Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[editor]

Only taken him ten months to get around to this.

Fucking useless piece of shit that he is. How many people have died or suffered because of his attempts to prioritise the economy over health.

 

[Hyperdark]

Badgers Last I heard that hasnt been established, but seems likely to me

 

[maomao]

If that were true (and I'm not sure that it's true it makes no difference to transmission at all) then firstly, everyone's going to have to vaccinate every eight months or whatever and secondly, there'll be such a large amount of the virus in circulation for such a long time that all these very unlikely mutations we're told not to worry about will eventually happen.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

My understanding is that vaccinated people can transmit the virus as non vaccinated?

No, they don't know.

Afaiui there's a very good chance it will provide at least some degree of protection from transmission. The experts have to be cautious though and the cautious approach is to assume no protection until some can be shown.

 

[Hyperdark]

I'm trying my best to stay mostly calm, but I'm getting pretty pissed off with both Drakeford's spineless utterings (he's allready saying more about how restrictions migh be eased off and lying about supplies being the bottleneck) and also the way things are not happening at a local level, I've yet to hear of anyone in the priority groups that I know personally getting even a letter let alone the vaccine and my local surgery still has a big banner on its frontpage saying they dont know anything about vaccine delivery
I've not even had that letter supposdedly explaining shit yet...........FFS, Rural Wales is being thrown to the dogs

 

[danny la rouge]

 

[Chilli.s]

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.

Sad to read this, condolences to you.

 

[elbows]

Your position may have mutated in a matter of hours

The release has been cancelled!

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey, UK: 15 January 2021

Estimates for England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. This survey is being delivered in partnership with University of Oxford, University of Manchester, Public Health England, and Wellcome Trust.

www.gov.uk

 

[Pickman's model]

The release has been cancelled!

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey, UK: 15 January 2021

Estimates for England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. This survey is being delivered in partnership with University of Oxford, University of Manchester, Public Health England, and Wellcome Trust.

www.gov.uk

View attachment 249166

trans.: it's far fucking worse than we thought and we are working every hour god sends to find a way to soften the blow

 

[gentlegreen]

contrast and compare.

 

[elbows]

trans.: it's far fucking worse than we thought and we are working every hour god sends to find a way to soften the blow

No.

If there does turn out to be anything awkward in the data that should have been published, I might expect it to relate to the new variant levels per region.

But it may well be a lab issue and without knowing the detail of the delays there I cant say more.

 

[souljacker]

The release has been cancelled!

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey, UK: 15 January 2021

Estimates for England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. This survey is being delivered in partnership with University of Oxford, University of Manchester, Public Health England, and Wellcome Trust.

www.gov.uk

View attachment 249166

Is this different info to the stuff at Official UK Coronavirus Dashboard ? Because that was released at 4pm as usual.

edit: and shows a marked decrease in case rates.

 

[elbows]

Is this different info to the stuff at Official UK Coronavirus Dashboard ? Because that was released at 4pm as usual.

edit: and shows a marked decrease in case rates.

Yes its different stuff, this is the weekly estimates that are based on random sampling & testing of households.

And last time that report came out they had added a section on the proportion of cases in each region that likely involved the new variant. And thats the bit I was especially looking forward to seeing this week.

This is last weeks version: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey, UK - Office for National Statistics

Some of the regional new variant graphs were starting to show interesting things so I am bound to be suspicious that I cannot see what happened next yet.

 

[cyril_smear]

only a year too late.

 

[Cid]

The release has been cancelled!

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey, UK: 15 January 2021

Estimates for England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. This survey is being delivered in partnership with University of Oxford, University of Manchester, Public Health England, and Wellcome Trust.

www.gov.uk

View attachment 249166

Guess they got to the end of the spreadsheet again.

 

[teuchter]

No, they don't know.

Afaiui there's a very good chance it will provide at least some degree of protection from transmission. The experts have to be cautious though and the cautious approach is to assume no protection until some can be shown.

Yes - that's kind of my understanding. My question was about how the level of transmission can be measured - will it be inferred from overall numbers and patterns - or will routine testing be able to identify people who have not "got" covid but are carrying the virus to some extent. Or will there have to be a new kind of test to find this out.

 

[Pickman's model]

Yes - that's kind of my understanding. My question was about how the level of transmission can be measured - will it be inferred from overall numbers and patterns - or will routine testing be able to identify people who have not "got" covid but are carrying the virus to some extent. Or will there have to be a new kind of test to find this out.

yes

 

[elbows]

Also need to know more about 'delays to laboratory testing' to make sure that this situation has not caused positive cases in the daily dashboard figures to be artificially low for some recent period.

