Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[elbows]

Yes I should have defined shitshow. Continuing growth of case numbers, hospitalisations and deaths,

Anyway if we get a peak without the formal handbrake of lockdown, its obvious that anti-lockdown types will try to use that to rewrite history. I'm ready for that, with my usual explanations about how peaks are caused by the virus not being able to continue to find ever larger numbers of victims. And how that picture is governed by all the things that reduce the number of susceptible people, and keep susceptible people out of harms way. So for example all the disruption, self-isolation and changes to behaviours that occur when infections reach silly levels, even before formal lockdowns were introduced in the past. Behavioural changes that manifested themselves in data such as mobility in the early weeks of the first wave, when the largest behavioural changes happened about a week before formal lockdown was belatedly introduced.

This stuff will become a hot potato in some ways when this wave peaks, if the peak isnt induced by u-turns and lockdowns. Because there will be people whose agenda means they will seek to attribute the peak to the immunity picture alone, as opposed to the combination of immunity with school holidays, self-isolation, voluntary reductions in risky behaviour etc that this period actually features. Which means some of these questions will lurk unhelpfully over periods like the autumn, and the battle to determine how normal a life we can go back to this year.

 

[teuchter]

Yeah and some forms of optimism have been deadly in this pandemic.

But there are many different angles where optimism can be pointed. I doubt anyone would think of me as an optimist in this pandemic, and yet I have been consistently optimistic when it comes to questions of how many people will get a pandemic clue and do the right thing, how much of a positive effect on viral levels that will have, how much burden people will carry without society collapsing and civil unrest. And I've been keen to point out peaks and good news whenever such opportunities have fleetingly made themselves available.

I'm sure we know what sort of optimism (or bloody minded madness) people are referring to most of the time, and there have been slim pickings for such optimists gaining credibility by actually being right in this pandemic so far. My assumption at the moment is that it is dangerous to assume that this state of affairs will simply persist in the dramatic form which we have become used to in this pandemic so far. They may yet have their day, their moment, and if this is an 'exit wave' where a big chunk of the wave crushing is actually caused by immunity, it would be foolish to ignore this prospect.

I've been an 'optimist' on and off at various points ... right at the beginning I reckoned it was going to be a brief thing that would blow over; I remember reading articles about why we wouldn't be affected like Italy was; when everything died down last summer I was watching other countries' opening up and thinking it looked like that was it; when the 'Delta variant' first appeared I thought probably that the increased transmissibility would turn out not to be as much as initial reports suggested. I thought all the modelling of another surge about now might turn out to be wrong.

I also quite frequently come on these threads and wonder if everyone here has lost the plot a bit with levels of worry and so on. And sometimes might think that certain people get off a bit on playing the doom-monger role.

Mostly though - the warnings that things are looking like they are going downhill, they have turned out to be true, at least to some extent. And in the past year and a half what everyone has gone through, even those who've not had Covid, has been far from trivial.

The latest from Pagel is really just an opinion - she thinks we've not seen the peak yet. She may or may not be right. She says there's a lot of uncertainty. Her opinion is backed up with arguments and info. She's not saying the world is going to end. Seems silly to describe her as a doom-monger.

 

[kabbes]

Are you disputing the ONS finding that 90%+ of adults have antibodies, or what's your point? It feels like you're using an ad hominem argument because you don't like the conclusion.

See data here:

Coronavirus (COVID-19) antibody and vaccination data for the UK - Office for National Statistics

Antibody data, by UK country and age, from the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey.

www.ons.gov.uk

It’s not “ad hominem” if you are making an argument from authority by saying we should listen to him because he’s a doctor and I point out that being a GP is insufficient in terms of being an authority on this subject.

(And we’ve already rehearsed on this thread the reasons why there merely being antibodies present in the population is not necessarily a source of relief.)

 

[8ball]

The latest from Pagel is really just an opinion - she thinks we've not seen the peak yet. She may or may not be right. She says there's a lot of uncertainty. Her opinion is backed up with arguments and info. She's not saying the world is going to end. Seems silly to describe her as a doom-monger.

I think things like the belief that it has peaked are liable to become factors driving the peak higher. There's a sawtooth nature to a lot of the case rises we have seen (which you'd expect regardless of feedback effects like this).

 

[elbows]

I think things like the belief that it has peaked are liable to become factors driving the peak higher. There's a sawtooth nature to a lot of the case rises we have seen (which you'd expect regardless of feedback effects like this).

