and ships not only from certain parts of CHina but from S. Korea, Italy, Iran and possibly others as this develops.
Failure to act on this holds enormous risks in my view. I don't believe the platitudes from the WHO and some of the talking heads on TV. They are ignoring the high case fatality rate of this disease and assuming that many undiagnosed mild cases exist to lower that rate. In my view, that is nonsense. The only way that could be true is if there were many mild cases in Wuhan and Hubei during the quarantine but they would likely have infected anyone living with them. Undiagnosed mild cases i nthe community would spread the disease remarkably quickly to many thousands of people and the case load in China would probably be in the many millions by now if this were so.
To me, the maths says that this is unlikely and my forecast for China of 86000 cases and 3450 deaths gives a case fatality there of about 4%
---
4mar
I have applied the same model to South Korea that I have used for China. I want to put this on the record in case it is correct, because it's early days. 10,950 cases. It could change because the trend is tentative enough to reverse. I think that S Korea has handled the situation well and been highly transparent.
I saw the PM's press conference. I'm glad they did it but it was quite depressing. At least it handled the potential worst case scenario possibilities and was a great example of transparency./-
---
7mar:
The nations that act in their self-interest will do the best. The Chinese have beaten this disease I feel and so it is possible but only with discipline. I fear that western nations lack that self-discipline and are likely to be ravaged. Soon the Chinese will be less infected that anyone else.
The Channel Tunnel needs to be closed now, in my view. Someone needs to demand that in Parliament. I don't know if we are accepting flights from Italy, S Korea, Hubei Province, or Iran but really we should be accepting no travel to or from these areas, period.
One amusing thing. I went to London on Friday. I didn't want to go. I waled about 3 miles in London. It was quite busy No-one was wearing a mask, except for two Chinese girls crossing the road opposite St. Pancras station when I was coming back home!
I predict that within a few weeks, China will take measures to restrict travel INTO China to avoid getting re-infected.
---
8mar:
I think that without a rapid improvement, Italy will overtake CHINA and the epidemic there will go on to as late as September. This would be economically devastating, a 6 month hiatus. China is likely nearly done with this disease for now and can open up soon.
We need to put as much pressure as possible to make the government take very strong proactive and pre-emptive actions or this disease will get out of control here too.
-
Our MP wrote to Matt Hancock to no avail:
Dear David
Thank you for your e-mails.
I raised concerns about the Government’s approach on Monday:
:-
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
My constituents in Kettering are struggling to understand why we are not banning flights from quarantined areas of north Italy.
Matt Hancock
The reason is that there are many UK citizens in that area who may want to come home. Also, crucially—this is very important—the evidence shows that banning flights from affected areas does very little to protect us. Indeed, Italy was the only country in Europe that banned flights from China earlier in the progress of this disease: it did not work, and now Italy is the epicentre of the European outbreak.
---
15mar:
To :jon.ashworth.mp@parliament.uk
It is clear from even a basic statistical analysis that even once quarantine measures are put into place (e.g. in Wuhan, Hubei, China, S Korea and Italy), there is still very likely to be a tenfold increase in cases (or more) from that point on.
For example, Italy has been in the several thousands and now they have locked down as they are on their way from 10,000 to 20,000. My forecast for Italy stands at around 150,000 cases at present.
I do have a fear that even despite the quarantines, that China and later South Korea may experience clusters (this is definitely happening in China outside of Hubei right now) that could seed a new epidemic when they release quarantines but of course they can look at the evidence and release quarantines gradually if this is a danger.
---
and again:
15mar
OK we have (had) drive through testing. That was good. Not enough tests, not enough high tech solutions but now it's going to get worse and we are going the way of Italy perhaps to 200,000+ cases vs S Korea's under 9000 at the close of this particular epidemic cycle.
---
7apr:
The comparisons with Italy, China and South Korea versus the UK trend are important. The exponent on the decay curve needs to be large and negative, something like -0.0 to -0.15 but it is only around -0.03 to -0.04. This gives big forecasts for the UK vs Italy whose exponent as -0.06 to -0.09. It means that it takes a very long time for the UK % daily changes to halve as can be seen on the trend graphs.
We have kind of hit the +10%/day mark which is one make or break level but the % change is decreasing too slowly to prevent a huge total number of cases and deaths.
---
11may:
It is abundantly clear that the current R0 in the UK is considerably higher than those in these other countries and therefore the path to an R0>1 scenario is a much shorter one. Secondly, the potential path to a manageable level of new daily cases is a much longer one with such a slow downtrend in new daily cases – and deaths. I wondered if the persistence of high new daily case figures in the UK was perhaps due to increases in the number of people being tested but I do not believe this is true because the new deaths are also still consistently very high.
