Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[cupid_stunt]

Another member of the advisory group on behavioural science for Sage, Professor Robert West , is not happy with the government's handling of things, in particular the Cummings pantomime.

“I know [concern] is widespread among the group but not everybody feels comfortable speaking out and I completely understand that. But there has been considerable and growing unease,” West said. “The worry is that the government has said from the beginning it is following the science, and that was never true.”

The group did not expect to be calling the shots, he said, “but when the government forms policy or does something that goes against the advice, they need to explain why”.

He said the Cabinet Office asked the committee to provide guidance and write papers to answer questions posed by the government, sometimes at two hours’ notice. The members were working extremely hard, he said. “Then it seems to go into a black hole and we see communications that are at variance [with the advice].”

Cummings' actions show government cannot be trusted, says adviser

Sage scientist condemns ‘vacuum in the heart of government’

www.theguardian.com

 

[Buddy Bradley]

How many sub-editors are sitting on a "CUMMINGS GOING" headline right now?

 

[Mation]

This is one of the govt's advisors yesterday

Is that actual SAGE, not provisional?!

 

[butchersapron]

He's on one of the SAGE sub-groups, specifically the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours which seems to be a real nest of renegades. Gangs all there Stott, Drury, Reicher. Plus 4 who cannot be named.

 

[PD58]

More Cummings and goings...let's see where this goes

 

[Mrs Miggins]

I wonder if his name is going to become a term of abuse? As in "oh you absolute CUMMINGS!"
It's got a good ring to it as an insult.

 

[Lord Camomile]

Bots in action.

View attachment 214739

Think it's also been shown that that photo comes from an election night some time previous, and not from the recent crisis.

 

[treelover]

Care workers should be better paid and valued after Covid-19 – poll

Fawcett Society survey shows support for income-tax increase to fund pay rise

www.theguardian.com

There has been a dramatic shift in the public’s perception of care workers as a result of the coronavirus crisis, with most people believing they should be better paid and better valued, according to a survey.
The poll, which was published on Tuesday by the gender equality campaigning charity the Fawcett Society, found 65% of respondents supported an increase in income tax to fund a pay rise for care workers, a figure that rose to 68% among Conservative voters polled.

Good news, slightly higher with Tory voters than others, our CLP is discussing it in June, should be better than the lacklustre discussion when I raised it last time

 

[elbows]

He's on one of the SAGE sub-groups, specifically the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours which seems to be a real nest of renegades. Gangs all there Stott, Drury, Reicher. Plus 4 who cannot be named.

Some cherry picked quotes from their past papers that have been published before now:

Where public disorder occurs, it is usually triggered by perceptions about the Government’s response, rather than the nature of the epidemic per se. For example, a perception that the Government response strategies are not effective in looking after the public may lead to an increase in tensions.

Promote a sense of collectivism: All messaging should reinforce a sense of community, that “we are all in this together.” This will avoid increasing tensions between different groups (including between responding agencies and the public); promote social norms around behaviours; and lead to self-policing within communities around important behaviours.

From https://assets.publishing.service.g...8-spi-b-return-on-risk-of-public-disorder.pdf of late February.

While there may be concerns about the sustainability of adherence for difficult behaviours such as entering isolation for weeks or months, it is not clear that these concerns apply to the specific context of making day-to-day adjustments to reduce social contact. We are concerned that our comments about the difficulty of maintaining behaviours should not be used as a reason for not communicating with the public about the efficacy of the behaviours.

SPI-B has pointed out repeatedly that trust will be lost in sections of the public if measures witnessed in other countries are not adopted in the UK and that not pursuing such routes needs to be well explained. Communications is not within SPI-B’s remit, but this point bears repeating again.

From https://assets.publishing.service.g.../13-spi-b-insights-on-public-gatherings-1.pdf around March 12th.

There was agreement that whoever is responsible for giving public messages on behavioural interventions has the relevant expertise to ensure public confidence in the legitimacy of the message, e.g. a healthcare professional rather than a politician.

From https://assets.publishing.service.g...behavioural-social-interventions-03032020.pdf March 3rd.

And of course at least one person within SPI-B was responsible for the herd immunity justification that blew up in the governments face:

SPI-B have divergent opinions on the impact of not applying widescale social isolation at the same time as recommending isolation to at-risk groups. One view is that explaining that members of the community are building some immunity will make this acceptable. Another view is that recommending isolation to only one section of society risks causing discontent.

From https://assets.publishing.service.g...ined-behavioural-and-social-interventions.pdf March 4th.

