Coronavirus - Modelling Aspects Only

[johnhemming]

My guess (aka hypothesis) is that one part of this is the weather which reduces the viral load that people go up. Hence as it gets colder later this year one would expect the proportion of people hospitalised who die to increase. However, obviously there are other factors as well.

[Mike4]

On an ongoing basis, that's likely to be very important in terms of any future spikes and how they are handled, given that we can perhaps start to draw lines in the sand in terms of how far back we might need to reverse any lockdown protocols to 'get back to where we are now'...[/i]

It is worth reminding ourselves that full lockdown is a measure only necessary at the very beginning of a pandemic when very little is known about the characteristics of the infection. Rather like that nice Mr Wanamaker's comment about advertising budgets "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half", the same principle applies to lockdowns. We don't know which parts of a lockdown are doing the trick.

Lockdowns are a 'catch-all' while you learn which aspects of lockdown actually work, and which aspects make little difference and can be dispensed with. For example it has been decided that gathering in pub gardens at a distance from each other carries little risk, need not be banned and will be allowed once again shortly. On the other hand, the fine tuning has led to wearing of face coverings on public transport being made mandatory.

So in the light of advancing knowledge I doubt we will ever need to go back to full lockdown. If infection rates take off again we will have a clearer idea about what measures to concentrate on.

The biggest risk still lies in our politicians resisting implementing the measures necessary quickly enough in my personal opinion, as has been the story all along since day one.

[feder1]

We have just received an email from the Covid Symptom Study app (Zoe) which includes:

“Many of you have also asked why our data differ from the ONS. We will be sharing a detailed comparison of the data from next week explaining why these differ.”

This will be interesting.

[johnhemming]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... oronavirus

Can you develop a T cell response without developing antibodies? That seems to be a possibility: a small study of patients and their families shows that an unexpected six out of eight family members who caught the virus at home had T cell responses but no detectable antibodies.

[johnhemming]

It appears that CEBM publish the hospital admissions:
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19- ... dmissions/

(the chart seems to be updated every day even though the page is dated 1st may)

The independent Sage committee suggest that admissions are 2 weeks after infection. That does not seem unreasonable to me.

I think we can conclude from this that the protests etc earlier this month are not increasing infections in any substantial way. Which is what I expected.

[Mike4]

I think we can conclude from this that the protests etc earlier this month are not increasing infections in any substantial way. Which is what I expected.

And yet it is (was?) widely regarded that the infection here in the UK was given a massive kick off by Cheltenham going ahead, and *that* football match, both of which were outdoor events too.

I wonder what the big difference was.

[johnhemming]

It is really difficult to work out what is happening from testing as the number and the statistical nature of the people tested drives the results perhaps moreso than the amount of infection around.

Hospital admissions, however, cannot be used to monitor the position today. They have to monitor the situation around 2 week ago. However, anyone infected today could have been infected weeks ago as well.

[tjh290633]

And yet it is (was?) widely regarded that the infection here in the UK was given a massive kick off by Cheltenham going ahead, and *that* football match, both of which were outdoor events too.

I wonder what the big difference was.

Was there a spike in infections in the Republic of Ireland after Cheltenham? I would have thought that they would have imported a lot of infection if that meeting was a major source.

TJH

[Nimrod103]

I think we can conclude from this that the protests etc earlier this month are not increasing infections in any substantial way. Which is what I expected.

And yet it is (was?) widely regarded that the infection here in the UK was given a massive kick off by Cheltenham going ahead, and *that* football match, both of which were outdoor events too.

I wonder what the big difference was.

Widely regarded by who?
Only serious scientific evidence please.

[Mike4]

I think we can conclude from this that the protests etc earlier this month are not increasing infections in any substantial way. Which is what I expected.

And yet it is (was?) widely regarded that the infection here in the UK was given a massive kick off by Cheltenham going ahead, and *that* football match, both of which were outdoor events too.

I wonder what the big difference was.

Widely regarded by who?
Only serious scientific evidence please.

Widely regarded by me and The Guardian.

"Several deaths in city have been blamed on 11 March football game against Atlético Madrid"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... pool-match

You disagree and hold that the Cheltenham meeting and the Liverpool Vs Atlético Madrid football match on March 11th had no impact on the start of the epidemic in the UK, then?

Just asking for your opinion. You don't have to produce evidence.

[johnhemming]

You disagree and hold that the Cheltenham meeting and the Liverpool Vs Atlético Madrid football match on March 11th had no impact on the start of the epidemic in the UK, then?

The difficulty with this is you can have the events having "no impact" a "massive kick off", or "some impact".

It is clear that the virus was circulating in the UK before March. Hence the match did not bring the virus into the UK. However, singing and shouting is a good way of infecting people. Hence the match probably did spread disease in Liverpool possibly more from UK citizen to UK citizen than from Spaniard to UK citizen - we will never know.

The guardian's analysis of Cheltenham is flawed because it considers infection by people living around the racecourse. That only really is relevant if they work in large numbers at the race course.

In retrospect I would guess that the football match was more effective at spreading disease than Cheltenham. I would disagree with "massive kick off", however (for either of those).

[johnhemming]

I was thinking about testing in the light of discussions about Leicester potentially having a local lockdown of some form. I have tended to ignore testing results in terms of case numbers as it depends primarily on how many tests are taken.

However, there is another way of looking at testing which is to determine how responsive it is to increases in infection rates. If we assume for the purposes of argument that people are infected for four weeks and then stop being infected. If we assume that infection rates are static and then double on a particular day. Then making the assumption that all statistical noise is dropped out and the number of tests remains constant one would expect on the day after that on which the infection rate doubles the test positive rate would go up by a factor of 1 1/28. Assuming still that the increase in infection rate stays at the doubled rate it would take two weeks to take the test rate up by 50%.

