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thanks Tired, that makes sense, getting on a bus and going into town this week, public transport use is waaaay down.
I got the northern line a week or so ago at "rush hour" and managed to get on the first tube at london bridge and even got a seat! I was amazed. Like already said our only saving grace right now is the majority of the city is still working from home and will be for the long term. Seems logical the cases will rise here soon too. somehow they ned to get a grip on it but we cant stay locked away forever until this vaccine does or doesnt appear.
however in Africa the virus isn’t nearly a deadly as expected.
This is primarily a killer of the elderly and those with comorbidities associated with extended age. Life expectancy varies within Africa obviously, but on average is around 65 in Africa compared with 79 in Western Europe (males). There may well be some other factors in play, lifestyle perhaps and genetics, but essentially you're not comparing a similar cohort.
I also wonder which strain is predominant in Africa - as some are more virulent/less deadly, or just less deadly. We seem to have copped the worst one.
Mrs anagallis has lost sense of smell, I tested it with half a tub of Vicks and now believe her…testing website says no!!
wife had to take a test (postal) yesterday, just awaiting results. gov.uk website said no local tests so had to order one.
shes had a high temperature which could have been anything, but the cruncher was weirdly when she shot up from the settee saying "somethings on fire down there, the laptop leads on fire. cant you smell it?? switch everything off!" i couldnt smell anything and nothing was on fire. she swore she could smell it, so with 'loss or change of taste or smell' as a symptom too, here we go........
Many African countries are far better at disease control than we are.
Before we forget the contribution of Dr Professor Sir James Delingpole MO WTF - let's just take some time to look at his best bits -
How can Boris be telling us we’re entering a second wave when just a few short weeks ago it was safe to return to work?
Its almost as if we’ve a government of bullshitting ****s?
Its almost as if we’ve a government of bullshitting ****?
That's the best case. Alternatively it's more of the "firehosing" that they've used in the past.
Keep everyone confused to **** with a constant stream of often contradictory information and no one knows what or who to be angry about.
Plus we've had a media happily showing people failing to socially distance, interviewing people clearly not from the same household sat round a pub table telling us how nice it is to get back to normal, or the crowd waiting at the Spurs ground yesterday for Gareth Bale.
It's 2 metres, unless you're wearing a mask. Always.
But ultimately, the Cummings fiasco is what ****ed the chances of enough public compliance.
I can guess what my sister in law is doing this weekend, who lives in an area under stricter measures. Driving out of the lockdown area to drop her son off at grandma’s. Then going back and staying the night at her new boyfriends house. Basically, as was the norm during full lockdown 🤷♂️
How can Boris be telling us we’re entering a second wave when just a few short weeks ago it was safe to return to work?
Might the graphics showing rapidly rising wall on cases graph. It's easier to keep stating second wave than admitting this is just the infection getting away from him. Just caught part of Breakfast news and flattening the curve was being mentioned again. Cases go up, you put measures in cases come down. If they are bouncing along the crest then they've got something wrong.
Quite interesting the Dr giving the interview said there was 50years of evidence showing three weeks after the start of term there is a spike in colds and infections.
More concerning is trying the same thing again a countrywide application of control measures in October? Seems it's just incentivising movement (and so spreading) before putting the brakes on again. Months of seeing exactly how people behave and yet the government's behavioural unit appears to be wilfully ignorant and steadfastly stuck to the same old same old.
Public transport is a huge source of cross-transmission in London. It has been shut down and not really reopened to any significant extent.
Not sure I entirely agree with that, I’m sure pre-lockdown it was a primary cause of transmission but to say it “is” and not “was” is misleading. Public transport services in terms of frequency are approaching 100% in most of the country due to DfT funding but passenger use is at the 40% to 50% levels.
1m+ on buses has limited capacity to around 50% of normal, and so long as people wear a face covering and maintain a distance it’s pretty safe.
Anyway, DfT are about to undertake some detailed research on transmission on public transport so it’ll be interesting to see what that reveals.
