Coronavirus (2021) thread

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Healdplace said:
Sorry but 4% is provably too low.

May well not be 40% but I think it probably is nearer there than 4.
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Sorry, I meant closer to 4% than 40%, ie, less than 22%. I really don’t know the figures but I’d be stunned if it was higher than that. I might be wrong.
 
Beefeater said:
Really??
Third lockdown and I've had the letter every time saying I'm clinically extremely vulnerable due to COPD.
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Same with me had a letter about being at extreme risk when we go into lockdown, got two this morning one from Mr Hancock and one from the Major of Tameside
 
Healdplace said:
Manchester's Pop score is 7309. That in effect translates to 7.3% of the population of the city have tested positive for Covid.

So that is the bare minimum it can be.

Some places have had almost 10% of people who have tested positive.

It is obviously FAR more who have had it than testing proves as until fairly recently the majority who caught it were not tested unless they got quite sick. Even now unless it becomes a problem plenty never get tested who likely do and rates will differ widely across the regions and much higher in urban areas.

We don't know exactly what the levels are but they are almost certainly over 20% and rising fast with this new variant. And in big cities could well be up to around a third by now even on conservative estimates. The rapid spread of the new variant is accelerating that number daily.

It is obvious even anecdotally. Up until 2 months ago I knew only one or two who might have had it and only one who had tested positive. By November it was suddenly 3 who definitely had it and tested and others likely who never did. As of now I am well into double figures just from family and close friends.

This will be happening all over the UK.
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Hmmmmm. All very logical but still it's a huge stretch to get from 7.3% to say "40% have had it (in Manchester)".

More than 7.3% for sure. 40%? I very much doubt.
 
On the debate about how many people in Manchester have been infected.

The 40% estimate (actually 38.6%) comes from this research.

www.theguardian.com

One in five in England have had Covid, modelling suggests

Analysis shows 12.4 million people infected since start of pandemic, against 2.4 million detected by test and trace
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

The model is based on taking the known number of deaths split by age. The lethality of the virus, infection fatality rate (IFR) has been separately estimated for age ranges - it's much more lethal for older people of course.

They've then simply worked back from deaths to infections using IFR estimates.

There will be quite a large uncertainty around this, but it seems very credible.
 
hcblue95 said:
I agree, I find that incredibly hard to believe.
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Agreed. It's not plausible.

Were it to be that high, we would not be seeing the huge rates of new infection because herd immunity would already be a big factor. Herd immunity is not a boolean; the more people who have been infected, the less new potential infectees there are and the new infection rates drop. We are not seeing this.
 
Chippy_boy said:
Agreed. It's not plausible.

Were it to be that high, we would not be seeing the huge rates of new infection because herd immunity would already be a big factor. Herd immunity is not a boolean; the more people who have been infected, the less new potential infectees there are and the new infection rates drop. We are not seeing this.
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I may be wrong but 38.6 would not be enough for herd immunity anyway and if the R is 1.1 then cases would still rise. Along with healdplace's numbers indicating GM may not be rising as fast i'm inclined to think that it may not be too far off an estimate. Though that is just my own thinking and could be bollocks.
 
roubaixtuesday said:
Would be interested to see any scary quotes from respected people. I've not seen any such.

Quite a bit of media reporting as scary things that really aren't so much.
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Sorry - I'm not having a go at you, your input as always is appreciated. But a deputy chief medical officer quoting the words that a recent mutation found in Brazil "is both more transmissible and less responsive to antibodies and treatment" IS a scary quote in itself. The 'try not to worry about it' follow up is bizarre, as if it's something not worth any of us worrying about then why are we bringing it up or talking about it in the first place?
 
everythingchangesbutblue said:
I may be wrong but 38.6 would not be enough for herd immunity anyway and if the R is 1.1 then cases would still rise. Along with healdplace's numbers indicating GM may not be rising as fast i'm inclined to think that it may not be too far off an estimate.
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As I say above, heard immunity is not a boolean. It is the resistance to the disease in the population. Even at 38.6% there is some herd immunity, and I don't think we are seeing that. We were keeping R close to 1 when the levels of infections were near zero. At 38% infection levels (and continued measures), R would be well below 1.
 
