COVID19

[Doobs]

This Chris Snowdon piece is good too.  You don't have to register

https://capx.co/the-latest-smiley-myth-its-not-the-jabs-its-just-seasonality/

I didn't realise Devi Shridhar had changed her tune, but seems she has. eg

https://twitter.com/devisridhar/status/1407716978362564616

Seeing lots of unhelpful panic over today’s numbers. Obviously caution needed but most important marker is whether link between cases and moderate to severe disease being broken. This is a different wave than previous ones. We are in new territory.

[Marky147]

Yeah, I saw that she was getting terrorised by the 'zero covid' brigade, because she's changed with the new information.

What you'd hope most people do, and why the likes of Ivor & Toby Young will always be ***ts 

[Doobs]

Hello, its Wednesday, woohoo.

Another Wednesday where nothing much happens.

Deaths are still rising a bit, but that is all it is.  27 deaths were reported yesterday, but that was mostly just delayed deaths from the weekend; average deaths were still less than 10 a day in England this time last week.

Hospitalisations.  They are now up to 200 a day, from 150 or so the week before, so up about a third on the week.  As the average age is much lower this time, then there isn't going to be a big surge in deaths nezt week.

Cases.  No excitement here either.  They are probably still increasing at 20% or so a week over the last week or so, hence the increase has definitely been slowing down.  Zoe app has R down at 1.1

Deaths will probably carry on drifting up for a few more weeks, as they catch up with the current hospitalisations and cases.  There seems no reason at all for not going to stage 4 next month.  Other than a nagging worry about the long term effects of Covid on our kids (who are going to be at higher risk of Covid for some time), I don't really see much harm in confirming it now. 

Though I dislike UEFA liggers as much as the next man, then I can't get too excited about them rocking up at Wembley.  Given the vaccination status of the majority of adults here, these people are likely to be a bigger danger to their own countries than ours.  Hope they get theiir fair share of opprobrium when they return home.

Somebody asked about the USA the other day, their cases look to have levelled off, as the delta variant spreads (now up to 20% or so cases).  I think it is safe to say that they will get a third wave like ours, given their vaccination progress is lagging ours by a few weeks.

Hopefully we'll all be fine, and none of us will be members of the unlucky few going forward. 

It is Friday Wednesday.

Another week where deaths and hospitalisations have stayed pretty low, but cases are really starting to rise.

Deaths are definitely on the rise.  They rose 20% in the week to Wednesday and the provisional figures suggest we'll see a bigger increase next week.   I assume this will be the last week for a while where we see English Covid deaths below 100 a week.

Hospitalisations are currently increasing by about 20% a week too.  They are still staying below 300 a day, which is far below the 4,000 a day at peak.

Having said last week that increases in cases were slowing down, that seems a false dawn, with cases now rising by 40% a week agan.   I don't know how much of this is down to the football, but I assume lots of people meeting indoors for a singsong isn't going to be the best strategy for getting rid of Covid.  Scotland has now past the cases peak from wave 2, but the rest of the UK is still some distance away.

I think overall things are still looking manageable, but some of the messaging supposedly coming from the Government seems mad.  As I see it masks are just a less effective substitute for social distancing.  So why do I keep reading that they expect social distancing to end but keep the mask recommendations?   Just keep the social distancing recommendations in place, and just get rid of the legal barriers seems better to me.  There seems a danger that people are going to think it is safe to just carry on as before, and I am not sure it is. 

I think we need some clarification on Government policy.  If the intention is for most kids to just get Covid then shouldn't they explain this to the schools and parents?  My kids school has just canned after school activities, and seem to be getting confused messages from offiicials on whether they should be track and tracing or sending kids home.   They have given up on one year who I think have all gone home, and are still tracking and tracing the rest.  Has there ever been a date where track and tracing ever seemed to work in the UK?     

[Marky147]

Think the trouble with the distancing mandates, is it puts more of the entertainment sector out of business, and they've been hit heaviest of all anyway.

I think it's gotten to a point now, we've just got to try and run it through now in the summer, so that any bounce in the winter is minimalised by existing protection gained from natural/vaccine immunity throughout the summer.

