Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

[Newroad]

Hi JohnHemming.

You asked me to provide (dictionary) definition(s) of "virulent" last time I saw you misusing the term, which I did (more than one) yet you continue to do so? This alleged summer increased "virulence" is a fallacy - it is merely reflects the practical upshot of a societal predilection to be less close/indoors during the period. Even this may not be true in really hot first world countries - where it's very hot outside and people are actually more inclined to be indoors in air conditioning for longer periods.

{Red Sturgeon} I agree with your quote ...

"On mental health I'd argue that short timely lockdowns are less harmful than delayed prolonged ones and more effective against the virus."

... except that I wouldn't limit it to mental health. I think it's also true for most business.

For example, imagine a scenario where each school half term had been expanded to three weeks, an extra week each side. Same for the Christmas period (to three weeks) etc. Then imagine all this was communicated well in advance and that such circuit breakers would continue, as hard lockdowns, until the government (via its advisors) judged that effective herd immunity had been achieved, by whatever means. A few good things that might well have happened

The lock-downs themselves would likely have been more understood, with the consequence of higher rates of observence and hence effectiveness
If people needed to travel prior to lockdown, they wouldn't all wait to the last minute then crowd train-stations etc
Restaurants would have ordered only enough produce to get to the next lockdown
Primary producers supplying restaurants and take-aways would calibrate their production to only cater for the take-aways
People would have done their Christmas shopping between the October half term and mid December
etc

Still wouldn't have been as effective as closing the borders in addition, but the circuit breakers would have likely had their desired effect (a meaningful reset to a lower level) and the economic damage would have been minimised - being able to plan makes all the difference.

Regards, Newroad

[servodude]

If the March-June lockdown last year had worked, why are the numbers now so bad?

Generally in the Northern Hemisphere it appears that people who had the most effective lockdown in March/April also had a bigger rush of infections in autumn/winter.

So a bit more suffering in the first instance might cause better adherence to the regulations when reimposed, and vice versa?
Yeah I guess that's got a bit of a compelling ring to it

There certainly seems to be a bit of fatigue about it; especially now there's a viable exit strategy (i.e. vaccinating to reach herd immunity and bingo! back to normal!)

I do think some of the fatigue will be down to mixed messages regarding the need for effective social distancing.

Everyone knows that there are vaccines, that the world is aiming for herd immunity through the vaccine, that the end is in sight
but they were told by some that they'd reached herd immunity before the first lockdown; so why bother?
They were told there wouldn't be a second wave; so why bother?
They were told that this isn't a second wave; so why bother?
They were told that lockdowns don't work; so why bother?

Is it any wonder that people are not doing what is necessary?

Those who promulgated that dangerous tosh must bear some of the responsibility for the situation the world finds itself in

-sd

[Itsallaguess]

So we have three groups of people who are not adding to the count:

1) Those are not susceptible to Covid in the first place
2) Those who have had it, survived and therefore have some kind of immunity
3) Those who have been vaccinated

Of these (2) and (3) are growing and propelling us to herd immunity.

Isn't there a fourth group of people not adding to the count though Lootman?

What about all the people who are making a good fist of being sensible, trying very hard to comply with all the advice and guidance, and are simply avoiding contagion through sheer hard work and quiet determination?

I suspect they might have something loud to say when this 'herd immunity' flare goes up based on just the above three groups, and Group 4 start to drift into their streets in large numbers and wonder why they're all suddenly coming down with a nasty and persistent cough...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[dealtn]

If the March-June lockdown last year had worked, why are the numbers now so bad?

Generally in the Northern Hemisphere it appears that people who had the most effective lockdown in March/April also had a bigger rush of infections in autumn/winter.

So a bit more suffering in the first instance might cause better adherence to the regulations with reimposed, and vice versa?
Yeah I guess that's got a bit of a compelling ring to it

There certainly seems to be a bit of fatigue about it; especially now there's a viable exit strategy (i.e. vaccinating to reach herd immunity and bingo! back to normal!)

I do think some of the fatigue will be down to mixed messages regarding the need for effective social distancing.

Everyone knows that there are vaccines, that the world is aiming for herd immunity through the vaccine, the the end is in sight
but they were told by some that they'd reached herd immunity before the first lockdown; so why bother?
They were told there wouldn't be a second wave; so why bother?
They were told that this isn't a second wave; so why bother?
They were told that lockdowns don't work; so why bother?

