Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[maomao]

Unless I had by amazing coincidence contracted Covid in the last week, the test will of course be negative. As will for the immense majority of the rest of the participants in this exercise, I would wager. It seems a bit of a waste of resources to ask symptom-free people to test themselves for research, no?

How would it be an amazing coincidence for you to have Covid? We're in a high growth part of a pandemic and 1-2% of the London population have had it at any one time over the last few weeks.

 

[Mation]

Apologies if this has been discussed already, I don’t check this thread often and it is a long read.

So it seems I won some kind of government’s Free Covid Test raffle, as I recently got a letter from the NHS telling me I’ve been picked up at random from their database to participate in a mass test exercise, and asked if I wanted to take part. I thought might as well do it, and sure enough today the home kit came through the post.

The thing is, you’re supposed to use it and send it back right away, regardless of whether you have symptoms or not. The test doesn’t check for antibodies either, so it won’t provide any useful statistics to the government there.

Unless I had by amazing coincidence contracted Covid in the last week, the test will of course be negative. As will for the immense majority of the rest of the participants in this exercise, I would wager. It seems a bit of a waste of resources to ask symptom-free people to test themselves for research, no?

Absolutely not a waste of time or resources.

Think of it as answering the question: what proportion of people who wouldn't otherwise have had a test turn out to be positive.

That's an important thing to find out.

 

[T & P]

It will pickup cases that otherwise don't make it into hospital or report themselves and you can get an overview of how many people in the population have it or have had it from the data. Think of it like a polling sample, if X number of people report in then Y number of people of have it we can estimate Z number of people in the country have it.

Was this from the Imperial College London? Wife's had a couple of similar survey letters come through she's ignoring, but she gets to test herself twice a week anyway for work so fuck that.

Yes, it was Imperial.

 

[T & P]

How would it be an amazing coincidence for you to have Covid? We're in a high growth part of a pandemic and 1-2% of the London population have had it at any one time over the last few weeks.

Admittedly it seems more likely now, but the initial letter was sent to me before this new super contagious strain had been discovered.

With that in mind, I haven’t contracted Covid in the nine-odd months since it’s been generally around in the UK. If I am supposed to test myself immediately after receiving the kit in the post, surely the odds of me having avoided contracting Covid for nine months straight and getting infected on the very small window of time when the test arrives must be fairly small... Or at least it would have been when this exercise was conceived, before anyone knew about the new strain...

 

[weltweit]

I had the random survey covid test thing also. They asked me if I would do it and then sent a home test kit which they then collected. A day or two later they texted to say my test was negative and followed up with an email saying the same.

 

[elbows]

Admittedly it seems more likely now, but the initial letter was sent to me before this new super contagious strain had been discovered.

With that in mind, I haven’t contracted Covid in the nine-odd months since it’s been generally around in the UK. If I am supposed to test myself immediately after receiving the kit in the post, surely the odds of me having avoided contracting Covid for nine months straight and getting infected on the very small window of time when the test arrives must be fairly small... Or at least it would have been when this exercise was conceived, before anyone knew about the new strain...

They need to know how low those chances are in practice. And thats not a question that becomes less important to them at times when cases are low. They need to keep an eye on the picture all the time and study the signs of change in one direction or another. The negative results are as important to them as the positives.

They arent trying to find as many cases as possible with this method They do find some, a few out of many. And thats quite enough for their purposes. I do not like it when a country relies only on this sort of disease surveillance to monitor the state of things, but it is an important part of the mix and is useful. It was even more useful when we didnt have a testing system that the public could access, but its still useful even when larger methods of surveillance are available, even if only to confirm things from a slightly different vantage point and to confirm the validity of trends seen via other data sources.

 

[cupid_stunt]

Some seriously ill covid patients in London, the east, and south-east are being moved to hospitals hundreds of miles away, such as Bristol & Plymouth.