NHS is always under it, and it's better to spread it, rather than push it back to winter, I reckon. I'm a dummy, and that's just me thinking out loud

[nirvana]

A really simple and logical approach from now would be to stop prioritising not dying of Covid over not dying of other dying things.

At a push one could be a ninny, and despite the diminishing return in terms of survival rates for further vax efforts, determine that we'll go that route once we're at max double vax in terms of optional take up.

[RED-DOG]

Vax Man, Vax Man, ddouble Vax Man.

[RED-DOG]

Click to see full-size image.

[Doobs]

It is Friday Wednesday.

Another week where deaths and hospitalisations have stayed pretty low, but cases are really starting to rise.

Deaths are definitely on the rise.  They rose 20% in the week to Wednesday and the provisional figures suggest we'll see a bigger increase next week.   I assume this will be the last week for a while where we see English Covid deaths below 100 a week.

Hospitalisations are currently increasing by about 20% a week too.  They are still staying below 300 a day, which is far below the 4,000 a day at peak.

Having said last week that increases in cases were slowing down, that seems a false dawn, with cases now rising by 40% a week agan.   I don't know how much of this is down to the football, but I assume lots of people meeting indoors for a singsong isn't going to be the best strategy for getting rid of Covid.  Scotland has now past the cases peak from wave 2, but the rest of the UK is still some distance away.

I think overall things are still looking manageable, but some of the messaging supposedly coming from the Government seems mad.  As I see it masks are just a less effective substitute for social distancing.  So why do I keep reading that they expect social distancing to end but keep the mask recommendations?   Just keep the social distancing recommendations in place, and just get rid of the legal barriers seems better to me.  There seems a danger that people are going to think it is safe to just carry on as before, and I am not sure it is. 

I think we need some clarification on Government policy.  If the intention is for most kids to just get Covid then shouldn't they explain this to the schools and parents?  My kids school has just canned after school activities, and seem to be getting confused messages from offiicials on whether they should be track and tracing or sending kids home.   They have given up on one year who I think have all gone home, and are still tracking and tracing the rest.  Has there ever been a date where track and tracing ever seemed to work in the UK?     

Wednesday is on a Wednesday this week.

It seems we have a new health secretary, so we have had to endure some comparisons with flu and overexaggerated mental health problems and some nonsense about how we can have more operations by letting the virus rip (or something like that).  Only a matter of months until we get to hear him to talking about the great rest if he follows the trajectory of Clare Path, Nick Hudson and Ivor.  It seems they may have achieved what seemed impossible and found someone worse than Hancock at this.

Deaths were up 25% on the week to over 100 a week, hospitalisations up 30% or so on average to 400 a day and cases were up over 50% on the week.  Vaccinations have been falling noticeably recently too.

So none of these indicators is slowing down, and if anything, they appear to be accelerating.  There are some signs that there is a recent slowdown (Zoe reported it the other day), but it stlll seems likely that we do get more casdes per day than in wave 2.  As an indication of the new Covid World, 100,000 cases a day is going to translate to 2,000+ hospitalisations a day, which isn't that far from the last peak. 

James Ward has done a recent thread which forecasts possible deaths and hospitalisations based on more current information. 

https://twitter.com/JamesWard73/status/1412182736572399623

It seems clear that the NHS could suffer worse than before under the worst scenarios but deaths should still be lower. 

I'd add that if the patients are younger than average then deaths at half the levels seen in wave 2 isn't clearly going to be a better result than wave 2 either (is the death of a 50 year old worse than the death of an 80 year old?  We don't know the long term effects of Covid on our children).

I am probably less optimistic than I was, if that isn't clear.

 

[Cf]

They're just rolling the dice and hoping to get lucky at this point aren't they?

They're creating the perfect scenario for a vaccine evading variant to emerge.

[Marky147]

We haven't seen one emerge yet, so that would be lower on a list of concerns. They're definitely punting, though.

You'd think they'd be trying to get needles into as many arms as possible, given the vaccine is what they're depending on seeing us through.

