Supine
Newt Member
Do you think you are being clever? Rates were increasing massively and then started going down. It's not fucking rocket science.
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Do you think you are being clever? Rates were increasing massively and then started going down. It's not fucking rocket science.
For about the 20th time, I have NEVER said that lockdowns were not necessary. I literally just posted this same thing about five minutes ago. Nor have I said they aren't effective, again about five minutes ago. Read what I wrote before you try acting high and mighty like I'm some kind of covid denier. Literally all I was saying is that you cannot know what the precise death toll would have been. You can guess, you can estimate, you can predict, you can model. You cannot KNOW.
Given that Neil Ferguson, whose model predicted 500,000 deaths if nothing was done, also said, to quote the article linked by Sugar Kane a little earlier;
'And the British response, Ferguson said on 25 March, makes him “reasonably confident” that total deaths in the United Kingdom will be held below 20,000.'
It goes to show that just because a scientist makes a prediction, does not make him or her automatically correct.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
You keep saying this but are yet to offer an alternative. For the period of time before vaccines become available, there are no other tools available, other than lockdowns of some form. I expect you will say we just should have had "restrictions" that don't amount to full lockdown, but whatever they would be, you'd get the same people complaining about their freedoms being restricted. Also, if you are saying we could have had restrictions short of full lockdown, applied much earlier in the process, thereby avoiding lengthy full lockdowns then you are agreeing with most people here. I don't actually get what point you are trying to make.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
I'm just baffled to what you are suggesting (if anything) MJ100 or the exact point you're trying to make. We're on about 145,000+ dead in the UK with a year of restrictions (and it's not over yet) so modelling that thought 500,000 was possible with no restrictions does seem like a possibility. Yes, nobody can know for absolute certain but I just don't see where constantly saying that leaves us tbh. And you keep mentioning different countries, all of which have significant differences to the UK in terms of the seeding and spread of the pandemic, which again, leaves me thinking what the point you're trying to make is, unless it's just a vague and not very helpful 'but we just don't know for sure' thing?
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SpineyNorman
Inappropriate content removed
I would find it extremely difficult to take anyone who thinks they would have been the same or even similar to what we actually had seriously.
Like Saul Goodman I know exactly how many it would have been. I'm not telling you but as everyone on here can verify, I am always right and never lie. So there.
SpineyNorman
Inappropriate content removed
This poster seems to spend a lot more time explaining what he's NOT saying than actually saying anything so they can't really complain when people try to fill in the gaps.
I was trying to make a point regarding the argument between littlebabyjesus and elbows, where the former was claiming lockdowns didn't work and the latter was claiming they were the sole reason the virus went into retreat over the summer. Both of those positions are of course bullshit. I was just trying to say the reality lay in the middle somewhere, then a bunch of people started implying I was saying that we would have seen less Covid deaths without lockdowns, which I have never said, so I had to reply against their nonsense. That's all.
There are plenty of alternatives, I though people here were big on complaining how the government didn't implement any of them- early border closures, proper quarantine, test and trace, all that stuff. So yes, I am agreeing with most people here. The only point I was initially trying to make was related to the argument between elbows and littlebabyjesus in respect to the fact that we can never know the precise number of how many Covid deaths lockdowns prevented.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
As far as I can see that's a misrepresentation of both of their positions.
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
Yes I can't imagine either of them saying that - could you point to their original posts?
elbows
Well-Known Member
Its a crude version of our positions. It does capture a fair chunk of my position, which is better described as:
Number of people getting infected in first wave was brought down by changes in behaviour: far less mixing between people, various things closed, attempts to get a partial grip on hospital-acquired infections and care home spread, getting people to isolate when they have symptoms and/or test positive, getting people to wear masks and maintain distance and ventilate indoor spaces and wash their hands. When these things were done, infections, hospitalisations and deaths peaked and fell away. When we relaxed, when some old behaviours and mixing between people returned, the number of infections rose and we had a second wave. When restrictions were imposed in November the numbers flattened and started to go down, but then we relaxed quickly and things shot up again, in combination with a more transmissible variant. Then we had more closures and beehavioural changes in January, which brought things down to the current level.
Thats a great big chunk of the picture. Its all about opportunities the virus has to spread, so things like how many people have already caught the virus and have immunity are a factor, just like they are in standard epidemic modelling where the number of susceptible individuals at each moment in time is a key parameter. Seasonal factors are another variable, albeit a limited one as we saw in countries that had second waves during summer. And some of the seasonal factors are expected to involve behavioural changes at any rate, eg more likely to meet people outdoors than indoors, more likely to allow more airflow indoors.