All are from Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE): Coronavirus (COVID-19) response

 

[Steel Icarus]

Had a few deliveries lately - last couple of days it's been noticeable drivers are no longer retreating to the end of the garden every time. Geezer stood other side of the door just now. I stepped back and he then retreated.
A neighbour who has about twenty laminated NHS pictures her kids have done outside her house has just posted FB pics of her on a walk in a pretty crowded local woods. Other families walking next to her etc.
I cannot see how we're not getting a second spike

 

[Jeremiah18.17]

Had a few deliveries lately - last couple of days it's been noticeable drivers are no longer retreating to the end of the garden every time. Geezer stood other side of the door just now. I stepped back and he then retreated.
A neighbour who has about twenty laminated NHS pictures her kids have done outside her house has just posted FB pics of her on a walk in a pretty crowded local woods. Other families walking next to her etc.
I cannot see how we're not getting a second spike

Will depend on how much community transmission has been driven down. We can only hope community transmission hugely reduced. Main risks will still be resumption of more widespread indoor activity (I.e. schools, shops, workplaces) especially with seeming UK aversion to masks compared to other countries. But London figures give some hope. Caveat there is level of short term immunity amongst those regularly using tube/buses up to now which is likely higher in London than elsewhere?

 

[treelover]

Agreed, but they're not dropping it yet:

Today's Metro front page is rather good too:

Won't be long before 'stay elite' posters and stickers appear everywhere.

 

[Roadkill]

Won't be long before 'stay elite' posters and stickers appear everywhere.

Hope so - and 'sack Cummings, save lives' graffiti!

 

[elbows]

I'm still thinking of ways to represent different data for regions over time to give some further indication of the state of things in the past and now.

I dont have time to do this with ONS data at the moment (plus a lot of their data is for weeks that is harder to turn into exact months).

So by way of a very initial start on this here is a simple table of regions in England, based only on NHS England hospital deaths data, but I decided to break the numbers down by month instead of the way this data is generally shown.

 

[elbows]

And this is what happens if I take the NHS England deaths per day per hospital trust figures, throw away everything before May, and then sort by total for May.

I'm only showing the top 50 but its still a little long so I'm putting it behind a spoiler tag. Also as ever with this particular set of data, larger trusts with more hospitals/larger size of population served will tend to have higher numbers. So there is a limited value to this particular exercise, but anyway....

Spoiler

edit - I decided to include Aprils top 50 as well for some contrast, and so that there are at least some clues about which hospitals feature largely because of their size.

 

[maomao]

Had a few deliveries lately - last couple of days it's been noticeable drivers are no longer retreating to the end of the garden every time. Geezer stood other side of the door just now. I stepped back and he then retreated.
A neighbour who has about twenty laminated NHS pictures her kids have done outside her house has just posted FB pics of her on a walk in a pretty crowded local woods. Other families walking next to her etc.
I cannot see how we're not getting a second spike

Transmission outside is far less likely than indoors. Talking to people outdoors is probably not going to increase transmission enough (even if it does make a few people ill) to change the overall downward trend. An actual increase in infections and deaths at this early point would just take us straight back into lockdown anyway.

I'm far more scared about September and October than I am about people having barbecues now. Fresh air and human contact are enormously important for human health too.

 

[ska invita]

View attachment 214734

unless I keep missing it that graph is missing Spain, which when i did the numbers in my head a few weeks ago seemed to have the highest per capita?
Curious omission if so

Is this up to scratch? Signs of a second peak?

 

[quimcunx]

Were some hospital patients brought back to life in week 19?

e2a oh, ok excess deaths, fewer deaths than average still seems unlikely.

 

[ska invita]

Were some hospital patients brought back to life in week 19?

e2a oh, ok excess deaths, fewer deaths than average still seems unlikely.

fewer deaths in hospital...because people are avoiding hospitals i guess...overall the deaths are higher than average - over 3000 in that week if im reading it right

 

[killer b]

Were some hospital patients brought back to life in week 19?

e2a oh, ok excess deaths, fewer deaths than average still seems unlikely.

Theres briefly less people dying in hospital than usual 'cause of non covid deaths that would have happened in hospital under normal circumstances happening at home/in care homes I'd imagine...

 

[teuchter]

unless I keep missing it that graph is missing Spain, which when i did the numbers in my head a few weeks ago seemed to have the highest per capita?
Curious omission if so

UK compared to Spain:

 

[2hats]

unless I keep missing it that graph is missing Spain, which when i did the numbers in my head a few weeks ago seemed to have the highest per capita?
Curious omission if so

That's daily. Not totals.

 

[vanya]

Lord Sumption, former Supreme Court judge, on how the response to coronavirus is a huge overreaction.

