On the way down?

[dealtn]

I'm sure there were lots of articles in the Spectator and Telegraph about how imposing lockdown would somehow make everything worse, and the only cure was to head for the 20% herd immunity threshold without delay.

I doubt it.

[vagrantbrain]

Not quite, some examples in the paper below of estimates in the US where cases and deaths went in the complete opposite direction to what was being forecast.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7447267/

Most extreme is the FEMA prediction for New York after reopening last summer: 70% increase in deaths and a 700% increase in cases - reality was a 60% decrease in deaths and a 15% reduction in cases.

I remember reading plenty of articles last year where various people were predicting cases rising to the hundreds of thousands per day in the UK during the first lockdown while cases on the covid dashboard were actually trending down.

I read your link - that's not a paper, that's a rant. I mean, just read this bit from your link. Starvation and malaria rife in the US because of lockdown? That's Piers Corbyn/David Icke territory. (Although to be fair, maybe we are being ruled by giant alien lizards, I mean let's keep an open mind!)

The general population was locked and placed in horror-alert to save health systems from collapsing..... The prospects of starvation and of lack of control of other infectious diseases (such as tuberculosis, malaria, and childhood communicable diseases where vaccination is hindered by COVID-19 measures) are dire

So no examples in the UK? As for your UK anecdotal, no intelligent expert or analyst ever said that imposing lockdown would make cases increase. I'm sure there were lots of articles in the Spectator and Telegraph about how imposing lockdown would somehow make everything worse, and the only cure was to head for the 20% herd immunity threshold without delay.

The nearest thing to a discredited UK prediction I remember was last Autumn when the wrong slides were used in a Downing Street presentation, and the predicted infection rate was rubbished, although the predicted hospitalisation rate proved to be accurate.

Sorry, next time i'll write a peer-reviewed and fully referenced thesis before posting my experiences.

And my point has nothing to do with imposing lockdowns or not - it was about evidence of cases beginning to fall while the experts were still predicting they had much further to rise.

[zico]

Sorry, next time i'll write a peer-reviewed and fully referenced thesis before posting my experiences.

And my point has nothing to do with imposing lockdowns or not - it was about evidence of cases beginning to fall while the experts were still predicting they had much further to rise.

"Experts always get it wrong" is just such a trite throwaway line, but hard to justify with actual evidence. It's politicians who've got this disastrously wrong (not just in the UK of course) while experts have been busy saving the politicians' skins by developing world-beating vaccines, making expert predictions, and (trickiest of all) attempting valiantly to educate politicians that Low Numbers Now + Exponential Growth = Trouble Ahead.

[zico]

I'm sure there were lots of articles in the Spectator and Telegraph about how imposing lockdown would somehow make everything worse, and the only cure was to head for the 20% herd immunity threshold without delay.

I doubt it.

The magic of Google. 4th May 2020 Spectator article - headling "Herd immunity may only need 10-20% of people to be infected"!

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/her ... ction-rate

But it is interesting that it gives an estimate for herd immunity of between 10 and 20 per cent, because that echoes real-life experience.

It is a figure which gave rise to the now-famous paper by Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, which claimed that a herd immunity policy (which the government denies ever following) would result in the deaths of 250,000 people in Britain.

So herd immunity would have been achieved with 10-20% infected, or herd immunity would have resulted in 250,000 deaths - which prediction did best?

On lockdowns, here's a recent Spectator article from 14th April 2021 about how some other wonderful magical thing always happens at the same time that lockdowns start, and it's the magical thing that reduces numbers, not the lockdowns.

The Prime Minister said on Tuesday that lockdown, far more than vaccines, explains the fall in hospitalisations, deaths and infections. But how sure are we that only lockdown caused these falls — in the first, second and third wave? Or were other interventions, plus people’s spontaneous reactions to rising cases, enough to get R below one?

