Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[Supine]

Any news on this 'Thai' variant that I saw reported somewhere today? Traced from Thailand and ultimately back to Egypt(!) apparently. 100 or so cases detected in the UK so far. I forget where it was (maybe the BBC live updates today). The Yorkshire variant seems to have gone quiet too.

It was discussed a bit at Indy Sage on Friday. Still early days as it’s so new.

 

[Sunray]

I’m coming to the conclusion that Dominic Cummings is way smarter than Boris Johnson. Whatever his politics, this makes me think he would have done a much better job than Boris ‘Bodies’ Johnson in this pandemic.
It’s a low bar but it’s clearly true.

Expert who helped change No 10 Covid policy in first wave warns over risk of easing

Exclusive: Prof Sir Tim Gowers says ‘things will get bad very quickly’ after June if new variant spread is underestimated

www.theguardian.com

Understanding that Gowers was one of the leading mathematicians in the UK and getting in touch with him. I don't think Boris Johnson feels there is anyone clever than him.

It’s good that I came to that realisation when I did, because the day after that (or to be precise at 1.23am, but I saw it only when I got up the next morning), Dominic Cummings, who already knew me from discussions about mathematics teaching several years ago, got in touch. So I wrote and told him that I thought we needed to move urgently to extreme containment measures.

 

[johnwesley]

The so-called Freedom March has taken their troops to Westfield.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Update to this - all four of them had the worst night they've had in ages, shivery, nausea, dizziness. I'm now laughing at them telling them they should have waited for Pfizer

Wife had a shit time in the Pfizer. I had a rough headache on zeneca's first but the second was pish

 

[cupid_stunt]

The so-called Freedom March has taken their troops to Westfield.

Fucking twats, marching into Westfield demanding 'freedom', when everyone in there were already exercising their 'freedom' to shop.

 

[Supine]

I hope I’m wrong but it looks like we’re starting a new wave and we haven’t even done the stage four opening yet. The government haven’t learnt anything.

 

[Supine]

Going in hard and fast saves lives. That isn’t in dispute. At least we need to wait another month or so to get the vaccination percentage up. Why gamble now???

 

[elbows]

Yeah. I know I posted certain modelling stuff too much already, but I suppose I better do it again.

Because usually when I talk about it, I say another peak is modelled for July. But I should point out that in some of this modelling the wave actually begins at end of May or early June, and its the explosive bit that comes in July.

Because we have a new variant taking over I havent bothered with the central scenarios from the modelling, instead concentrating on their variant of concern scenarios. And I've left out Imperial Colleges modelling because unless I read their document wrong, for a variant of conern they only modelled the same or less transmissivity relative to the Kent variant.

These arent new, they are the same early May modelling documents I've posted about plenty before.

Warwick:



London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/984533/S1229_Warwick_Road_Map_Scenarios_and_Sensitivity_Steps_3_and_4.pdf

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/984546/S1230_LSHTM_Interim_roadmap_assessment_prior_to_steps_3_and_4.pdf

Although I've tended to go on about how a wave was expected even if we only did step 3 and not step 4 of unlocking, I believe at least one of the models suggested there would be a summer wave even if we'd only gone as far as step 2 of the unlocking, albeit a modest one.

As ever these models are sensitive to all sorts of assumptions, including vaccine rollout pace and efficacy of the vaccines.

R is expected to be lowered during school holidays so half term will do something, but is obviously rather short.

 

[elbows]

But I should point out that in some of this modelling the wave actually begins at end of May or early June, and its the explosive bit that comes in July.

Oh how I hate trying to reduce these modelling documents down to a few sentences. My description of June and the explosive bit not till July only applies to one of the universities model results, the other has a lot of the big swing upwards happening in June, when looking at the variant with higher transmission scenario.

Is it fair to say that the public have not been given much sense of the implications that a 50% more transmissive strain may have in terms of wave size compared to previous waves, even in the vaccination era?

 

[elbows]

Also rather than driving myself mad trying to look at the age heatmaps for every place via the dashboard, I noticed that I can quickly look at them all via documents on this page:

Coronavirus cases by local authority: epidemiological data, 26 May 2021

Weekly watchlist giving epidemiological coronavirus (COVID-19) data for each lower-tier local authority (LTLA) in England.

www.gov.uk

Here is one example, some of the ones from the North West:

 

[pinkmonkey]

My brothers son has covid, big outbreak at his school, in Yorkshire, what a shit bank holiday weekend for them all. Their trip out today was to get the rest of the family PCR tested.

 

[elbows]

The ZOE Covid people had a report about the effects of vaccination and I feel the need to highlight some particular details that people might not have heard via other sources yet:

Looking more closely, we saw that people with less healthy lifestyles and higher body mass index (BMI) were more at risk of becoming reinfected after vaccination, as well as people living in areas of higher social deprivation.