 

[elbows]

Is this up to scratch? Signs of a second peak?

Its because thats deaths by date registered, and there was a bank holiday on one of the registration days in the previous weeks number. So its a case of the previous weeks number being artificially low, and the following weeks numbers containing some deaths that would normally have been registered in the previous week.

ONS deaths data is not a good place to look for timely signs of any spikes and 2nd waves, its more accurate than most other sources but is also subject to considerably worse delay, and is affected more by bank holidays (if looking at deaths by date of registration instead of date of actual death). Its better for looking at all sorts of things eventually, especially totals and excess deaths, but other sources are better for more recent trends.

I dont think there are any dramatic stories of spikes or second waves in any data yet. And initial indicators would be more subtle anyway, eg the rate at which new hospital admissions are falling would slow and that number would then start to increase again. But there are other reasons why the rate of decline of such numbers can end up slowing or becoming stagnant, So I have to be careful not to jump the gun with the subtler indictors. Especially as I dont have regional hospital admissions data and figures for the whole of England can mask significant regional differences. We do have total numbers in hospital data per region though.

There are a few things I'm now starting to do to keep an eye on things as best I can, but its tricky. For example I've started to graph the NHS England reported hospital deaths for certain individual hospital trusts, to get a sense of the story at individual hospital trusts so far, and whether there is much difference between rates of decline, timing of peaks, stagnation of the picture. But things can still get murky when zooming in so close, because the daily numbers are quite low for some trust and so small fluctuations have a big impact on the picture. Plus even when some graphs clearly seem to be telling some kind of story, its hard to know what it is. eg a trust that is still having quite large numbers of deaths at stages of May might not be a story of ongoing community spread in the area at relatively high levels, it could be a story of an outbreak at one particular hospital. I'll probably post some in the coming days anyway, but with plenty of caveats, and I dont have any stories about 2nd waves or spikes to tell from them.

 

[IC3D]

Had a few deliveries lately - last couple of days it's been noticeable drivers are no longer retreating to the end of the garden every time. Geezer stood other side of the door just now. I stepped back and he then retreated.
A neighbour who has about twenty laminated NHS pictures her kids have done outside her house has just posted FB pics of her on a walk in a pretty crowded local woods. Other families walking next to her etc.
I cannot see how we're not getting a second spike

In London there are many pretty sizable groups of deliveroo riders hanging out. Easily 30 odd last I saw. Made me, okaaay riiight, outloud.
They've thrived and multiplied.

 

[Teaboy]

In London there are many pretty sizable groups of deliveroo riders hanging out. Easily 30 odd last I saw. Made me, okaaay riiight, outloud.
They've thrived and multiplied.

Its not surprising really given how tough it is in the gig economy at the moment and how other avenues of income have been shut down. You are right though, they don't seem to care much for social distancing.

 

[elbows]

Just a little bit of new Weston info. The last BBC article I saw about it prior to this one added nothing beyond the bland statement that was originally issued.

Coronavirus: Weston hospital staff 'worried and confused'

Weston General Hospital is not accepting new patients due to a high number of coronavirus cases.

www.bbc.co.uk

Unison representative Liz French said: "They're confused, they're worried but I have to say they are pulling together to do their best for their patients and all their colleagues."

The hospital said the reopening date remained "under review".

"It's not just the patients that have been diagnosed with Covid-19 but also lots of the staff because they've done lots of testing over the past week or so," Ms French added.

"They were unhappy but they were getting on with their jobs."

She said staff felt there was a lack of communication from bosses.

"Although the senior management team were meeting every couple of days to discuss the way forward but that wasn't getting down to the staff.

"That was the biggest problem and that's why they were so worried," she said.

The Weston Area Health NHS Trust which runs the hospital has been asked for comment on the union's concerns.

 

[elbows]

Today Hancock said there would be local lockdowns to respond to local flareups in future.

 

[Teaboy]

Today Hancock said there would be local lockdowns to respond to local flareups in future.

Bloody difficult to enforce I would imagine.

 

[spitfire]

In London there are many pretty sizable groups of deliveroo riders hanging out. Easily 30 odd last I saw. Made me, okaaay riiight, outloud.
They've thrived and multiplied.

Its not surprising really given how tough it is in the gig economy at the moment and how other avenues of income have been shut down. You are right though, they don't seem to care much for social distancing.

I work in a kitchen that is also home to several dark kitchens. The Deliveroo/Uber couriers are complete (deliberate) strangers to the concept. We've tried reminding them about it in the shared corridor but have been met with hostility and/or laughter. Fucking pisses me off.