Harlan Krumholz

Yeah, it's pretty much more of the same this week with the Office for National Statistics data comes out.

But remember, that's about going back about 10 days ago.

So it comes out on Tuesday and looks back in time.

But when we say we're looking at the peak, I think there's a multitude of bits of data that allow us now to say we're well past the peak.

If you look at the hospital data on deaths,

The peak of the death there was the 8th of April.

We can also look at the admission data which we've got access to and that peaked on about the 2nd of April.

All the other measures show that they're now trending down and particularly the admission data is really helpful.

because we've now come down from a peak, as I said, on the 2nd of April, they've come down by about 70%, and we've been low 1,000 admissions a day.

All of that information is reassuring, and that's going to help us when we come out of lockdown.

Well, look, I think there's something really interesting.

I want to go slightly left field because I've heard this term precautionary principle raised an awful lot so far.

And I'm not sure if people are using it in the right manner.

Because what precautionary principles state is when an activity raises the threat of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.

So this is about things that are toxic in the environment.

You think might cause cancer, might cause a problem.

The question is you raise the bar for research and you raise the bar for the cause and effect and you say, well, we should remove them from the environment.

But we seem to be then applying that to this precautionary principle to non-pharmaceutical interventions, if you like, and saying, well, we should just do this as a caution.

Now, I'm raising the question is I don't see that as the right way to use the precautionary principle.

It's about generally removing things.