Reducing all of this to the word lockdown does not do justice to the explanation, but its not a billion miles off the mark when trying to be brief in a way I seldom manage.
I wont attempt to describe littlebabyjesuses position in full, not least because they have at least been pretty consistent with it for much of the pandemic, and there are plenty of arguments between us in the past that can be reviewed to see that its the same old clash, I dont think there is anything new this time around other than some other people joining in. Instead I focus on the bit that really gets to me, which I'd characterise it as a stance where they prefer to find other explanations for the waves peaking when they did, no matter how many times we see waves peaking a few weeks after behaviours changed in the ways I described. They look mostly for other explanations as to why the virus suddenly found it hard to keep finding greater numbers of people to infect all the time. They overemphasise and misjudge since aspects roles in affecting the extent to which the virus ran out of ever increasing numbers of susceptible people. They choose to believe its because not enough people remained clinically susceptible, as opposed to the fucking obvious reality that vast numbers of people were actually not catching the virus at those stages because they were not going to school or the pub or to work, not hugging their relatives, not getting too close to people, not being idiots about reducing risk via mask wearing etc. Drives me absolutely nuts when the basics of how people catch or avoid viruses, the key factor in epidemic waves, is denied to serve some agenda, ignorance of the most grotesque and dangerous form. Its not rocket science, these are pretty basic concepts that children wouldnt struggle to understand. Which is not to say the number of clinically susceptible individuals hasnt changed or isnt a factor at all, it has reduced over time, as a result of people catching it, and more recently as a result of vaccination. But what they are trying to suggest is that we got far closer to 'herd immunity' type levels of population infection than is actually the case. We've come nowhere close, so its not that the number of susceptible people fell to levels that could peak a wave and send it into decline on its own, the waves peaked when they did because people were taken out of harms way by other means, by lockdown etc. A bunch of people being immune post-infection does help, its part f the equation, but its only been a modest factor so far, we've had to use a bunch of non-pharmaceutical interventions for prolonged periods to avoid even higher peaks, and to even get a few months here and there without runaway levels of infection. Now vaccinations can carry a big chunk of that burden.
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Elbows is right, it's a simplification of their positions, but without quoting large chunks of their replies to each other it was the best I could do. Mainly I responded to this quote by Elbows that seemed to summarise their positions nicely;
You [littlebabjesus] preferred to believe after the first wave that it was not lockdown which brought the wave to a halt, but rather a natural phenomenon to do with the attack rate having been largely fulfilled. Now you are just revisiting the same faulty logic despite the existence of the second wave which pissed all over your shit theory last year. I [elbows] on the other hand believe the virus only ended up in retreat because huge numbers of still susceptible individuals avoided the virus due to mitigation measures taken.
Then adding my own opinion that the reality lay somewhere in the middle. Of course lockdowns helped around the world including in the UK, but so did other things, most of which elbows just touched on in his latest post- seasonality, possibly local herd immunity in certain places (Delhi, New York, possibly London) though there still hasn't been any definitive evidence on that from what I've seen, border restrictions, pre-existing natural immunity, the rate of infection through things that lockdown cannot control (nosocomial, intra-household etc), ventilation, and so on.
You [littlebabjesus] preferred to believe after the first wave that it was not lockdown which brought the wave to a halt, but rather a natural phenomenon to do with the attack rate having been largely fulfilled. Now you are just revisiting the same faulty logic despite the existence of the second wave which pissed all over your shit theory last year. I [elbows] on the other hand believe the virus only ended up in retreat because huge numbers of still susceptible individuals avoided the virus due to mitigation measures taken.
