THE PROBLEM
We now find our lives blighted by COVID-19. Significant restrictions across the country, and more in the north of England. Theatres, concert venues and sports closed. Pantomimes cancelled. Now the Cineworld cinema chain is closing this week.
Overall there's hundreds of thousands of jobs and self-employed contracts at risk. The Shadow Chancellor is right to say the new support schemes are not enough and indeed not going to work Furthermore, millions of people are missing their favourite pastimes.
PM Johnson confirmed on Sunday that the winter is going to be tough and "bumpy". Chancellor Sunak is substantially reducing support as the furlough scheme comes to an end shortly. Support cut to businesses, the employed and indeed the self-employed. He can't support every job. That means the night-time industry effectively sacrificed, just because it isn't viable now.
Whilst we patiently await a vaccine, do we really want to live like this? Is there a better way? Indeed is there a solution that would let us live with the virus? And be better for the Treasury?
SOLUTION EXAMPLES
In my professional life I have developed solutions to complex ‘impossible’ problems on numerous occasions. To mention just two:
- Two divisions within a business group were to be merged, and needed to be managed with one team on one system with one set of business processes. But the divisions were part of two different legal entities, which was going to take months to sort out with an outside investor. In the meantime the two businesses had to be accounted for separately, using two different stock valuation methods, actual and standard. Once we had the solution designed and approved, the MD of the combined business said “I didn’t think we would be able to find a solution”. I had led the design. Result.
- A well-known business had a major problem that three other Chartered Accountant had investigated but not solved. I had a hunch, based on my experience of systems, and with my tenacity and gentle cajoling of colleagues, I found the solution. The solution contributed more profit to their year-end “Dash for Cash”, involving all directors and employees, than all their other initiatives put together. Result.
I've also audited the main financial systems at British Gas in Staines, as it happens.
DEVELOPING AN INTEREST IN DEFEATING COVID-19
Back in early March 2020, before the lockdown, I started to take an interest in COVID-19. As a graduate Oxbridge scientist, I had studied genetics and test spectroscopy. I started posting interesting articles on COVID-19 that I had found, which weren’t reflected in the mainstream media.
That interest has increased. My main hobby of playing music and attending concerts, gigs and music festivals was closed down in March. Every such activity has remained closed. Some venues boarded up, with no hope in sight of being opened under this Government’s strategy.
It has therefore been my ambition to get these activities re-started and re-opened. For me and my many pals in the industry. Being the most difficult industry to reopen means reopening the whole economy. Which is to everyone’s benefit. Including to the Treasury's benefit.
But this has to be done without the virus running rampant, as that would inevitably mean the NHS being over-run. Preferably keeping deaths and LongCOVID to a minimum.
Impossible? The Government seems to think so. But I don’t believe in impossible.
In doing my research, I’ve helped the production of an academic paper about RT-PCR testing for Birmingham University. That involved the review of literally hundreds of academic papers looking for relevant content. And using the opportunity to read about a whole raft of issues including physical symptoms, treatments, the mental effects and the ‘side-effects’ of lockdowns. Seeing important developments before they get reported in the mainstream media.
I’ve done my research, which of course continues. So what’s the answer?
FINDING A SOLUTION
We actually have two problems:
- What level of infection is the optimum balance between lives and livelihoods, including between deaths and the economy?
- How do we get to that level, and importantly stay there?
THE OPTIMUM BALANCE
One solution to the balance problem is what New Zealand has tried to do, which is to “eliminate” the virus to zero level. They were initially successful. But they’ve found that viruses get into the country via people and possibly chilled food, even though New Zealand is far more isolated than the UK. Realistically, full elimination is not feasible for the UK.
So my solution to this apparently impossible problem of balancing lives and livelihoods is #NearZero. Subtlety different from “elimination” proposed by the Independent SAGE group, in being a different frame of mind. Recognising that a small background infection level is unavoidable, and gearing up to keep it below 1000 a day.
One thousand a day was suggested by Professor Chris Whitty the Chief Medical Adviser back in March, but seemingly forgotten.
That very low level of infection would mean we could reopen the economy AND save lives. At less than 4 people a day per hundred thousand being infected, there would be about 20 being out and about infectious before symptoms in a town like Watford. 30 out and about in a City such as Oxford. The chances of meeting someone infectious slim enough to live with. Provided:
- Any outbreak is pounced upon and extinguished back to a very low level
- There’s better controls on people and goods coming in to the UK
Two topics covered in more detail in this article.
#NearZero would also minimise LongCOVID, that threatens to seriously affect far more people of all ages including young adults and children. LongCOVID is symptoms suffered for more than two or three months. It’s lethargy, as typically follow any serious infection, and also damage to bodily organs.
When the SARS-COV-2 virus gets into the bloodstream, it causes microclots that can cause strokes and other organ damage. The virus can also directly attack organ cells using the same ACE2 mechanism which it uses to infect the respiratory system. Overall the organs at risk include liver, kidneys, heart, digestive system and brain. Plus the lungs and respiratory system initially infected.
One thousand new infections a day in the UK, with its population mainly in England, is around 17 per hundred thousand. Not everyone tries to get tested and for other technical reasons the official “new confirmed cases” is understated by a factor of around five. Which means we would need to get the national infection level under 200 total a day, less than 4 per hundred thousand.
That’s lower than achieved in the summer, and far lower than most of the UK now.
BUT HOW TO GET THERE?
So #NearZero is the target. How do we get there? How do we then stay at #NearZero long enough to be worth the effort?
A simple second lockdown should have been sufficient in the summer. But now the infection level has substantially increased in so many areas of the country above 4 per day per hundred thousand. So neither the current local restrictions nor a national lockdown would be sufficient. It needs something far more potent.
We’re all ready (aren’t we?) to be contacted by NHS Test and Trace and asked to immediately self-isolate under threat of a £1000 fine. Those of us who have downloaded the app and plan to use it should also expect to receive self-isolation instructions, but without the threat of a fine due to the privacy-compliant architecture.
So how about doing a self-isolation all together? A Mass Simultaneous Self-Isolation (MSSI). Probably just two weeks.
A full ‘circuit break’, cutting off the transmission ‘current’ as much as can be possible. A proper circuit break, not just closing pubs.
Maybe we'd have to do this every few months, if new cases threatened to rise. But an investment of say two weeks that would provide a number of weeks when life can work as normal. 2 off and say 11 on. That would be worthwhile.
THE PRACTICALITIES
A full proper ‘circuit break’ will mean everyone stocking up with food and medicines so that literally every shop can be closed down.
Emergency services will need to continue, as would residents in hospitals, care homes, prisons and the like. Staff being allowed to travel. Petrol and other sheer necessities kept open on a small scale.
Other absolutely vital activities to be identified. Overcoming any hurdles.
Vital workers would need to be allowed out and about, but otherwise there would be a curfew. Policed under threat of the existing £1000 fine.
Tough. Very tough. But fair. The whole country.
SO WHAT ABOUT SID?
Sid won’t like it. But he might agree to an ‘investment’ in an MSSI if he sees that we could get back to some normality without the significant job losses forecast.
He would then be a Mass Simultaneous SI Do. But possibly unconvinced as a SI Don’t.
Which are you? SI Do or SI Don't? Or do you want to think about it?
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