COVID19

[Doobs]

Think that one was just the main points from the long one, which I didn't watch either.

I wanted to try and find some stuff out about her, but I've had no time to do anything today

He's spoken about it and been dubious a few times before, but the way she has put everything across has impressed him. I was sceptical, as unless you are convinced the lizards are trying to keep us all plotted up in the garden, if this thing was so good, it would be being used everywhere.

They had that Kory Scott in front of the senate before Xmas, and he was talking about how it's a miracle, a lifesaver etc.

Might well be a case of it being another vitamin d, though it would be highly advisable to not buy it from a veterinary website or random 3rd party sites

They did the miracle thing with hydrozychloroquine too, and it didn't turn out that way. 

Some of the evidence points to it having some positive effect and it has been in use for some time, so there should be no massive downsides.  So I think it is definitely worth a proper trial.  I have no idea what it would show, but 75% fall in deaths feels optimistic.   

If nothing else, if the virus does change then it might give you another weapon or it may be useful in countries which don't have access to many vaccines or where the anti-vax people have been too active.   I am definitely not dismissing it.

[Marky147]

That's the main problem with them just wanting silver bullets.

The anti society/science/vaccines/world just want anything as a solution, which isn't put forward by the 'global elite'

[Doobs]

I think last week was just a bit of a blip. Lots of good news again from the UK this week.

I look a week back with deaths, but in the 7 days up until then deaths were falling an average of 40% over the previous week down to just over 200 a day.  So the reduction is still increasing in percentage terms.  Note that the chart in the Telegraph is incorrect as they have used some incomplete death data.  Deaths are falling quickly, just not that quickly.

Hospitalisations are now down to around 1,000 a day from 4,000 at wave 2 peak.  If anything this is better news than deaths, as there was a worry that hospitilisations wouldn't fall so quickly as middle aged people can still suffer long hospitalisations even if they are less likely to die than the elderly.  The total number of Covid patients in hospital is now down almost 70% from the peak, so people are leaving hospital too.

Cases was my worry last week, but having been worried that they were struggling to get below 10k a day last week, we are now seeing numbers close to half of that.

Vaccinations have picked up a bit too from last week's dip.  Hopefully there won't be much fall off in the pace from now on.

So all good news this week in the UK, shame Carl Heneghan is back posting regularly now cases are getting low again, it is almost like the last couple of months didn't happen. 

Away from the UK, a lot of countries aren't doing nearly as well, but am not going there. 

It is all pretty optimistic for us, and I don't see the UK having to extend its reopening schedule and nearly all the pressure is going to be on opening up sooner. 

The rate of reducton of Covid deaths has probably slowed a little, but there have been under 200 a day since the 26 February, so we are probably about 100 a day now in England when the data lag has gone.  We are getting to the level where there may be no excess deaths at all in the near future.  Marky posted something the other day which showed that a side effect of the Covid measures has been that a lot of other causes of deaths have reduced because of Covid reduction methods.  http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=68630.msg2288300#msg2288300.  In addition some Covid victims will clearly have been people that were near death already, so some of those people died in wave 1 who would have died anyway by year 2.  To balance this, there are likely to be more cancer deaths going forward because people were too scared to see their GPs and I assume we will see a significant increase in suicides recorded last year (albeit from a pretty low level).

Cases were about 6,000 a day this time last week, and are likely to be loess than 5,000 now.  I don't know what the effect will be of all these new lateral flow tests that will be perfomed on children.  Looking at yesterday's figures, testing has doubled in a week.  There is bound to be some effect on the number of positives.  My daughter's school has 2,000+ kids, so even if false positives are only 3 per 1,000 that is 6 positive tests in the school.  I don't want to cover that too much here, so will move on

Hospital admissions are now significantly below 1,000 a day, and nearer 600 now.  Now the total Covid population in hospitals is below 10,000, then it is probably safe to say that the NHS Covid crisis is no longer a Covid crisis.  The amount of postponed tests and operations are still going to mean the NHS is in crisis, just a different type of crisis for the next few months.

So lots of Covid good news this week again.

It has been soured a bit by this study I saw this morning.  This has just been announced by the BMJ this morning  https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n579?
Remember some hoo-ha a month or so ago, when people "preamturely" speculated that the new UK variant could be associated with higher mortality, well it seems it is.
Of the 54 906 participants in the S gene negative arm, an average of 227 deaths occurred compared with 141 of 54 906 in the S gene positive arm (hazard ratio 1.64, 95% confidence interval 1.32 to 2.04; P<0.001)

That means you are roughly 60% more likely to die of the new variant than the old one, but there is some uncertainty (it could be 30% to 100%).  Also, those included in the study are younger lives on average than the average Covid death, so the mortality increase may not be across all ages.  Either way, the vaccination program seems to have happened at a very good time for the UK.  Other countries with the UK, or similar variants, will not be so lucky.
   

