Robert Inventor

In the UK those who think they have COVID-19, including confirmed cases, isolate at home for 7 days after onset of symptoms. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, was confirmed to have COVID-19 a week ago. He has just come out of isolation after 7 days. See: Matt Hancock leaves week-long isolation period under UK's 'outlier' rules
This is radically different from the WHO isolation period. According to the WHO he is still infectious and could contribute to the spread of the disease. He should only leave isolation this early if he has two negative PCR tests 24 hours apart.

Experts are weighing in on Matt Hancock’s proposal of “immunity passports ” in the UK. They say antibody tests will NOT prove you are immune to the disease. We don't know enough about this disease yet to say. From our experience with other diseases, it is possible that those with antibodies can be infected a second time (with the same strain of virus), and die of the disease.

This is a conversation I had recently via text with someone who suffers from depression about the situation about COVID-19 in the UK. I hope my answers will help others with depression face this situation.
The main message is, don't give up - we can and will deal with this - pressurize our government to act and protect yourself and others by making sure you don't get it yourself.
On a personal level, this is how to protect yourself, and also the people around you who might get it from you - you can break those chains of transmission at least and prevent it spreading through you into your community.

The idea that COVID-19 can’t be stopped and has to go in waves is based on the idea that it transmits like flu.
But COVID-19 is not flu.
COVID-19 can be stopped; it can be contained. Any second wave can be stopped too.
You can totally crush COVID19. China, South Korea have shown how. Spain and Italy are doing it now too. The WHO say this with every press briefing but the media almost never report this. To do this you test, isolate and care for cases, trace contacts and quarantine the contacts.
If you stop 75% of the transmisions you change a transmission that goes
100 cases → 200 cases → 400 cases
to one that goes
100 cases → 50 cases → 25 cases
and it soon stops.

Many countries are showing that the strategy of China, Singapore and South Korea also works in Europe - to aggressively find cases, isolate them, trace contacts and isolate them. They now need to keep this up.
Italy is now down to a 4% increase per day - that’s a doubling time of 17 days. It’s down from a doubling time of just 5 days a fortnight ago. Italy looks to be well past its exponential rise, and even over the stage of a linear increase too. The cases per day are decreasing significantly.

Doubling time of 17 days = [log(2)/log(1+4/100)]
Doubling time of 5 days = [log(2)/log(1+13/100)]

I am glad to read that the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt is asking our government to follow the WHO recommendations on COVID19. Not just mass testing, also quarantine and contact tracing, all on an unprecedented scale. His op ed is here:

Mass testing is the fastest route back to normal life

We can do this. The cobas 8800 by Roche Diagnostics can test 2,500 samples a day.
400 of those machines would test a million samples a day.

The UK’s policy is based on a model such as is used in pandemic simulations. The (simulated) influenza in this model is an upper respiratory tract infection, and is airborne which means you can get it just by breathing the air of someone who is near you. Their simulated disease also has a large population of people who don't show any symptoms and have half the infectivity of those who do have symptoms. These assumptions are not based on real world data for COVID-19 but rather on data for influenza. Influenza and COVID19 are unrelated diseases. Both are respiratory tract infections,but influenza is not a coronavirus.ns is that we are using a simulated flu to guide policy rather than data from the real disease.

Good news - one small Italian town, Vo Euganeo, has completely stopped its outbreak by rigorously testing everyone in the community including those who were asymptomatic. To do that they disregarded a directive from their government to only test those who had symptoms.
Even China didn’t do that, or Singapore. They only tested those with fever or respiratory disease symptoms.
Vo Euganeo is in Veneto which has had consistently lower case numbers than the other provinces and has had the most rigorous approach to case finding.

I have sent variations of this email to my local MP, the shadow health secretary, leaders of the main parties etc.
Dear
Please challenge the government and ask for an evidence based science debate on the basis for their COVID-19 policies.
You can check what I say here with the experts at the WHO.
I have just sent this email to the Prime Minister:
Screenshot

Dear Prime Minister,

Few in the UK seem to realize that our policy for controlling COVID-19 differs radically from the WHO recommendations. The WHO say we need to test all suspected cases, quarantine them, trace all close contacts and ask them to self isolate. The UK was doing that until the 12th March when they decided to stop testing for mild cases.

The director general gave a really good speech on Friday, and I am sharing it here, to help people have more courage in what are going to be difficult times.
Up until March 20th, the WHO said this is the first pandemic we can stop.
Now the WHO say that Wuhan has its first day with no cases which shows the world that even the most severe situation can be turned around.
They are particularly concerned about the effects if it reaches vulnerable populations of malnourished children and people with AIDS which is endemic in parts of sub Saharan Africa.
He says however none of this is inevitable. This is the first pandemic in history where we have the power to change the way it goes.

Singapore is controlling its outbreak with case finding and contact tracing. Any other country can do the same. Singapore is a particularly clear case. They test everyone for COVID-19 if they go to a doctor or clinic for treatment with symptoms of a respiratory disease. For instance if you are living in Singapore, and get a cough or fever, and go to see your doctor - he or she will take a swab which is automatically tested for COVID-19. That's in a country of over 5 million, as large as Scotland.
skip to: Contact tracing in Singapore