Then adding my own opinion that the reality lay somewhere in the middle. Of course lockdowns helped around the world including in the UK, but so did other things, most of which elbows just touched on in his latest post- seasonality, possibly local herd immunity in certain places (Delhi, New York, possibly London) though there still hasn't been any definitive evidence on that from what I've seen, border restrictions, pre-existing natural immunity, the rate of infection through things that lockdown cannot control (nosocomial, intra-household etc), ventilation, and so on.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
And those "other things" by some coincidence all happened to come together at the same time, producing the sharp peak we see in the graphs? It's not plausible to me; lockdown type restrictions start suddenly at a certain point in time whereas all these other things are gradual effects that would cause a rounded peak, not the cliff edge that we see.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Some of the detail is also illustrated by what stage our agrument reached after the first wave was in the past. I went as far as I could to partially accommodate some aspects of littlebabyjesus's stance at the time. I acknowledged limitations to our understanding about immune systems and levels of population susceptibility. I admitted that I could not completely rule out that some of what he was calling 'dark immunological matter' or words to that effect could be part of the mix for all I knew. This stuff means I could not be sure what the natural attack rate of this virus would be, I could not say that typical values such as 80% of the population catching it in an unmitigated pandemic, which were being used for public health planning purposes, would turn out to be spot on.
But there was no way I would run too far with those unknowns to the extent that I could express confidence that that stuff had reached a level after the first wave that would prevent subsequent waves. And indeed we had a 2nd wave, which I thought rather proved the point. But apparently not, apparently it is still possible for anti-lockdown stances to involve making the same flawed mental gymnastic moves as he did after the first wave. I would think that even those who were tempted to place too much faith in such a stance, such a hope, after the first wave would not be fooled again.
Plus even if I had unusual ideas about how immunity works and how many people were susceptible, such ideas should be dampened by the obvious reality of quite how many millions of people have not had the opportunity to catch the virus in any wave so far. Certainly lots of people were exposed, care homes were not protected well at all in the first wave. Not everybody followed the guidelines and the laws. But dont let that distract from the fact that really huge numbers of people, especially older people, took things real seriously and really minimised the number of moments that they were in harms way. It therefore stands to reason that within this large group remained very many susceptible people, some of whom would be expected to die in a subsequent wave if we got rid of non-pharmaceutical interventions. Or at least that was the reality until recently, now vaccination programmes should change that picture significantly, vaccines have now reached lots of these people before the virus could. Even in the vaccination era there will still be some people who are susceptible even after vaccination, but thats a picture of susceptibility that will take much further time to judge. And the vaccination era includes complications such as how long immunity lasts and whether we will see the rise of escape mutants that start sending things back in the other direction, back to a picture of many millions of susceptible people that the likes of littlebabyjesus want to misjudge in order to sustain some bogus sense of reality that is compatible with their ideological beliefs about freedom or whatever shit it is that causes them to be such an idiot in this pandemic.
But there was no way I would run too far with those unknowns to the extent that I could express confidence that that stuff had reached a level after the first wave that would prevent subsequent waves. And indeed we had a 2nd wave, which I thought rather proved the point. But apparently not, apparently it is still possible for anti-lockdown stances to involve making the same flawed mental gymnastic moves as he did after the first wave. I would think that even those who were tempted to place too much faith in such a stance, such a hope, after the first wave would not be fooled again.
Plus even if I had unusual ideas about how immunity works and how many people were susceptible, such ideas should be dampened by the obvious reality of quite how many millions of people have not had the opportunity to catch the virus in any wave so far. Certainly lots of people were exposed, care homes were not protected well at all in the first wave. Not everybody followed the guidelines and the laws. But dont let that distract from the fact that really huge numbers of people, especially older people, took things real seriously and really minimised the number of moments that they were in harms way. It therefore stands to reason that within this large group remained very many susceptible people, some of whom would be expected to die in a subsequent wave if we got rid of non-pharmaceutical interventions. Or at least that was the reality until recently, now vaccination programmes should change that picture significantly, vaccines have now reached lots of these people before the virus could. Even in the vaccination era there will still be some people who are susceptible even after vaccination, but thats a picture of susceptibility that will take much further time to judge. And the vaccination era includes complications such as how long immunity lasts and whether we will see the rise of escape mutants that start sending things back in the other direction, back to a picture of many millions of susceptible people that the likes of littlebabyjesus want to misjudge in order to sustain some bogus sense of reality that is compatible with their ideological beliefs about freedom or whatever shit it is that causes them to be such an idiot in this pandemic.