Is it any wonder that people are not doing what is necessary?

Those who promulgated that dangerous tosh must bear some of the responsibility for the situation the world finds itself in

-sd

All true, to an extent. But the period being talked about here is March-June last year. So with the numbers at that time heading in the "right" direction, everything appearing to be working, and some people not qualifying for assistance payments etc. there may be some "good" reasons why some people didn't adhere rigidly to "the rules".

Plenty of others though that didn't care, or think it applied to them too, of course.

[XFool]

At best the lockdown only delays the infections and buys us more time.

1. That was always one of the points of lockdown and was understood(?) from the start.
https://tomaspueyo.medium.com/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

2. Again(!) the point missed is "Protect the NHS, save Lives"
Why does this still remain so hard to understand? Especially at the preset moment.

If the March-June lockdown last year had worked, why are the numbers now so bad?

Can you convincingly demonstrate how much better/same/worse they would be if we hadn't had that lockdown?

[Lootman]

If the March-June lockdown last year had worked, why are the numbers now so bad?

Can you convincingly demonstrate how much better/same/worse they would be if we hadn't had that lockdown?

That is exactly the problem - you can never know if what you didn't do would have been better or worse. It is all speculation.

All i know is that we had a severe lockdown for 3 months last year and ultimately it did not work, other than delaying many infections until the weather was worse.

[vrdiver]

All i know is that we had a severe lockdown for 3 months last year and ultimately it did not work, other than delaying many infections until the weather was worse.

Fair enough. Let's run a short thought experiment. Imagine that there hadn't been a lockdown for 3 months and that all the cases that have been delayed happened instead during that period.

Now imagine how the NHS, with its still-learning-how-to-treat-Covid19 patients, would have coped with the ones it had beds for, and what would have happened to the ones it didn't have any beds for.

My imagination shows a lot more bodies at the morgue. What does yours conjure up?

[XFool]

Can you convincingly demonstrate how much better/same/worse they would be if we hadn't had that lockdown?

That is exactly the problem - you can never know if what you didn't do would have been better or worse. It is all speculation.

All i know is that we had a severe lockdown for 3 months last year and ultimately it did not work

What is your definition of "work" in this context?

You seem to be simultaneously claiming we cannot know: "It is all speculation", and that you do know: "ultimately it did not work".

[servodude]

All i know is that we had a severe lockdown for 3 months last year and ultimately it did not work, other than delaying many infections until the weather was worse.

Fair enough. Let's run a short thought experiment. Imagine that there hadn't been a lockdown for 3 months and that all the cases that have been delayed happened instead during that period.

Now imagine how the NHS, with its still-learning-how-to-treat-Covid19 patients, would have coped with the ones it had beds for, and what would have happened to the ones it didn't have any beds for.

My imagination shows a lot more bodies at the morgue. What does yours conjure up?

bUt tHaTs jUsT YoUr oPiNiOn
- YoU CaN'T SaY FoR SuRe tHaT ThOsE SeRvEd bY ThE NoRmAl nEeDs oF A HeAlTh sErViCe wOuLdN'T SpOnTaNeOuSlY ReMoVe tHeIr rEqUiReMeNtS
- tHaT MiGhT HaVe hApPeNeD! wHo's tO SaY It wOuLdN'T HaVe?

but in the real world yeah - lots more dead people and not just the covid fatalities
- and if 1 in 50 (?) have it at present there's a good chance if you need a hospital and can find one and can get in you might be coming home with a cough

conceivably somewhere could have had an effective "lockdown" until the virus was a manageable level
- then keep it suppressed until there was a vaccine rolled out
- I imagine that would have kept the net tally of deaths down and hopefully gone some distance towards sending this the way of SARS-COV1

- sd

[Arborbridge]

Can you convincingly demonstrate how much better/same/worse they would be if we hadn't had that lockdown?

That is exactly the problem - you can never know if what you didn't do would have been better or worse. It is all speculation.

All i know is that we had a severe lockdown for 3 months last year and ultimately it did not work, other than delaying many infections until the weather was worse.