 

[frogwoman]

I know Owen Jones isn't that popular on here often for good reason but this is a good piece on Karl Sikora

Giving people false hope about the pandemic isn't 'balanced' – it's dangerous | Owen Jones

The media should not promote disinformation under the guise of debate, says Guardian columnist Owen Jones

www.theguardian.com

 

[Red Cat]

Admittedly it seems more likely now, but the initial letter was sent to me before this new super contagious strain had been discovered.

With that in mind, I haven’t contracted Covid in the nine-odd months since it’s been generally around in the UK. If I am supposed to test myself immediately after receiving the kit in the post, surely the odds of me having avoided contracting Covid for nine months straight and getting infected on the very small window of time when the test arrives must be fairly small... Or at least it would have been when this exercise was conceived, before anyone knew about the new strain...

Positive or negative is information. I don't understand why you seem to be opposing the gathering of information about asymptomatic prevalence during a pandemic?

 

[brogdale]

Isle of Sheppey off the hook?

 

[2hats]

Updated LSHTM modelling (not yet peer reviewed) with latest data highlights the increasing spread of VOC 202012/01 (B.1.1.7) from the SE across the country, particularly as December progressed. The growth is consistent with increased transmission of the new variant of >50% over previous variants.

^ Spread of new variant by region.

^ Growth of the new variant indicated by proxy of S dropouts (local authorities arranged from north to south, top to bottom).

 

[StoneRoad]

Some seriously ill covid patients in London, the east, and south-east are being moved to hospitals hundreds of miles away, such as Bristol & Plymouth.

I don't know if it would make more sense to move covid or non-covid patients to other areas to release ICU / high dependency beds in the areas with the excessive demand for beds, or find some way of staffing the Nightingales ?

 

[brogdale]

Updated LSHTM modelling (not yet peer reviewed) with latest data highlights the increasing spread of VOC 202012/01 (B.1.1.7) from the SE across the country, particularly as December progressed. The growth is consistent with increased transmission of the new variant of >50% over previous variants.

^ Spread of new variant by region.

^ Growth of the new variant indicated by proxy of S dropouts (local authorities arranged from north to south, top to bottom).

Kent (& Medway) + Bexley certainly showing up there, but there appear to be some oddly early stuff in that Plymouth line as well?
Am I reading that right?

 

[magneze]

Isle of Sheppey off the hook?

View attachment 246452

Maybe everyone can call it the 'Trump Virus' from now on?

 

[2hats]

Admittedly it seems more likely now, but the initial letter was sent to me before this new super contagious strain had been discovered.

With that in mind, I haven’t contracted Covid in the nine-odd months since it’s been generally around in the UK. If I am supposed to test myself immediately after receiving the kit in the post, surely the odds of me having avoided contracting Covid for nine months straight and getting infected on the very small window of time when the test arrives must be fairly small... Or at least it would have been when this exercise was conceived, before anyone knew about the new strain...

Yes, it was Imperial.

If it was from Imperial (actually distributed by Ipsos MORI) then it would be part of the REACT study. This is an important cross-check on the ONS Coronavirus Infection Survey and also provides insight into the duration of naturally acquired immunity. Unlike the National Testing Programme (aka 'Test and Trace') this is a random sample of the population and not a self-selecting sample. As such it helps paint a more realistic picture of infection and immunity levels across the country, so it's important that people don't treat it as a personal test and only bother with it if they think they might be/might have been infected or ignore it (irrespective of their own determination of their seropositivity).

 

[2hats]

there appear to be some oddly early stuff in that Plymouth line as well?
Am I reading that right?

Correct. Could be an early introduction there (cue idle speculation about local activities) but note this analysis is using the proxy of S dropouts with a somewhat arbitrary cut off in time of (approx.) October where, going forward, the dominate contribution to those dropouts was from VOC 202012/01. So some signals to the left could have been from other variants.

