In the week 26 Public Health England surveillance report, this map was produced. PHE Surveillance Report 25 June Figure 9: Weekly rate of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population tested under Pillar 1 and 2, by upper-tier local authority, England (box shows enlarged maps of London area) Leicester is subject to a local ‘lockdown’, but what …
Category archives: Public Policy
The Lack of COVID Data: And Why It’s A Problem
Following the local ‘lockdown’ in Leicester, lots of people – including newspaper editors – are anxious to answer the question ‘are we next?’. The lack of reliable Government data poses two problems: firstly, making towns look worse than they are; and secondly making people question why they are in Lockdown. Data in the UK is …
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Explaining the Leicester COVID-19 Outbreak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPOUIa9Q6aA Full playlist of BBC Interviews here The Home Secretary, when questioned on the BBC Andrew Marr show announced on Sunday 28 June ‘there is going to be a Leicester lockdown?”So, there will be support going into Leicester … with local flare-ups, it’s right that we have a local solution’ But looking at the public …
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Operational Research Response to COVID-19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78zZVRx2RRU
Muddling Through Does Not Work for Pandemics: COVID-19 Letter Published in The Financial Times
In 1959, Charles Lindblom wrote The Science of “Muddling Through”, advocating an incremental approach to public policy and management. “Muddling through” does not work for pandemics. The science of pandemics is dominated by epidemiology, not behavioral science. The delay between policy decisions (or indecisions) and the resultant high UK death rate needs tracing back from …
Charley Says Social Distancing
Charley was a character in UK Public Information Films in the 1970s. Here he is in ‘Charley Says Social Distancing’ “Treat everyone else as if they’re about to catch fire and you’re a lit match.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YmN0iV3f0I Charley: Miaoweeaawwwoa [I can’t believe I’m writing this] Narrator: This is you. You’re a match. And these are your …
I am concerned about the UK Government’s approach to social distancing
The real problem with Coronavirus Covid-19 is that when the health service becomes overloaded, the death rate goes up significantly. So, it is imperative that we keep the number of cases at any one time below or as near as possible to NHS capacity. The Government’s model relies on shifting the peak. I am not …
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Social Distancing using Play-Doh and Matches
There has been much talk about using social distancing as a response to the Coronavirus outbreak. Here’s a video of how social distancing can be used: Close Contact, where the population is infected very rapidly. This is not A Good Thing – the national health service is overwhelmed, and the death rate goes up as …
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Coronavirus: The First Big Test of Behavioral Science
The United Kingdom is at a crossroads, an ideological battle between natural science and behavioral science. Let’s hope for all our sakes we get this one right. Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, is facing a dilemma. When do we go from the so-called containment phase for controlling Covid-19 Coronavirus, to the delay phase. In …
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Contagion: How to Model It and What R-nought (R0) Actually Means
The 2011 film Contagion, starring the spectacularly ill-fated Gwyneth Paltrow, is a dramatization of a viral pandemic starting in pretty analagous circumstances to the current Wuhan Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak. It’s a good film, and is a great introduction to the work of Centers for Disease Control (CDCs) that monitor the spread – the epidemiology – …
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