Coronavirus (2021) thread

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Healdplace said:
Not a good day for the NW or Greater Manchester sadly.

Region up 188 to 877 and the bulk of that rise - 124 - was in Greater Manchester.

GM was even up wk to wk versus last Monday 400 v 449 today.

So big % rise to 51.2 % - highest GM rating in 2021.

Everyone under 100 but only Bolton, Bury and Wigan had fewer cases today than 7 days ago.

Stockport and Rochdale matched their scores last Tuesday.

The other 5 boroughs were up week to week so will have Pop Score rises today.

Bury at 20 was the lowest - Manchester up the most week to week at top score of 90.

Trafford has its highest number (38) in 2 or 3 weeks. Double where it was last week.

Hopefully all this just a blip and schools related.
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Like you said above, cases are not really relevant or comparable any more due to the huge number of testing that is taking place and the fact the vulnerable have all now had 1 jab at least.
 
Bluewonder said:
Except it isn't, as they forecast these numbers to be reached at the end of November/beginning of December, a point at which the effect of the November 'circuit breaker' on death numbers wouldn't yet be seen, as it is 3-4 weeks from infection to death, on average. It was actually around 400 at that point, so they were out by a magnitude of 10.
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Please link to the numers you're quoting if you want to debate them. Otherwise we just end up with a half remembered set of assertions (aimed at myself as much as you)
 
roubaixtuesday said:
This isn't entirely true. There are more than enough unvaccinated people (~2/3 of the population) to sustain R>>1 without restrictions. If that is allowed unmitigated, almost the entire population will catch the virus.

There are more than enough vulnerable people either unvaccinated or unprotected (vaccines are not 100% effective, the more so after one dose) to sustain death rates up at the level of the last wave.
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Add on the people already infected of 20% and you are nearing 50%

Either way, the vast majority of those susceptible to hospitalisation have been vaccinated.
 
Bluewonder said:
SAGE themselves in March 2020 said suppressing the virus too harshly would cause a surge. That's exactly what happened.
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No, really they didn't. Not in the context you're claiming. I would agree that SAGE got a lot wrong in the run up to the first wave though. The sticking with herd immunity (which is what you're referring to from March) until they realised far too late it wasn't tenable, and behind the rest of the world, cost 10s of thousands of lives in wave one.
 
roubaixtuesday said:
Israel is interesting for the "let's just open up" brigade.

I don't know exactly what restrictions they have in place, but their cases are ~4x ours and static for a while.

Their death rate is only just below ours, and not currently falling.

Despite the fact they've administered about three times the number of vaccines we have.

View attachment 12142

Cautious seems appropriate.
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it's something that needs to be clarified as to why Israel is at that trajectory because there has to be a good explanation somewhere otherwise the alternative is the vaccines aren't actually working.
 
roubaixtuesday said:
Please link to the numers you're quoting if you want to debate them. Otherwise we just end up with a half remembered set of assertions (aimed at myself as much as you)
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No worries. I use the Government dashboard

coronavirus.data.gov.uk

Official UK Coronavirus Dashboard

GOV.UK Coronavirus dashboard
coronavirus.data.gov.uk coronavirus.data.gov.uk

The daily deaths ranged between 400 and 500 through November, which is some departure from that model.
 
Those graphs suggest there is a plateau point in cases and deaths below which - vaccines or not - we will not go. As this is in effect an endemic disease and vaccines will help but will never eradicate.

Although in truth this was alway looking like the outcome - that is still going to be a hard sell to the public who are likely perceiving them as the end game when they are really only ever going to be a way to curb the worst case outcomes as we live with a level of disease and death from Covid we will have to accept as normal.

If that proves to be where we are the debate on how and when we open up will have a different dimension.
 
Bluewonder said:
Add on the people already infected of 20% and you are nearing 50%
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Yes, I agree. And that leaves plenty of room for rapid exponential growth for a virus with Ro perhaps ~4 for current variant.


Bluewonder said:
Either way, the vast majority of those susceptible to hospitalisation have been vaccinated.
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Have had one dose of a two dose vaccine. And easily sufficient remain either unprotected by the vaccine or unvaccinated to allow a major further surge in hospitalisation and death if a third wave is allowed by opening up too soon.