Boris referred to the 'inevitable' 2nd wave whereas Dido said 'who could have predicted' the increase in demand for tests and Dom says 'I couldn't care f less'. The chaos and confusion stirred up by this will increase the agony and it will be the poor who suffer most, and get the blame. I'm expecting Hancock to argue that Covid victims only have themselves to blame for wearing crocs and tatts and shopping in Asda.
This site has some fantastic contributors and interrogators and combined with IndieSage, gives a much more vivid picture of what might be going on.
NB Just noticed in the hateful speech by JRM (junior John Cleese), he said we should thank 'the administration' and no mention of the NHS. What a poisonous, insidious ratbag that man is.
Not sure I entirely agree with that, I’m sure pre-lockdown it was a primary cause of transmission but to say it “is” and not “was” is misleading.
Hence the use of the word “Source”. Clearly contacts are also a source of transmission too. The amount attributable to the source is obviously dependent on current levels. Use of London transport is approximately 20% of normal, hence that source of TFL-related cases is reduced by perhaps 80%. I should have added “potential” if that helps.
Quite interesting the Dr giving the interview said there was 50years of evidence showing three weeks after the start of term there is a spike in colds and infections.
Naga Munchetty actually had to step in while he was mid-waffle because he was giving the impression that there was not much for people to be worried about. Yes, there is always a spike in transmission of whatever viruses are floating about in September. But normally they are rhinoviruses and far more benign coronaviruses etc, rather than a mixture of rhinoviruses and a lethal pandemic strain of coronavirus.
We don't want people dismissing trivial symptoms like mild coughs and temperatures in children as just the normal stuff that's going around, even if it isn't making them any more ill than normal, because their contacts, and their contacts' contacts could be made seriously ill. The cycle of transmission has to be disrupted wherever possible, even if it means the school year will be punctuated with periods of self-isolation.
VENT mode activatated.
****ing hell you would think mrs anagallis was being tested for syphillis the way she is about telling anyone, apparently me telling my mates who I was supposed to be leading a ride with this morning is terrible, what if her friends find out!!! **** me this could be a long two weeks!! And she did the shopping last week and forgot to buy beer 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
New patio time, do B&Q deliver?
which is pretty simple, they just encode small conversion variants
Forget B&Q, breweries deliver.
Secrecy about possibly having Covid-19 is a very counter productive trait to exhibit right now. Informal contact tracing is something we should all see as our responsibility.
VENT mode activatated.
**** hell you would think mrs anagallis was being tested for syphillis
If that was the case you would have every right to vent - and lay a new patio...
Marina delivers her weekly demolition
Matt Hancock, could you honestly think of no one better to run test and trace?
Many African countries are far better at disease control than we are.
True.
I worked in West Africa when ebola was going on. Nobody was moaning about the rules or protesting their rights.
I once met Marina after an event at Byline a couple of years ago and shook her hand. It was only since covid that I've washed it...
Just to roll back a bit, are we not listening to Tired? Now, normally glass half empty I'm now (bizarrely for me) err-ing on the side of logic. And I think I've been told by people on here:
a) No of cases in March vs Today because its a case of "Admissions" (little or nor testing) being counted in March, and "Positive Tests" being counted now is not a comparable number despite what's being shown on charts
If we took that view, thats 3000 admissions approx per day in March at its worst vs 183 admissions September 16th, so 6%? If this is correct, we are nowhere near the first spike. Notwithstanding we don't want to be there and even a single death from C19 is terrible, plus I bet it'll be hard to find a home in Britain that isn't using preventative measures such as masks & sanitiser, are we not in a media panic frenzy right now?
Apologies for my cut and paste quote error up there ^^^^
Oh for a quote button/function.
Anyway… the following has left me utterly confused…
https://twitter.com/ligomersall/status/1307256952511135745?s=21
Depending how you look at the data, we are doubling every 1-2 weeks (I tend towards the upper end, but am concerned that it could be speeding up towards the quicker rate). While it's still not as desperate as March, it is still rapid enough to be genuinely problematic. Deaths are now showing signs of a rise and the disease is spreading to the older population.
