Coronavirus (2021) thread

[Marvin]

It is not a reporting effect. It is real.

I have posted regularly from before the first vaccination and as it has developed lots of data in here on the age range of who is catching Covid.

The data is very clear. The age ranges have shifted markedly over the past 6 months everywhere the data is available.

Not just the UK Gov heat maps - that are a fairly new addition but a great visual way to show this as I have said a few times in recent months.

But also in the data supplied daily by other nations. Ayrshire posts it daily here from Scotland. I post it daily or every few days from N Ireland based on their past 7 days cases age ranges testing positive.

Every one of these things tells the same story.

In the last wave - pre vaccination programme - as well as the previous waves - we had 40 K in hospital 4000 on ventilators and 1000 dying a day at the peak BECAUSE the people testing positive skewed towards the older age ranges.

Likely younger people were catching it but not getting sick enough to know or seek out testing as much so that skewed things a little.

But the reality is the numbers changed, at first slowly, but then as the pace of vaccination accelerated, grew faster and you could literally watch if you read back months in this thread and see how they radically a ltered the dynamic we now see.

Very obviousy the one factor triggering this was that the vaccinations which coincide entirely with this alteration - and started with the oldest / most vulnerable and have worked downwards in age to the 20s now.

This is why these numbers have shifted so radically from the wave in January to the one now.

Cases are rising like then but patients, ventilators and deaths - whilst rising in tandemas they are bound to do - are not doing so to anything like the same degree. It looks all but certain even if we get up to 60,000 cases a day as we did in January we will not see numbers anything like we had in the hospital data then. Though they might still rise enough to be a moderate problem for the NHS especially at the point they are needing to catch up on other urgent care that has been on hold for a year,

The age dynamic shift from 20% catching it under 40 six months back to 80% now catching it and from 25% catching it in the vulnerable over 60s down now to under 5% is why we have a radically different wave now.

The case numbers still matter but they matter much less because they are only translating into modest rises in hospital numbers.

We should nt get complacent. This could change, And 60,000 cases would still put strain on the NHS regardless. And more seriously a vaccine evading variant is more than possible if we let it in by complacency or sheer frustration to just get on with it. That would put us back almost to the start.

Things are looking very good right now in the medium term if we navigate through this uptick carefully and not jump a few weeks early into the melting pot.

Get everyone vaccinated over coming weeks we will be as safe as we are ever going to be. Just hold the faith for that. A few weeks atop the past year can be managed.

Simply observing a rising count of cases in young people does not mean the underlying rate of infection in young people is going up.

 

[Healdplace]

Northern Ireland data

0 deaths - was 0 last week

107 cases - was 95 last week

All we get here today

 

[Healdplace]

Simply observing a rising count of cases in young people does not mean the underlying rate of infection in young people is going up.

No but it means the rate relative to the ones who are older and more vulnerable is increasing a lot.

Which is what matters in terms of health care and death.

And the vaccination profile is pretty obviously the main reason why as it is happening everywhere you look AND progressing as we have vaccinated higher and higher proportions of the vulnerable.

 

[Healdplace]

I read about the lag as well but I'm struggling to interpret it. Does it mean that these figures (I believe from Glasgow) are being reported today and yesterday are artificially low and they'll be caught up (some time next week most likely) or that these numbers today are higher due to a previous delay?

Obviously hoping it's the second of those but for whatever reason I can't get my head around what it means.

I think it means catch up over the past two days from lower numbers over the previous days. Thats how I read it.

Which would mean a stabilising of numbers around 900 evened out not an increasing daily rise.

Could be wrong though but that is what I assumed they meant.

It seemed an issue identified and resolved but as tests take a few days to work through to the final figures the issue can take a few days before it stops impacting the numbers.

Though I agree it could have been clearer and that guess might be wrong.

 

[Healdplace]

No Wales data today as usual now and no England hospital data anywhere until Monday. Though the number tonight will allow an inference. As it is 2 plus whatever is added for England.

Last week the number was 13 and 12 of those were in England.

Yesterdays 17 all settings deaths (16 from England) was - btw - the highest in a month.

 

[ayrshire_blue]

Thank you @Healdplace glad it's not just me it's not 100% clear for. Seen a few people with similar comments on social media.

 

[Healdplace]

12 all settings deaths - was 13 lat week . 10 added from England today.

7738 cases - was 5765 last Saturday

 

[Healdplace]

Bolton 134 cases - down 3 on the day and 37 on last Saturday

Seems to have levelled off but not really falling notably much.

Last 5 days 127 - 133 - 103 - 137 - 134

 

[Marvin]

No Wales data today as usual now and no England hospital data anywhere until Monday. Though the number tonight will allow an inference. As it is 2 plus whatever is added for England.

Last week the number was 13 and 12 of those were in England.

Yesterdays 17 all settings deaths (16 from England) was - btw - the highest in a month.

Sometimes data can be misleading because you change the way it is collected so I am asking whether the increase in the numbers we are finding in young people, particularly children, is real. For example if we surge test in schools we will find cases in children even if the positivity rate is low.

 

[Healdplace]

Another pretty good day for Greater Manchester. Did much better again than the NW region as a whole.

Cases 1098 in GM - down 93 on yesterdy.

North West fell by just 126 to second highest ever at 2191. So 93 out of that 126 drop came in GM. Well above average.


Week to week NW was up 439 and GM was up 166 of that number - which is well below expectations of about half. So even better for GM.

In GM only Rochdale and Tameside were up today.

Manchester fell by 51 and Bury by 41 but both were up week to week.

Stockport on the other hand fell 21 to be below 100 and 8 less than the 102 from last Saturday,

GM numbers do appear to have stabilised over the past week and the NW problems at the moment are largely a result of cases rising now in other parts of the region to which it has spread - such as much of Cheshire and North Lancashire and Merseyside.