Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[Wilf]

Students are invested in this too tbf. One of the things that swung it for one university over another is that the one she went for was offering 'blended' teaching rather than 100% online. Of course once she's there it will most likely end up being 100%... so will everywhere. But right now it's a selling point.

Yeah, the whole thing's a mess. When we do, almost inevitably, revert back to online only, there will be a lot of students who have moved into university and private accommodation wondering whether they ever needed to have moved from their bedroom back home. Along with all the others who were stung for accommodation they couldn't use last term.

 

[andysays]

...Think there's also a lot of complacency too - have also had people say 'i don't know anyone who's had it'

At least some of them may not be able to say that for much longer

 

[Cloo]

Is it because there's a backlog of unreported cases? Or are they generally all being diagnosed in the last day or two?

I think it's partly backlog- saw an interesting tweet about how, though obviously it's not good, we can't compare to similar numbers at the start of the year because whatever was reported officially then was probably around x10 less than the actual number of cases, whereas now they reckon testing is more like x2-4 behind the actual cases.

 

[brogdale]

That 'serious' look out for Granny now wave2 approaches look.

 

[elbows]

Here is my attempt to visualise the nations and regions data for number of positive cases.

So these are by specimen date as per my earlier post. But in order to amplify the signals and smooth out the bumps, the numbers plotted on these graphs are all totals for the 7 days up to and including that date. Also note that the same scale is not used for every region, most dramatically the scale for the England graph is 10 times the scale of the Scotland and Wales graphs. Data for specimens for the most recent days is also deliberately missing since this is always artificially low due to lag.

I suppose it would be fair to say that most regions and nations are contributing to the rise, but some more dramatically than others.

 

[LDC]

92 new cases in Leeds today and just down the road from me there's an anti-mask gathering

Where's that Orang Utan - I'm in Leeds too. As mentioned I was a bit shocked/angry/depressed when I saw the city centre yesterday given it's been in the news how high infections are here.

 

[Orang Utan]

Where's that Orang Utan - I'm in Leeds too. As mentioned I was a bit shocked/angry/depressed when I saw the city centre yesterday given it's been in the news how high infections are here.

There was a protest on Woodhouse Moor - only a couple of weeks after a rave was held there!

 

[brogdale]

School cluster in Hancock's own constituency. Those poor teachers.

 

[ash]

I've encountered a few antimask plandemic project fear twats at work recently - they are growing in number or getting bolder. It's hard to remain professional with them. Think there's also a lot of complacency too - have also had people say 'i don't know anyone who's had it'

I had that response (I’ve never met anyone who had it ) in taxis in Bournemouth- I told them I was from London and lots of people I know have died (actually only 2). Masks were soon put on !!

 

[bimble]

This is kind of interesting, sorry if it’s already been posted. No clear or single answer to how come deaths remain so low recently whilst infection rates climb but sets out a few possible contributing factors.
Why is it that while Covid-19 cases are rising, deaths continue to fall?

 

[brogdale]

Like they'd ever had it.

 

[elbows]

This is kind of interesting, sorry if it’s already been posted. No clear or single answer to how come deaths remain so low recently whilst infection rates climb but sets out a few possible contributing factors.
Why is it that while Covid-19 cases are rising, deaths continue to fall?

When those sort of articles say things like 'no one is sure why', I feel like putting it another way....

Should anybody be surprised that the death rate hasnt gone back up yet? I believe the answer to that is no, because many of the possible reasons why that are covered by that article are probably true, we just dont know to what extent each one plays a part.

I also tend to moan at such articles for not paying more attention to hospital data other than deaths, and for not trying to compare and contrast the phenomenon seen in the UK so far with what has been happening in Spain recently.