Older people with health conditions causing frailty were also more likely to get infected after their jab, which could be particularly relevant for elderly people living in care homes, although age itself didn’t seem to affect the chances of reinfection.

According to our analysis, people over the age of 60 who’d been vaccinated were less likely to develop prolonged COVID symptoms (long COVID) than those who had not.

Having an underlying health condition - including asthma, cancer, diabetes, and lung or heart disease - didn’t increase the chances of being reinfected after vaccination compared with unvaccinated groups, although there was a small increase in risk for people over the age of 60 with kidney disease. It’s possible that people with these conditions are still shielding to some extent, whether vaccinated or not, which could explain this finding.

I take particular note of this finding:

Curiously, we did notice that people who had been vaccinated and then tested positive for COVID-19 were more likely to report sneezing as a symptom compared with those without a jab.

What’s my risk of COVID-19 after vaccination?

Our latest analysis of data from the ZOE COVID Study app reveals who is most at risk from being reinfected with COVID-19 after vaccination.

covid.joinzoe.com

 

[cupid_stunt]

If the increases in both new cases and hospital admissions of 23% over the last 7 days, is the start of a trend, surely they will end-up delaying stage 4 of the unlocking for a few weeks, to allow the vaccination programme time to get more people jabbed?

Almost half of the population thinks they should, according to this poll in the 'i', and I would expect that to grow if/as cases & hospital admissions continue to increase.

Almost half of Britons do not believe England's Covid-19 rules should ease on 21 June

Doubts have been cast on the Government’s plans to move to step four of the roadmap due to increase in cases of the Indian variant

inews.co.uk

 

[Sunray]

If the increases in both new cases and hospital admissions of 23% over the last 7 days, is the start of a trend, surely they will end-up delaying stage 4 of the unlocking for a few weeks, to allow the vaccination programme time to get more people jabbed?

Almost half of the population thinks they should, according to this poll in the 'i', and I would expect that to grow if/as cases & hospital admissions continue to increase.

View attachment 270923

Almost half of Britons do not believe England's Covid-19 rules should ease on 21 June

Doubts have been cast on the Government’s plans to move to step four of the roadmap due to increase in cases of the Indian variant

inews.co.uk

That doesn't make any sense, because whatever we are doing now is allowing the spread?
So really we should go back before the 17th of May?
On past performance, it's all going ahead as it 'irreversible'.
I also note that that hospital admissions are nearly a week out of date on the PHE website.

 

[kabbes]

That doesn't make any sense, because whatever we are doing now is allowing the spread?
So really we should go back before the 17th of May?
On past performance, it's all going ahead as it 'irreversible'.
I also note that that hospital admissions are nearly a week out of date on the PHE website.

“Things are already slightly bad so we should make them worse”?

 

[cupid_stunt]

That doesn't make any sense, because whatever we are doing now is allowing the spread?
So really we should go back before the 17th of May?

I very much doubt they will roll-back on the May unlocking, I think the best we can hope for is that June unlocking will be put off, to give the vaccine programme a better chance to get ahead of the virus in the race.

They always expected an increase in cases with unlocking, and the Indian variant is not helping, their concern is overloading the NHS again. If those increased hospital admissions are mainly in the Indian variant hotspot areas, where they are throwing resources at it, I doubt they will be concerned about the NHS being overloaded at present.

Looking at Bolton, they do seem to have turned the tide on new cases, down -16.6% in the last 7-days, hospital admissions up +36%, but if those now start to drop in line with a drop in cases, it would be a good sign the local action plan has worked.

On past performance, it's all going ahead as it 'irreversible'.

They wanted the unlocking to be 'irreversible', but each stage is still down to consideration of 3-4 weeks of data & a week's notice of change, so it's possible stage 4 will be delayed, so that they don't have to reverse it later.

 

[LDC]

Is it fair to say that the public have not been given much sense of the implications that a 50% more transmissive strain may have in terms of wave size compared to previous waves, even in the vaccination era?

Definitely, even quite sensible people who have followed things reasonably closely the last year now now seem to think it's all over IME.

 

[LDC]

That doesn't make any sense, because whatever we are doing now is allowing the spread?
So really we should go back before the 17th of May?
On past performance, it's all going ahead as it 'irreversible'.
I also note that that hospital admissions are nearly a week out of date on the PHE website.

Yesterday in the city centre it felt normal really, so I think some of the big steps have been taken already, June will, I expect, just add a little to the mix.

 

[cupid_stunt]

This article is a good summary of the current hospital admissions situation, and how increases are mainly a localised reaction to a localised hotspots, which is why I can't see them rolling back on the May unlocking.