No, all those other things happened all the way through the pandemic and are still happening now. Lockdowns caused the sharp peak, but those other things will have affected the shape of the graph all the way through, even if it's only in a subtle way- especially in the summer, otherwise, with lockdown restrictions easing from late May (in the UK), we would surely have seen a similar rise in infections once again in early summer. As it was, we didn't see a rise until September, when we started to get the imports of cases from people coming back from holidays which accounted for 40% (I think I read on the BBC) of new infections, plus schools and unis going back, and then the spread of the Kent varient. That surely either means that many of the things that were restricted earlier on but were eased over summer (retail, restaurants, contact sport, gyms, social mixing) weren't major drivers of infections anyway, or that other factors besides lockdown were helping to keep the cases and deaths low over the summer, seasonality being the obvious one.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Most of the aspects of curve shape we'd notice are actually the same or similar under both scenarios. The nature of exponential growth and decay is the main driving force behind the particluar shapes we see. In the models the number of still-susceptible people is key, and the results are broadly the same no matter what the reasons for the decrease of available victims in the path of this virus.
So when we slam on the brakes really quite hard, the results are similar in shape to what we'd see with a natural peak, but the peak is lower.
To get a much longer, gradual curve, like the original doomed 'pressing down on the peak, pushing it off into summer' UK government 'plan a' approach pre-March 16th 2020, you'd press the brakes less hard, enough to lower the number of people in harms way at each moment, but leaving enough gaping holes in the shield that the virus still has a lot of people to work with, and that given long enough a large percentage of the population would have been exposed eventually. Maths didnt add up with this virus for them to do that without busting hospitals, so we didnt really get to see it. Even if the maths had been different I dont know if it would have been possible, seems more likely that number of infections would have reached the sort of explosive tipping point at some stage that wuld have spiralled things out of control and been met with firmer brakes. Not sure if there are examples in history of that sort of thing being pulled off either.
Another way you can get a much broader curve with more gradual trajectories is if there is a large amount of regional timing variation. Or per-setting variations in timing eg large care home outbreaks or hospital outbreaks a while after the main community peak in cases. 1st wave demonstrates some of this more than our 2nd.
What happened on the geraphs as a result of November measures is useful to look at too. Again I think it tells an obvious story of brakes not being applied hard enough or long enough, leading to a resumption in upwards terajectory after a period of decline. Obviously this is a distinct feature in UK charts, very noticeable and unlike what we are used to seeing on charts of natural epidemic waves. But there is the role of the new variant in there too, which people will be able to lean on if they have some reason to deny the validity of what I've attributed that shape to.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Dont overestimate seasonal effects, dont underestimate how long it takes for the virus to really take off again if the brakes have been on quite hard for a long time before the relaxation of measures begins. The nature of exponential growth means that if levels of the virus have been pushed down to very low levels, it takes time for the base to grow back up to the extent that the next doubling of infections means scary big numbers.
Restrictions were lifted quite slowly, in phases. Schools remained closed. Large numbers of people did not return to normal levels of mixing etc. To the extent that I was able to recommend people not spend June 2020 waiting anxiously for the 2nd wave to emerge imminently. I then got away with stretching that into July.
Plus cases actually started increasing again in August, not September, but as I said it takes a bit of time for levels of infection to really get going again (just like it was possible for authorities to miss much of the early part of the first wave until it became substantial).
And we have other countries to look at. The relatively modest wiggle room the the summer season offered was on display in various states of the USA for example, a pretty vivid demonstration of what happens if you dont apply the brakes hard enough and long enough, and try to rely on seasonal cliches to carry too much of the burden. In some states they never pushed cases low enough in first lockdown, so they rebounded easily. The sort of things that happend in different places at different times over summer were even enough to give littlebabyjesus pause for thought at the time. It seems they feel emboldened to talk absolute shit about the dynamics at work in this pandemic only when we are at a stage like the current one, where number of infections etc has fallen away. I may be an annoying, tedious bore at times but at least my stance is a stance for all seasons, I've not set myself up to have to slink away when the going gets tough.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
That's the main reason I would have assumed there would be a more rounded curve with a "natural" peak because we know things were/are progressing at different timings in different parts of the uk, but the lockdown was applied universally at the same point in time.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Although the government initially painted a picture where London was some weeks ahead of the rest of the country, the differences on that side of thing were actually more modest. The virus had been well seeded all over the place, some worse than other for sure, but probably closer than you might expect. Likewise in terms of natural, unmitigated waves of other viruses like flu, in the modern interconnected era the timing variations around the country seem likely to have reduced.
When it comes to the down side of the curve, although the lockdown timing was the same across the country, ability to adhere to all the behaviours that reduce transmission varied. I know we've discussed this in the past when it comes to things like how sharp curves were in the London for first wave compared to some other regions. We end up discussing things like how many people can work from home in London and the South East, and the effects of reduced tourism, percentage of the local economy that was involved with hospitality & entertainment etc.