In a peer-reviewed paper now published in Biometrics, I find that, in all three cases, Covid-19 levels were probably falling before lockdown. A separate paper, with colleague Ernst Wit, comes to the same conclusion for the first two lockdowns, by the alternative approach of re-doing Imperial College’s major modelling study of the epidemic in 2020. In light of this, the Imperial College claim that new infections were surging right up until lockdown one — causing about 20,000 avoidable deaths — seems rather questionable.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/cov ... e-evidence

[vagrantbrain]

Sorry, next time i'll write a peer-reviewed and fully referenced thesis before posting my experiences.

And my point has nothing to do with imposing lockdowns or not - it was about evidence of cases beginning to fall while the experts were still predicting they had much further to rise.

"Experts always get it wrong" is just such a trite throwaway line, but hard to justify with actual evidence. It's politicians who've got this disastrously wrong (not just in the UK of course) while experts have been busy saving the politicians' skins by developing world-beating vaccines, making expert predictions, and (trickiest of all) attempting valiantly to educate politicians that Low Numbers Now + Exponential Growth = Trouble Ahead.

I didn't say experts always get it wrong??

[dealtn]

I'm sure there were lots of articles in the Spectator and Telegraph about how imposing lockdown would somehow make everything worse, and the only cure was to head for the 20% herd immunity threshold without delay.

I doubt it.

The magic of Google. 4th May 2020 Spectator article - headling "Herd immunity may only need 10-20% of people to be infected"!

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/her ... ction-rate

But it is interesting that it gives an estimate for herd immunity of between 10 and 20 per cent, because that echoes real-life experience.

It is a figure which gave rise to the now-famous paper by Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, which claimed that a herd immunity policy (which the government denies ever following) would result in the deaths of 250,000 people in Britain.

So herd immunity would have been achieved with 10-20% infected, or herd immunity would have resulted in 250,000 deaths - which prediction did best?

On lockdowns, here's a recent Spectator article from 14th April 2021 about how some other wonderful magical thing always happens at the same time that lockdowns start, and it's the magical thing that reduces numbers, not the lockdowns.

The Prime Minister said on Tuesday that lockdown, far more than vaccines, explains the fall in hospitalisations, deaths and infections. But how sure are we that only lockdown caused these falls — in the first, second and third wave? Or were other interventions, plus people’s spontaneous reactions to rising cases, enough to get R below one?

In a peer-reviewed paper now published in Biometrics, I find that, in all three cases, Covid-19 levels were probably falling before lockdown. A separate paper, with colleague Ernst Wit, comes to the same conclusion for the first two lockdowns, by the alternative approach of re-doing Imperial College’s major modelling study of the epidemic in 2020. In light of this, the Imperial College claim that new infections were surging right up until lockdown one — causing about 20,000 avoidable deaths — seems rather questionable.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/cov ... e-evidence

So contrary to your claim of "loads" that ... "Make everything worse" you provide 1 link that has in its headline the word "may" and refers to a 3rd party, and isn't even about lockdown.

Your second link, which is about lockdown, doesn't make the claim about everything being worse either.

[zico]

So contrary to your claim of "loads" that ... "Make everything worse" you provide 1 link that has in its headline the word "may" and refers to a 3rd party, and isn't even about lockdown.

Your second link, which is about lockdown, doesn't make the claim about everything being worse either.

Are you saying because I said "loads of articles" you need me to give you every single Covid-minimising article from the Spectator over the last 18 months?
In under 30 seconds, I found 2 Spectator articles. If you're interested, I suggest you look back through Spectator articles and compare the number of "Covid is really serious - let's be cautious" articles to "Covid is no biggie - let's get on with life" articles.

[dealtn]

So contrary to your claim of "loads" that ... "Make everything worse" you provide 1 link that has in its headline the word "may" and refers to a 3rd party, and isn't even about lockdown.

Your second link, which is about lockdown, doesn't make the claim about everything being worse either.