Anyway its probably obvious that I am not surprised by whats been seen in either deaths or hospital data so far. I've said before that I think September will be something of a guide, or should at least contain clues. If we get through September without any significant signals in the daily hospital data, then I might start to express some surprise. This surprise will probably quickly turn into some tentative conclusions about our testing regime in September compared to much earlier in the pandemic, some tentative conclusions about the nature of the epidemic, some questions about why things here have evolved differently to whats been seen in Spain etc. Under certain circumstances it could raise questions about the quality of the hospital data. And whatever happens, it might still not offer me many clues about whether vulnerable people will be kept away from the virus more effectively than the first time around. And I'll almost inevitable end up studying the daily data in October as closely as I am looking at the data for September, the waiting game will continue. But I am getting ahead of myself, and in truth am expecting to see some signals in the hospital data in the coming weeks. They might not be terribly strong ones though, since so far even in places like Northern Ireland which showed a very strong rising signal in its number of positive cases, a rise in hospital admissions was seen but the numbers involved were not large so far.

I also need to pay more attention to percentage of tests that are testing positive. I havent attempted much on that front at all yet, but I think it may have been mentioned in this weeks surveillance report so I will go digging for that in a bit.

 

[miss direct]

I have been living on a university campus all summer - just moved off, and am glad to be away from there before all the hordes of new students arrive. Chatted to taxi driver today who was asking me about freshers week as it's usually a very busy week for him and his colleagues. Surely bars won't be allowed to open or do freshers events? That would be madness...

 

[Steel Icarus]

I'm not looking forward to a full college tomorrow. It's going to be carnage. It very much feels like I'm about to walk across a minefield four days a week from here on in.

 

[elbows]

Like they'd ever had it.

Coronavirus: fears UK government has lost control as Covid cases soar

Labour calls on Matt Hancock to explain reasons behind increase and testing centre problems

www.theguardian.com

That article you mention also contains this, from the people that brought us the faulty prediction that we were '4 weeks behind Italy' that I never stopped going on and on about....

A government source said there was significant concern that the UK was “six weeks behind France”, where the trajectory showed more young people being infected, leading to increased hospitalisations of vulnerable groups.

 

[frogwoman]

Carol Munt: Stop the harsh blanket ban on visitors in hospitals and care homes - The BMJ

“If the Bristol Nightingale could have an area to enable visits to Covid patients at the end of life I’m damn sure care homes could arrange something for their guests. [...]More...

blogs.bmj.com

The title is a bit misleading (because she goes onto talk about homes where visits aren't banned) but from what I can tell this is a very balanced piece, talks about what was done to enable hospital visits at the Bristol nightingale hospital to happen safely during the peak of the crisis.

 

[Wilf]

I'm not looking forward to a full college tomorrow. It's going to be carnage. It very much feels like I'm about to walk across a minefield four days a week from here on in.

Yeah, I say this with all humility towards supermarket workers, carers and others who've been doing it for months, but me too. Whether it's 2nd waves, spikes or hotspots that never cooled down, we look to be well on the way there now. Yeah, the perfect point to bring large numbers of young people into the same premises. Fuck.

 

[elbows]

This sort of language probably gives me an excuse to have a moan too:

Medical leaders and ministers can only hope that the spread of the virus amongst younger people does not get passed on to the elderly and those with underlying health problems.

(from UK coronavirus cases rise sharply by 2,988 )

Can only hope? For fucks sake, squandering the time we had to prepare the first time around, in February and early March, was not something to repeat again later, and that featured plenty of 'go through the motions and hope' rather than 'actually do the right things at the right time'.

Can only hope, can only half-arse it more like.

 

[quimcunx]

Quotes from a thread on mumsnet.

"Tried to book him a test and again, all local centres don’t have any appointments for 6 days and the next nearest available appointment is at a centre 150 miles away - and I haven’t even checked if that place has appointments available!!

I tried to order a home testing kit but was told there was none available?"


"My local test centre is showing no appointments for 5 days, however, I know someone who works there & he said to just turn up as they are very quite & will not turn you away.
It’s seems the testing is available but it’s the booking system that is at fault."

