Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[Azrael]

For weeks it was hard to tell because of their apparent need to avoid the impression of a u-turn when doing the daily briefings. But they foolishly threw around the 20,000 number of deaths as being some sort of target we could judge them by. And there are some signs that the old orthodox approach is actually dead, they are just hedging their bets a bit about what happens instead. eg Whitty recently acknowledging that there were lessons to be learnt from Germany. Its still not enough for me to be highly confident about what strategy they are now following, but I'm reasonably confident it isnt herd immunity any more. Even if for no other reason than the numbers game just doesnt work on this front, not unless they eventually get serological survey data that shows a much higher proportion of the country have already been infected than is currently assumed to be the case.

Belief in engineering "herd immunity" via controlled mass infection appears to be pervasive among government scientific advisors (just this week, Passport Office staff were told to return to work because 80% of the population would eventually become infected with Covid-19), but like you, I'm not at all convinced that it remains policy. Hancock appears to realize that rolling lockdowns and hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths would be, at the least, politically catastrophic for any government, and raises the real prospect of civil and criminal liability for anyone who attempted it.

As ever, I want to know how this belief spread like wildfire through government scientific and medical advisors. Their relying on the old flu modelling alone doesn't explain it, as they know a SARS coronavirus behaves differently, and there's much that remains unknown about its ability to confer natural immunity. Lots more investigation into the roots of this lethal orthodoxy needed.

 

[Azrael]

Has Piers Morgan had a road to Damascus moment? This is just one example of him taking the government to task:

View attachment 206368

Much to many's surprise, he's been travelling it for weeks, attacking ministers and their advisors for their deadly complacency. To spin a colourful phrase, he's a sonuvabitch, but at present, he's a useful sonuvabitch.

 

[keybored]

Has Piers Morgan had a road to Damascus moment? This is just one example of him taking the government to task:

View attachment 206368

2020 keeps getting more bizarre.

 

[editor]

More twats

Coronavirus: Family fined for London to Devon fishing trip

The family was escorted out of Devon and fined by police before being sent home to London.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Mation]

Regarding point 2, the summary was unhelpful with the language used to describe peak dates, because it didnt indicate what date the author wrote it on. But later in the main body of the work, it says:



As for point 1, I will wait to see whether the ODE model or the MDP model turns out to be more accurate, since there are big variations in estimates for population infected after the first wave (5% or 20%), and their number of waves thing seems to just be another way of describing this level. When they spoke about this, they chose to highlight as few as 3 waves possible for UK (since they are trying to get to 60% and 3 x 20% would do that) and as many as 12 for Germany because of the low estimates for infection there.

Also, relating to my last point and your point 3, I dont think I would not quite say 20% is their best case scenario for the UK because I think one of the graphs has red error bars and they cover rather a large range for the ODE model that the 20% comes from.

View attachment 206364

Why are those error bars so big on the ODE model? Why aren't they on the MDP model?

(Going off to read up now, but asking in case it's straightforward to explain the difference. )

 

[brogdale]

[This is in no way meant to be an offensive post & I really hope it causes none]

But...last year I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Etaples CWGC just South of Boulogne and, even though I've been to quite a few WW1 cemeteries, I was genuinely shocked at the vast scale and sprawl of senseless waste.

Anyway, having 'officially' now reached the 10k covid death figure, (the real one will, of course be much higher) I was reminded of Etaples with its 11k graves. My pic only shows one portion of the site as my camera was just not up to the task of capturing the whole thing...in fact I think you'd need an aerial shot to do it justice.

Apols for ramble & dark thoughts...but it does possibly help give some idea of the human tragedy that has befallen us?

 

[editor]

I was talking to a paramedic who works at Kings College Hospital today (he's a neighbour) and he painted a very grim picture. He said it's basically a lottery who survives and most of the time they're helpless to stop people dying, so all they can do is make them comfortable.

It must be so traumatic for the hospital staff - they're in the business of saving lives and for much of the time there's nothing they can do.

He told me that he'd also contracted the virus a few weeks back. He described his case as 'moderate' but what he went through sounded really fucking grim and made my memory of getting the flu (the worst illness I've ever had) sound very mild indeed.

