Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion
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SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Conveniently I had already decided to give myself the 1st off work. Now I can pretend I did it on principle.
elbows
Well-Known Member
I havent had time to look at overall England data recently, I will get round to it soon because you know I like to look at it by age group.
But aside from that I recommend zooming into individual places to see whats happening, because the picture is probably still very mixed depending on where exactly you look, and sometimes opposing trends cancel each other out when looking at overall national numbers. I'd tend to use the following website and tables such as 'R-Values - Highest First' and then look at the graphs for some of those places on the official dashboard.
A screenshot of some of the places with very highest R values from that site right now, in this case I'm just highlighting ones with an R over 1.4(!) There are currently 248 places where R is over 1.0 in this data.
Case numbers are a pretty relaible guide for what will happen with hospitalisations, but since school age cases may be a very large part of recent increases, I need to look at per-age figures in order not to end up with the wrong expectations about the level of hospitalisations that will show up in the next week or so.
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Elpenor
a clown’s heart and a mandolin
I live in no 2. Devon had low numbers during last winter, so I assume this is Delta + Covid exploiting new markets.
I know correlation / causation but all this does seem to imply that existing immunity gained through exposure is playing a big roll here. Since the latest lockdown was eased I've been expecting something quite bad to happen in SE London due to various factors but primarily due to comparatively low vaccine uptake. So far that doesn't seemed to have occurred.
Supine
Newt Member
Vaccines are brilliant
They're less good when enough people don't use them, hence my comment regarding SE London. I suspect vaccine take-up is higher in those South West areas listed in the table above then in many parts of South East London.
I know age demographics are clearly in play but it just occurs to me that immunity gained through previous exposure might be playing a significant roll.
ETA: If the history of the pandemic has taught me anything is that speculation like this from someone like me is usually wrong anyway so expect a massive spike in SE London any day soon.
Supine
Newt Member
elbows
Well-Known Member
Wel its certainly true that modelling earlier this year in regards the expected 'exit wave' had considerable regional variance that was in great part based on proportion of people infected in previous waves. And that included London being less badly affected and the North East being badly affected.
_Russ_
Never not Knowingly Misunderstood
Wales is doing really badly last 2 weeks, my MSOA has gone from 13 cases a day to 56, average now over 640/10,000 with some areas above 1500/100,000 Hospitals filling up again and deaths going up.
I can't believe that everyone round here is going around more worried about whether they'll get a fucking Turkey in December
I can't believe that everyone round here is going around more worried about whether they'll get a fucking Turkey in December
elbows
Well-Known Member
Since GPs came up here recently, I suppose I should draw attention to this:
Face-to-face GP visits still near lockdown levels
Surgeries in England say remote consultations are the only option as they do not have enough staff.
www.bbc.co.uk
cupid_stunt
Merry fecking Christmas.
Where has that figure come from?
According to the dashboard they are up 'just' 6.5%
lazythursday
Averagely-Known Member
My area (Calderdale ) has been pretty bad through all the peaks except the first one. This time its been noticeable that some of the more rural areas have been much worse hit than previously but even so, some of the same areas are getting hit again and again. There doesn't seem to be much evidence that the virus has burned itself out anywhere. It really puzzles me that London gets short peaks and drops down pretty low again when in other parts of the country it just seems to grind on and on.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Where has that figure come from?
According to the dashboard they are up 'just' 6.5%
Its down to the way media run news stories based on a range of different reports that wont all be in alignment.
In that particular case I suspect it comes from the Test & Trace side of the system which is probably reported weekly.
edited to add: yes its from the test & trace reports, but note the date range that figure covers.
Covid weekly cases soar with 18% rise in people in England testing positive
Test and Trace figures reveal 191,771 people tested positive for coronavirus at least once 1 between 16-22 September 2021, the highest number since the week to September 8.
www.mirror.co.uk
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Where has that figure come from?
According to the dashboard they are up 'just' 6.5%
BBC live news ticker https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-58744991
cupid_stunt
Merry fecking Christmas.
elbows
Well-Known Member
I'd agree that phrases like "burned out" dont end up doing the situation justice.
Different age groups and different sections of society in different parts of the country are certainly experiencing increases and falls at different times.
As time goes on it may be more appropriate to use concepts like burned out in a more limited way, eg if the virus hasnt run out of people to infect but has run out of sufficient people and opportunities that very large and rapid increases in growth result that lead to massive fresh peaks.
So maybe for now I'd prefer to think about this stuff in terms of whether some ceilings have been imposed in some places and some groups.
A few expert voices have started talking about equilibrium and endemic phase in recent months. Thats still a bit premature in my book, or at the very least I'd say that if we peer below the surface of periods that it is tempting to think demonstrate equilibrium, I'm more likely to find a messy picture involving opposing trends cancelling each other out when only viewed at the broadest level. So not real equilibrium, but perhaps a range of views on the road to equilibrium. Not that that desitnation is assured since in theory things can come along which leave more peoples susceptible again.
For now I do consider it appropriate to think about it in terms of some delicate balances involving levels of immunity. And since there unknowns about what will happen on the waning immunity front, such balancing acts may wobble quite a lot over time. And there are further complications because its not clear the extent to which waning immunity will affect not just peoples chances of catching it, but being hospitalised or dying, eg the virus might gain the chance to bounce back more in terms of number of infections, but not all of that rise will filter down into hospitalisations and deaths if some other vital parts of the immune system wane against this virus at a slower rate.
