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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

teuchter said:
If the stuff about the "new variant" upping the R number substantially is/was right, and London is really at 0.6, that seems like a fairly remarkable turnaround.
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The new variant has been robbed of the scotch eggs and schools it needed to secure world domination.

But in all seriousness, there should be ONS new variant data later today that will probably cause my position on UK variant issues to evolve.
 
elbows said:
will probably cause my position on UK variant issues to evolve.
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Your position may have mutated in a matter of hours :eek:

Two weeks ago reports were saying

The new variant of Covid-19 is "hugely" more transmissible than the virus's previous version, a study has found.
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It concludes the new variant increases the Reproduction or R number by between 0.4 and 0.7.
The UK's latest R number has been estimated at between 1.1 and 1.3. It needs to be below 1.0 for the number of cases to start falling.
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I was never really clear about whether the 0.4-0.7 was in proportion to the underlying number or if you were supposed to just add that on regardless of the starting rate... but if you were to take that as meaning that the R number, at that time, would have been say 1.3-0.4 or 1.3-0.7 =0.6 to 0.9 had the new variant not been involved - then applying the same proportionate reduction to 0.6 would leave you with 0.3 or 0.4. In other words... without the variant, the current lockdown measures could have produced an R number in that sort of range. But I don't remember anything as low as that being reported during/after the first lockdown.
 
Wilf said:
If there are signs a corner has been turned in terms of infections, it looks like lockdowns actually work. Who'd have thought it eh? Must be a revelation to boris johnson.
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There were one or two people round here that preferred to believe that the shape of the curve seen in the first wave was not due to lockdown. They preferred to believe that the peaks they saw were the same as what would happen without a lockdown. ie that the virus had run out of the quantity of susceptible individuals required to sustain growth, and that this had happened because of immunity within the population rather than massive behavioural changes & lockdown having placed very many individuals who were susceptible out of reach of the virus at that time. In reality immunity is still a factor in the lockdown scenario, the results obtained are a mixture of decreasing susceptible population and lockdown/behavioural changes, rather than being one or the other.

Those people were idiots. I humoured a few of their ideas in late spring and early summer because I did not have 100% conclusive proof, which could only be obtained by seeing if there was a resurgence of the virus once measures were relaxed. We know what happened next, and thats probably why we dont hear very much from those idiots these days.
 
teuchter said:
Your position may have mutated in a matter of hours :eek:
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My position has limited room to mutate since I treated their initial impression with much caution and a degree of skepticism in the first place. And that already got more complicated for me when I saw more recent regional graphs. But those graphs were poised at a delicate stage last time that data was published, so I am waiting for this weeks data before starting to firm up some of my ideas, or at least get a conversation going about what seems to be happening.

edited to add - the following post has the previous version of the graphs, initially presented earlier than normal via press conference slides but normally published as part of ONS infection survey which comes out of Fridays.

#138
 
SAGE output on such matters tends to be based on combining the results from a bunch of different modelling groups. I would expect the Cambridge results to be part of that mix, but that either other modelling groups results have higher values which pushed the averaged consensus value up, or alternatively some results we get may be based on more recent data and model runs than the official SAGE estimate.
 
elbows said:
www.bbc.co.uk

Covid: Wales' new shop rules 'follow evidence of spread'

First Minister Mark Drakeford says there is "no doubt at all" Covid-19 is spreading in shops.
www.bbc.co.uk
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There's a simple answer to that risk of spreading in shops.
Insist that only essential shops are open, and are enforcing "no mask, no entry" & 'strict limited numbers / spacing inside' rules and allow click n collect for those who can't comply for medical reasons.
 
As quimcunx says it depends on needs & equipment available.

I lost my cousin Sue to covid last week, she was already on oxygen, took a turn for the worst, the Kent hospital she was in had no ventilator free, so was looking to transfer her, sadly she passed away before that was possible. :(

ETA -

PLEASE DON'T QUOTE THIS POST - as much as I appreciate the condolences replies, I don't want them to further clutter the thread, thanks. :)
 
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cupid_stunt said:
As quimcunx says it depends on needs & equipment available.

I lost my cousin Sue to covid last week, she was already on oxygen, took a turn for the worst, the Kent hospital she was in had no ventilator free, so was looking to transfer her, sadly she passed away before that was possible. :(
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Sorry to hear that, my condolences. :(

Awful, awful thing to happen and so much more difficult for families and loved ones in the current circumstances.
 
bimble said:
If I’d administered that test myself (was given the choice) there’s no way I’d have held that thing that far up my nostril for the full length of time required, until eyes watered and it was really hard not to swear. Maybe I’m just a wuss but wonder if there are the same rates of positive results for self-administered tests as for the ones done by professionals?
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yeah mine came back inconclusive, but i blatantly didnt do it properly :facepalm: im certain ive got IT though
 
Is there any statistics available on what professions are most affected?

1610730154687.png

From sweden - published november last year. Taxi drivers and similar. Takeaway workers and similar, bus and tram drivers, translators, linguists and similar, restaurant workers, other service workers (supermarkets etc).
 
cupid_stunt said:
As quimcunx says it depends on needs & equipment available.

I lost my cousin Sue to covid last week, she was already on oxygen, took a turn for the worst, the Kent hospital she was in had no ventilator free, so was looking to transfer her, sadly she passed away before that was possible. :(
Click to expand...

sorry to read this CS. :( condolences to you. Hope you are doing ok in the circumstances.
 
Pickman's model said:
So you're positing a situation in which the vaccinations are successful but some people have it but are still asymptomatic?
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As I understand it, vaccination will be successful at preventing people from becoming ill, or mean they become less ill than they would have. Afaik, we don't yet know how well able the vaccinated might be to pass the virus on to others. I would assume they can. (Apologies if I misread you.)
 
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Mation said:
As I understand it, vaccination will be successful at preventing people from becoming ill, or mean they become less ill than they would have. Afaik, we don't yet know how well able the vaccinated might be to pass the virus on to others. (Apologies if I misread you.)
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My understanding is that vaccinated people can transmit the virus as non vaccinated?
 
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