And BOOM, half of inner London goes black
Can someone wake me up when this is 'over'..?
Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion
- Thread starter Sasaferrato
- Start date
cupid_stunt
Merry fecking Christmas.
And BOOM, half of inner London goes black
Yep, and you can see how it's spreading out of London, with most surrounding counties now dark purple.
West Berkshire will go that way tomorrow, closely followed by Hampshire, us in West Sussex, then East Sussex soon after. It's just like watching the spread from north Kent last Dec., and into Jan.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
elbows
Well-Known Member
Traansmission will be reduced further than Plan B because of all the behavioural changes due to the much worse mood music. Really difficult for me to guess to what extent though, or the extent to which extended family contact patterns over Christmas remove the advantages from workplace contacts and school contacts being reduced by the holiday period. ie similar to last year where people were on the lookout for a dreadful Christmas-induced spike in cases, but I felt the need to keep waffling on about the effect of school holidays etc.
I cant even use the daily hospital admissions data to form a strong opinion because although the numbers have been going up quite quickly in the London region, it would still take more time before they reached doom levels, and there will be some large disruptions to publication of that data over the holiday. Also given the increased Omicron transmissiveness I dont know to quite what extent I should attribute the rise in daily hospital admissions/diagnoses to spread within hospitals and people tsting positive when they are in hospital for other reasons. And of course the condition they are in for other reasons makes a difference to the implications for them when they happen to catch covid without the covid being the original cause of their admission.
My adherence to precautionary principals mean that the above would not stop me from taking further action, but those and many other unknowns mean I dont really have a solid prediction for quite what to expect in January.
I cant even use the daily hospital admissions data to form a strong opinion because although the numbers have been going up quite quickly in the London region, it would still take more time before they reached doom levels, and there will be some large disruptions to publication of that data over the holiday. Also given the increased Omicron transmissiveness I dont know to quite what extent I should attribute the rise in daily hospital admissions/diagnoses to spread within hospitals and people tsting positive when they are in hospital for other reasons. And of course the condition they are in for other reasons makes a difference to the implications for them when they happen to catch covid without the covid being the original cause of their admission.
My adherence to precautionary principals mean that the above would not stop me from taking further action, but those and many other unknowns mean I dont really have a solid prediction for quite what to expect in January.
stdP
One Swiss dinosaur in Polly Gosling's anorak hood
A similarly worrisome article from The Conversation:
theconversation.com
Thankfully we've got a government that's always got the interests of the most deprived and dispossessed at heart and the efficiency of the private sector is pulling out all the stops to help the NHS.
Omicron is likely to hit deprived areas the hardest – here’s why
Fewer people in deprived areas have been receiving the COVID booster shots.
theconversation.com
Thankfully we've got a government that's always got the interests of the most deprived and dispossessed at heart and the efficiency of the private sector is pulling out all the stops to help the NHS.
stdP
One Swiss dinosaur in Polly Gosling's anorak hood
The (presumably) infection rate for London is pretty impressive, with the rest of the country broadly stationary - suggesting that the huge increases in cases every day are predominantly London-only? I'm beginning to wonder if I'm the only person in Lambeth never to have got it.
Do your sources for stats have separate data for hospital admissions only in London itself? Seeing as it appears to be London leading the omicron charge starting about a month ago it'd be very interesting to see what the London hospital admissions started looking like a fortnight ago.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Large numbers of locations around the country are showing big leaps in case numbers, but these only showed up more recently than London and it takes time to filter through into hospitalisations.
The graphs I included show London as an entire region. To zoom in more than that you need to look at data per hospital trust, which only comes out once a week (Thursdays if I recall properly). It is available on the main UK dashboard using dropdown menus. And I'm not a Londoner so I have a bit of trouble putting individual NHS trusts into context.
Just to give one example, this link should show the data for Barts. Currently only covers admissions up to the 12th December.
editor
hiraethified
Anecdotally, there's been a HUGE increase in mask wearing in the street and in shops. Why we couldn't have just stuck with an enforced requirement to wear masks on public transport and shops baffles me. Well it would if we didn't have a bunch of fucking clowns in government.
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
Well, it would reduce transmission. And just imagine being trapped in an ideological and political place where you can't do that? Killers.
StoneRoad
heckling from the back!
