Britain's Coronavirus Stragety is Nuts

From The Financial Times,

Italy has imposed a nationwide lockdown. Ireland has closed all schools, as has Denmark, which has also shut its border. France has cancelled large public events. One big European country, though, has adopted a noticeably less stringent approach to tackling coronavirus: the UK. It may be somewhat reassuring that Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his government, who have previously disparaged “experts”, appear to be acting on the basis of scientific advice. But this strategy represents a significant gamble.

​The UK has moved from the “contain” to “delay” phase of its counter-virus efforts. 

Indeed, the strategy has been described as this:

The strategy is to allow the virus to pass through the population.

​The key phrase we all need to understand is “herd immunity” – which is what happens to a group of people or animals when they develop sufficient antibodies to be resistant to a disease.

In other words, Britain is taking the  same approach as they did during the Black Death.

OK, this isn't perfectly fair. The goal is to "slow the spread" and "flatten the curve." But as Joshca Bach points out, this isn't a good approach at all. Regarding the United States (which isn't that much different than the UK),

The “flattening the curve” idea suggests that if we wash our hands and stay at home while being sick aggressively enough, we won’t have to stop the virus from becoming endemic and infecting 40% to 70% of all people, but we can slow the spread of the infection so much that out medical system can deal with the case load. This is how our normally distributed curve looks like when it contains 10.8 million patients, of which no more than 170,000 are ill at the same time.

​Dampening the infection rate of COVID-19 to a level that is compatible with our medical system means that we would have to spread the epidemic over more than a decade!

Here's Boscha's chart:

The curve needs to be destroyed, not flattened. Britain's approach could very well be disastrous.