Talk of a new lockdown in mid-Oct seems unrealistically complacent to me. That is a long way off and the numbers could be very high by then (4 doublings = 16x higher). If we are going to have cycles of tighter and looser restrictions, better to do this with a low level of disease than a high one.
we are nowhere near the first spike
Correct. But you have to act in advance to prevent the spike, not wait ‘till the numbers say we are nearly there, it’s far too late then. Read back through this thread as regards the lag in indicators. Just read TiRed’s posts about this if you want to save time.
I wrote this two months ago. Nothing has changed my mind. I don't see doom and gloom, as we know that control measures do restrict transmission. I don't do the economics bit 😉
Summary
An Autumn/Winter SRS-COV2 epidemic will follow the first epidemic wave, with doubling time >1 week (rather than 2-3 days). There will be added influenza mortality but reduced overall transmission due to school precautions (including lockdown/closure), reduced commuting and office working, use of public barrier precautions, testing and isolation of the elderly and healthcare workers, testing and tracing of cases. Regional lockdowns will be necessary but are unlikely to prevent overall spread. Excess mortality of up to 30000 deaths (half the first wave) should be anticipated, again predominantly in the elderly. Any reductions in 2020-21 influenza mortality due to reduced contacts and increased vaccination will be offset by COVID19 mortality. There will be no effective vaccine or new treatments available, however earlier treatment of mild/moderate cases may mitigate mortality.
Talk of a new lockdown in mid-Oct seems unrealistically complacent to me
Linked to education of course. Half-term is a natural time to consider. But yes, it's 2-4 doubling times from now, so potential for serious trouble. We are currently seeing about 200 hospital admissions per day and about 10-20 deaths per day. By late October, I predict perhaps 1000-3000 admissions/day (range is wide but that's the nature of the game), with 100 deaths/day (range 30-300). The top of that admissions rate is the April peak.
Theres a lot of assumptions in that post Tired. Like track and trace and testing functioning. Like schools being covid safe (for want of a better word)
Also… timing. When all those measures occur will effect where we end up.
I would not disagree. But one has to take a slightly longer view than last week’s headlines. Timing is important. But just like infection immunity, lockdown immunity wanes too - just ask any student who’s gone to uni. People will tire of controls.
People will tire of controls.
I'm bored already and only 12hrs into a potential 2 week isolation!!
TT starts at 14:00 😉 get on the turbo.
We are currently seeing about 200 hospital admissions per day
That doesn’t make sense when the media were reporting a total of 8-900 beds in hospital in England occupied with C19 patients this week. NHS data showed approximately 450 on September 9th, so an increase of about 400.
Presumably the vast bulk of those admissions are discharged very quickly?
We have only just hit 200, it was fewer on previous days in the period you’re looking at, and very low at the start of it.
https://twitter.com/richardhorton1/status/1306937064445874176?s=21
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare
Median stay is about five days - very roughly the number in hospital/admission rate. Sadly you can’t see the data on those plots on a log-scale to track growth rate.
Naga Munchetty actually had to step in while he was mid-waffle because he was giving the impression that there was not much for people to be worried about.
I didn't look at that as nothing to worry about more there were some fairly strong indicators the rapid rise in numbers around now could be inferred / identified and planned for in terms of testing capacity.
How can Boris be telling us we’re entering a second wave when just a few short weeks ago it was safe to return to work?
If you take a step back from the constant political angle we all keep putting on it, the two aren't mutually exclusive.
It was "safe" to start to go back to work* - with controls and distancing - a few weeks ago. We are now getting the second wave that everyone, including TiRed, was expecting. Mixed government messages and failures to stick to controls are making it worse than it could have been.
*Much as I hate to sound like I'm supporting the dangerously incompetent oaf, if you read beyond the headlines, he never said it was safe for everyone to go back to work, full time, all together, like we did before. Even his dictats to the civil service haven't said that said. Which is handy, as all departments I've got contacts in are basically ignoring it and carrying on WFH!
