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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

SpookyFrank said:
No great surprise, sadly. I don't suppose the services that would normally support those with alcohol problems have been able to do much either.
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Mostly phone and online support.
Some are being seen face to face for drug/alcohol testing but mostly not I think.
Counselling and stuff online seems to be working for many adults but it’s hard to get a clear sense of how someone is doing without seeing them.
 
cupid_stunt said:
New deaths - 1,449 down 182 on last Tuesday's 1,631, bringing the 7-day average down to 1,122, a drop of 9.7% in a week.

Long way to go, but at least we've seen the deaths declining for about a week or so.
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Yes data increasingly points towards deaths by date of death having peaked on January 19th, with over 1300 Covid-19 deaths recorded for that day so far.

Screenshot 2021-02-02 at 19.30.13.png
 
... no, I just checked. The prediction was indeed made on 19 Jan but it was that the peak had been seen around the 14 Jan. Still, not too far off.

I did remember the reaction though...


cupid_stunt said:
Why on earth would you think that?

It's already been pointed out on a number of occasions that the 7 day average of reported deaths tends to be a early sign of what the 7 day average of deaths by actual date will look like, the curves tends to be very similiar, and the former continues to go up.

I have no idea why this hasn't sunk in, perhaps you are just in denial, because that would involve accepting you were wrong.
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kabbes said:
Isn’t this pretty much what teuchter predicted at the time to which cupid_stunt reacted negatively? Or is my memory faulty?
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Your memory is faulty, he put his money on the 14th, I thought that was both weird & somewhat morbid, and simply questioned why he picked that date & why not a week or two later, he then changed his prediction to the 19th, almost a week later to where he had placed his bet.
 
cupid_stunt said:
Your memory is faulty, he put his money on the 14th, I thought that was both weird & somewhat morbid, and simply questioned why he picked that date & why not a week or two later, he then changed his prediction to the 19th, almost a week later to where he had placed his bet.
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Rubbish! I did not change my prediction. I said, on the 19th, that I was putting my money on the peak already having passed at that stage. At the same time, I guessed the peak might have been somewhere around the 14th. So I was pretty much right to say on the 19th that we had already passed the peak, and I was 4 or 5 days out in my rough guess of the 14th.

I think the peak of the "average" line is still on the 18th. I was going to leave it for another week or two before finalising any claims though.
 
The intresting bit as far as I'm concerned is not who predicted it, its the logic behind these things.

So in this case the interesting bit was the timing of peak in deaths relative to peak in hospital admissions, since admissions happen first and that data is also more timely since we get the hospital admissions data quite some time before we get accurate death figures. I'm pretty sure authorities look at these different measures to get a sense of what the death picture will look like in advance of having the deaths data, so its not surprising that some of us want to perform the same sort of exercise at times.

So as discussed at the time, I didnt agree with the guess of January 14th because I thought there was a hospital admissions peak on January 12th in data already available to us. And that therefore a date such as the day we were having that conversation, January 19th, was a better guesstimate for peak deaths, since as teuchter observed there seems to be about a weeks gap between these two sorts of peaks. If teuchter had spotted the peak day of January 12th clearly in the hospital admissions data, they might very well have guessed January 19th as the peak for deaths in the first place, since the underlying logic of timing seemed sound enough.

teuchter said:
Looking at the first wave - deaths peaked on the 8th April, about a week after admissions peaked on the 1st April.
The first hump of the second wave - deaths peaked 18th Nov, admissions 11th Nov.
So about a week between them.
Second wave first hump peak cases reported - 9th Nov. So only 9 days ahead of peak deaths
We don't really know if/when admissions have peaked for this current wave. Looks to me they might just have reached some sort of plateau around the 6th Jan but that might change with further info.
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elbows said:
Agree about approximate timing gaps seen previously between peak admissions and peak deaths.

Disagree with choice of 6th Jan for admissions this time. Plateaus do complicate the timing but in that circumstance I certainly wouldnt just choose the earliest peak date when the daily admissions figure was actually higher for Jan 12th. So for all I know the day with most deaths could turn out to be today, January 19th.
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In other words elbows got it just about spot on :thumbs:

Some context to my estimation was that this was around the time I was arguing with people about primarily using the "deaths by day reported" data because I was trying to say that we should be paying more attention to the "actual date of death" numbers. At around that time, the line for the former number was on quite a steep slope upwards and it, in itself, gave little indication that we were probably approaching a peak. In particular at that point of time I felt that it was further distorted by a catch-up in reported numbers after the new year period. So, a lot of people seemed to be reporting these ever escalating numbers with excessive gloom ignoring the context of other things like the plateau in admissions and the already visible decline in positive test results.

So I was somewhat inclined to give an "optimistic" estimate as a bit of a provocation. elbows made a calmer assessment (also based on a much better understanding of all the numbers than I have) and came up with a better guess.

Seemed also around that point to be quite a few people almost wanting to see the dramatic supposed "Christmas" spike play out with a horrendous further jump in numbers because of the pointing-the-finger opportunities it would afford. But no such clearly discernable spike happened - for reasons that have already been discussed.