 

[elbows]

Daily Covid-19 hospital admissions/diagnoses for England. Smoothed using 7 day averages, and also spiky versions without that averaging. I will do the other UK nations in a bit.

Data is as usual from Statistics » COVID-19 Hospital Activity

 

[David Clapson]

What's the likelihood of a new variant which needs a whole new vaccine to be developed? We might still be in crisis next Christmas.

 

[StoneRoad]

What's the likelihood of a new variant which needs a whole new vaccine to be developed? We might still be in crisis next Christmas.

IIRC, Pfizer (at least, I think it was them) have already said that "tweaking" the vaccine to protect against new variants would be less difficult than what has already been achieved in creating one from scratch.

 

[weltweit]

What's the likelihood of a new variant which needs a whole new vaccine to be developed? We might still be in crisis next Christmas.

They mentioned that possibility as a justification for tightening airways in today's press conference.

 

[elbows]

Covid-19 daily hospital admissions/diagnoses for the rest of the UK to go with the England charts I posted earlier. Data is from the official UK dashboard since my NHS data source is only for England. Includes raw data versions and versions smoothed using 7 day averages.

Caveats include the fact that Northern Ireland changes its figures retrospectively, so the drop at the end should be disregarded in the same way we disregard the ever-present drop at the end of 'deaths reported by date of death' figures. And Wales includes suspected cases in their figures so their data is not directly comparable. And since some of these nations figures often end up on the dashboard a day or two behind Englands, the overall UK figure lags behind slightly in time period covered compared to some of the other figures.

 

[elbows]

And finally, admissions covering the entire pandemic data available so far, so the size of admissions at the moment can be compared to the first wave.

Different regions and nations charts use very different scales, so dont use these to compare the size of admissions in different places with each other, just the shape and trends over time.

 

[Doodler]

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.

Very sorry to hear of your loss.

 

[weltweit]

..
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.

cupid_stunt so sorry to see this, when we are listening to the press conferences or looking at elbow's graphs, the numbers are almost meaningless but when it is someone we are related to or someone you are related to it brings it home, this is a shitty disease. So sorry for you and your family.

 

[elbows]

If there was no knowledge or focus on the new variant, the simple story that its most tempting to attach to those graphs is one of along the lines of...

Action taken to prevent second wave taken far too late, especially for certain regions and nations. Then the brakes finally applied but not in a long enough or strong enough manner. And then when brakes released, in many areas the charts then continue from where they left off before the brakes were applied in November.

Its a disgrace regardless of how much the new variant has or has not had an impact on this picture.

 

[elbows]

cupid_stunt so sorry to see this, when we are listening to the press conferences or looking at elbow's graphs, the numbers are almost meaningless but when it is someone we are related to or someone you are related to it brings it home, this is a shitty disease. So sorry for you and your family.

Yes I was very sorry to hear about this news. I am also sorry that I most often shy away from commenting on the personal trajedies that people here have endured during this pandemic. I'm not good at expressing myself about that in text on messagebaords. I'm not much better in real life, I usually have a go and then fret that I have put my foot in it with the way I worded something.

Data probably is a strangely cold and detached view of things for many people. For me it speaks vividly and is directly connected to my feelings about the human, individual toll of pandemics etc. It is no substitute for real human stories, but these two ways of looking at things are somehow connected in my mind in a way that means I never feel like I am staring at cold charts, I feel like I am somehow staring at the full horror. In some other sense data is part of how I cope with the pandemic. Perhaps there are many situations where I have come to terms with not having control, but then I at least want to be able to observe what is actually happening in some way, and hope to achieve at least a realistic sense of the magnitude of whats happening.

 

[StoneRoad]

Looking at the shape of those graphs for admissions (thanks elbows ) - To my eyes, the climb before and after the November restrictions [not-quite-a-lockdown] is at a very similar angle. If anything, the post November climb is steeper in some areas.
I agree, that period in November really was a case of "too little, too late" and wasn't applied for anything like long enough. And then we had to save christmas / new year ... and now we've got several new variants impacting the situation.

Obviously, we'll have to wait and see when the current "stay at home" rules and the vaccinations start to bite into the cases, admissions and death rates.
Hopefully, they will already be starting to have affects ...

