Using data to design strategies & execute tactics

The following statement, including what it doesn't say, is the nub of the failure of the outsourced test, track and trace system. It's from yesterday's report attempting to justify the government's tiered lockdown policy.

"However, due to the range of factors that need to be considered, and that in many cases are difficult to estimate – including how the virus would have evolved in different scenarios – any attempt to estimate the specific economic impacts of precise changes to individual restrictions for a defined period of time would be subject to such wide uncertainty as to not be meaningful for precise policy making."

If you don't trace and analyse the data of where people caught covid, you can't design a lock down policy based on what works and what doesn't. Let alone justify it. Nor compare the economic & social impacts of those measures.

The report is a reductionist argument for a policy which didn't work before the second wave, based on "if we did nothing it'd be bad". True, but what did you do in the last 6 months to set up a way to know better? There is no sign of any leadership with data and analytical competence.

Furthermore the report quotes the impacts of poverty and their correlation with infection. But doesn't address this in the policies. It doesn't address funding for schools to enact the policies proposed. For example there's an obligation to provide remote learning but that requires students to have kit and internet access at home, a promise to provide these for every pupil was already broken earlier in the year.

It doesn't provide any data on infection rates in schools (anecdotally lots are affected; data says 16% of pupils are reported to be isolating in mid November. It relies on a DELVE report from July to argue its low risk for kids to be at school. But this report sets out the caveats on its statement that other countries aren't seeing increased rates from schools going back: other measures were taken at same time, it's too early to say, most only partially opened, the need for masks and other measures. It emphasises the need to collect data to know what is actually happening. Any sign of it? Not in this report.

The report doesn't mention students at all, a cause of huge spikes and transporting transmission geographically. Or Brexit impacts (medical supplies for example).

No self respecting commercial CEO would have allowed their outsourced or in-house service to run this long without developing good data about where and how people are catching covid. And with which to design a way out of generic lock downs. No self respecting CEO would publish such a weak report, or attempt to use it as an argument for their policy.

If you're in charge what would you demand right now?

Some hypotheses to prove and disprove would help. Start with a 24 hour review of the literature; there were lots of reports to read on sources and methods of spreading back in April. There must be many more now. Then list your top suspected sources. Then look in the existing data to see what can be proven or not. This assumes track and trace captures likely sources of infection. Get a couple of young students ( not health experts) with simple AI tools to swim in the data and see what correlations and potential causes they can come up with. Then design the questions for track and trace to deepen the data. Including, if necessary, asking those with previous positive tests where they suspect they could caught it and with what level of certainty. Design some control experiments to test the developing hypotheses. Prove or disprove the hypotheses. Design a containment strategy based on it.

Has this been done minister? Are you doing it minister? No, minister!

Capability with data and analysis is a core competence for CEOs and board directors. To create and make the right decisions. You can tell a mile off when it is and it isn't there. It should be a core competence for politicians and heads of public services too.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/939876/Analysis_of_the_health_economic_and_social_effects_of_COVID-19_and_the_approach_to_tiering_FINAL__SofS_.pdf