elbows
Well-Known Member
OK I'm probably misreading a graph then. It comes from here Covid-19 in the UK: How many coronavirus cases are there in your area? and the cases rising / falling chart halfway down the page. I am not a stats person though so its probably something I've got wrong.
Ah I see. Assuming its the following chart you mean, the misinterpretation is simply down to timing. They are comparing rolling averages on 6th November with ones on 20th November. Two weeks is not enough to see the lockdown effect in full, especially when rolling 7 day averages are used as these smooth things out in a manner that effectively adds a little lag, in so much as the numbers they use for November 20th are still influenced by numbers from days before then. So that particular graphic mostly ends up showing the results of regional and other-nations measures which were in effect in the period before the national measures in England, and will only reflect the humble beginnings of national measures impact.
There are likely to be other, less discussed factors too. For example we dont spend much time thinking about what the timing of an epidemic without the brakes on would look like. And I would tend to expect that the potential for larger reductions in cases is greater in areas where a rather large epidemic was allowed to steadily build over a long period of time up to a very high level. Because peoples sense of risk changes in the most affected areas, and because lots of people have had the virus and are therefore temporarily unavailable to get it again. Think of it as a watered down version of the herd immunity stuff we heard so much shit about. Because even very far below some theoretical level where full on herd immunity would be temporarily achieved, the percentage of the population that have recently had the virus is still a factor to some lesser extent. It can still impact R, just not to the extent that all other brakes become unnecessary. Or another way to think of it would be that if we had reached a point where say 10% of the population had been vaccinated, this would not be considered enough to totally change the game, but it would still be better than nothing. And in these respects it is plausible that the North and Midlands are now in better shape than the South, and depending on how much immunity is left from the first wave, the South may be more vulnerable in the 'not as much immunity from 2nd wave infections' sense right now.