How can Boris be telling us we’re entering a second wave when just a few short weeks ago it was safe to return to work?
He meant the plebs, it safe for them to go back to work, eveyone else can work from home
I thought it was only a month so back that Boris, ok maybe team Boris, was openly talking about the removal or all restrictions before Christmas. Being cynical, it feels ramping up on Wave 2 would fit with Cumming's Drive it like you stole it approach. Move rapidly away from pesky questions about coming up short again and get it round to wave 2 as this unexpected overwhelming event that no one knows how to deal with. It's their first second time round.
I agree.
First wave caught us and we could only flatten the peak by pushing it back with big restrictions on activity and economy.
Second wave coming so Team Boris take this opportunity to flatten the peak by pulling it forward the other way, by opening up activity and economy, and get a few through hospital before demand surges. Of course, that doesn't seem well with bereaved relatives so it's easier to pretend it's caught them out again.
Morbid thought, but if we now have a couple of "treatments" that may reduce deaths, will those patients fill up beds and thus put the NHS under strain even quicker - Nightingale hospitals in use this time, if the staffing fairy can rustle up some trained staff from, er, somewhere?
One of the endpoints from the treatment trials is length of hospitalisation. Whilst few have moved the needle on mortality, some, including remdesivir, have reduced hospital stay (from 11 to 8 days). Small steps at the moment. Bigger improvements will come.
We (the UK) have been well into the second spike since the end of July/early August.
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
That our politicians are only now talking about it as if it's something that's happened in the last week or two says it all really.
Why is everything based around reacting to the spread of the disease?
Why isn't there any foresight?
(I know that's Conservatism/incompetence to a tee but this issue is greater than just the economy. I.e you can't have a functioning economy without a healthy/terrified population.)
if you read beyond the headlines, he never said it was safe for everyone to go back to work, full time, all together, like we did before.
I seem to remember him telling people to return to the workplace to support the high street and local businesses. I know he didn’t say it was safe, but nevertheless...
We (the UK) have been well into the second spike since the end of July/early August.
That’s not even vaguely true, is it?
Why isn’t there any foresight?
Such as thinking in March/April...assume a vaccine will be 2 years away at best, there is no treatment (yet), best to assume this won't just disappear, if it's still around in autumn/winter that co-incides with flu and other seasonal infections, we have finite NHS capacity both physical and staff.
Must starting planning - now.
It's not as if any of this is with the benefit of hindsight.
I have little doubt this was raised by 'experts' but dismissed by johnson-gove-cummings; the rest of the clown circus were too scared of losing their jobs to say anything.
Why isn’t there any foresight?
Optimism to the point of being delusional from Boris. How many times have we seen him immediately contradict caution by prattling on about world class jam tomorrow as no body does it better.
And yet again the Tories are Ignoring all actual evidence and defaulting to their idealogical positions.
There’s clearly a massive problem with track and trace delivered in such a woeful fashion by Serco and other private companies. Should we hand it over to regional health authorities who have been considerably more successful?
Of course not. That would be the rational, logical thing to do.
Instead... Troubled test-and-trace system drafts in management consultants
You just couldn’t make this shit up
Optimism to the point of being delusional
VOTE LEAVE
Whitty said in the original daily briefings earlier in the year that these things always have a second - and more - waves. And of note Sturgeon calling for Cobra meetings, others baying for prompt action yet Boris has gone into hiding again. Out Grouse shooting no doubt.
After several days of trying to book a test I finally had one this afternoon; response time for results is now 72 hours.
Why is everything based around reacting to the spread of the disease?
Why isn’t there any foresight?
(I know that’s Conservatism/incompetence to a tee
Not just the UK/conservatives though, Spain and France seem to be in the same boat, just further downstream.
Anyone know if the government is actually ignoring the experts, or has decided to only listen to experts that they like the sound of, or are both the government and the experts not able to see the blindingly obvious without a dataset to back it up?
That’s not even vaguely true, is it?