 

[Anju]

Not yet clear how this has affected PPE supplies as the stockpiled stuff includes vaccines and other drugs but the majority is PPE so this will have had an impact on supplies to healthcare workers.

Revealed: value of UK pandemic stockpile fell by 40% in six years

 

[Azrael]

I was talking to a paramedic who works at Kings College Hospital today (he's a neighbour) and he painted a very grim picture. He said it's basically a lottery who survives and most of the time they're helpless to stop people dying, so all they can do is make them comfortable.

It must be so traumatic for the hospital staff - they're in the business of saving lives and for much of the time there's nothing they can do.

He told me that he'd also contracted the virus a few weeks back. He described his case as 'moderate' but what he went through sounded really fucking grim and made my memory of getting the flu (the worst illness I've ever had) sound very mild indeed.

Went into detail in the other thread, but if I did have it (and the symptoms and course tracked so closely I expect I did), "moderate" doesn't do it justice. While I've certainly been sicker, lingering symptoms went on for weeks after fever broke for last time, and I've still got intermittent wheeziness. And if it was C-19, that was a supposedly "mild" case that never led to the infamous broken glass cough. Most of all, having experienced a shadow of what those pour souls in hospital are going through has me constantly thinking of them.

One London NHS Trust has now junked the government "advice" to not try drugs against Covid until clinical trials are completed (far as I've been able to find, England's alone in Europe in mandating this), so can but hope that King's joins them. The effect of forced helplessness on medics will be horrific.

 

[elbows]

Well we had no firm idea how bad things were three weeks ago when they were touting 20,000 (but we were tracking Italy - the clues were that it was bad). The truth about the state we were in then is only emerging now with the current death rates. Truth is that we were doomed to reach 20,000 dead from infections pre-lockdown alone. It never was a realistic target, however people behaved in the last three weeks, let alone however people behave from today onwards. And that's just too bad a truth for this govt to admit to.

Its probably time for me to review some of those mid-march claims again soon, as we reach a month since some of them were made.

I need to check some facts before I do that properly.

But in terms of the 20,000 claim, it came from the Imperial College team, stemming from their 'influential' report that ended up changing the government strategy around March 16th. It was described in an FT article (which I cannot currently read but quoted from at the time Subscribe to read | Financial Times ):

Imperial’s researchers presented their latest analysis after the prime minister’s press conference at 10 Downing Street on Monday. Modelling a scenario similar to the new measures — including social distancing of the whole population, home isolation of cases and household quarantine of their families — might bring total deaths down to about 20,000 if they were observed strictly, said Azra Ghani, a member of the Imperial team.

I have forgotten when Vallance first mentioned this number in a press conference, but the press quoted him at a Commons health committee on Tuesday 17th March:

20,000 UK Coronavirus Deaths Would Be 'Good' If 'Horrible' Outcome, Says Patrick Vallance

Chief scientific adviser tells MPs it is "reasonable" to assume there are currently 55,000 cases in the UK.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

Vallance said: “Every year in seasonal flu the number of deaths is thought to be 8,000.

“If we can get this down to numbers 20,000 and below, that is a good outcome in terms of where we would hope to get to with this outbreak. It is still horrible. That is still an enormous number of deaths.”

If I look at the actual Imperial paper from the time, the 20,000 isnt highlighted in particular, but rather it, and other numbers somewhat close to it, appear in a range of tables which look at different triggers used to switch suppressive social distancing measures on and off and different rates of virus reproduction.

PC=school and university closure, CI=home isolation of cases, HQ=household quarantine, SD=social distancing of the entire population




from pages 13 & 14 of https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/im...-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

I will review more claims of a month ago and various models as time goes on.

 

[Raheem]

Presumably, one reason the Imperial College modelling might not pan out is the gap between it being conducted and the lockdown starting.

 

[elbows]

Presumably, one reason the Imperial College modelling might not pan out is the gap between it being conducted and the lockdown starting.

The triggers they used were when numbers of new Covid-19 patients in ICU over a week crossed a threshold. I do have some ICU data from March 21st onwards but it isnt quite sufficient for me to judge the new case threshold for that period accurately.

 

[Azrael]

If Vallance considers 20,000 deaths, while "still horrible", to be a relatively "good outcome", tells you all you need to know about the man.

