Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

[redsturgeon]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54723962

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the latest ONS data is staggering. 100,000 new cases a day!

London, R 2.86, can you tell me how that fits it with herd immunity?

1 in 37 people have the virus in Yorkshire.

I'm thinking we will be in national lockdown soon.

John

[Mike4]

I believe I said that I thought the reaction had been disproportionate, not what you imply above.

Ok, so do spell out for us what you think.

Do you think too much action is being taken to 'control the virus'? Or too little? Or is it about right?

The virus isn't being controlled...we are, as I have explained before. Please don't reply, this is getting tedious.

Translation: "I can see my position makes no sense and I can't defend it, so I'm backing out of the dabate."


Of course we are being controlled. It's the only method available to reduce the spread of infection.

[Mike4]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54723962

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the latest ONS data is staggering. 100,000 new cases a day!

London, R 2.86, can you tell me how that fits it with herd immunity?

1 in 37 people have the virus in Yorkshire.

I'm thinking we will be in national lockdown soon.

John

This is my reading of the situation too, and has been for a couple of weeks. Care to put a date on "soon"?

I think our lockdown will come very late as our government is reactive rather than proactive. Although I anticipate an urgent need for a lockdown coming into focus over the week or so, my estimate is it won't happen until about a month from now. I'm not trying to be political, just stating how I forecast things panning out.

[redsturgeon]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54723962

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the latest ONS data is staggering. 100,000 new cases a day!

London, R 2.86, can you tell me how that fits it with herd immunity?

1 in 37 people have the virus in Yorkshire.

I'm thinking we will be in national lockdown soon.

John

This is my reading of the situation too, and has been for a couple of weeks. Care to put a date on "soon"?

I think our lockdown will come very late as our government is reactive rather than proactive. Although I anticipate an urgent need for a lockdown coming into focus over the week or so, my estimate is it won't happen until about a month from now. I'm not trying to be political, just stating how I forecast things panning out.

Within 2 weeks.

John

[Bouleversee]

If BJ has the courage to defy the objectors. Wouldn't bank on it.

[johnhemming]

so if you look at the time from symptom onset to death
- from https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 895v6.full

Note: This figure illustrates time lags in the incidence and reporting of COVID-19 fatalities using the results of a simulation calibrated to reflect the estimated distribution for time lags between symptom onset, death, and inclusion in official fatality reports.[29]

There are issues with the 28 days from positive test measurement. A material proportion of positive tests of hospital admissions are from people who were admitted for other reasons.

What we don't know at the moment is exactly how the number of deaths and hospital admissions compares to normal. Daily admissions for respiratory diseases are normally around 1,000 (I saw this figure on CEBM, but cannot immediately find it).

I have found this report which tracks one of the recent SAGE predictions against reality
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/tracking- ... -19-cases/

In the end, however, the key thing to track is excess mortality.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/22268/

I do expect it to be higher this season as a result of covid. We don't have the up to date figures as yet.

[johnhemming]

London, R 2.86, can you tell me how that fits it with herd immunity?

What happens with a seasonal virus is that the HIT goes up as the virus becomes more infectious.

[Mike4]

Within 2 weeks.

John

The sooner the better and the lower the impact on our hospitals, including their non-COVID services.

But I fear the people making the decisions will delay, trying to avoid lockdown over xmas, then get overwhelmed by events.

[redsturgeon]

London, R 2.86, can you tell me how that fits it with herd immunity?

What happens with a seasonal virus is that the HIT goes up as the virus becomes more infectious.

Yes there will of course be some rise and we are certainly seeing that but you have spent a long time pointing out how close London is to herd immunity which would suggest that the rise would be much less, if at all if true herd immunity has been reached.

IIRC the sort of numbers you were using were suggesting that with natural immunity plus T cell imunity plus antibody immunity that only about 30% of Londoners were susceptible. If that is the case then an R of 2.86 seems high.

John

[redsturgeon]

Within 2 weeks.

John

The sooner the better and the lower the impact on our hospitals, including their non-COVID services.

But I fear the people making the decisions will delay, trying to avoid lockdown over xmas, then get overwhelmed by events.

Yes I agree and a lockdown this week for three or four weeks would avoid Xmas.

John

[servodude]

Care to put a date on "soon"?

If I had to guess I'd say it will be around 2 weeks before the next "peak deaths"

-sd

[Mike4]

Within 2 weeks.

John

The sooner the better and the lower the impact on our hospitals, including their non-COVID services.

But I fear the people making the decisions will delay, trying to avoid lockdown over xmas, then get overwhelmed by events.

Yes I agree and a lockdown this week for three or four weeks would avoid Xmas.

John

Yes I agree this would be the best course of action, but the discussion is swerving away from what we are forecasting what will happen, into what we think ought to happen.

I'm with Bouleversee on this and I think the government will place more weight on the arguments from commercial interests than on the arguments from the medics.

[johnhemming]

Yes there will of course be some rise and we are certainly seeing that but you have spent a long time pointing out how close London is to herd immunity which would suggest that the rise would be much less, if at all if true herd immunity has been reached.

The herd immunity threshold is the proportion of susceptible people that need to be infected before R goes to 1 or below one naturally. It depends upon how infectious the disease is (inter alia). As a seasonal virus becomes more infectious the herd immunity threshold goes up. That means that more people end up catching the disease until it gets to the higher HIT.

I have little confidence in the data the government use (prevalence testing) for calculating the R figure and/or the methodology. Hence I do not give their figures for R any credence.

Given that the disease is already widely spread then restrictions are unlikley to constrain infection by that much.

[langley59]

Of course we are being controlled. It's the only method available to reduce the spread of infection.

Quite, that has been the plan all along of course. Q: How do we implement a global police state and do it so that the people accept it? A: We use the pretext of a new virus with which we will scare the hell out of people so they demand the imposition of draconian measures.

[Bouleversee]

How can you get any meaningful herd immunity if immunity is as short-lived as would appear to be tha case?

[XFool]

Of course we are being controlled. It's the only method available to reduce the spread of infection.

Quite, that has been the plan all along of course. Q: How do we implement a global police state and do it so that the people accept it? A: We use the pretext of a new virus with which we will scare the hell out of people so they demand the imposition of draconian measures.

Aha!

[Bouleversee]

Of course we are being controlled. It's the only method available to reduce the spread of infection.

Quite, that has been the plan all along of course. Q: How do we implement a global police state and do it so that the people accept it? A: We use the pretext of a new virus with which we will scare the hell out of people so they demand the imposition of draconian measures.

Some pretext!

[88V8]

....the UK deaths total has been revised down to 41,000.
And even that is dubious, as it includes anyone dying within 28 days of a positive test.

This is probably one of the worst handled bits of communication around the whole of this cluster cuss
.....so in short the perception that using a 28 day cut off is going to inflate the figures seems quite a strange one

Thankyou.
It's good to know that this aspect of the stats is reasonably reliable.

As regards lockdown, one is rather fascinated by the sudden obsession with Christmas. Have we suddenly rediscovered religion?
In terms of entering and exiting lockdown, those one or two days of over-eating are going to become Boris's beacon of light, never mind whichever set of wise men he's supposed to be attending.

V8

[johnhemming]

How can you get any meaningful herd immunity if immunity is as short-lived as would appear to be tha case?

Immunity does not appear to be short term. The antibodies may fade, but the immunity memory lasts.

[redsturgeon]

How can you get any meaningful herd immunity if immunity is as short-lived as would appear to be tha case?

Immunity does not appear to be short term. The antibodies may fade, but the immunity memory lasts.

I think I would want to see more data for at least a year before being comfortable with that claim.

John