COVID19

[Doobs]

Clear vaccine effect by age group

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[RED-DOG]

They can wait 3 months for it to open but apparently not a second longer.

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[RED-DOG]

Have you ever had that "I must buy something from Primark immediately" feeling?

[Doobs]

Meanwhile, not so good news from much of the rest of Europe, with "herd immunity" Sweden leading the way. 

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As the UK variant has spread

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And away from Europe, lots of bad news globally.

Another "herd immunity" example, India has also been suffering from a bigger wave than before, and increasing more rapidly than before.

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/india

and look at all these countries that are now above the John Ioannidis newly revised infection fatality rate of 0.15% (or 1,500 per million).  Evidence, pah.

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[Doobs]

They can wait 3 months for it to open but apparently not a second longer.

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Yeah, was mad at my local one, must have been 200 in front of the person who posted on my Faceboof from the queue. 

Guess at least they are all stood outside, and cases are so low here we shouldn't be that bothered.  In a couple of days they'll have got over the excitement, though my eldest got a swift "nooooooooo" to her suggestion we went shopping this weekend.   I do need to get my Debenhams strat. nailed, as they are reopening for a few weeks to get rid of stock.  A future full of shite off Amazon doesn't appeal so much. 

[nirvana]

Great scenes in soho last night with the countries youth braving the elements to get a drink and pull with any luck. Euphoria and freedom must be a good aphrodisiac, wish i was 20 and single.

[Doobs]

Sad to report that I am not going to get upset about people going out and drinking beers in the sun and going shopping.  The cases in the UK have collapsed since  the lockdown and vaccination rollout...

which brings me on to this from JuliaHB and similar from Toby Yong (No surprise).

https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1381938956888080385

Hey @BorisJohnson, if it wasn't the vaccines that caused the huge fall in Covid infections and deaths, you should tell @MattHancock  to stop lying to us about vaccines saving 10,000 lives. You can't *both* be telling us the truth. One of you must be lying. Which is it? You or him?

Surprisingly they can be both telling the truth, and pretty much are in this case. 

You can see the effect of lockdown by looking how the infection curve turned down (and the hospitalisations and deaths followed) from the beginning of January.  At that date, there weren't nearly enough vaccinations to cause that effect, so it must have been something else, of which lockdown is lthe obvious most likely cause.  You can then see the later effect of vaccinations by looking at the cases/deaths etc boken down by age.  It is very clear that the cases and deaths have fallen quickest in the vaccinated groups.  I posted one of these charts this morning here.  You can even tell the order the age groups were vaccinated from each of these charts.

I say they are both close to the truth, as the number of lives saved is an unknown, and breaking down by the effect of lockdowns and vaccinations is going to involve quite a bit of opnion.  John Roberts (actuary) estimated 6,000, but I have seen some much higher estimates.  10,000 seems a reasonable estimate anyway, and in the long run, the numbers should be way higher than that.  I personally would estimate the lockdown has saved signifiicantly more lives right now, but I don't think it matters much. 

Looking at the charts from earlier, it is quite clear that the UK has been a recent success story; we have recently fallen from having one of the highest Covid death rates in the World from Covid to being in amongst the lowest (certainly in Europe anway).  This is down to this lockdown and the vaccination rollout, and arguing about the proportions seems a bit pointless in the circumstances. Going forward, vaccinations will save many more lives, and hopefully we won't need any more lockdowns.

It is mad that even today people are still denying the effectiveness of lockdowns and/or vaccines, and frequently both.

[Marky147]

Great scenes in soho last night with the countries youth braving the elements to get a drink and pull with any luck. Euphoria and freedom must be a good aphrodisiac, wish i was 20 and single.

You can't really knock any of them, I know I'd have wanted to go mad after so long without a good night out.

You'd guess the large majority have just got their nuts down and cracked on, and not been whipped into a frenzy by idiots like Toby Young & shithouse-brewer.

I think the honeymonster should just open the boozers & restaurants up now, and let them start catching up on lost earnings.

[nirvana]

Sad to report that I am not going to get upset about people going out and drinking beers in the sun and going shopping.  The cases in the UK have collapsed since  the lockdown and vaccination rollout...

which brings me on to this from JuliaHB and similar from Toby Yong (No surprise).

https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1381938956888080385

Hey @BorisJohnson, if it wasn't the vaccines that caused the huge fall in Covid infections and deaths, you should tell @MattHancock  to stop lying to us about vaccines saving 10,000 lives. You can't *both* be telling us the truth. One of you must be lying. Which is it? You or him?

Surprisingly they can be both telling the truth, and pretty much are in this case. 

You can see the effect of lockdown by looking how the infection curve turned down (and the hospitalisations and deaths followed) from the beginning of January.  At that date, there weren't nearly enough vaccinations to cause that effect, so it must have been something else, of which lockdown is lthe obvious most likely cause.  You can then see the later effect of vaccinations by looking at the cases/deaths etc boken down by age.  It is very clear that the cases and deaths have fallen quickest in the vaccinated groups.  I posted one of these charts this morning here.  You can even tell the order the age groups were vaccinated from each of these charts.

I say they are both close to the truth, as the number of lives saved is an unknown, and breaking down by the effect of lockdowns and vaccinations is going to involve quite a bit of opnion.  John Roberts (actuary) estimated 6,000, but I have seen some much higher estimates.  10,000 seems a reasonable estimate anyway, and in the long run, the numbers should be way higher than that.  I personally would estimate the lockdown has saved signifiicantly more lives right now, but I don't think it matters much. 

