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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

Well in this particular case, having looked into it a little more since I last posted it appears the study itself likely was actually intended to discredit what was done. Because it was written by biased economists and has resulted in quite the backlash from scientists. I'm only going to quote one of them but have linked to the full article. Its fair to say I no longer plan to read the shitty report.

expert reaction to a preprint looking at the impact of lockdowns, as posted on the Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences website | Science Media Centre

www.sciencemediacentre.org

“Smoking causes cancer, the earth is round, and ordering people to stay at home (the correct definition of lockdown) decreases disease transmission. None of this is controversial among scientists. A study purporting to prove the opposite is almost certain to be fundamentally flawed.

“In this case, a trio of economists have undertaken a meta-analysis of many previous studies. So far so good. But they systematically excluded from consideration any study based on the science of disease transmission, meaning that the only studies looked at in the analysis are studies using the methods of economics.
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Guardian is saying cases are somewhere in the 84k region, the ZOE app update is saying nearer 200k. What gives? :confused:

Anecdotal info of people I know testing positive would point more towards the ZOE figures.
 
Cases picked up by the testing system are always considered to be only a fraction of the full picture, and it is expected that the system is picking up even less cases these days due to changes to the testing rules (eg no need for PCR confirmation of LFT coupled with people not reporting their LFT results). Things like ZOE and weekly ONS infection surveys will give a better sense of scale and trends.

Hospital admissions per region have continued to decrease or remain relatively flat so far, with quite some variance between these two different trends by region. This is probably due to the younger age groups having been responsible for the bulk of the rises seen in this second Omicron wave. I dont know what will happen next on this front, it would not be a shocking development if hospitalisations started to rise again, or if the regions with decreases till this point see a flattening off. I certainly wouldnt expect to see sustained falls continue until the trends shown by ZOE etc change again.
 
And I think its fair to say the media have currently lost interest again and are playing into the agenda of it being all over, so they arent likely to draw much attention to the resurgence in cases at the moment. This is somewhat driven by data at the sharp hospitalisation and deaths end of things, but also because the media are called upon to ramp up the gloomy mood music when the authorities need the masses to behave in a certain way.

I would be going crazy about this repeatedly if it were not for the various factors which have capped severe disease and death at a certain level (eg some properties of Omicron coupled with the size and timing of the UK booster rollout). I'll still draw attention to it but only sporadically unless the situation deteriorates markedly. If anyone still reading my posts is still in the mode of hoping to avoid catching Covid, my advice is that the risk of catching it has not decreased substantially compared to the situation at the turn of the year, and you should behave accordingly.
 
elbows said:
(eg no need for PCR confirmation of LFT coupled with people not reporting their LFT results).
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I was wondering today about what kind of an impact this rule change might have had - when my daughter tested positive with a LFT early this week I didn't bother reporting the result or going for a PCR, just sent her to bed with some paracetamol - it was only when I was afflicted by a savage fever a couple of days later and was planning on just going to bed for a week myself that I was told by my nurse brother that the rule change is just for people who've tested positive with LFTs but don't have symptoms - if you have symptoms you still need to get a PCR. We went for a PCR and where last time I did there was a queue, this time I was the only car in the testing centre.

(My PCR was negative but I'm assuming it's still covid as it's unlikely I'd pick up a different virus with similar symptoms at my daughter at the same time...?)

In my circles, locally and further afield, there seems to be a big surge of cases atm - a colleague at work was off with it the week before last, another brother has been struck down last week - but if most of those people were understanding the rule change as I did, then the cases won't be getting reported - they'll just shut up shop for 5 - 10 days, lateral flow tests allowing, and crack on.
 
killer b said:
I was wondering today about what kind of an impact this rule change might have had - when my daughter tested positive with a LFT early this week I didn't bother reporting the result or going for a PCR, just sent her to bed with some paracetamol - it was only when I was afflicted by a savage fever a couple of days later and was planning on just going to bed for a week myself that I was told by my nurse brother that the rule change is just for people who've tested positive with LFTs but don't have symptoms - if you have symptoms you still need to get a PCR. We went for a PCR and where last time I did there was a queue, this time I was the only car in the testing centre.
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I’m not sure if that is the case. I just had a LFT test with symptoms, and the resultant communication when I reported it just said I had to do a PCR if I needed to claim financial assistance. Presumably I would have also had to do it if I had been abroad.