Thats one of the reasons authorities are very slow to describe peaks as such in public until more time has passed by than is strictly necessary to identify a peak.

 

[8ball]

Thats one of the reasons authorities are very slow to describe peaks as such in public until more time has passed by than is strictly necessary to identify a peak.

Fair, but it's not the authorities as such that's my concern.

 

[scalyboy]

If we are approaching a peak soon, that would be great news, but obviously it's too early to say. For one thing, I guess the impact of 'freedom day' has yet to show up in the stats.
The first weekend since the 19th starts tomorrow, so there may be lots of busy shopping centres, and the decent-ish weather might mean lots of people going on day or overnight trips, some via public transport (not that I'm judging, just saying).

But as I understand things, we have to hope the peak is soon approaching, because our incompetent government won't help - this shower is unlikely to reintroduce a lockdown so soon after promising 'freedom' on July 19th; in any case, they were criminally slow to react during the previous two waves.

 

[elbows]

I also quite frequently come on these threads and wonder if everyone here has lost the plot a bit with levels of worry and so on. And sometimes might think that certain people get off a bit on playing the doom-monger role.

It probably wasnt possible to tell whether I get off a bit on playing the doom-monger role, or something else. It was something else - I get off on being right, appearing to have moments of prescience, being able to convey info that is useful. This stuff may have the largest impact when the theme happens to be gloomy, so I dont know if the examples that point in the other direction are easily overlooked. I do remember going on about how people shouldnt expect to see some massive new Christmas day spike, to give just one example, although that sentiment was built on the gloomy foundations of case rates already having become so extremely high before that day.

 

[andysays]

Are you disputing the ONS finding that 90%+ of adults have antibodies, or what's your point? It feels like you're using an ad hominem argument because you don't like the conclusion.

See data here:

Coronavirus (COVID-19) antibody and vaccination data for the UK - Office for National Statistics

Antibody data, by UK country and age, from the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey.

www.ons.gov.uk

The point here surely is that no-one yet knows what the significance of this figure of 90% really means in terms of stopping/slowing the spread.

It's been suggested by some, including you as far as I can see, that this means that transmission rates will be right down as a result, and the implication is that the battle is almost over and that we can get rid of the various restrictions which we've all had to rely on for the last 18 months because they're no longer necessary.

But the truth is it's still too early to be sure, and in all the circumstances a rather more cautious approach might be advisable...

 

[teuchter]

It probably wasnt possible to tell whether I get off a bit on playing the doom-monger role, or something else. It was something else - I get off on being right, appearing to have moments of prescience, being able to convey info that is useful. This stuff may have the largest impact when the theme happens to be gloomy, so I dont know if the examples that point in the other direction are easily overlooked. I do remember going on about how people shouldnt expect to see some massive new Christmas day spike, to give just one example, although that sentiment was built on the gloomy foundations of case rates already having become so extremely high before that day.

Yeah, it's not you that I'd put in the 'getting off on being a doom monger category'. If it seemed that was what I was implying.

 

[elbows]

If we are approaching a peak soon, that would be great news, but obviously it's too early to say. For one thing, I guess the impact of 'freedom day' has yet to show up in the stats.
The first weekend since the 19th starts tomorrow, so there may be lots of busy shopping centres, and the decent-ish weather might mean lots of people going on day or overnight trips, some via public transport (not that I'm judging, just saying).

But as I understand things, we have to hope the peak is soon approaching, because our incompetent government won't help - this shower is unlikely to reintroduce a lockdown so soon after promising 'freedom' on July 19th; in any case, they were criminally slow to react during the previous two waves.

Yes too early to see the impact of freedom day yet, and more broadly this weeks positive case numbers have been a mess that is not easy to interpret. Next set of data due in minutes, no idea whether it will bring any clarity to this weeks picture.

Freedom day itself is a tug of war between any relaxed behaviours and risky settings people have visited and mixed with others in, and the effects of the sombre mood music which ended up being played for several weeks before freedom day. Plus the weather as you mention, and also schools closing for summer. And really large numbers of people told to self-isolate, which is bound to have some kind of impact.

Most of the recent modelling of this wave just looked at different rates at which people might proceed from cautious pandemic behaviour all the way back to behaving as in pre-pandemic times. They are rather crude and simplistic, and cannot hope to capture this tug of war between factors in full detail, except by chance.

 

[elbows]

Yeah, it's not you that I'd put in the 'getting off on being a doom monger category'. If it seemed that was what I was implying.

