I’m confused by your pessimism about England’s Tier 4 restrictions:
So basically, if you’re outside where it’s safe, they’ll harass you and maybe worse. Whereas if you stay inside, technically it’s not allowed but in practice it’s a lot less likely anything happens to you, unless the anything in question is ‘you catch Covid-19.’ The rules are porous enough that they aren’t enforceable against the things that are risky but enforceable enough to shut down the relatively safe actions that keep people sane. And with weird exceptions for remarkably large indoor gatherings for certain events that are textbook superspreaders.
All of which is what our model expects to see, and none of which seems likely to be remotely sufficient if the new strain is as infectious as they estimate.
Tier 4′s bundle of restrictions is almost identical to those from England’s “second lockdown” in November. (See e.g. here.) But you write as though you believe the “second lockdown” was impactful:
[...] the context of England being under lockdown conditions that had previously turned the tide [...]
How effective are these kind of measures at controlling things (a) before the new strain and (b) with the new strain?
This heavily discussed paper from Dec 23 addresses question (b), using the same model the authors previously applied to question (a) in this paper. These papers are worth reading and I won’t attempt to summarize them, but some relevant points:
The authors argued for the “second lockdown” in the 2nd linked paper on the basis of its projected impacts on mobility, thus R, thus etc.
The 2nd linked paper was later updated with data from November, showing that their model did quite well at predicting the effect on mobility, R, etc.
The 1st linked paper (on new strain) approximates Tier 4 as being equivalent to “second lockdown” in its effects
The 1st linked paper (on new strain) is worth reading in its entirety as it provides some (provisional) quantitative backing to intuitions about the impact of various measures (Tier 4 / Tier 4 + school closures / Tier 4 + school closures + XYZ amount of vaccination)
Not the OP so can’t answer for him, but qualitatively the second (November) lockdown was quite different from the first (March) lockdown—much more leeway given on exercising outdoors, workplaces largely stayed open (even if people were working from home). In March, police officers would move people along if they were sitting on a park bench (as that’s not exercise); the second time round things were much less strictly enforced. Rules around forming ‘bubbles’ with other households also didn’t exist in March.
Tier 4 is essentially the same as the November lockdown but you can meet one other person outdoors.
A really key difference between March and November is that schools were open in November but not March. Though the UK is now in a third lockdown, and it looks like schools won’t be re-opening
I’m confused by your pessimism about England’s Tier 4 restrictions:
Tier 4′s bundle of restrictions is almost identical to those from England’s “second lockdown” in November. (See e.g. here.) But you write as though you believe the “second lockdown” was impactful:
How effective are these kind of measures at controlling things (a) before the new strain and (b) with the new strain?
This heavily discussed paper from Dec 23 addresses question (b), using the same model the authors previously applied to question (a) in this paper. These papers are worth reading and I won’t attempt to summarize them, but some relevant points:
The authors argued for the “second lockdown” in the 2nd linked paper on the basis of its projected impacts on mobility, thus R, thus etc.
The 2nd linked paper was later updated with data from November, showing that their model did quite well at predicting the effect on mobility, R, etc.
The 1st linked paper (on new strain) approximates Tier 4 as being equivalent to “second lockdown” in its effects
The 1st linked paper (on new strain) is worth reading in its entirety as it provides some (provisional) quantitative backing to intuitions about the impact of various measures (Tier 4 / Tier 4 + school closures / Tier 4 + school closures + XYZ amount of vaccination)
Not the OP so can’t answer for him, but qualitatively the second (November) lockdown was quite different from the first (March) lockdown—much more leeway given on exercising outdoors, workplaces largely stayed open (even if people were working from home). In March, police officers would move people along if they were sitting on a park bench (as that’s not exercise); the second time round things were much less strictly enforced. Rules around forming ‘bubbles’ with other households also didn’t exist in March.
Tier 4 is essentially the same as the November lockdown but you can meet one other person outdoors.
A really key difference between March and November is that schools were open in November but not March. Though the UK is now in a third lockdown, and it looks like schools won’t be re-opening