Ultimately, we are all dead, so nothing works

But shouldn't we define what one means by "it works"? It worked in the sense that infections and deaths fell to a very low level - yes, so it did work. Then unlocking caused infections to rise, which was emminently predictable. But then no one expected it to "work" in the longer term: I always believed the strategy was to delay the worst until a vaccine had been developed. Only the naive could have thought a lockdown would "cure" the disease.

Can you prove convincingly that if we hadn't had a lockdown the situation would have been better now? Thought not, so your reverse question is equally pointless - just rhetorical technique that sounds good but shows nothing.

My view is that there would have been a continuing upsurge in deaths if lockdown hadn't happened and the NHS would have been in dire straits at that time. Whether herd immunity would have kicked in by now we will never know, but the total deaths might well have been three or four times higher when it did.

As it is lockdown has worked: it enabled the NHS to function without being overwhelmed, it allowed some significant economic activity to return, it reduced the number of deaths until a vaccine was developed.


Arb.

[johnhemming]

Fair enough. Let's run a short thought experiment. Imagine that there hadn't been a lockdown ...

The evidence (comparing the charts of hospital admissions between Sweden and England) is that the peak number of hospital admissions would not have been any higher, but that
a) The number of cases in the initial wave would have been more and it would have lasted longer

b) The number of cases in the subsequent wave would have been lower (to a greater extent than the increase in the earlier wave).

Now I know this is a contentious statement and it is nigh on impossible we will get agreement on this now. However, these issues will be subject to scrutiny for many years and the emotional energy behind particular positions will get gradually replaced by rational analysis and accepted conclusions.

At the moment it is possible to keep a weather eye on what is happening in other countries in Europe and use that to inform what we expect to happen in the UK.

[JamesMuenchen]

- that's IF you can't catch it twice

If you can catch it twice, would it be possible to have an effective vaccine?

[johnhemming]

- that's IF you can't catch it twice

If you can catch it twice, would it be possible to have an effective vaccine?

This "catch it twice" thing has been floating around for some time. PHE have now accepted in a press report today that the vast majority of people who catch it get some immunity. However, that was predicted at the start and was obvious in that there were not vast numbers of people with repeat infections.

Some people - a very small number - catch it twice.

[redsturgeon]

Thanks but as soon as I saw the date was October 20th 2020 I didn't read any further. Well, not quite true, as this is a blog, or report, so I thought I would at least go to the source. That was dated September 18th 2020.

At least that was the publication date, which was of research carried out between 2nd March 2020 and 5th August 2020.

Now it doesn't take a particularly competent mathematician to overlay those dates with the path of the pandemic. I'm not sure I would see how relevant that 11% statistic is to the current situation.

When I have a bit more time I will read it properly (honestly), the original source that is. I won't hold the lack of peer review against it (honestly) so few papers have been peer reviewed in last 12 months.

That's fair enough. The 11% is one I just remember hearing about that time. I would not have thought it had changed significantly to reach anywhere near 100% do you?

John

No I guess it will depend on what is being measured. I suspect anything close to 100%, say 89%, is as unlikely as anything like 0%, or 11%!

Heard last night on Newsnight that the latest estimate for compliance with self isolation is 30%.

John

[johnhemming]

Heard last night on Newsnight that the latest estimate for compliance with self isolation is 30%.

When I hear these headline figures I always wonder what this actually means. Does it mean that 70% of people don't self isolate at all, does it mean that measured by the time people should be self isolating only 30% of the time they stay isolated or does it mean only 30% of people are fully compliant.

That is one of the reasons why I have not really watched Newsnight for decades (or many of these programmes) they don't give enough information to understand what they mean. I also know from personal experience that the skew the news agenda in various random ways that prevents people getting knowledge. It is more about entertainment and if we remember the "big things" they were things like Jeremy Paxman asking the same question lots of times (possibly 12) which in restrospect did not add an iota of understanding of a wrongful thing that may have, but in fact did not occur.

[dealtn]

That is exactly the problem - you can never know if what you didn't do would have been better or worse. It is all speculation.

All i know is that we had a severe lockdown for 3 months last year and ultimately it did not work, other than delaying many infections until the weather was worse.