[RED-DOG]

Thanks Doobs. I think you should be on the podium on Boris's left.

[Marky147]

Only a few more weeks of living la lockdown loca, boys!

[Doobs]

Only a few more weeks of living la lockdown loca, boys!

I am pretty sure that is the case.  I would probably be very happy if it wasn't miserable out and the hot water hadn't stopped working (obv my fault as the only man in the house). 

I guess I should have a look at these projections at some point whereby we have another 30k deaths.  I meant to add earlier that wave 2/3 has passed 50k deaths so is likely to end at a bit less than wave 1.  This assumes we can call it at an end soon.  I also need to come back on Sweden sometime.

[Marky147]

I saw Chris Snowdon was talking about that, a short while back. How are they projecting so many deaths in the summer, given everything we know thus far.

https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1368558233154125824

[Doobs]

I saw Chris Snowdon was talking about that, a short while back. How are they projecting so many deaths in the summer, given everything we know thus far.

https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1368558233154125824

I have seen him banging on about it before and he is likely right, but I'd like to check everything and not just focus on one assumption as the likes of Team Ivor do.  I do find myself going really? when I hear tails of woe ahead in late summer.  But I'd really like to have a proper look.

As an aside if Heathrow has 6 hour delays when everyone bar Piers and Julia HB is hiding away, what happens when we all go on our hols?

[Marky147]

Click to see full-size image.

Ivor fully migrating to the Icke side, now he realises his rona grift is almost up.

[Doobs]

I saw Chris Snowdon was talking about that, a short while back. How are they projecting so many deaths in the summer, given everything we know thus far.

https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1368558233154125824

I have seen him banging on about it before and he is likely right, but I'd like to check everything and not just focus on one assumption as the likes of Team Ivor do.  I do find myself going really? when I hear tails of woe ahead in late summer.  But I'd really like to have a proper look.

As an aside if Heathrow has 6 hour delays when everyone bar Piers and Julia HB is hiding away, what happens when we all go on our hols?

I have had a look at this projection now.

Firstly, it was from the 2nd February, so they were probably working on it when a lot of things weren't so clear as they are now.  If they were working on it at the end of January then deaths were still peaking, and hospital admissions were still high and only a couple of weeks past their peak.

Looking at their assumptions, they seem to have been a bit pessimistic on several things.  If you read back through my posts, you will see I am suprised about how well things have been going.

We have done extremely well on vaccinations.  Back in January I was a bit sceptical that we were going to do 2.5 million vaccinations a week.  We have been sliighly better than that over the last couple of months.  Looking at track and trace, it was hard to be optimistic.  They were scheduling the priority groups would be vaccinated by May.  We are already into the last group in some areas, and May looks very pessimistic now.

Vaccine take up.  They assumed 85% takeup throughout.  The outcome has been a lot better than that.  I read it was 94% of over 65s yesterdays, but that wasn't what the polling was showing back in January.  Even some of the most public critics have posted that they have had the vaccine (Peter Hitchens did and I remember another one doing so).     

Vaccine efficiacy.  They assumed that the first dose of the vaccine would only give 48% protection against infection and 70% against serious disease.  They assumed that death rates were similar once people got the serious disease.  I think all these things were unclear at the start of the year (there was little Astra Zeneca data for over 65s and very little Pfizer data on what happened after just taking one dose).  Now we know all these estimations were too pessimistic, with barely any vaccinated people dying after 3 weeks and very few vaccinated people even ending up in hospital after 3 weeks (we also haven't had masses of deaths caused by Vaccinations :/). 

It is clear now that all their major assumptions were pessimistic, and we have had a much more favourablle outcome as a result.  Looking at their underlying assumptions, it is hard to conclude any individual assumption looked very unreasonable at the time, but it is very easy to criticise the result now. Stuff like this sometimes happens with modelling, but that doesn't mean modelling isn't worthwhile, it just mean that there is always uncertainty with modelling. 

I think all this means that the "3rd" wave projections that were in that modelling are clearly likely to be too pessimistic, and here Snowdon is right.  He has been calling out this modelling for at least a couple of weeks.  I don't know how much of it has been debated by Sage, but suspect it has already (their published output is huge and I haven't read much of it recently).  Going forward it seems unlikely that many people on Sage are now seriously believing that the modelling from February is still accurate, but that message may take some time to percolate to everyone in Government.

This means that we are doing a lot better than was expected a couple of months ago, so the Government response was likely to have been too pessimistic.  You can look at this negatively or positively.  I am choosing to look at this positively and am looking forward to everything in the Government plans happening on the earliest dates in the plan (or possibly even earlier).  Bad things can always happen going forward, but hopefully not so bad that the plans have to change.

[Doobs]

Now the kids are back at school, I have a bit more time.

So the smileys say "ThEy aRe aLl FalSe PoSiTiveS", so is that true?