Cases have been increasing since the 2nd week of July onwards. Therefore R has been greater than 1 for 2 months+. They should have been tweaking the restrictions months ago to get R<1 to get infection levels down before Schools/Unis went back.
Genius. How to dampen down demand for the testing you have failed to deliver… new fines, up to £10,000 for risking spreading the virus to others, if you’ve taken a test. So… if you think you have it, and you consider yourself to be at low risk of being effected by it seriously yourself… don’t get a test, and don’t risk the large fines.
Why do we make the assumption that cases and deaths will be correlated as they were in March? France has had cases in the thousands for well over a month now, yet deaths are still barely triple figures. Other European countries are similar. Compare this to the Spring and there is a big difference.
Mask usage in France is also very high (you have to wear them in most workplaces, even) yet I don’t see much evidence of this having any impact on cases. Ditto Spain, etc. Anyone care to explain?
JP
Cases have been increasing since the 2nd week of July onwards. Therefore R has been greater than 1 for 2 months+. They should have been tweaking the restrictions months ago to get R<1 to get infection levels down before Schools/Unis went back.
Actually just to correct myself, the increase could be explained by the increase in testing, however hospital admissions have been increasing for at least 3 weeks which still implies R>1 for at least the last 4 weeks.
Anyone care to explain?
Social distancing is more effective than mask wearing.
Cases have been increasing since the 2nd week of July onwards. Therefore R has been greater than 1 for 2 months+.
SAGE has been saying R was less than one for almost all of this period, until the last few weeks.
SAGE are incompetent idiots of course, but they are supposed to be the experts, and the group was specifically set up to advise the govt about the science of the epidemic. The modelling is supposed to be "world beating" and I assume that is meant in the genuine, non-ironic sense.
Also, I'm not sure exactly where Harding got her target of 500,000 tests by END OCTOBER but I'm assuming the scientists played a part in that and she didn't just pull a number and time scale out of her arse. Modelling study after modelling study predicted a 2nd wave over WINTER.
****ing idiots the lot of them.
Why do we make the assumption that cases and deaths will be correlated as they were in March?
Because nothing has changed much except much more testing so the case numbers between now and then are not comparable. France has seen a big uptick in deaths but the doubling time has been slowed by social distancing measures
Anyone care to explain?
New cases were much higher just before confinement but unreacorded as Covid because there were no tests for the masses. A ball park figure of 100 000 a day in France. Mask use, home working, reduced public transport use... are all helping slow the post confinement rise but the rise is still there.
It's still a highly contaigeous disease and there are still enough people taking almost no precautions to spread the virus, in France and pretty much everywhere else in the world.
Prior to lockdown, cases were unknown because of testing. Post lockdown, there are a lot more cases being detected, but total cases are still unknown. What we DO know is that hospital seeking behaviour and deaths are closely linked. That is what I have posted previously, along with some simple neat-term predictions. In March there was no Pillar 2 testing, so almost all cases were hospital cases.
Now onto R. I don’t believe it is knowable and changes in behaviours are so varied that precision is pointless. I do, however believe in doubling times, as I did last time around. The space of possible parameters that can describe the observed epidemic are so wide as to be effectively unhelpful.
So, we're (still) in the dark.
So, we’re (still) in the dark.
Only if what you want to see is precision, wee can see enough to know what is happening.
And what is happening is, according to the BBC graph, hospital admissions have risen to 227 compared to an April peak of 3000. With doubling every 7-8 days, if we continue unchanged then in about a month we will have seen 4 doublings. 4*2*227= 3632. So we need to act now if we are to avoid that and hard lockdown again.
Btw, what's been happening in the States and is there anything to learn? Didn't they open up faster than us and sort of let things rip?
Genius. How to dampen down demand for the testing you have failed to deliver… new fines, up to £10,000 for risking spreading the virus to others, if you’ve taken a test. So… if you think you have it, and you consider yourself to be at low risk of being effected by it seriously yourself… don’t get a test, and don’t risk the large fines.