Reuters reported that the government and its creatures were well aware that the death toll would run into the hundreds of thousands when they launched their "herd immunity" strategy. The Imperial paper didn't tell them anything new: it just revealed to the public what'd been kept hidden.

So yes, Sir Patrick, I expect 20,000 does seem a "good outcome" right now. When more people connect the dots, and the government needs scapegoats, you may reconsider your position.

 

[weltweit]

..
So yes, Sir Patrick, I expect 20,000 does seem a "good outcome" right now. When more people connect the dots, and the government needs scapegoats, you may reconsider your position.

I am very aware the politicians are making a point of saying that they are following the scientific advice at every opportunity. It's an arse covering for the investigations and public enquiries that are likely to follow.

 

[killer b]

Worth a read.

Professor mocked as 'ranting lefty' is right on coronavirus

Professor John Ashton was written off by many, but his words and warnings appear to have been on the money so far

www.liverpoolecho.co.uk

this from the article is good, and true I think - they left everything too late, then suddenly found themselves on the brink of the pandemic kicking in here without enough PPE, without enough testing kits, and with the whole world in front of them in the queue to get them. So they found themselves with very limited options - as they still do now.

Professor Ashton believes the herd immunity theory was something the government had effectively forced itself into because of its failures to prepare - and crucially begin mass testing - from an early stage.

He said: "They basically stopped testing on March 12, they then were very much on the backfoot and that was where you got all this herd immunity stuff, which I think was a kind of after-the-event explanation to make it look like they hadn't cocked it up."

 

[sheothebudworths]

Nm.

 

[Azrael]

I am very aware the politicians are making a point of saying that they are following the scientific advice at every opportunity. It's an arse covering for the investigations and public enquiries that are likely to follow.

Yup. And the Dr. Strangeloves somehow didn't realize what was happening (think Whitty has now, no wonder he's looking so ashen). If that's how this goes, we should at least discover how these orthodoxies sank so deep and spread so wide (Scotland's medical and scientific establishment have been every bit as awful as England's, so whatever Cummings' enthusiasms, he's not patient zero).

 

[kabbes]

Interesting. Little difference between the two key models used (Markov and ODE) other than in subsequent post wave overall population susceptibility estimates (which then feeds through to number of waves required to reach herd immunity); though not a huge disparity.

They agree on:

1. ~50K dead at the end of the first wave of infection (UK),
2. that it will take several such waves to reach herd immunity (the golden 60%) - anything up to 12 waves for the UK,
3. that most countries are near the peak case rate (France about now, Ireland within the next 2 weeks, the UK within the next 3 weeks, all others in this study already past their peaks),
4. herd immunity at the end of the first wave across all countries considered anticipated to be around 6%; at best 20% for the UK.

Other comments - likely it will need somewhere between 8-12 cycles of lockdown for the UK to achieve herd immunity. Alternatively, if we want to try to test extensively in order to protect the vulnerable, quarantine the infected and facilitate the well&recovered going back to work then we are probably looking at >600,000 tests per day (cf the government's current goal of 100,000 tests per day by the end of the month). Outcomes of the modelling presented obviously will vary with the degree of immunity that infected people go on to develop (not yet clear).

Numbers broadly chime with those coming out of Imperial and LSHTM models.

I think those timescales are from the end point of the data period, ie 5 April, no? So it’s now a week on from the start point of the model, which means 2 rather than 3 weeks for the U.K.

 

[elbows]

this from the article is good, and true I think - they left everything too late, then suddenly found themselves on the brink of the pandemic kicking in here without enough PPE, without enough testing kits, and with the whole world in front of them in the queue to get them. So they found themselves with very limited options - as they still do now.

Professor Ashton believes the herd immunity theory was something the government had effectively forced itself into because of its failures to prepare - and crucially begin mass testing - from an early stage.

He said: "They basically stopped testing on March 12, they then were very much on the backfoot and that was where you got all this herd immunity stuff, which I think was a kind of after-the-event explanation to make it look like they hadn't cocked it up."

Sort of. I dont think it does the period justice to think it was mostly a question of them leaving it too late though.