 

[maomao]

If it was from Imperial (actually distributed by Ipsos MORI) then it would be part of the REACT study. This is an important cross-check on the ONS Coronavirus Infection Survey and also provides insight into the duration of naturally acquired immunity. Unlike the National Testing Programme (aka 'Test and Trace') this is a random sample of the population and not a self-selecting sample. As such it helps paint a more realistic picture of infection and immunity levels across the country, so it's important that people don't treat it as a personal test and only bother with it if they think they might be/might have been infected or ignore it (irrespective of their own determination of their seropositivity).

Any idea of sample size? Ie. how many tests a day/week they do.

 

[2hats]

Any idea of sample size? Ie. how many tests a day/week they do.

Typically involves something like 100,000-200,000 randomly chosen people being tested every fortnight or so. Read more here.

 

[teqniq]

With the new strain there is a much higher infection/transmission level with kids: close schools.

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[Hyperdark]

I think there is a danger of over-playing the transmission rate for the young, the study you link to indicates 1.2X that of the rate in older people, its not the nigh and day difference implied

 

[StoneRoad]

I don't think underplaying the risk of transmission is a good look at all.

There are enough idiots - like the deniers, anti-maskers & anti-vaxxers - to be assisting the spread of even the mark 1 version, without the greater transmissibility of the new Variants coming into play at all.

 

[Hyperdark]

Its a comparative study, you can ignore the numbers in studies to suit your 'Look' if your that way inclined....many do
and who the fuck underplayed it anyway?, cos it seems that was directed at me

 

[existentialist]

I think there is a danger of over-playing the transmission rate for the young, the study you link to indicates 1.2X that of the rate in older people, its not the nigh and day difference implied

Take the third or fourth power of each rate, and then see how tiny the difference is.

1.0 * 1.0 * 1.0 * 1.0 = 1
1.2 * 1.2 * 1.2 * 1.2 = 2.07

So, in 4 cycles of infection, an invectivity of 1.2 will double the number infected vs that of 1. Little numbers get big quite fast in exponential rates.

 

[maomao]

I think there is a danger of over-playing the transmission rate for the young, the study you link to indicates 1.2X that of the rate in older people, its not the nigh and day difference implied

20% weekly compound interest. That's a massive difference. Look at a list of powers of 5 and powers of 6. How big a difference do you want?

 

[cupid_stunt]

Take the third or fourth power of each rate, and then see how tiny the difference is.

1.0 * 1.0 * 1.0 * 1.0 = 1
1.2 * 1.2 * 1.2 * 1.2 = 2.07

So, in 4 cycles of infection, an invectivity of 1.2 will double the number infected vs that of 1. Little numbers get big quite fast in exponential rates.

BIB - very true, Worthing came out of the last national lockdown on under 25 cases per 100k, four weeks later and we were on over 400 cases per 100k, slightly over doubling every bloody week.

ETA - with today's figures, we are now on 526 cases per 100k, up from 25 in just over 4 weeks.

ETA 2 - Just checked the figures for covid cases in our local hospital trust, it was 22 on the day we came out of the last national lockdown, now it's 96, higher than the 80 at the peak in April.

 

[existentialist]

This pandemic has achieved, if nothing else, a revelation of the vast gap between some people's perception of their mathematqical/epidemiological understanding and the reality. Not to mention their reluctance to do anything about that gap.

 

[frogwoman]

53,285 cases and 613 deaths

 

[LDC]

I think there is a danger of over-playing the transmission rate for the young, the study you link to indicates 1.2X that of the rate in older people, its not the nigh and day difference implied

FFS Hyperdark you really like to continually illustrate how little you know and how you don't understand this stuff. What's the danger, we're a bit too cautious? As we are fast approaching 100,000 dead, have an out of control infection rate, and a new variant we don't fully understand the implications of yet, maybe being very cautious is sensible?!

 

[elbows]

53,285 cases and 613 deaths

And by test specimen date the figure for 29th December has already gone above 64,000 positive cases!

 

[frogwoman]

And by test specimen date the figure for 29th December has already gone above 64,000 positive cases!

Out of that 64,000 i guess if we assume ages etc are averaged out, around 500 to 640 will die and 6400 will end up at hospital?