Yup, and you know that their obsession with behavioural nudging means that this is the calculated aim or at best, a perfectly acceptable outcome.
TiRed wrote this earlier:
Excess mortality of up to 30000 deaths (half the first wave) should be anticipated
And going back to the national archives for past years:
An estimated 43,900 excess winter deaths occurred in England and Wales in 2014/15; the highest number since 1999/00, with 27% more people dying in the winter months compared with the non-winter months.
i.e. this coming winter will be back to normal, and quite a lot better than 1999, when we did nothing at all.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/resources/figure5_tcm77-425290.pn g" alt="" />
URL not working for me, but it looks like you’re comparing the winter excess mortality* for a single year with an estimate for excess deaths** this winter above the average expected for the time of year. Apples and oranges.
Short version… no, TiRed is not estimating that this winter will be normal.
[ * compares summer and winter mortality rates ]
[ ** estimate of number of deaths this winter beyond what has would be expected when looking at past winters ]
Edit: you’ve added a graph… thanks… we don’t want another winter like 1999, looking at that… it didn’t look “normal”.
My estimate (It’s a guess really) is 30k deaths above a typical influenza year. I’ve also simulated projections for different relaxations of contacts. The conclusions are Covid deaths of up to 80k, with a typical value of about 40k. The 2014 epidemic is included in my (but not ONS) reference range for weekly deaths.
Now the bit The media ignore; uncertainty is so high that precision is impossible. Preparation is therefore vital for a reasonable worst case.
Compared to March, we have some flying instrumentation now, but prediction beyond six weeks is still largely a futile exercise.
i.e. this coming winter will be back to normal, and quite a lot better than 1999, when we did nothing at all.
Already said, but not what he's said. And 1999/2000 was a really bad flu year, through Christmas and New Year especially.
What were the excess deaths for 1999/00 and 2014/15 ?
And what was the cause of the spike in 1999/00, and was it followed by a "second wave", or just a return to the average?
From your graph… flu rates were high [ Influenza Like Illness incidence ] in 1999, so strongly assume that was the problem that winter… but 2014 looks like something else… remember why we have winter fuel payments?
thanks… we don’t want another winter like 1999,
First wave of the milenium bug
oldnpastit, don’t go down the route of assuming this virus is just like flu… most of the mistakes made early this year by people who should be far more knowledgable than you are or I were based on using that single wrong assumption when planning for what was coming our way.
So, we’re (still) in the dark.
I think you just have to read the signs. The "leaked" idea that the government were considering a national lockdown is really them 'testing' the idea with the public and press and warming the plebs up to the idea.
My guess is they'll carry on with the mixed messaging, telling public sector workers they should be back in the office and prop up Costa, that pubs are safe spaces and you can get a test any time you need it, that increased infections are the fault of under 30s but don't matter so long as they don't hug their Nan.
They'll hold off calling a lockdown until they believe we're right on the cusp and then Boris will hit us with another ill timed, bumbling, Friday evening announcement I reckon, they might try to leave it as late as 02/10/20.
They'd probably prefer to go longer to try and get it to coincidence with already booked half-term leave...
Now sit back and watch all my predictions miss spectacularly...
Now sit back and watch all my predictions miss spectacularly…
Those are the rules of the game I’m afraid. At every point I always ask “how wrong could I be?”. My above predictions are what I consider reasonable. The worst case scenario is probably twice as bad. It’s very easy to take an exponentially bad prediction and let the media run with it. There is a reason I don’t do that side of communication.
Whats thought to be the current death rate? Reason I ask is I just looked up West Berkshire cases, 558 diagnosed so far and 133 deaths, I'm guessing "a few" undiagnosed cases are about, obviously I'd like to know the number of cases since mass testing started, but you know numbers and journalists!!
Remember, it’s important that “the public” stay put if they suspect they have the virus… “the public”…
https://twitter.com/jimmfelton/status/1307422861485912067?s=21
Never forget…
https://twitter.com/jonlis1/status/1265402689330057216?s=21