Covid-19 hospital admissions in England: What do the local numbers show?

About two-thirds of acute hospital trusts in England are currently recording no Covid-19 admissions.

www.standard.co.uk

 

[LDC]

This article is a good summary of the current hospital admissions situation, and how increases are mainly a localised reaction to a localised hotspots, which is why I can't see them rolling back on the May unlocking.

Covid-19 hospital admissions in England: What do the local numbers show?

About two-thirds of acute hospital trusts in England are currently recording no Covid-19 admissions.

www.standard.co.uk

Yeah, it's all 'irreversible', until it isn't...

 

[teuchter]

Definitely, even quite sensible people who have followed things reasonably closely the last year now now seem to think it's all over IME.

Just yesterday I overheard someone, saying to their friend who was reminding them to put their mask on as they went into a supermarket, "oh yeah I forgot...in my mind it's all over now".

 

[existentialist]

Just yesterday I overheard someone, saying to their friend who was reminding them to put their mask on as they went into a supermarket, "oh yeah I forgot...in my mind it's all over now".

I can see what would tempt someone into believing that, TBF. Although it's up to all of us not to get complacent.

 

[pinkmonkey]

My brothers son has covid, big outbreak at his school, in Yorkshire, what a shit bank holiday weekend for them all. Their trip out today was to get the rest of the family PCR tested.

and my brother has it now, he had one vaccine but he still has symptoms, says he feels sweaty and tired.

 

[Supine]

Just shared a train with hundreds of drunk maskless youth. Passing through hotspots like Bolton with everyone seemingly going on the piss in Manchester. Things are going to get bad pretty quickly if this is the new normal.

 

[elbows]

Given my focus on hospital infections as a pandemic wave driver, the possible increase in transmissiveness of the new variant, and the talk of hoe vaccine failure is more likely to be seen in people with other health problems, I have to eercise much restraint to stop my mind running wild when I read things like:

But he said it was "incredibly striking" how busy hospitals were, as they deal with non-Covid backlogs.

Trusts were going "full pelt", he said.

Covid-19: 'Very few' Covid hospital patients had two jabs, NHS boss says

NHS boss Chris Hopson adds it is "incredibly striking" how busy hospitals are with non-Covid patients.

www.bbc.co.uk

The headline comment doesnt mean much to me other than on the reassuring propaganda / encourage vaccination watch front. Because its what I'd expect them to draw attention to, and its a poor guide as to what the picture would look like if we have another big wave. And documents I read which deal with the next wave tend to say that its inevitable that the proportion of hospitalised patients that have been vaccinated will be significant in future,

Having said all that, there is still quite a wide range of possibilities in my mind in regards what we will see in the months ahead.

 

[LDC]

Just shared a train with hundreds of drunk maskless youth. Passing through hotspots like Bolton with everyone seemingly going on the piss in Manchester. Things are going to get bad pretty quickly if this is the new normal.

Same with town yesterday, just looked normal.

 

[elbows]

In terms of behaviours returning to normal, I suppose its sensible to use 'extreme ambulance service pressure for non-Covid reasons' as an indicator too? Although such a situation can also relate to staffing pressures, in this case they are talking about a record number of calls.

South Western Ambulance Service declares 'critical incident'

South Western Ambulance Service blames "extreme pressures" for extended wait times for patients.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[20Bees]

Just yesterday I overheard someone, saying to their friend who was reminding them to put their mask on as they went into a supermarket, "oh yeah I forgot...in my mind it's all over now".

I was working on the supermarket checkout yesterday and a guy unloading his basket snapped at the woman (in her 50s?) behind him to step back. She looked at me, clearly bewildered. I said, “Please will you wait at the next floor marker until the customer in front of you has gone“, ... she did then move away, saying “Sorry, I didn’t think we had to do that now everywhere’s open”!

 

[elbows]

An additional complication in my ability to use things like the Bolton hospital reality to gather clues about how bad a subsequent wave will be, is how keen the authorities are to present as much as possible as being good news. Some of it might turn out to be good news but I'm bound to resist crude attempts to characterise it as such at this stage. Its something I might look back on and think I should have been more positive about, or I might look back and rant about what a load of bullshit wa flying around at this time. The BBC news on telly today was esepcially vulgar in this respect, although it is a bank holiday weekend so that might partly explain why they are laying it on even thicker than usual.

 

[Brainaddict]

I was working on the supermarket checkout yesterday and a guy unloading his basket snapped at the woman (in her 50s?) behind him to step back. She looked at me, clearly bewildered. I said, “Please will you wait at the next floor marker until the customer in front of you has gone“, ... she did then move away, saying “Sorry, I didn’t think we had to do that now everywhere’s open”!

I don't really blame individuals for this. The government should be making it more clear.