In a few weeks from now I'll be looking back at the death certificate numbers to see where the peak ends up appearing on those.
 
I wouldnt claim people wanted to see a Christmas spike, only that lots of people were expecting one. The whole reason I kept saying that I expected the opposite was because I knew it would probably sound counter-intuitive to people that paid more attention to the headline Christmas fears than the other aspects of Christmas such as school and workplace holidays which would actually reduce infections overall. There will still have been Christmas-related Covid-19 tragedies but these will have to be told in individual terms, they dont stand out distinctly in the overall data.
 
teuchter said:
Some context to my estimation was that this was around the time I was arguing with people about primarily using the "deaths by day reported" data because I was trying to say that we should be paying more attention to the "actual date of death" numbers. At around that time, the line for the former number was on quite a steep slope upwards and it, in itself, gave little indication that we were probably approaching a peak. In particular at that point of time I felt that it was further distorted by a catch-up in reported numbers after the new year period.
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I should pick on these comments a little using part of a graph, but its too late for that tonight and I should probably take some time off imminently to recharge my drained pandemic emotions. So I'll just have to do it with words alone for now. The trajectory of the averages wasnt quite as steep as it had been by the 19th, and thats exactly the sort of weak but present signal we might expect from that data - the peaks in daily reported deaths arent too easy to spot until right upon them, but we can still make tentative assumptions using changes in trajectory steepness, especially when combined with other forms of case and hospital data as you mention. Also although there was a Christmas-holiday delayed reporting distortion in the figures, this was compendated for reasonably quickly and most of the extremely steep trajectory then seen in the daily reported numbers turned out to be an accurate reflection of how steeply the deaths by date of death were rising in the period before the peak :(

In a few weeks from now I'll be looking back at the death certificate numbers to see where the peak ends up appearing on those.
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The 19th is covered in this weeks data that came out on Tuesday, although it is quite near the end of the period covered by that release so I expect those numbers to grow a little more in next Tuesdays release. At the moment they still have a slightly higher number of 1273 for the 16th January, with the 19th on 1267, but once next Tuesdays version is published I only expect relatively small changes in future releases after that, so you probably only need to wait one week rather than two.
 
Emotional recharge isnt my only motivation for taking a break either, I am also boring myself rather a lot these days with the things I am ending up saying about the pandemic right now. Even I have limits for how much I can repeat myself without it getting to me. I find myself longing to have gone beyond peak smart arse and that perhaps that entire side of me might be allowed to diminish down to low levels forever more. Problem is I'm not sure what else is left of me if that aspect is removed, probably not a lot!

Also I'm not really looking for personal responses to this post, lets stick to talking about the pandemic, just wanted to explain why I might not be joining in that much for a bit.
 
elbows said:
Emotional recharge isnt my only motivation for taking a break either, I am also boring myself rather a lot these days with the things I am ending up saying about the pandemic right now. Even I have limits for how much I can repeat myself without it getting to me. I find myself longing to have gone beyond peak smart arse and that perhaps that entire side of me might be allowed to diminish down to low levels forever more. Problem is I'm not sure what else is left of me if that aspect is removed, probably not a lot!

Also I'm not really looking for personal responses to this post, lets stick to talking about the pandemic, just wanted to explain why I might not be joining in that much for a bit.
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Sorry I know you don't want it to be about you but this thread would be shite without your input. You have been a proper star on here & thank you. Take a bit of time off & try to re-charge those batteries.
Take care mate & thanks for all you have contributed. :thumbs:
 
I reckon PHE have performed even worse than the government during this. At least the government can claim they were making political decisions, but PHE should have known their shit from the get go, yet seem to have got everything wrong since the start of last year. Too many years focusing on sugar taxes instead of disease outbreaks, when health prevention should always have been part of the NHS.
 
I'm hoping that if things are looking good at the end of this month, the gov doesn't decide that we should start coming out of lockdown but actually gives the message that if we hold on for one month more before starting to do so, we can have a lot more people vaccinated and infection levels even lower and be in a much better position for the rest of the year. But they probably won't do that.
 
teuchter said:
Good news hopefully

www.bbc.co.uk

Covid-19: Study showing Oxford vaccine slows virus spread 'superb' - Hancock

As results show the Oxford jab may cut transmission, the health secretary says it offers a "way out".
www.bbc.co.uk
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I don't quite understand this story.

It seems to be based on the finding that those vaccinated firstly haven't developed covid themselves, and secondly haven't developed the antibodies which would suggest they could potentially infect others.

But given that most of those already vaccinated will still be shielding, they will only have had a very limited opportunity to come into contact with an already infected person.
 
Ministers must level with Britons that summer holidays abroad may not be possible unless other countries make better progress on vaccination, senior MPs have warned.

Downing Street now believes there is little prospect of mass international tourism this summer, though insiders said they were hopeful about staycations in Britain. “Internally the view is that UK holidays may be possible depending on the circumstances but going abroad is very unlikely,” a government source said
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Be honest about summer holidays abroad, MPs warn No 10 | Coronavirus | The Guardian

Downing Street believes there is little prospect of mass international tourism
amp.theguardian.com amp.theguardian.com

Not surprising but not cheering
 
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