Ultimately, we are all dead, so nothing works

But shouldn't we define what one means by "it works"? It worked in the sense that infections and deaths fell to a very low level - yes, so it did work. Then unlocking caused infections to rise, which was emminently predictable. But then no one expected it to "work" in the longer term: I always believed the strategy was to delay the worst until a vaccine had been developed. Only the naive could have thought a lockdown would "cure" the disease.

Can you prove convincingly that if we hadn't had a lockdown the situation would have been better now? Thought not, so your reverse question is equally pointless - just rhetorical technique that sounds good but shows nothing.

My view is that there would have been a continuing upsurge in deaths if lockdown hadn't happened and the NHS would have been in dire straits at that time. Whether herd immunity would have kicked in by now we will never know, but the total deaths might well have been three or four times higher when it did.

As it is lockdown has worked: it enabled the NHS to function without being overwhelmed, it allowed some significant economic activity to return, it reduced the number of deaths until a vaccine was developed.


Arb.

It's genuinely debateable, and like you say definitions are important here. Academically it is probably going to be looked at well after the pandemic passes.

It can be argued, especially if the objective was to "Protect the NHS", and not to save lives, that it might have been "better" to have reopened sooner, and allowed the disease to exist at a higher, and hopefully manageable level, in the Summer/Autumn period. More would have had it, passed it on, been treated, and died as a result in those months, but arguably the Winter peak would have been lower. Some argue catching it in Winter is worse than at other times (so presumably individuals would rather get it in Summer given the choice), and the resource pressure on the NHS from non-Covid sources is already stretch and eating into Covid capacity in Winter.

In practice do we think it really was about protecting the NHS and not saving lives? I don't think so. In practice could a government admit is was willing to sacrifice lives in the short term as part of a bigger plan? I don't think so either.

What was particularly disappointing, though perhaps not surprising, was the slow response to reopen those parts of the NHS offering non-Covid diagnostics and treatments as the first wave diminished. Your argument that lockdown enabled the NHS to function without being overwhelmed is probably true in a Covid context, but "function", and certainly "function optimally" (or close to it), I think was a general failure at the nadir.

[johnhemming]

It's genuinely debateable, and like you say definitions are important here. Academically it is probably going to be looked at well after the pandemic passes.

Obviously I agree that it is possible to debate the effect of any one of the lockdowns. For the first lockdown we have a comparable situation in Sweden which acts as a control experiment.

It is very obvious that it was not a necessarily condition of the number of infections reducing going into the summer was the lockdown.

In fact the BLM demonstrations showed that the number of infections was not that sensitive to people remaining in their homes. In the end it was sensitive to the weather.

[Newroad]

Hi All.

On the catch it twice discussion, I wonder if that is affected by how far it got the first time around.

From an earlier BBC article, is was suggested that from day 0 your innate immune system fights it (sometimes badly, causing cytokine storms etc) and then around day 10 your adaptive immune system kicks in and starts fighting it in a more targeted way.

I wonder if you get over it before your adaptive immune system kicks in, you might get it again - as I'm guessing that's the part of the immune system which has the "memory"?

Regards, Newroad

[redsturgeon]

Heard last night on Newsnight that the latest estimate for compliance with self isolation is 30%.

When I hear these headline figures I always wonder what this actually means. Does it mean that 70% of people don't self isolate at all, does it mean that measured by the time people should be self isolating only 30% of the time they stay isolated or does it mean only 30% of people are fully compliant.

That is one of the reasons why I have not really watched Newsnight for decades (or many of these programmes) they don't give enough information to understand what they mean. I also know from personal experience that the skew the news agenda in various random ways that prevents people getting knowledge. It is more about entertainment and if we remember the "big things" they were things like Jeremy Paxman asking the same question lots of times (possibly 12) which in restrospect did not add an iota of understanding of a wrongful thing that may have, but in fact did not occur.

When I hear this figure it gives me some more information that I didn't have before hearing the figure. I am now reasonably confident that most people do not self isolate when required to. I could of course ignore this information since I have not read a double blind randomised crossover study reporting it but life's too short.


John

[XFool]

Covid: Infections 'plateauing' in some areas - scientist

BBC News

The coronavirus growth rate is slowing in the UK and the number of infections are starting to level off in some areas, a top scientist has said.

"Prof Neil Ferguson told the BBC that in some NHS regions there is a "sign of plateauing" in cases and hospital admissions.

But he warned the overall death toll would exceed 100,000."