They followed the orthodox approach, tuned to what capacity for testing they had. The orthodox approach was pretty much identical in all but name and rhetorical angle to their herd immunity stuff. The orthodox approach only started to shift in europe at the same time (coinciding with Italy going into lockdown). On the 12th when they went on about herd immunity, it looked like they were going to stick with the traditional approach, and stopping certain kinds of testing on that date was also part of the orthodox approach. An approach that only died over the subsequent weekend, and then the Imperial modelling was released to the public after the press conference of the following Monday, where it was clear something major changed.

He is right in so much as I suspect some within the group were already realising by March 12th, when they activated the next phase that their orthodox approach called for, the delay phase, that the whole thing was looking a bit dodgy compared to the unorthodox approach some countries were taking in europe etc. I dont even rule out the possibility that the herd immunity rhetoric was an act of self-sabotage of the orthodox approach in some way, but far more dull possibilities are probably more plausible.

They certainly were dicking around with the publicly stated timetable on the same day as the herd immunity stuff though - again it was the ill fated March 12th when the claim we were '4 weeks behind Italy' emerged.

Speaking of that claim, since more than 4 weeks has passed since then, I can look at the stupid claim another way:

On March 12th when it was made, Italy had reported 1016 deaths. 4 weeks later, on April 9th, UK had reported 7978 deaths. But if I close the gap to what the claim should have been, that we were 2 weeks behind Italy, by instead taking the total number of deaths from Italy as reported on March 26th, their number is 8165. I know thats a slightly unusual way round to do it, but we'd previously already looked at it in the other ways available at the time and in the subsequent 2 weeks.

 

[elbows]

I think those timescales are from the end point of the data period, ie 5 April, no? So it’s now a week on from the start point of the model, which means 2 rather than 3 weeks for the U.K.

Yes I already quoted this bit from later in the report, which means its even closer than that:

For the UK, the peak case rate predictions were estimated at April 11th for the HMM and April 17th for the ODE model.

 

[elbows]

Yup. And the Dr. Strangeloves somehow didn't realize what was happening (think Whitty has now, no wonder he's looking so ashen). If that's how this goes, we should at least discover how these orthodoxies sank so deep and spread so wide (Scotland's medical and scientific establishment have been every bit as awful as England's, so whatever Cummings' enthusiasms, he's not patient zero).

Apart from my brief foray just now into a few specific aspects of this stuff as it pertains to shit being said a month ago, I am no longer available to discuss this topic in detail at the moment, because I spent so many hours on it already, too big a chunk of my March went into it. After the first wave is done, I would like to compare notes with other people on this topic though. And as I've said many times, other countries, institutions and pandemics are available with which to demonstrate the nature and extent of the orthodox approach. EU documents and the 2009 swine flu pandemic are the two largest sources of my own knowledge at this time on the topic. So there should be quite a lot of long, heavy background reading out there if you are interested.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

On March 12th when it was made, Italy had reported 1016 deaths. 4 weeks later, on April 9th, UK had reported 7978 deaths. But if I close the gap to what the claim should have been, that we were 2 weeks behind Italy, by instead taking the total number of deaths from Italy as reported on March 26th, their number is 8165. I know thats a slightly unusual way round to do it, but we'd previously already looked at it in the other ways available at the time and in the subsequent 2 weeks.

Good spot. And doing 'subtract 14 days and look at Italy's number' still works. It's an unerringly simple way to look at things really. We were tracking 2 weeks behind Italy at lockdown and locked down two weeks after Italy. And we've been tracking Italy ever since. How could we not?

One difference that perhaps we should worry about is that Italy has managed a lot more testing than the UK. We might do well to continue tracking closely.

 

[Azrael]

Europe junking the orthodoxy en masse -- with a handful of outliers like Sweden and maybe the Netherlands (some provinces rebelled) -- makes any prospect of carrying it through in Britain with rolling lockdowns politically fantastical. They expected to rack up their obscene death toll in one horrific burst, justified with dire warnings of a more deadly second wave, and given cover by equivalent horrors unfolding in Ireland and on the Continent.

Now, they'd have to run Britain through at least five lockdowns, of around 50,000 deaths each, while other countries contain or even eliminate the coronavirus. How is this politically sustainable? Dictatorships have fallen over less.