This is exactly what Whitty and Vallance have been saying today. And what every other expert thinks.
 
roubaixtuesday said:
No, really they didn't. Not in the context you're claiming. I would agree that SAGE got a lot wrong in the run up to the first wave though. The sticking with herd immunity (which is what you're referring to from March) until they realised far too late it wasn't tenable, and behind the rest of the world, cost 10s of thousands of lives in wave one.
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Minute 24.

I agree about the strange pursual of herd immunity until it was far too late. It was odd at the time and odder now.
 
roubaixtuesday said:
Yes, I agree. And that leaves plenty of room for rapid exponential growth for a virus with Ro perhaps ~4 for current variant.




Have had one dose of a two dose vaccine. And easily sufficient remain either unprotected by the vaccine or unvaccinated to allow a major further surge in hospitalisation and death if a third wave is allowed by opening up too soon.

This is exactly what Whitty and Vallance have been saying today. And what every other expert thinks.
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It leaves some room for growth if all restrictions are lifted immediately, which nobody could ever argue for.

There is an increasing body of evidence that just one dose is sufficiently effective, and the maker of the AZ vaccine has said the second dose is simply intended as a booster for long-term immunity.
 
Bluewonder said:
It leaves some room for growth if all restrictions are lifted immediately, which nobody could ever argue for.

There is an increasing body of evidence that just one dose is sufficiently effective, and the maker of the AZ vaccine has said the second dose is simply intended as a booster for long-term immunity.
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This is not a static illness / virus. We had the wild type in tbe Uk. Now we have the Kent variant. So we have to take into account the possibility that there will be more variants that alter tbe elidemic in terms of transmission and virulence. I think we will be OK but we need to monitor growth of variants which xan partially evade the immune system. We got a more transmissible variant that took over in tbe UK. Why can't the E484K mutations take off here in the same way it has in South Africa? I think its unlikely but I think we should be being careful now rather just assume that its all done because we have a vaccine
 
Marvin said:
This is not a static illness / virus. We had the wild type in tbe Uk. Now we have the Kent variant. So we have to take into account the possibility that there will be more variants that alter tbe elidemic in terms of transmission and virulence. I think we will be OK but we need to monitor growth of variants which xan partially evade the immune system. We got a more transmissible variant that took over in tbe UK. Why can't the E484K mutations take off here in the same way it has in South Africa? I think its unlikely but I think we should be being careful now rather just assume that its all done because we have a vaccine
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We can monitor mutations and update vaccines in a very short time frame.
It doesn't look like anything has taken off in South Africa - its epidemic curve looks almost identical to our own.
 
roubaixtuesday said:
Yes, I agree. And that leaves plenty of room for rapid exponential growth for a virus with Ro perhaps ~4 for current variant.




Have had one dose of a two dose vaccine. And easily sufficient remain either unprotected by the vaccine or unvaccinated to allow a major further surge in hospitalisation and death if a third wave is allowed by opening up too soon.

This is exactly what Whitty and Vallance have been saying today. And what every other expert thinks.
Click to expand...

You have to also bear in mind that it's probably already hit the superspreaders though. The ones that come across people all the time, as many of those are in low paid jobs and have carried on working as per usual throughout this. There is no guarantee that it'd go through the remaining 50% of the population anywhere near as fast. I don't doubt there would be a surge, but surely those who haven't had it yet are either probably more cautious or less likely to be around people due to what they do for a living or their personal situation. Surely it's an awful lot harder for a virus to spread when most of the big spreaders have already been removed from that chain. Not saying there will be no surge, but it'll be different, cos it has to be?
 
Better news from the hospitals. Under 9000 now in hospital across UK....TV news if you are reading!


Hospital data:

As I suggested they would last night - happily - after the small Monday rise in numbers we often see things returned to their steady downward path today.