Are you saying because I said "loads of articles" you need me to give you every single Covid-minimising article from the Spectator over the last 18 months?
In under 30 seconds, I found 2 Spectator articles. If you're interested, I suggest you look back through Spectator articles and compare the number of "Covid is really serious - let's be cautious" articles to "Covid is no biggie - let's get on with life" articles.

No I don't need you to do anything. Feel free to back up your statement with as many examples as you like though.

As I say, I doubt it, and nothing you produced so far changes my mind.

If you had made a claim the Spectator and the Telegraph published multiple features on the Coronavirus crisis, not all of which were accepting of the consensus, or Sage position, or indeed your own, then I doubt I would have had an issue with that. That's broad investigative journalism for you.

Instead re-read what you actually said.

[zico]

Something very strange is happening with Scotland trend for infections compared to UK infections.
Scotland's infections have halved in the last month, while the UK infections have doubled over the same time period.
Can anyone explain this big discrepancy?

[vagrantbrain]

Something very strange is happening with Scotland trend for infections compared to UK infections.
Scotland's infections have halved in the last month, while the UK infections have doubled over the same time period.
Can anyone explain this big discrepancy?

It's been suggested scotland getting knocked out of the euros early on reduced the amount of socialising whereas the parties continued in england for a few weeks after. True or not I don't know but seems plausible.

Having said that where I work in the NW has seen cases drop from a peak several weeks ago where they were once the highest in the country, although they were one of the first places it took hold. With no basis in fact I wonder if the Delta variant is too infectious for it's own good and burning itself out. Certainly cases in India have dropped dramatically after the carnage a while ago

[Itsallaguess]

Schools closed earlier In Scotland as well, which, along with the earlier exit from the Euros, seems to give both the clearest explanation for the lag in dropping cases in England, and also hopefully a good indication for where we might also end up in the coming weeks and months.

All eyes, of course, are likely to be focussed on the next couple of weeks for England, where any fallout from the changes made on the 19th might start to be seen in the cases figures...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[UncleEbenezer]

Schools closed earlier In Scotland as well, which, along with the earlier exit from the Euros, seems to give both the clearest explanation for the lag in dropping cases in England, and also hopefully a good indication for where we might also end up in the coming weeks and months.

All eyes, of course, are likely to be focussed on the next couple of weeks for England, where any fallout from the changes made on the 19th might start to be seen in the cases figures...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

Busiest travel time since BC may push England's short-term stats upwards. But thereafter I expect things to improve, in a mirror image of what happened a year ago when the requirement to wear germ-incubators brought an end to the decline and the start of a second-wave rise.

[swill453]

Is it possible that the downturns, both in Scotland and England, are because we're not testing school kids by the thousand out of term?

So they may still be catching and spreading it, but because it's asymptomatic and they're not being tested as a matter of course, they're missing from the stats.

Scott.

[daveh]

Is it possible that the downturns, both in Scotland and England, are because we're not testing school kids by the thousand out of term?

So they may still be catching and spreading it, but because it's asymptomatic and they're not being tested as a matter of course, they're missing from the stats.

Scott.

Unlikely, if so you would have expected cases to start rising in Scotland by now, but they continue to fall. Why, because schools have been closed for several weeks, so any lack of kids testing would now have fallen out of the data and if it was spreading from them into adults, symptomatic adults should by now be causing case rates to increase.

[jfgw]

Is it possible that the downturns, both in Scotland and England, are because we're not testing school kids by the thousand out of term?

So they may still be catching and spreading it, but because it's asymptomatic and they're not being tested as a matter of course, they're missing from the stats.

Scott.

It does seem uncanny that the England region graphs look so similar. Higher case numbers do correspond with slightly earlier peaks but there could be a combined effect. I would expect school kids to meet with a smaller circle of classmates (and for that circle to have some consistency) out of term, thus reducing transmission. You make a very good point about a potential much lower detection rate, however.