Still a bit too early for omicron cases to be affecting deaths in particular.
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
cupid_stunt
Merry fecking Christmas.
purenarcotic
Conveniently Pocket Sized
What is happening in South Africa? They have much lower vaccination rates, so just wondering if that helps to build a picture of what it might be like? Given they discovered it so are presumably ahead of us…
Artaxerxes
Look out, he's got a gnu!
Younger average population though.
I think things are doing ok there at the moment but not paying that much attention.
Doctor Carrot
Marxist Henchman
Pass the spliff.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Data I've seen has cases dropping (quite fast) but I think the question is to what extent that is a true picture and/or an artefact of various factors
elbows
Well-Known Member
I wore myself out with that stuff via past waves peak predictions and trying to decode data, so I'm not going to try this time, I'll quit while I'm ahead (the July peak that somehow commentators and experts didnt see coming despite the same thing having happened in Scotland earlier due to earlier school holidays in Scotland back then). And I've bored myself going on about reasons for actual peaks that dont involve the classic formal lockdowns. Certainly with every day that passes there will be more people drawing attention to that data on twitter etc, but I'll take a break instead. My focus will be on cases by age group since these sometimes tell a different story to the peaks in overall case numbers. And I'm sure I will keep looking at hosiptal data one we reach a point where I can make more confident claims about such things, probably after the Christmas pause to hospital data at this rate. eg the July case peak I mentioned did not lead to the peak in hospitalisations for that wave following soon after in a straightforward manner, since the peak was dominated by younger age groups and case number in older people grew more later.
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I just read that Tuesday's figure was down on the highs of last week
Cases are up 63.1% on the pervious 7 days.
cupid_stunt
Merry fecking Christmas.
Not sure where you read that, but...
elbows
Well-Known Member
Theres lots of different ways to look at it and different headlines can be constructed as a result.
There are 7 day averages. There are positive cases reported per day. There are positive cases by test specimen date (current peak of those is still December 15th but that could still change later).
And then there are other forms of surveillance which arent so reliant on number of tests done and attitudes to testing. eg things like the ONS study that does random sampling of households and tends to generate news items once a week. But thats a laggy form of surveillance so people will still tend to resort to daily data when trying to tell peak stories at the very earliest opportunity (or prematurely).
For England ones of the clues about testing numbers we have these days is that if you drill down to England on the test section of the dashboard and scroll down a fair bit, you can see how many lateral flow tests are recorded as having been taken each day. So far these also peaked on the 15th but I wouldnt call the drop off since then staggering.
Other clues are obtained via weekly reports and via things like the percentage of tests that are positive. I might focus on the positivity rate at some point, but for now I will see how long I can go without the temptation to keep making posts like these.
Oh and people could also look at daily data for the Christmas period last year, to see what sort of festive season & school holiday induced changes happened to the figures that time around.
There are 7 day averages. There are positive cases reported per day. There are positive cases by test specimen date (current peak of those is still December 15th but that could still change later).
And then there are other forms of surveillance which arent so reliant on number of tests done and attitudes to testing. eg things like the ONS study that does random sampling of households and tends to generate news items once a week. But thats a laggy form of surveillance so people will still tend to resort to daily data when trying to tell peak stories at the very earliest opportunity (or prematurely).
For England ones of the clues about testing numbers we have these days is that if you drill down to England on the test section of the dashboard and scroll down a fair bit, you can see how many lateral flow tests are recorded as having been taken each day. So far these also peaked on the 15th but I wouldnt call the drop off since then staggering.
Other clues are obtained via weekly reports and via things like the percentage of tests that are positive. I might focus on the positivity rate at some point, but for now I will see how long I can go without the temptation to keep making posts like these.
Oh and people could also look at daily data for the Christmas period last year, to see what sort of festive season & school holiday induced changes happened to the figures that time around.
Cloo
Banana for scale
I was thinking this yesterday - was on the tube and FINALLY almost 100% compliance in our carriage and I just thought 'See? It's not that fucking hard; we needed to have been doing this since first lockdown last year and to keep doing it next year. If you can do it now, you can keep doing it!'
Would it have stopped COVID in its tracks? No. Would we have been in a much better position with 1000s fewer dead or left with chronic illness? Yes.
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