Another England hospital record second day number added on to yesterdays record first day total shows only this is still going upwards.

Deaths ON 12 Jan now sit already at 494 after less than 48 hours. That is only 2 short of the highest ever number of deaths from Covid in England hospitals recorded within 48 hours of a single date - which occurred at the peak of the first wave in early April.

On that day in April the daily total for that single day became 974.

I fear a 1000 single day death number for England hospitals alone is already certain.

The one we had yesterday was totted up across about 40 dates. Not a single day.
 
Chippy_boy said:
As I say above, heard immunity is not a boolean. It is the resistance to the disease in the population. Even at 38.6% there is some herd immunity, and I don't think we are seeing that. We were keeping R close to 1 when the levels of infections were near zero. At 38% infection levels (and continued measures), R would be well below 1.
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he infection fatality rate for the virus is ~1%.

~100,000 people have died in the UK.

So you'd expect ~10 million to have been infected.

That's ~15%

I think 2-3x that in the worst affected places is credible.
 
Chippy_boy said:
Where did you get that from? Strikes me as unbelievable and just plain wrong tbh. By mid December the ONS estimated that 4.4m people across the UK (6.6% of the UK population) had been infected. Seems unbelievable to me that in Manchester it is 40%
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was quoted on here the other day.
 
ayrshire_blue said:
Sorry - I'm not having a go at you, your input as always is appreciated. But a deputy chief medical officer quoting the words that a recent mutation found in Brazil "is both more transmissible and less responsive to antibodies and treatment" IS a scary quote in itself. The 'try not to worry about it' follow up is bizarre, as if it's something not worth any of us worrying about then why are we bringing it up or talking about it in the first place?
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No problem. Did she actually say that? The tweet isn't a direct quote. I also think there can be a big difference between what scientists mean by their words and how the general public understand them.

This works both ways - when Chris Whitty said way back in a presser it was uncertain if tier 3 would be strong enough, what he meant was "For fucks sake, here we go again. Take some proper action you ridiculous, cowardly, indecisive bag of wind".

Here if those were her words I suspect she meant "Yes, it behaves marginally differently in a test tube, but it's unlikely to have a big impact in the scheme of things. Still, better safe than sorry until we know for sure."
 
roubaixtuesday said:
he infection fatality rate for the virus is ~1%.

~100,000 people have died in the UK.

So you'd expect ~10 million to have been infected.

That's ~15%

I think 2-3x that in the worst affected places is credible.
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The other night I posted in here the infected % for each GM borough based on case numbers (ranging from 5% in Stockport to nearly 8% in Oldham).

These are not guesses they are hard data over the past 10 months.

I also posted death rates for GM boroughs.

2.8% iirc was the fatality rate based on deaths v cases recorded

Again hard evidence not guesses.

It certainly will not BE that high based on all the medical evidence and studies it is probably a third of that as reasonable - and some think lower.

You can easily extrapolate from that by upgrading the case numbers to the amount needed to produce the correct death rate and get to numbers for GM regions most infected over the past year that are certainly way above 4% and whilst not any near 40% some places are indeed nearer 40 than 4.

Stockport 15% to Oldham 24% seem a fair estimate from that data.

So I was saying what I did on evidence not guesses.

And we are not near herd immunity levels but these are going up daily remember. And vaccines are reducing daily the number needed for herd immunity.

At some point the two will converge.
 
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Chippy_boy said:
Agreed. It's not plausible.

Were it to be that high, we would not be seeing the huge rates of new infection because herd immunity would already be a big factor. Herd immunity is not a boolean; the more people who have been infected, the less new potential infectees there are and the new infection rates drop. We are not seeing this.
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It is plausible when you have 1m infected people. The R value is probably hovering around 1 at the moment. We've just gone through a long period of extended exponential growth to reach a point where huge numbers are infected.
 
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