Plus you know if there is one thing I like to bore on about, its hospital-acquired infections and the role that such infections have in causing explosive growth of hospital and death figures. And potential feedback loops between community and hospital infections. I'm fairly confient that a proportion of the slower decline seen in curves in some regions were due to it taking much longer to get more of a grip on hospital spread in some places. Just look at the state of the number of Covid019 patients in my local hospital during the first wave for one of the most dramatic examples of this! That hospital outbreak had a modest effect on regional and national statistics but when zoomed in on its a very different pattern to the one people think of as typical for the time.
That's a valid point of course, but then the caveat must also apply- don't potentially underestimate seasonal effects or overestimate how long it takes for the virus to take off. We saw how quickly things could rise last spring, after all, and that was from a base of zero active cases, which we've never been at since then. Our first case was reported on January 23rd, and exactly two months later we were in lockdown.
I'm not an epidemiologist but I imagine it must be hard to determine exactly how much effect was down to any individual change in behaviour or particular closure/restriction. Another problem of course is that testing was so much more limited in the first wave- how can we know what the true shape of the graph should have looked like last spring? Is there any way to determine that or would it just be guesstimating?
elbows
Well-Known Member
The whole point of banging on about exponential growth is that its a form of growth where the increase is proportional to the amount thats already there. So the growth doesnt look all that impressive to start with, until some point is reached where the doubling is suddenly making quite large numbers into very large numbers, and we actually notice.
What looks like sudden tipping points to us are built on what came in earlier periods, often unnoticed.
We missed cases and deaths, likely quite a bit earlier than many people realise. News stories about the first few deaths could only come about once we were actually looking at a far broader range of patients, well beyond the stupid narrow travel-history based criteria that was in use for far too long. I sounded an alarm here in February 2020 when Italy suddenly noticed some deaths when previously they hadnt even been detecting many cases. It was a strong indicator that they had missed most of the initial phase of their outbreak, and by the time they noticed deaths the number of infections would have been really quite large, far into the danger zone. So within a few weeks they were in huge trouble.
Just look at this sort of story regarding an early UK victim that went unnoticed at the time:
news.sky.com
The virus was repeatedly introduced to the UK over quite a long period and had quite a lot of time to grow before it reached the levels where it became obvious to everyone that it was spreading widely here. Lots of people who should have known better about this stuff did not, they failed in their observational and tracking duties. Even when they nticed the tip of the iceberg and knew it was only the tip, there was a reluctance to properly estimate the size of the hidden part of the iceberg. It only looked like it suddenly exploded out of nowhere because of the failure to track it in the earlier phases. And plenty of chains of transmission end up as dead ends, so the virus needs quite a lot of opportunities to thrive in order to really get going, to get beyond a basic foothold. Lots of new seeding events due to half-term holidays abroad probably ramped things up considerably towards the end of the initial 'not noticing the true scale of the problem' phase, and without those repeated introductions of the virus into the country things may have simmered more slowly for a lot longer. And/or hospitals are a massive virus spread multiplier and things kick off once the virus has been in the right place at the right time and starts to run rampant in those healthcare settings.
Most aspects involve some guesstimating. I tended to concentrate on the sharp end of the pandemic, the deaths, in order to focus on something closer to a measurable picture via data, as opposed to cases which were so woefully undercounted then. I'm sure estimates exist for cases, and curves can be reconstructed from that, but its not something I do myself. I look at all cause daily deaths to get a sense of how many deaths were likely missed during the bulk of the first wave, but even this method does not allow me to get a view of how many deaths were missed in the early phase. Because below a certain quantity of daily deaths, nothing significantly stands out from the usual number of deaths, so isnt spotted. This is also true when it comes to detecting new pandemics in the first place - unless the disease in question has unusual symptoms, unless a country does a lot of proper routine diagnostic testing of patients at all times, or unless something else has tipped authorities off to be on alert, perceptions of disease tend to be based on lots and lots of classic assumptions. And there are certainly a lot of normal, routine assumptions made when it comes to respiratory diseases. So authorities dont notice anything unusual is happening until an outbreaks hits a vulnerable population at such scale that unusual numbers of people present themselves to hospitals etc. That happened in China, and it still happened again later in other places despite the eventual warning from China. And I cannot say exactly how long the virus was simmering before anyone noticed in China. This is also part of the reason why I cannot automatically disregard stories about the possibility of earlier undetected outbreaks elsewhere, before Wuhan. And if we dont notice till it really explodes, then no wonder it looks like it arrived out of nowhere with incredible speed, we completely missed so much of the earlier part of the story.