E2A - My personal opinion is that the decision-making has been too swayed by concerns for the economic factors and not enough by the science & public health considerations.
Exemplified by the fact that Nicola Sturgeon always starts by voicing her condolences to the grieving families/friends of those most recently reported as having died. And by some 16 MPs having voted against the most recent "stay at home" order ...

 

[elbows]

Looking at the shape of those graphs for admissions (thanks elbows ) - To my eyes, the climb before and after the November restrictions [not-quite-a-lockdown] is at a very similar angle. If anything, the post November climb is steeper in some areas.
I agree, that period in November really was a case of "too little, too late" and wasn't applied for anything like long enough. And then we had to save christmas / new year ... and now we've got several new variants impacting the situation.

The incredibly steep trajectory see in some regions after the first week in December is a main reason they searched for an explanation and found one with the new variant. Especially because the timing of that and when they saw rises in other data such as cases, indicated that the rise in infections began whilst the November measures were still in effect, so it wasnt being driven only by the shitty tiers they came up with once the November measures came to an end.

I'm pretty sure that modelling would not have predicted such an immediate and steep climb in rates in regions like London, the South Easy and the East of England, after the brakes were taken off. So whatever they thought they were playing at was probably thwarted by that. Its possible they thought that the November measures had bought them a December in which they could carry on with their original Christmas plans. And then things would get real bad in January and they would do a lockdown then, once the 'business' and politics of Christmas were over.

In my mind there are several properties of the new variant that could be responsible in theory, and also a number of other potential explanations.

For example in regards the new variant, modelling was done to see if the increases seen fitted best with increased transmissibility, or an increased ability ot defeat immune systems that had been primed by past infection with an earlier strain of the pandemic virus. The model involving increased transmissibility seemed to fit best, and they had some other evidence to do with viral load and testing of new variant samples. I wouldnt call it a solid conclusion, its the possibility they considered most likely. If their thoughts on this have evolved significantly since, I havent found out about it yet, although I believe there was a somewhat lower estimate of increased transmissibility doing the rounds recently which I didnt have time to look at. And I didnt get the regional new variant data I was expecting today.

In terms of other explanations beyond the new variant or the obvious effects of releasing the brakes too soon, I've got a few thoughts but I havent really found any expert stuff to backup where my thoughts were going. So its just a collection of possibilities I have deduced but that I dont consider ripe enough to go on about much yet.

But for example, we have the topic came up here recently of what role the number of susceptible people in a population has on epidemic waves and the modelling. And I found some quote about what difference an increase in people whove now had the disease can have on the R rate, especially once R is around one. They were looking at how this picture improves over time as more people get infected, influencing R in a downwards direction. And there was also stuff about a lot of the people whose occupations etc meant they were most at risk of infection in the first wave were the same people exposed most in the second wave, and the role that existing immunity the second time around could play in robbing the virus of so much 'front line fuel' in subsequent waves. I wondered what happens when we apply these same principals in reverse, to selected sub-populations in certain scenarios.

Lets say for example you have a population that were not so much in the front lines for the first wave, because their movements and the institutional setting of interest where they mix were limited by the original lockdown. But then when dealing with the second wave, you dont lock them down when taking a national response in November. Are they not a population that then becomes a large, relatively fresh new target for the virus? The virus spreads through human networks, and here is a network that was largely disabled the first time but is in full flow this time (well, in November and December, not now). Would it be reasonable to place schools in that category? Hmmmmm. Im not an epidemiologist so I dont know if I joined the right dots on that one.

Obviously, we'll have to wait and see when the current "stay at home" rules and the vaccinations start to bite into the cases, admissions and death rates.
Hopefully, they will already be starting to have affects ...

Combination of factors that happened a while ago would be expected to influence the picture we currently see, which includes something with hospital admissions that I dont quite want to call a plateau yet, but is certainly a trajectory change.

Its a combination of tier changes, tier 4 coming in, tier 4 expanding, and then schools and workplaces being closed for Christmas holidays, and then finally the current lockdown. Versus the chains of infection that were already in motion, and whatever risky stuff some people did over Christmas, and then whatever the bad effects are from how many people are still working and doing other things during this lockdown. And stuff linked to weather and behaviours and the extent to which full hospitals are increasing transmission, the extent to which the virus is getting into care homes etc.

I wont be surprised if the picture via data remains as messy as my attempts to describe the factors involved for a while. And we know the deaths numbers will keep going up for longer than the hospital data. It sort of does my head in that at the same stage like this last week where I have been able to make comments about tentative good signs, there is not currently a clear end in sight in terms of reporting ever worse death data.