UK total:


Patients 8999 - it was 39, 248 at the peak on 18 Jan - (fall of 30, 249 in 50 days)

Ventilators 1295 - it was 4077 at the peak on 24 Jan - (fall of 2782 in 44 days)



England only:-

Patients: down 396 in day to 7451 v 10, 121 last week

Peak was 34, 336 on 18 Jan (fall 26, 885 in 50 days)

Ventilators: Down in day 49 to 1187 v 1556 last week

Peak was 3736 on 24 Jan (fall 2549 in 44 days)



Regions:



Patient // Ventilators // change in past 24 hours and v last week


East down 72 to 709 v 1032 // down 1 to 107 v 134

London down 70 to 1481 v 1932 // down 21 to 358 v 485

Midlands down 83 to 1653 v 2304 // down 9 to 257 v 328

NE & Yorks down 44 to 1221 v 1629// down 4 to 165 v 200

North West down 51 to 1167 v 1540 // down 4 to 141 v 182

South East down 46 to 937 v 1248 // down 9 to 118 v 174

South West down 30 to 283 v 436 // down 1 41 v 53



Every region down in both patients and ventilators quite consistently.
 
Healdplace said:
Better news from the hospitals. Under 9000 now in hospital across UK....TV news if you are reading!


Hospital data:

As I suggested they would last night - happily - after the small Monday rise in numbers we often see things returned to their steady downward path today.


UK total:


Patients 8999 - it was 39, 248 at the peak on 18 Jan - (fall of 30, 249 in 50 days)

Ventilators 1295 - it was 4077 at the peak on 24 Jan - (fall of 2782 in 44 days)



England only:-

Patients: down 396 in day to 7451 v 10, 121 last week

Peak was 34, 336 on 18 Jan (fall 26, 885 in 50 days)

Ventilators: Down in day 49 to 1187 v 1556 last week

Peak was 3736 on 24 Jan (fall 2549 in 44 days)



Regions:



Patient // Ventilators // change in past 24 hours and v last week


East down 72 to 709 v 1032 // down 1 to 107 v 134

London down 70 to 1481 v 1932 // down 21 to 358 v 485

Midlands down 83 to 1653 v 2304 // down 9 to 257 v 328

NE & Yorks down 44 to 1221 v 1629// down 4 to 165 v 200

North West down 51 to 1167 v 1540 // down 4 to 141 v 182

South East down 46 to 937 v 1248 // down 9 to 118 v 174

South West down 30 to 283 v 436 // down 1 41 v 53



Every region down in both patients and ventilators quite consistently.
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Bloody great news it really is..
 
twosips said:
You have to also bear in mind that it's probably already hit the superspreaders though. The ones that come across people all the time, as many of those are in low paid jobs and have carried on working as per usual throughout this. There is no guarantee that it'd go through the remaining 50% of the population anywhere near as fast. I don't doubt there would be a surge, but surely those who haven't had it yet are either probably more cautious or less likely to be around people due to what they do for a living or their personal situation. Surely it's an awful lot harder for a virus to spread when most of the big spreaders have already been removed from that chain. Not saying there will be no surge, but it'll be different, cos it has to be?
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Yes, there are arguments for this, and people have used this so-called heterogeneity to argue that the herd immunity threshold was much lower than a basic model would suggest. So far they've been very wrong on that front.

I don't think we'll know until we try it how significant the effect is, which is why a cautious approach seems sensible.
 
Bluewonder said:
It leaves some room for growth if all restrictions are lifted immediately, which nobody could ever argue for.

There is an increasing body of evidence that just one dose is sufficiently effective, and the maker of the AZ vaccine has said the second dose is simply intended as a booster for long-term immunity.
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I'm no longer sure what you are arguing for. I agree the results for one dose are good, and absolutely support the UK vaccination strategy. "sufficiently effective" is highly subjective, and I don't know what you mean by that.
 
Healdplace said:
Those graphs suggest there is a plateau point in cases and deaths below which - vaccines or not - we will not go. As this is in effect an endemic disease and vaccines will help but will never eradicate.

Although in truth this was alway looking like the outcome - that is still going to be a hard sell to the public who are likely perceiving them as the end game when they are really only ever going to be a way to curb the worst case outcomes as we live with a level of disease and death from Covid we will have to accept as normal.

If that proves to be where we are the debate on how and when we open up will have a different dimension.
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I guess we'd need to know if those deaths are among folk in Israel who actually had the vaccine. Same applies here. I guess we'll know that soon enough.
 
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