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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

Other stuff from that modelling document:

There is a clear consensus that continued high levels of homeworking has played a very important role in preventing sustained epidemic growth in recent months. It is highly likely that a significant decrease in homeworking in the next few months would result in a rapid increase in hospital admissions.

The modelling did not foresee such rapid transient change in dynamics, with possible reasons including the closure of schools for the summer, changes in behaviour during and following the Euro 2020 football matches, a period of warm weather, and a large proportion of the population isolating as a result of being identified as a contact of a case, as discussed in a previous consensus statement

I put part of that in bold as its a good fit for the idea that the 'pingdemic' was like a mini partial lockdown that made an important difference. Fuck the press that moaned and mischaracterised it at the time.
 
got a batch of Flowflex tests from the Government - so relieved, as i’ve not been able to do tests properly until now, so have avoided doing it unless i’m going to a social thing, and not doing it for work - we’re only strongly encouraged to do it rather than instructed to, so it was easy just to not bother.
 
got a batch of Flowflex tests from the Government - so relieved, as i’ve not been able to do tests properly until now, so have avoided doing it unless i’m going to a social thing, and not doing it for work - we’re only strongly encouraged to do it rather than instructed to, so it was easy just to not bother.
Presumably because they say you dont have to stick these very far up nostrils?
 
Presumably because they say you dont have to stick these very far up nostrils?
I've found the post-sampling gagging and sneezing near to intolerable, so I eagerly opened my new pack of tests to see if they're any different from the previous ones, but sadly not. Gagging and sneezing, here we come :(
 
I'm finding this hard to believe. We have groups of staff testing positive daily.
Even if cases are rising in some segments of society, or regions, age groups etc, this is often masked in the overall figures if big falls are happening elsewhere.

I'll be looking into how case numbers are going in different age groups and regions and will have something to say on this within the next couple of days.
 
I'm finding this hard to believe. We have groups of staff testing positive daily.
A couple of things to remember:

Reported case numbers may have come down a bit in the last week, but the numbers are still huge. The lowest reported daily new case number in the last month was yesterday's 26,628. That's just in one day. In pre-vaccine times that would be disastrous. It still is disastrous - 201 reported deaths today; the daily death toll currently averaging 139 deaths per day over the last week (that's equivalent to 50,735 deaths per year).

That figure is the national figure. There's considerable variation across the countries. Glasgow has 873.5 cases per 100,000 on the latest available info (up to 10th Sept); Hackney has 171 cases per 100,000.
 
For example in regards what I said in my previous post, look at the 7 day totals by age group in Scotland. Younger age groups tend to have been responsible for the most cases, with more dramatic rises and falls, and earlier timing of trajectory changes than older groups. But when it comes to things like hospitalisations, even when the rises in positive cases in older age groups have been more modest, they tend to drive a significant chunk of hospitalisations. This is part of the reason why dramatic fall in overall case numbers sometimes only leads to a modest drop or plateau of hospitalisation figures.

I'm resorting to Scotland again now because their trends have been more dramatic and obvious, but also because I can just go to the following website to get this graphic, rather than England where I tend to feel the need to make my own graphics in a way that involves some tedious arsing around with data manually in a spreadsheet. So I need more time before I can show the age-related picture for England.


Screenshot 2021-09-15 at 20.20.jpg
 
It looks like there was a real drop in hospital admissions/diagnoses for England across age groups, although as usual I hesitate to read too much into it and I dont really use it as a guide as to what happens next.

I supose I post it now mostly to backup the idea that at least some of the fall in case numbers in data for England recently is actually real. I still dont know how much of that to attribute to a spell of good weather a little while back.

I still havent had time to look at English positive case data by age group and region.

Screenshot 2021-09-16 at 16.44.jpg
 
I dont watch Tim Spector of ZOEs videos too often, except on occasions where people have reasons to draw attention to something he's said like that 'only a ripple' error months back. The ZOE youtube channel do quite like clickbait titles, and I decided to make myself watch the latest one as it was titled "Is the UK sleepwalking into a COVID disaster?".

I dont want to describe it in full or even review it properly. Many of the usual themes were there including their feelings about what symptoms should count officially, a mix of hopeful and not so hopeful data, and plenty of "we'll have to wait and see". Anyway the reason I am bothering to make this post is that there was a small part of the video where he looked with envy at graphs showing what a few other well vaccinated European countries had been able to achieve in terms of bringing down hospitalisations in a sustained manner. And he wants plan B stuff to be done now.

Rather than link to the video which I find a bit tedious, here is a bit of a statement that they've put out on the same subject:


I also don't understand why we are waiting for the situation to get worse and the NHS is pressured further before implementing simple measures that would help to bring down the number of new cases and save lives. With such high levels of virus in the population we should also still be wearing masks and keeping our distance in crowded public places, as in major European cities where cases are much lower than ours.
 
I dont watch Tim Spector of ZOEs videos too often, except on occasions where people have reasons to draw attention to something he's said like that 'only a ripple' error months back. The ZOE youtube channel do quite like clickbait titles, and I decided to make myself watch the latest one as it was titled "Is the UK sleepwalking into a COVID disaster?".

I dont want to describe it in full or even review it properly. Many of the usual themes were there including their feelings about what symptoms should count officially, a mix of hopeful and not so hopeful data, and plenty of "we'll have to wait and see". Anyway the reason I am bothering to make this post is that there was a small part of the video where he looked with envy at graphs showing what a few other well vaccinated European countries had been able to achieve in terms of bringing down hospitalisations in a sustained manner. And he wants plan B stuff to be done now.

Rather than link to the video which I find a bit tedious, here is a bit of a statement that they've put out on the same subject:

but...
the public perception
the party conference
the rabid back benchers
all those other political rather than public health related reasons
...possibly also unicorns in teh distance
 
I didn't get very far with that as it kept wanting me to log in to instagram, which I don't have. I'll take your word for it though and have edited my (hostile) comments.
Yeah I already looked at some of his other stuff (there's a fair bit of it around here) and there are some pro NHS themed murals but noting specifically about vaccines (either pro or anti) as far as I can see.

Screenshot 2021-09-17 at 13.17.42.jpg
 
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