[Doobs]

We haven't seen one emerge yet, so that would be lower on a list of concerns. They're definitely punting, though.

You'd think they'd be trying to get needles into as many arms as possible, given the vaccine is what they're depending on seeing us through.

Whilst vaccine escape os a worry, it probably doesn't make much difference what we do in the long run, as there are many other places in the World this could happen.

I think there is clearly some degree of punting involved.  There is just a masisve difference in outcomes with small changes in assumptions.  Javed said they hadn't even calculated the expected hospital admissions on radio 4, but suspect this is more to do with him not following the detail rather than the reality of teh situation.  I think it is relatively easy to get from cases to expected admissions, so there doesn't seem any reason to not calculate it.  I think deaths are harder to estimate and estimating long term side affects on our kids from this herd immunity strategy are harder to estimate still.

[Marky147]

I'm presuming stays are a bit (lot?) shorter now, as well as it being a much lower number of cases requiring admission, too?

[RickBFA]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57678942

Sensible article from BBC.

I think Whitty mentioned supporting the decision as it’s better to have an exit wave in the summer than in the autumn/winter.

[Cf]

We haven't seen one emerge yet, so that would be lower on a list of concerns. They're definitely punting, though.

You'd think they'd be trying to get needles into as many arms as possible, given the vaccine is what they're depending on seeing us through.

Whilst vaccine escape os a worry, it probably doesn't make much difference what we do in the long run, as there are many other places in the World this could happen.

I think there is clearly some degree of punting involved.  There is just a masisve difference in outcomes with small changes in assumptions.  Javed said they hadn't even calculated the expected hospital admissions on radio 4, but suspect this is more to do with him not following the detail rather than the reality of teh situation.  I think it is relatively easy to get from cases to expected admissions, so there doesn't seem any reason to not calculate it.  I think deaths are harder to estimate and estimating long term side affects on our kids from this herd immunity strategy are harder to estimate still.

Other places in the world don't have a 65% vaccinated population for the vaccine to try and adapt to. And that 65% is only adults - children can get it too.

Whilst there may emerge a variant elsewhere in the world which happens to evade the vaccines by chance, it's in this country that it will actively try to do so.

We might get lucky. But with cases as high as they are it's definitely a gamble.

[Doobs]

We haven't seen one emerge yet, so that would be lower on a list of concerns. They're definitely punting, though.

You'd think they'd be trying to get needles into as many arms as possible, given the vaccine is what they're depending on seeing us through.

Whilst vaccine escape os a worry, it probably doesn't make much difference what we do in the long run, as there are many other places in the World this could happen.

I think there is clearly some degree of punting involved.  There is just a masisve difference in outcomes with small changes in assumptions.  Javed said they hadn't even calculated the expected hospital admissions on radio 4, but suspect this is more to do with him not following the detail rather than the reality of teh situation.  I think it is relatively easy to get from cases to expected admissions, so there doesn't seem any reason to not calculate it.  I think deaths are harder to estimate and estimating long term side affects on our kids from this herd immunity strategy are harder to estimate still.

Other places in the world don't have a 65% vaccinated population for the vaccine to try and adapt to. And that 65% is only adults - children can get it too.

Whilst there may emerge a variant elsewhere in the world which happens to evade the vaccines by chance, it's in this country that it will actively try to do so.

We might get lucky. But with cases as high as they are it's definitely a gamble.

I am not sure what your point is, why would the variant only actively try and escape by chance? 

I guess I wasn't clear either, but the US has a bigger population of unvaccinated and a higher proportion of unvaccinated... and their restrictions have been less strict than our as a whole recently.  You could make the same argument about the rest of Europe too.  In the less developed World, you are going to get many more people unvaccinated and with differentg degrees of vaccination. 

So there is a much higher chance the next dangerous variant emerges outside our shores than on our shores.  That is my only point, and I am definitely not saying we should carry on as we are.  I was more optimistic a month ago, but right now the cases haven't slowed down nearly as much as I hoped they would, which is at least partially due to a stalling vaccination program (see next post).