There were moments where the label would have seemed a good fit for me, mostly when actual doom was impending!

We lost our most obviously dramatic poster on the subject of how bad the first wave was going to be, people dropping dead in the streets etc etc, right at the moment where that waves arrival and growth became apparent to people in this country. I wonder what happened to them, I hope they are OK.

 

[elbows]

I remember reading articles about why we wouldn't be affected like Italy was

I dont suppose you have links to any of those now? I could do with a laugh! I was probably at my most useful in the period between the shit hitting the fan in Italy and the true scale of the UKs first wave becoming apparent to even our slowest authorities.

The pandemic has certainly provided many reasons why I might want to rebrand British exceptionalism as British absurdism.

 

[elbows]

No case data has been published today that would fill in gaps some werent expecting to see this week.

See for example this bit of a graph from the dashboard, covering England not the UK as a whole, with the cases reported today being in yellow.

 

[Supine]

No, doom-mongering.

If it was all good news they wouldn't bother doing it

 

[teuchter]

I dont suppose you have links to any of those now? I could do with a laugh! I was probably at my most useful in the period between the shit hitting the fan in Italy and the true scale of the UKs first wave becoming apparent to even our slowest authorities.

There was one article I specifically remember reading... because I recall reading it on my phone as I wandered through central london... and it was a list of reasons that the Italy experience might not translate to the UK. I think it was around the point where I was wavering between thinking people were over-reacting, and realising something fairly major was actually likely to happen.

I feel it was somewhere quite mainstream like BBC or guardian - but I can't seem to find it now.

 

[two sheds]

A tad confused here, the interactive map showed results up to 20th the other day, I'll swear. They seem to have gone backwards.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map/cases

Errm fucking hell I've just checked again and it's changed I'll swear again. Lots more of the country at 400-800/100,000 including Cornwall which was 200-400 on the map earlier.

Noted what elbows said though.

 

[elbows]

There was one article I specifically remember reading... because I recall reading it on my phone as I wandered through central london... and it was a list of reasons that the Italy experience might not translate to the UK. I think it was around the point where I was wavering between thinking people were over-reacting, and realising something fairly major was actually likely to happen.

I feel it was somewhere quite mainstream like BBC or guardian - but I can't seem to find it now.

Not to worry, cheers for looking. I dont remember the articles, I remember some people here expressing various forms of hope that our fate would not be the same, which likely prompted me to take the piss a bit by going on about the virus being allergic to radio 4 and a nice cup of tea.

 

[elbows]

Errm fucking hell I've just checked again and it's changed I'll swear again. Lots more of the country at 400-800/100,000 including Cornwall which was 200-400 on the map earlier.

Noted what elbows said though.

Its gone 4pm so there is an additional days data there now, map page now says 7 day period ending on 18th. And since the period in the 7 days up to the 18th included days with very dramatic rises, I'm not surprised the map has evolved since last time you looked.

 

[elbows]

Since there wont be any more hospital data for the next few days due to a lack of weekend reporting on that, I may as well take this opportunity to post a few graphs. For a start here is how daily hospital admissions/diagnoses have been looking for the different regions of England:

 

[Wilf]

I'm fully expecting a continued shitshow, regardless of when Delta peaks.

The thing about shitshows is this government have treated us to the full range of shithows through the last 18 months. Johnson's always had a vaguely libertarian, certainly neoliberal disposition towards a 'blustering-do-nothing' with a full side show of herd immunity. Last Spring his do fuck all approach was blown apart by dire warnings about the likely death toll, though not until he'd delayed so long that mass death was the outcome. Then there's been the crony, private sector, give the contract to the brother of the woman you are shagging approach to PPE, test and trace and the kit needed. Outright lies about testing before people were discharged from care homes.... and plenty of other ways to 'let the bodies pile up'. Back to last Autumn the whole thing played out again as Johnson's laziness and libertarianism piled a few more bodies up. But reality and science made him shift back to lockdown and regulation. Managed to pack in a few cracking ideas that time round, such as getting university students on campus to the point where they had to be fenced in and fenced in to accommodation costs. Nice one!