Hence it appears that apart from extreme increases in infection rates it will take a while for an increased infection rate to feed significantly into the figures and actually we may find that hospital admissions are a more timely measure. (they being subject to a 2 week delay from infection)

[Nimrod103]

In retrospect I would guess that the football match was more effective at spreading disease than Cheltenham. I would disagree with "massive kick off", however (for either of those).

As has been mentioned on this thread before. There were 1000 football supporters arrived from Spain, in the same week as there were 30,000 arrivals from Spanish airports. A drop in the ocean. The event also happened outdoors, where transmission is believed to be much less likely. And the Spanish fans probably didn't fraternise very much with the locals.

[servodude]

In retrospect I would guess that the football match was more effective at spreading disease than Cheltenham. I would disagree with "massive kick off", however (for either of those).

As has been mentioned on this thread before. There were 1000 football supporters arrived from Spain, in the same week as there were 30,000 arrivals from Spanish airports. A drop in the ocean. The event also happened outdoors, where transmission is believed to be much less likely. And the Spanish fans probably didn't fraternise very much with the locals.

There's a lot of SHOUTING around sporting events though; and not just in the grounds.
That helps transmission.
- sd

[johnhemming]

Looking at with hindsight I think it is reasonable to suggest that the majority of viral spread in Liverpool was within the UK supporters rather than from Spain.

[dealtn]

In retrospect I would guess that the football match was more effective at spreading disease than Cheltenham. I would disagree with "massive kick off", however (for either of those).

As has been mentioned on this thread before. There were 1000 football supporters arrived from Spain, in the same week as there were 30,000 arrivals from Spanish airports. A drop in the ocean. The event also happened outdoors, where transmission is believed to be much less likely. And the Spanish fans probably didn't fraternise very much with the locals.

There's a lot of SHOUTING around sporting events though; and not just in the grounds.
That helps transmission.
- sd

Yes it "helps" but with pretty strict segregation much of that transmission was Spaniard to Spaniard. There may have been some cross infection but I would suspect it to be very small, certainly compared to the numbers travelling to this country with nothing to do with that match.

[feder1]

Worldometers seems to have gone awry again.

It quotes UK total cases as 283757 today and yesterday it was 313483. A cumulative figure can,t go down.

The total deaths figures seem ok.

[swill453]

Worldometers seems to have gone awry again.

It quotes UK total cases as 283757 today and yesterday it was 313483. A cumulative figure can,t go down.

See https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus ... the-public

We have updated the methodology of reporting positive cases, to remove duplicates within and across pillars 1 and 2, to ensure that a person who tests positive is only counted once. Methodologies between nations differ and we will be making future revisions to align approaches as much as possible across the 4 nations.

Due to this change, and a revision of historical data in pillar 1, the cumulative total for positive cases is 30,302 lower than if you added the daily figure to yesterday’s total. We will revise the methodology note explaining this in more detail in due course.

Scott.

[1nvest]

My by-eye casual guesstimate is that perhaps 29 million of the UK population may already have had it (43% of the population). ONS figures ...

which might explain why crowded beaches/parks and mass protests hasn't seen a sharp number of hospital admissions.

i.e. Government under-reported number of Covid deaths (around half the number reported as having died), so 80,000 deaths / 0.0028 Crude Mortality Rate type figure as a indicator of total number of contractions. Broadly 10,000/week die in the UK and the area above that average in the chart above seems to suggest a 80,000 additional (above average) number.

In which case pubs/restaurants opening this weekend may similarly see subsequent hospital admissions remaining low. At least here's hoping so. If the rest contract it before the winter/flu season, then we could be coming out of the woods and be back to normal again before the end of the year.

US seems to be behind on that scale. Proportionately reporting around 60% of the number of UK deaths, so presumably still on the steep part of the herd immunity transition curve. Yet others that have kept figures right down may still see the same proportion of deaths overall by the time herd immunity is evident, but where they'll be in repeated lockdown/openup/lockdown cycles for much longer, and enduring the more prolonged economic hit that involves. Could still all end with the UK having been seen to have taken the best approach - and is perhaps why Johnson has said that its the final outcome that we should be measured by rather that the ongoing interim numbers.

[redsturgeon]

My by-eye casual guesstimate is that perhaps 29 million of the UK population may already have had it (43% of the population). ONS figures ...

which might explain why crowded beaches/parks and mass protests hasn't seen a sharp number of hospital admissions.

i.e. Government under-reported number of Covid deaths (around half the number reported as having died), so 80,000 deaths / 0.0028 Crude Mortality Rate type figure as a indicator of total number of contractions. Broadly 10,000/week die in the UK and the area above that average in the chart above seems to suggest a 80,000 additional (above average) number.

In which case pubs/restaurants opening this weekend may similarly see subsequent hospital admissions remaining low. At least here's hoping so. If the rest contract it before the winter/flu season, then we could be coming out of the woods and be back to normal again before the end of the year.

US seems to be behind on that scale. Proportionately reporting around 60% of the number of UK deaths, so presumably still on the steep part of the herd immunity transition curve. Yet others that have kept figures right down may still see the same proportion of deaths overall by the time herd immunity is evident, but where they'll be in repeated lockdown/openup/lockdown cycles for much longer, and enduring the more prolonged economic hit that involves. Could still all end with the UK having been seen to have taken the best approach - and is perhaps why Johnson has said that its the final outcome that we should be measured by rather that the ongoing interim numbers.

I hope you are correct but how do we explain the Leicester blip?

John