" if you can get to the jubilee square testing station in Leicester city centre I'd just go and try your luck. I was at the blood donation centre round the corner yesterday and the CV testing station was dead, staff were all standing about chatting."

First poster followed up with

"We got to the testing centre at 4.30 last night and it was dead!

There were 10 testing areas and we were the only ones there!!"


World beating.

 

[two sheds]

Pandemicready.

 

[brogdale]

Any views on this graphic elbows ?

 

[frogwoman]

Where's that from? I thought they were going to be releasing other figures once a week?

 

[cupid_stunt]

Any views on this graphic elbows ?

View attachment 229476

The ONS data remains the best as far as I am concerned, and the most recent (w/c 28/8) shows around 21 deaths per day.

The number of deaths registered in the UK in the week ending 21 August 2020 (Week 34) was 10,967, which was 572 deaths higher than the five-year average and 390 deaths higher than Week 33; of the deaths registered in the UK in Week 34, 149 deaths involved COVID-19, 3 deaths higher than Week 33.

Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional - Office for National Statistics

Provisional counts of the number of deaths registered in England and Wales, including deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, by age, sex and region.

www.ons.gov.uk

 

[brogdale]

Where's that from? I thought they were going to be releasing other figures once a week?

Literally saw it on my twitter feed and thought that elbows might have a view on the credibility of the data?

That said, it is something that I've thought about since they changed the criteria; we hear about poor folk being in ICU for more than 28 days after testing positive, so I'm not sure why such deaths needed excluding?

 

[LDC]

Literally saw it on my twitter feed and thought that elbows might have a view on the credibility of the data?

That said, it is something that I've thought about since they changed the criteria; we hear about poor folk being in ICU for more than 28 days after testing positive, so I'm not sure why such deaths needed excluding?

Any source for the raw data from that?

There does need to be some cut-off point for deaths after a positive test, I think the 28 days brings us into line with some other countries, but think elbows covered this before. Also people won't just be tested once when admitted to hospital with the virus, so it should be after their last test rather than first.

 

[Spandex]

That said, it is something that I've thought about since they changed the criteria; we hear about poor folk being in ICU for more than 28 days after testing positive, so I'm not sure why such deaths needed excluding?

My partner's grandma was 101 when Covid got into her care home at the end of May. The 4 of them that caught it all had really mild cases and were fine a week later. Peggy died peacefully in her sleep two weeks ago. As far as anyone knows it was totally unrelated to the Covid; it was just that her time had come.

As time goes on, and considering the number of people in care homes who've had it, there did need to be some cut off when it wasn't automatically considered that Covid was the cause of death. The daily death figures have always been a rough guide and the ONS figures that come out later, relying on Covid beinging mentioned as a cause of death on the Death Certificate, are a better number to look at.

 

[brogdale]

So that school pupils studying for A Levels, BTECs etc, those in FE and going to University/College...

 

[clicker]

View attachment 229491

So that school pupils studying for A Levels, BTECs etc, those in FE and going to University/College...

And if like mine they'll have also been working weekends since 16 in retail or hospitality. Unfortunately it's an age group that involves a lot of contact with lots of different groups of people.

 

[elbows]

And if like mine they'll have also been working weekends since 16 in retail or hospitality. Unfortunately it's an age group that involves a lot of contact with lots of different groups of people.

And there is some data being used by some models to take this into account for pandemic planning purposes.

The one I know about are the POLYMOD dataset and a set of data that was created for the BBC Pandemic project some years ago.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.16.20023754v2.full.pdf

 

[elbows]

Any views on this graphic elbows ?

Its pretty much like other people have said - the daily numbers were way too low even before the change to 28 days, so I always preferred to use the numbers from the ONS anyway. It was impossible to take the daily number seriously because it was missing many thousands of deaths since the early days, never mind more recently.

I dont really believe the 28 day cutoff is fair or appropriate, but at this particular stage of the pandemic in the UK the difference it makes is relatively small.