What looks like sudden tipping points to us are built on what came in earlier periods, often unnoticed.
We missed cases and deaths, likely quite a bit earlier than many people realise. News stories about the first few deaths could only come about once we were actually looking at a far broader range of patients, well beyond the stupid narrow travel-history based criteria that was in use for far too long. I sounded an alarm here in February 2020 when Italy suddenly noticed some deaths when previously they hadnt even been detecting many cases. It was a strong indicator that they had missed most of the initial phase of their outbreak, and by the time they noticed deaths the number of infections would have been really quite large, far into the danger zone. So within a few weeks they were in huge trouble.
Just look at this sort of story regarding an early UK victim that went unnoticed at the time:
COVID-19: Daughter of first UK victim questions when coronavirus arrived in the country
Peter Attwood died on the 30 January 2020 but his cause of death wasn't officially discovered until seven months later.
The virus was repeatedly introduced to the UK over quite a long period and had quite a lot of time to grow before it reached the levels where it became obvious to everyone that it was spreading widely here. Lots of people who should have known better about this stuff did not, they failed in their observational and tracking duties. Even when they nticed the tip of the iceberg and knew it was only the tip, there was a reluctance to properly estimate the size of the hidden part of the iceberg. It only looked like it suddenly exploded out of nowhere because of the failure to track it in the earlier phases. And plenty of chains of transmission end up as dead ends, so the virus needs quite a lot of opportunities to thrive in order to really get going, to get beyond a basic foothold. Lots of new seeding events due to half-term holidays abroad probably ramped things up considerably towards the end of the initial 'not noticing the true scale of the problem' phase, and without those repeated introductions of the virus into the country things may have simmered more slowly for a lot longer. And/or hospitals are a massive virus spread multiplier and things kick off once the virus has been in the right place at the right time and starts to run rampant in those healthcare settings.
Most aspects involve some guesstimating. I tended to concentrate on the sharp end of the pandemic, the deaths, in order to focus on something closer to a measurable picture via data, as opposed to cases which were so woefully undercounted then. I'm sure estimates exist for cases, and curves can be reconstructed from that, but its not something I do myself. I look at all cause daily deaths to get a sense of how many deaths were likely missed during the bulk of the first wave, but even this method does not allow me to get a view of how many deaths were missed in the early phase. Because below a certain quantity of daily deaths, nothing significantly stands out from the usual number of deaths, so isnt spotted. This is also true when it comes to detecting new pandemics in the first place - unless the disease in question has unusual symptoms, unless a country does a lot of proper routine diagnostic testing of patients at all times, or unless something else has tipped authorities off to be on alert, perceptions of disease tend to be based on lots and lots of classic assumptions. And there are certainly a lot of normal, routine assumptions made when it comes to respiratory diseases. So authorities dont notice anything unusual is happening until an outbreaks hits a vulnerable population at such scale that unusual numbers of people present themselves to hospitals etc. That happened in China, and it still happened again later in other places despite the eventual warning from China. And I cannot say exactly how long the virus was simmering before anyone noticed in China. This is also part of the reason why I cannot automatically disregard stories about the possibility of earlier undetected outbreaks elsewhere, before Wuhan. And if we dont notice till it really explodes, then no wonder it looks like it arrived out of nowhere with incredible speed, we completely missed so much of the earlier part of the story.
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elbows
Well-Known Member
Also see this story I've posted before, which Fergus Walsh persued because of his own likely timeline of infection. The article predates the confirmation of the case I mentioned in previous post.
Some of the challenges of going back looking for signs of earlier, originally missed cases, are apparent towards the end of the article. There will be problems of bias and oversimplified thinking in either direction, and there will be problems finding evidence in samples because the number of people actually affected by Covid-19 in the earlier period is probably really quite small. And when its small our generalised forms of surveillance wont have had much to get its teeth into, there wont be signals that rose clearly above the standard picture, things remain obscured by the background noise of everyday infections, hospitalisations and deaths. We dont even have proper surveillance of other human coronaviruses that have been with us for many years! I hope one consequence of this pandemic is that much changes on these fronts, the system wont be left to run on complacency, faulty established wisdom, oversimplified assumptions and guesswork.