---
+++
/-
1st March my email to MP:
:
1mar:
We are now no longer part of the nonsensical "freedom of movement of people" dogma that pervades the EU. This could be a deadly conceit on their part. We will see how it pans out for them. In my view, we should look to closing the Channel Tunnel and shutting off flights and ships not only from certain parts of CHina but from S. Korea, Italy, Iran and possibly others as this develops.
Failure to act on this holds enormous risks in my view. I don't believe the platitudes from the WHO and some of the talking heads on TV. They are ignoring the high case fatality rate of this disease and assuming that many undiagnosed mild cases exist to lower that rate. In my view, that is nonsense. The only way that could be true is if there were many mild cases in Wuhan and Hubei during the quarantine but they would likely have infected anyone living with them. Undiagnosed mild cases i nthe community would spread the disease remarkably quickly to many thousands of people and the case load in China would probably be in the many millions by now if this were so.
To me, the maths says that this is unlikely and my forecast for China of 86000 cases and 3450 deaths gives a case fatality there of about 4%
---
4mar
I have applied the same model to South Korea that I have used for China. I want to put this on the record in case it is correct, because it's early days. 10,950 cases. It could change because the trend is tentative enough to reverse. I think that S Korea has handled the situation well and been highly transparent.
I saw the PM's press conference. I'm glad they did it but it was quite depressing. At least it handled the potential worst case scenario possibilities and was a great example of transparency./-
---
7mar:
The nations that act in their self-interest will do the best. The Chinese have beaten this disease I feel and so it is possible but only with discipline. I fear that western nations lack that self-discipline and are likely to be ravaged. Soon the Chinese will be less infected that anyone else.
The Channel Tunnel needs to be closed now, in my view. Someone needs to demand that in Parliament. I don't know if we are accepting flights from Italy, S Korea, Hubei Province, or Iran but really we should be accepting no travel to or from these areas, period.
One amusing thing. I went to London on Friday. I didn't want to go. I waled about 3 miles in London. It was quite busy No-one was wearing a mask, except for two Chinese girls crossing the road opposite St. Pancras station when I was coming back home!
I predict that within a few weeks, China will take measures to restrict travel INTO China to avoid getting re-infected.
---
8mar:
I think that without a rapid improvement, Italy will overtake CHINA and the epidemic there will go on to as late as September. This would be economically devastating, a 6 month hiatus. China is likely nearly done with this disease for now and can open up soon.
We need to put as much pressure as possible to make the government take very strong proactive and pre-emptive actions or this disease will get out of control here too.
-
Our MP wrote to Matt Hancock to no avail:
Dear David
Thank you for your e-mails.
I raised concerns about the Government’s approach on Monday:
:-
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
My constituents in Kettering are struggling to understand why we are not banning flights from quarantined areas of north Italy.
Matt Hancock
The reason is that there are many UK citizens in that area who may want to come home. Also, crucially—this is very important—the evidence shows that banning flights from affected areas does very little to protect us. Indeed, Italy was the only country in Europe that banned flights from China earlier in the progress of this disease: it did not work, and now Italy is the epicentre of the European outbreak.
---
15mar:
To :jon.ashworth.mp@parliament.uk
It is clear from even a basic statistical analysis that even once quarantine measures are put into place (e.g. in Wuhan, Hubei, China, S Korea and Italy), there is still very likely to be a tenfold increase in cases (or more) from that point on.
For example, Italy has been in the several thousands and now they have locked down as they are on their way from 10,000 to 20,000. My forecast for Italy stands at around 150,000 cases at present.
I do have a fear that even despite the quarantines, that China and later South Korea may experience clusters (this is definitely happening in China outside of Hubei right now) that could seed a new epidemic when they release quarantines but of course they can look at the evidence and release quarantines gradually if this is a danger.
---
and again:
15mar
OK we have (had) drive through testing. That was good. Not enough tests, not enough high tech solutions but now it's going to get worse and we are going the way of Italy perhaps to 200,000+ cases vs S Korea's under 9000 at the close of this particular epidemic cycle.
---
7apr:
The comparisons with Italy, China and South Korea versus the UK trend are important. The exponent on the decay curve needs to be large and negative, something like -0.0 to -0.15 but it is only around -0.03 to -0.04. This gives big forecasts for the UK vs Italy whose exponent as -0.06 to -0.09. It means that it takes a very long time for the UK % daily changes to halve as can be seen on the trend graphs.
We have kind of hit the +10%/day mark which is one make or break level but the % change is decreasing too slowly to prevent a huge total number of cases and deaths.
---
11may:
It is abundantly clear that the current R0 in the UK is considerably higher than those in these other countries and therefore the path to an R0>1 scenario is a much shorter one. Secondly, the potential path to a manageable level of new daily cases is a much longer one with such a slow downtrend in new daily cases – and deaths. I wondered if the persistence of high new daily case figures in the UK was perhaps due to increases in the number of people being tested but I do not believe this is true because the new deaths are also still consistently very high.
---
+++
/-
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