The surprising answer today is it is a lot closer to the truth than it was before, and will be even closer to the truth when we look at in-school testing.

Back at the start of January most tests were PCR tests and a high proportion of those tested had Covid symptoms.

We know the PCR test has a very low rate of false positives. We have a good idea it is less than 0.3% through data in countries where Covid isn't common and the UK experience in summer 2020. 

So near the peak, roughly 10% of PCR tests were showing postivie, so 50,000 of the 500,000 returned a correct positive test.   If they were 450,000 genuine negative tests, if even 0.3% of those were false positive then we'd get 1,050 false positives.  So even if the test was unreliable enough to show 0.3% false positive rate (it is probbaly significantly less than that in reality), then less than 1 in 50 of the positives we saw then was a false positive (1050/50,000 is roughly 2% and 1,050 was likely to be a high estimate).  So there was nothing really to worry about as the vast majority of people testing positive were genuine people with Covid symtoms and if they didn't isolate they could spread Covid.

So move on to today and the testing in schools.

We know the lateral flow test they use in schools is less sensitive and shows a lower rate of positives than the PCR test.
We know that the prevalence of Covid in secondary school children is currently very low as most children have been off school for months. 
We know that the number of cases in the UK is now 10% of the level we saw in January and this is likely to be much lower in school children. 
So if we used a PCR test on a million school children we'd expect to see maybe a couple of thousand correct positive tests (we are testing people who are asymptomatic and not those with symptoms).  If you look at the above, false positives on a PCR test could also be as high as 2,000 from a million tests. 

So even if we used PCR tests, we could now be in a situation where the false positives and real positives were equal.  But we aren't using PCR tests, we are using the less reliable lateral flow tests.  And in a lot of places, the people doing the tests are not doctors but children.  This sounds like a recipe for a large number of false positives (and false negaatives, as the ability to perform a correct test is probably pretty low).

As of last week, the positive rate in schools was 0.14%, which would be 1,400 per million.  Looking at our estimates above, it is possible that most of these are real postives, but also possible that most are false positive.  We just don't really know. 

As of today there is no requirement that a confimation test is performed to check that the postive peak flow test is verified using a PCR test.  Given the experience in my daughter's school before lockdown, as many as 150 kids and teachers could have to isolate for 10 days if there is a positive peak flow test result in her bubble, and that will happen even if the person who tested positive has no symptoms and has had a negative PCR test.  In additon because the test is a bit flakey, and the people performing it are not experts, we could be giving those who tested negative the false impression that they aren't carrying Covid when they are.

Seems a bit of a shambles.

[nirvana]

Can't really see any benefit to mass testing of people without covid or asymptomatic when it's so clear that as we move through the vaccination process there will be very low numbers of hospitalisations and deaths. I think we approach the point where using flu as a comparator makes sense. There is no way anyone would suggest or agree to mass testing for flu. Hopefully it's a very short lived pointless experiment/exercise

Shirley better to throw that money at clearing NHS waiting lists for a bunch of other things.

[Doobs]

Can't really see any benefit to mass testing of people without covid or asymptomatic when it's so clear that as we move through the vaccination process there will be very low numbers of hospitalisations and deaths. I think we approach the point where using flu as a comparator makes sense. There is no way anyone would suggest or agree to mass testing for flu. Hopefully it's a very short lived pointless experiment/exercise

Shirley better to throw that money at clearing NHS waiting lists for a bunch of other things.

I think there will be much lower deaths going forward in the near future, hospitalisations are a bigger unkown, as the cases amongst people aged 40+ could increase significantly when they open up, and those people could still end up in hospital.  Also there is some evidence that lots of people got infected with the newer Brazilian variant after getting Covid already.  So there is still a danger of re-emergence of the disease, and it is still a lot more serious than flu, so I don't think we can ever really treat it as flu. 

All that doesn't mean we can't open up quite quickly now.  They just need to be aware these things can happen in the future and prepare accordingly.  They should definitely be moving some of the emphasis to try and get waiting lists down and to get people screened for cancer etc.  FWIW I got a check on something at the doctors during lockdown 2, which turned out go be nothing serious.  I did speak on the phone first, but they will see you if they think it may be serious.  Those people who have been avoiding doing the same need to be told it is a lot safer to go to your doctor now.

[Marky147]

This Twitter account https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout

Along with a few of the rona goodnews/factcheck accounts, and Stuart Mcdonald's gang, are the only ones I really pay attention to now.

Oh, and the ones winding the grifter in chief up, too.

[nirvana]

Yes it's more serious than the flu, but the uptake on vaccines  and their efficacy will ensure hospitalisations, deaths from covid will be lower than typical death rates from flu.

An extension to or future covid related lockdowns surely can't ever be a serious consideration now that we have effective vaccines that can be adapted in relatively short timescales. Also, we're real outliers with our testing approach now so it's not obvious why we are taking this path.

Take all these things together and the mass testing just seems like performative stuff.