Fergus Walsh: Was coronavirus here earlier than we thought?
Could Covid-19 have been here earlier than we thought? The BBC’s medical correspondent investigates.
www.bbc.co.uk
Some of the challenges of going back looking for signs of earlier, originally missed cases, are apparent towards the end of the article. There will be problems of bias and oversimplified thinking in either direction, and there will be problems finding evidence in samples because the number of people actually affected by Covid-19 in the earlier period is probably really quite small. And when its small our generalised forms of surveillance wont have had much to get its teeth into, there wont be signals that rose clearly above the standard picture, things remain obscured by the background noise of everyday infections, hospitalisations and deaths. We dont even have proper surveillance of other human coronaviruses that have been with us for many years! I hope one consequence of this pandemic is that much changes on these fronts, the system wont be left to run on complacency, faulty established wisdom, oversimplified assumptions and guesswork.
elbows
Well-Known Member
And just in case anyone is still unaware of why I use such strong language when describing the likely role of hospital transmissions:
www.independent.co.uk
This also means that when I go on about all the different things that actually fall under the oversimplified banner of 'lockdown and behavioural changes lead to decline of a wave', people avoiding hospitals is very much on the list. I know that avoiding hospitals has other health consequences that authorities rightly worry about, but its a factor, its part of how people dodged personal Covid-19 danger during periods of high disease incidence, despite remaining clinically susceptible.
Trying to bring this back to a fitting angle for this worldwide thread, if I were trying to study why some countries in the developing world dont seem to have seen the same sort of impact from this virus, I would certainly want to study not just the age and weight of their population, but the nature of their healthcare systems, size of hospitals, proportion of population that are in hospital at a particular moment in time for other reasons, etc. Likewise care homes, or lack of. And for that matter pubs, schools, etc, and how well frequented and ventilated those places are. And the nature of contact mixing patterns between different parts of society, different age groups etc.
Spread of coronavirus within hospitals prolonged first wave fuelling a fifth of admissions
The R-rate for Covid-19 in hospitals could have been as high as 14, a new report reveals
www.independent.co.uk
This also means that when I go on about all the different things that actually fall under the oversimplified banner of 'lockdown and behavioural changes lead to decline of a wave', people avoiding hospitals is very much on the list. I know that avoiding hospitals has other health consequences that authorities rightly worry about, but its a factor, its part of how people dodged personal Covid-19 danger during periods of high disease incidence, despite remaining clinically susceptible.
Trying to bring this back to a fitting angle for this worldwide thread, if I were trying to study why some countries in the developing world dont seem to have seen the same sort of impact from this virus, I would certainly want to study not just the age and weight of their population, but the nature of their healthcare systems, size of hospitals, proportion of population that are in hospital at a particular moment in time for other reasons, etc. Likewise care homes, or lack of. And for that matter pubs, schools, etc, and how well frequented and ventilated those places are. And the nature of contact mixing patterns between different parts of society, different age groups etc.
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cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
Fingers crossed that it's only a blip, you are on fairly low numbers, so that 9% respects around 50 cases, which could be down to one or two local outbreaks, that hopefully the authorities will jump on & suppress with contact tracing & testing.
For example, here in Worthing [population 110,000) we almost reached 800 cases in one week in January! We dropped back down to around 50, then about 6 weeks ago we hit a massive 63% increase, which was traced back to a house party, and after a week or so, cases were declining again.
We got back down to about 60, and a couple of weeks ago we had another big increase of 50% due to almost 30 staff & kids at a local school & nursery testing positive, a week later the figures started to drop again, two weeks later and we are down to 42, a drop of -40.8% in the last 7-days, reported yesterday.
So, I wouldn't be concerned with that increase yet, if it continues over a few weeks, that would be worrying.
The thing is the daily numbers had stalled already. And numbers in hospitals have increased. So a jump from 550 a day to 750 is concerning.
At least that's what the state epidemiologists are saying.
People are increasingly flouting the rules. And with primary schools now fully open to all classes since last week I cant see us getting through the easter holidays without another spike in numbers.
But fingers crossed that people hold it together for the next few weeks. We are only now vaccinating the over 70s.
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
That would be a big jump, but I was commenting on the 9% you mentioned, and looking at worldometers, which shows around 50 extra new cases in just over a week.
Ireland COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer
Ireland Coronavirus update with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, mortality and recovery rates, current active cases, recoveries, trends and timeline.
www.worldometers.info