Naivete about realpolitik has always been the Achilles's heel of the monstrous scientists and doctors who plotted this foul experiment. Locked safely in their vacuum world of models and theories, it never occurred that people aren't a herd to be culled, and might rebel. Their dehumanization of us is their undoing. They're so used to thinking of citizens as faceless figures of a graph that they forget they're people who value their lives and the lives of their loved ones every bit as they do theirs, and will fight to live with all they have.

 

[Azrael]

Apart from my brief foray just now into a few specific aspects of this stuff as it pertains to shit being said a month ago, I am no longer available to discuss this topic in detail at the moment, because I spent so many hours on it already, too big a chunk of my March went into it. After the first wave is done, I would like to compare notes with other people on this topic though. And as I've said many times, other countries, institutions and pandemics are available with which to demonstrate the nature and extent of the orthodox approach. EU documents and the 2009 swine flu pandemic are the two largest sources of my own knowledge at this time on the topic. So there should be quite a lot of long, heavy background reading out there if you are interested.

Fair enough, there will, unfortunately, be more than enough time for inquests down the line. I don't know how much I'll be following them myself, it gets overwhelming.

 

[zahir]

A suggestion here that the herd immunity idea lingered on after the denials.

Documents contradict UK government stance on Covid-19 'herd immunity'

List of possible interventions included simulating impact of allowing majority to be infected

www.theguardian.com

 

[Azrael]

A suggestion here that the herd immunity idea lingered on after the denials.

Documents contradict UK government stance on Covid-19 'herd immunity'

List of possible interventions included simulating impact of allowing majority to be infected

www.theguardian.com

Unsurprising, the British scientific establishment is lousy with it.

The government giving their stamp of approval to a digital contact tracing app in today's presser may be the biggest sign to date that they've finally accepted that trying to generate herd immunity by running a live virus through the population is politically impossible.

 

[elbows]

Good spot. And doing 'subtract 14 days and look at Italy's number' still works. It's an unerringly simple way to look at things really. We were tracking 2 weeks behind Italy at lockdown and locked down two weeks after Italy. And we've been tracking Italy ever since. How could we not?

One difference that perhaps we should worry about is that Italy has managed a lot more testing than the UK. We might do well to continue tracking closely.

I was actually somewhat surprised at how closely we continued tracking, given that there are a number of possible answers to 'how could we not?', such as:

Differences in infection control and staff protection in hospitals.
Differences in lockdown detail, including timing differences that are slightly more complicated than us doing the same things exactly 2 weeks later.
Differences in the number of covid19 patients in hospital and in critical care at the times the lockdowns were implemented - I have only just started looking into this in terms of a UK-Italy comparison, because I have quite a lot more data now. Will share results in some days. There are differences for sure.
Regional epidemic size & timing differences - eg about half of Italys reported hospital deaths so far are from Lombardy. To make the same sort of claim about the UK, we would need to combine London and the midlands into one. More thoughts on this topic another day.

Likely some of these differences are minor or end up cancelling each other out to some extent. Will have to wait for broader, more accurate data about deaths in order to do a proper final comparison, and I suppose I still expect more differences to emerge than the crude hospital death indicators currently suggest.

 

[mauvais]

Europe junking the orthodoxy en masse -- with a handful of outliers like Sweden and maybe the Netherlands (some provinces rebelled) -- makes any prospect of carrying it through in Britain with rolling lockdowns politically fantastical. They expected to rack up their obscene death toll in one horrific burst, justified with dire warnings of a more deadly second wave, and given cover by equivalent horrors unfolding in Ireland and on the Continent.

So what do you think will happen?

 

[zahir]

Unsurprising, the British scientific establishment is lousy with it.

The government giving their stamp of approval to a digital contact tracing app in today's presser may be the biggest sign to date that they've finally accepted that trying to generate herd immunity by running a live virus through the population is politically impossible.

I’m speculating here but I wonder if the app is being seen as an alternative to actually having to set up teams of people at a local level to carry out contact tracing.

 

[2hats]

I think those timescales are from the end point of the data period, ie 5 April, no? So it’s now a week on from the start point of the model, which means 2 rather than 3 weeks for the U.K.

I believe the paper was completed on 9 April and published 10 April. So those week counts are from the 9th, which seems to tie in with the plots.