Looking at the charts from earlier, it is quite clear that the UK has been a recent success story; we have recently fallen from having one of the highest Covid death rates in the World from Covid to being in amongst the lowest (certainly in Europe anway).  This is down to this lockdown and the vaccination rollout, and arguing about the proportions seems a bit pointless in the circumstances. Going forward, vaccinations will save many more lives, and hopefully we won't need any more lockdowns.

It is mad that even today people are still denying the effectiveness of lockdowns and/or vaccines, and frequently both.

Yep, seems crazy to try and argue that lockdowns dont have a significant impact. There are many aspects to lockdown i disagree with but impossible to make an argument they are ineffective. Right now, and probably for about 4-5 weeks do think we're being excessively cautious with fairly clear evidence around vaccine efficacy.

[Marky147]

Yep, seems crazy to try and argue that lockdowns dont have a significant impact. There are many aspects to lockdown i disagree with but impossible to make an argument they are ineffective. Right now, and probably for about 4-5 weeks do think we're being excessively cautious with fairly clear evidence around vaccine efficacy.

Think it was just a case of they know how bad a look it would be to say 'We did it, off you go', and then it was a bit early.

All likelihood that wouldn't have been the case, but better to have a bit of moaning for a few more weeks, than risk having to say in you go again, when it really is summer

What they should do, is stop all this 50,000 deaths in summer nonsense from SAGE professors, when we all know that's no going to happen.

Given what transpired last summer, with lower prevalence of immunity, and no vaccines.

[nirvana]

Yep, seems crazy to try and argue that lockdowns dont have a significant impact. There are many aspects to lockdown i disagree with but impossible to make an argument they are ineffective. Right now, and probably for about 4-5 weeks do think we're being excessively cautious with fairly clear evidence around vaccine efficacy.

Think it was just a case of they know how bad a look it would be to say 'We did it, off you go', and then it was a bit early.

All likelihood that wouldn't have been the case, but better to have a bit of moaning for a few more weeks, than risk having to say in you go again, when it really is summer

What they should do, is stop all this 50,000 deaths in summer nonsense from SAGE professors, when we all know that's no going to happen.

Given what transpired last summer, with lower prevalence of immunity, and no vaccines.

I think your right and with a bit more support in the right places I could just about deal with a message that was along the lines 'we screwed up quite a lot, we've now decided to absolutely minimise deaths until every adult over 50 has 2 doses and then we are definitely opening everything up with no legal restrictions at all'. What I really find hard is what you allude to with that drip drip of more fear, more anxiety inducing stuff around big exit waves, resurgences, mutant ninjas, etc etc.

[RED-DOG]

Cowabunga!

[StuartHopkin]

Cowabunga!

I thought exactly the same!

[celtic]

Papers reporting this morning that USA and Malta are a go from May 17.

Green list with no quarantine and a single test on return.

I've started packing just in case!

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Can almost taste that free dinner!

[Doobs]

I mentioned a couple of days ago that the Government said they weren't publishing some data over Easter.  Well there has been no hospitalisation data for over a week now, so I can't say much about those.

I assume that there is still a lot of lag in the data form last week, as some death reporting will have been delayed by the long bank holiday.  I think deaths are still falling by 40% or so a week, and at this time last week there were around 20 or 30 deaths a day in England.  At that level there is going to be a lot of random fluctuation, so not sure we can read much going forward.

UK Cases were down to near 2,000 a day, but that might be affected by Easter too.  Either way, they have clearly carried on falling since last week.

Basically, data is sparse this week, so I can't say much more, and going forward we are just going to see a lot of randomness.  With deaths at this low level (see below), then these updates are likely to be shorter going forward.

Finally from Tim Spector of the Zoe App

In France- 1 in 2 people are refusing their AZ vaccines because of the fears of clots. The media fail to put risk in context . We have 79 cases total in 4 months. Each day 300 unvaccinated people have strokes and 240 have major clots, some related to medications and lifestyle

So far there have been 19 blood clot deaths that may well have been affected by the 20 million doses of AZ vaccine.  I doubt we have seen 20 million UK Covid infections in total and we may have seen 150,000 deaths (certainly significantly above 100,000).  Unless you are a young female, the illness is way more likely to kill you than the vaccine.  Even with young females, this is probably still true, but there are vaccine options that look safer.  Thhough I state weekly that deaths are falling rapidly, we are still getting more Covid deaths a day than we have seen of this rare blood clot in total.  Please ignore the innumerate "lovers of data" who don't get this.

Wednesday update.

Deaths have carried on falling, but there is now a lot of fluctuation day to day.  The rate of improvement each week is around 30% a week, with roughly 20 deaths a day a week ago vs roughly 30 a day the week before.

Infections and cases still seem to be falling, but rates of improvement are now down to about 15% a week (Easter caused some interuptions, so it isn't that clear).  I saw someone claiming that R was now 1.4 or so last week.  There are cranks on both sides it seems, as that seems very unlikey on what I have seen.

Vaccinations are interesting, as first doses have fallen off a cliff.  The 7 day average has collapsed from 500k a day, 2 or 3 weeks ago, to 100k a day last week.  Most of the vaccination doses are now been used for second vaccinations of elderly people (300k a day or so).  There hasn't been a massive fall off in total vaccination doses yet.

So not much going on to justify the continuation of UK restrictions, though the following this morning from John Roberts is interesting. 

https://twitter.com/john_actuary/status/1382256588006813700

There is now some evidence that antbodies to Covid are falling among the elderly.  This might be corrected by 2nd dosed of the vaccines, and may nort reflect decreased immunity.  The elderly are already thought to have a lower benefit from vaccination.  Also the Astra Zenca vaccine has lower efiiciacy over the South African variant.  So not entirely out of the woods yet, but the levels of South African variant in the UK are still very low.  Moving to secoond doses for the vulnerable seems like very good timing in the circumstances.