These sorts of things mean I am still stuck making posts like this one, talking about the situation being messy and not having any clearcut predictions for the next few months to share with anyone.
As for why some of the same places seem to come up time and time again, I'd agree that I've seen some patterns in this regard. eg places like Kettering and Leicester have come up on the pandemic radar on more than one occasion, just to pick a couple of examples that I've seen directly for myself when studying specific data. Theres a bunch of reasons why this may be the case, and its worth trying to avoid the assumption that just because a place had newsworthy levels of infection in the past, the virus had run out of further large opportunities there in future. Maybe those places had ridiculously large potential for number of infections in the first place, and even a horrible prior wave only ate a chunk of that potential.
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SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
elbows
Well-Known Member
Guess where I've been working in schools this week?
Teignbridge
I'll dig into cases by age group for that location when I get a chance.
Just to finish off my waffle from my previous post.....
Plus activities and attitudes towards testing can make a difference to the pictures we end up seeing clearly in data. Not that I find it at all easy to unpick all the potential factors.
For example there have been times when I've seen better off parts of a town show a higher number of cases. Sometimes this might have been due to stuff like people from those areas being more likely to have been on holiday, or have gone to university, or to have found it hard to resist the allure of dinner parties and swanky covid restaurants. But at other times its possible that they were showing higher case numbers because attitudes towards bothering getting tested, or practicalities of accessing testing, or not being able to afford the implications of testing positive, were different there to some of the poorer areas.
And theres probably no need for me to go on about the opposite, all the poorer places where all the reasons the poor have been more vulnerable in this pandemic have led to a severe and/or prolonged high level of cases. Leicesters summer 2020 local lockdown probably generated the most press coverage of these issues in that context so far, but there are others. There have certainly been times in the past where the 'distribution spine' of England was lit up like a chirstmas tree on covid data maps, but its still hard to unpick that stuff because there is of course also a relationship between the distribution spine and population density.
Oh and returning to questions of whether true equilibrium is being seen and what stage of the pandemic we are at, its always worth keeping in mind that it is said that levels of contacts between people are still not back to pre-pandemic levels. I think I've seen a figure of things only being back to 75% of normal levels in the press recently, but there is more than one way to estimate that so I dont take that figure as a complete guide. I think I saw something about how even when people have gone back to work they are reporting less contacts, but I didnt pay that much attention to the story because the headline appeared to be framed with a naive 'but nobody knows why!'.
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elbows
Well-Known Member
Guess where I've been working in schools this week?
Teignbridge
I probably should have waffled more when I pointed to that website and the R estimates the other day. R estimates are giving info relevant to rate of increases, and will be subject to potentially larger swings where its a place where the absolute number of cases were lower in the first place. So this is why I recommended people then take places from that list and look at the case numbers for them on the official dashboard, an exercise that in many cases may lead people to wonder what all the fuss was about. But Ive got a bit of a sore head right now so I dont know if I've botched that explanation and I dont want to waffle on too much more.
Anyway here are a couple of graphs for Teignbridge, positive cases by specimen date, which only go up to the 25th September right now. And I've clumped age groups together into broader age groups. Its a fairly typical pattern, with the most notable rises in 0-14 year olds (with 10-14 year olds being largely responsible for that trend).
Note that one of these graphs uses the sum of ases over 7 days to smooth things out. Stuff which I would normally tend to then divide by 7 in order to come out with a 7 day average rather than a 7 day total, but like I said I've got a sore head right now so didnt bother fiddling with this particular spreadsheet to achieve this.
I may as well take the opportunity to say that one of the reasons I'm not posting graphs and details quite as often right now is that I feel there may be some diminishing returns in terms of how much peoples understanding of the situation is actually helped by this level of detail. And I dont want to wind people up for no good reason. But for teachers and parents the data by age is still noteworthy at this particular stage of the pandemic. Its a shame the official dashboard doesnt visually present the age data per place in a very detailed way, I have to download the raw figures and do my own graphs.
And again just to be clear - the above is for Teignbridge not the national picture, although there are similarities.
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elbows
Well-Known Member
OK I just found time to knock out one comparable graph for Kettering. I picked Kettering because thats an example of somewhere that got in the news due to very high rates. And its R estimate would have been very high, but since they have probably reached a peak on some fronts, their R on the website I mentioned the other day is probably quite low again right now. When making these direct comparisons it would be better to use rates adjusted for population size but Im not setup to do that so I stick to absolute numbers.
Again this is 7 day totals rather than 7 day averages.
I ran out of time now but I'll try to do national case and hospital admissions by age graphs tomorrow and will probably then take another break till trends change again.
Again this is 7 day totals rather than 7 day averages.
I ran out of time now but I'll try to do national case and hospital admissions by age graphs tomorrow and will probably then take another break till trends change again.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Ah yes I forgot that I posted someones tweet about that earlier: Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion
StoneRoad
heckling from the back!
It's gone from "late" around 16:00, to "not before 18:30" and now it's "not before 20:30" ...
I'm now wondering wtf has gone wrong with the data collection / analysis !
cupid_stunt
Merry fecking Christmas.
It's not the first time, it's not that unusual.
Remember they are collating stats from different organisations, in four different nations across the UK.
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