Anyway, there was no way I needed my very strong line confirmed as a case 😭😷
 
Agent Sparrow said:
I’m not sure if that is the case. I just had a LFT test with symptoms, and the resultant communication when I reported it just said I had to do a PCR if I needed to claim financial assistance. Presumably I would have also had to do it if I had been abroad.

Anyway, there was no way I needed my very strong line confirmed as a case 😭😷
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oh ok - I read something last night that seemed to confirm his view, but looking again today perhaps you're right.

Either way I reckon loads of people aren't bothering reporting anymore.
 
killer b said:
oh ok - I read something last night that seemed to confirm his view, but looking again today perhaps you're right.

Either way I reckon loads of people aren't bothering reporting anymore.
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Yeah, I imagine a lot of people aren’t reporting at all. Which is quite fortunate for the government’s spin machine.

I was a bit put out that I’ve been reporting ALL my LFTs since the omicron surge on the work site and when I got a positive it meant fuck all! Nobody contacted me about it, there was no clear guidance about if I was meant to report it elsewhere, and I had to push myself on day two of feeling like utter crap to get confirmation I also needed to use the government register.
 
I'm pretty sure that the current situation is that if you test positive with an LFT and then develop symptoms, you don't need to take a PCR to confirm.

I only know this because this is what happened to me a few weeks ago and I had to read up on what the rules were in my particular circumstances.
 
I think a lot of people don't know you can report with an lft. I did for me and Ziggy and like you Agent Sparrow , the message said you only needed pcr if claiming payments and one or two other scenarios that didn't apply. Didn't say anything about symptomatic or not.
 
Yup. I've never reported a lateral flow result which is odd when I think about it as I'm the kind of person who does read the manual.
 
I know you're supposed to do it but I don't. I struggle with all the different systems I have to log onto for work as it is, I find it really overwhelming, and our lft boxes are all mixed up. I've got enough on my plate keeping things together as it is without reporting lft results. I did get a pcr following a positive lateral flow so that it was recorded though.
 
killer b said:
Sure but after 200 negative results, how many people are realistically still reporting them, esp. With recent changes in mood music about how severe omicron is, no longer needing a PCR etc etc?
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Doesn’t excuse being unaware of the instruction to report them, and the knowledge that reporting positive tests is particularly important.
 
Red Cat said:
I know you're supposed to do it but I don't. I struggle with all the different systems I have to log onto for work as it is, I find it really overwhelming, and our lft boxes are all mixed up. I've got enough on my plate keeping things together as it is without reporting lft results. I did get a pcr following a positive lateral flow so that it was recorded though.
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Sure. And a decision not to do it because you are personally overloaded is very different to claiming obliviousness of the request at all. We all have to prioritise based on personal circumstances — that’s totally understandable.
 
kabbes said:
You’re explaining that you don’t know you are supposed to report tests because you have done too many of them? As explanations go, I feel it lacks rigour.
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it's that a year or more after once reading some instructions, some of the information not related to the actual carrying out of the test can easily be overlooked? That the words on the side of a box you see every day but don't really look at while you scrabble about for the various bits inside it don't really register?
 
Either way, I think regardless of the moral implications of not doing so, huge numbers of people - probably the majority - have never reported most of their lateral flow tests, and it's probably even more now.
 
I made sure I reported all our first positive LFT tests because that put our infections on record. I’ve had periods of trying to record most of my negative LFTs (at least the recommended two a week) on our work system though I had got slack until we got nagging emails about it. But I’ve recorded no negative LFTs with the government and I didn’t record my positive day 5 LFT yesterday. Tbf that final one was because I didn’t trust the system to not think it was a new infection and send me all the T&T again :rolleyes:
 
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