Anyway... I take the point that Elbows has made that the current unlocking was all put in place and planned a while back. But as of this month it seems to me that johnson's own instincts and fear of the loons on the back benches has left them singularly unable to put together a 'balanced' approach. The rhetoric of Freedom Day, no social distancing and abandoning masks has left them trapped by their own idiocy. The changes were 'irreversible' They could U turn, they have in the past, but they are dragging a libertarian anchor behind them now. Similarly in terms of the 'pingdemic' they are moaning about and no doubt stoking in the right wing media, I really don't think they have a way through it. They can see cases are high even before we see the effects of 'Freedom' but are listening to the squawkings of business. Here's the point I suppose I want to make (finally ) I don't think they are confident that when all over 18s or even over 12s have been offered the vaccine that they will have achieved a functioning herd immunity. They are pretty much doing what they are doing now because they've talked and politicked themselves out of a more 'managed' and sensible approaches.

 

[David Clapson]

There was one article I specifically remember reading... because I recall reading it on my phone as I wandered through central london... and it was a list of reasons that the Italy experience might not translate to the UK. I think it was around the point where I was wavering between thinking people were over-reacting, and realising something fairly major was actually likely to happen.

I feel it was somewhere quite mainstream like BBC or guardian - but I can't seem to find it now.

There was a theory that a lockdown in Italy would never work because Italians wouldn't comply. Whereas the trusty British would grumble but obey. There was also a story that lots of Italians in the North had decamped to the South, where there wasn't a lockdown at first.

 

[two sheds]

Its gone 4pm so there is an additional days data there now, map page now says 7 day period ending on 18th. And since the period in the 7 days up to the 18th included days with very dramatic rises, I'm not surprised the map has evolved since last time you looked.

It was still marked 17th when I posted it.

 

[elbows]

Here is a comparison of various different data from Scotland, plotted using a log scale so that all these forms of data fit on the same scale of chart without manipulation.

I'd like to see the number in intensive care come down a bit before I go overboard about whats happened there.

Deaths are by date of death so more recent numbers are incomplete. Cases are the same except I use a 7 day average and have chopped off the latest, most incomplete daily figure.

Note that their daily admissions/diagnoses reached a level that is not too far off the autumn (pre-Alpha) wave.

 

[scalyboy]

.

 

[elbows]

Whatever happens with this wave, the strain on hospitals and ambulance services this summer is awful. The recent heat wont have helped. The high levels of RSV infection which have placed strain on intensive care for young children hasnt really been reported on enough I dont think, although that isnt the theme of this particular article either.

 

[elbows]

Anyway... I take the point that Elbows has made that the current unlocking was all put in place and planned a while back. But as of this month it seems to me that johnson's own instincts and fear of the loons on the back benches has left them singularly unable to put together a 'balanced' approach. The rhetoric of Freedom Day, no social distancing and abandoning masks has left them trapped by their own idiocy. The changes were 'irreversible' They could U turn, they have in the past, but they are dragging a libertarian anchor behind them now. Similarly in terms of the 'pingdemic' they are moaning about and no doubt stoking in the right wing media, I really don't think they have a way through it. They can see cases are high even before we see the effects of 'Freedom' but are listening to the squawkings of business. Here's the point I suppose I want to make (finally ) I don't think they are confident that when all over 18s or even over 12s have been offered the vaccine that they will have achieved a functioning herd immunity. They are pretty much doing what they are doing now because they've talked and politicked themselves out of a more 'managed' and sensible approaches.

They are running low on how much doubling of hospital admissions wiggle room they have left. And so I am not surprised that plans are being drawn up. But given uncertainties about peak timing, and indeed the lag between an apparent case peak in Scotland and a reduction in hospitalisations there, I currently have contradictory clues as to whether such a u-turn will end up being required this time.

 

[elbows]

And there are scenarios where they can win a battle against this Covid wave, but still lose the war due to a number of non-Covid things combining with Covid when it comes to pressures on the NHS. The non-Covid NHS alarm bells have been going off for a very long time already, so I'm not surprised things look a bit desperate.

 

[elbows]

I've not had time to read the documents in question yet, especially the new variant stuff which people shouldnt read much into at this stage.

The reason I am posting this article is because I know people are very interested in vaccinated hospitalisation stats.

PHE’s data also showed that between 21 June and 19 July, 1,788 people were hospitalised after contracting the Delta variant. More than half (54.3 per cent) were unvaccinated, while nearly one-third (29.6 per cent) had received both doses of a vaccine.

New Covid variant under investigation in the UK, PHE says

No evidence to suggest it causes more severe illness, PHE says

www.independent.co.uk

 

[elbows]

Although note that such figures only represent a subset of hospital admissions, where data is available and sequencing for Delta has been done, and likely some other criteria. For example, using dashboard admissions/diagnoses for England, I get a figure of more like 11,826 admissions over that period.