I have included Northern Ireland (spelling mistake spotted — corrected in spreadsheet), Scotland, and Wales for comparison.


My graph. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. : https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/


Julian F. G. W.


Edit:
Scotland cases peaked earlier and hospital admissions peaked about a week later which suggests that the downturn for Scotland is real.

[jfgw]

Looking at the cases data, all age groups peaked within a few days of each other so I don't think that school kids not being tested is a major factor. There could be a knock-on effect where fewer kids testing positive mean fewer adults getting tested but this would result in fewer tests. While this is the case, the drop in tests is much less than the drop in cases.


My graph. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. : https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/


Julian F. G. W.

[scotia]

Edit:
Scotland cases peaked earlier and hospital admissions peaked about a week later which suggests that the downturn for Scotland is real.

I agree - 7-day Scottish Admissions have peaked (about 2 weeks ago), and are falling. The statistics on 7-day Scottish Deaths are poor, but they may now be around the peak. A bit more patience will be needed before reaching any firmer conclusions.

[funduffer]

It is a confusing picture.

For the first time, the Zoe study is at odds with government case data (although not with ONS and REACT, although these don't have as up-to-date data). Zoe shows cases rising/flattening off, whereas government data shows cases sharply dropping. Here is Tim Spector's latest video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p7ok5aIX6s

What might be the reason for this? A couple of thoughts:

1. Testing has reduced due to large reduction in lateral flow tests, as schools break up. Kids will not now be regularly tested unless they become symptomatic.

2. Covid symptoms are different in the vaccinated compared to the classic covid symptoms you need to get a test. The Zoe survey will pick up these cases, but anyone who has them will either think its not covid, or will be refused a test because they have the 'wrong' symptoms.

As to the future, I take heart from Scotland that their Euros exit and earlier school holidays are probably important in their recent fall in cases and hospitalisations. Maybe England will follow this same path. On the other hand, opening up in England may well reverse this apparent drop in cases.

The next few weeks will be interesting.

[redsturgeon]

It is a confusing picture.

For the first time, the Zoe study is at odds with government case data (although not with ONS and REACT, although these don't have as up-to-date data). Zoe shows cases rising/flattening off, whereas government data shows cases sharply dropping. Here is Tim Spector's latest video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p7ok5aIX6s

What might be the reason for this? A couple of thoughts:

1. Testing has reduced due to large reduction in lateral flow tests, as schools break up. Kids will not now be regularly tested unless they become symptomatic.

2. Covid symptoms are different in the vaccinated compared to the classic covid symptoms you need to get a test. The Zoe survey will pick up these cases, but anyone who has them will either think its not covid, or will be refused a test because they have the 'wrong' symptoms.

As to the future, I take heart from Scotland that their Euros exit and earlier school holidays are probably important in their recent fall in cases and hospitalisations. Maybe England will follow this same path. On the other hand, opening up in England may well reverse this apparent drop in cases.

The next few weeks will be interesting.

Third reason that we are picking up via customers.

Person self tests with LFT and if positive sees no reason to go (and may reasons not to) get a PCR test to confirm thus is never entered into the statistics.

John

[zico]

Latest ONS figures are out today, covering the week up to 24th July (last Saturday). So 2 days pre-freedom, and 5 post-freedom days.
Here's the link, it's quite readable with a good summary and informative graphs.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... 30july2021

Main points (IMHO).
Percentage of population infected continues to rise, though with signs of slowing. Latest weekly figure is 1.6% - last time it was this high was in Dec20.
Highest % was about 2.1% in Jan21.
Worryingly, it took 4 months last autumn to go from very low infections to 2.1% but it's only taken about 6 weeks to go from very low infections to 1.6%.

People under 24 years old (including children of course) have the highest rates of infections (highest in 3.6% - in school Year 12 to age 24). Very steady upwards trends for infection in schoolchildren (hardly surprising as they're unvaccinated). Good news is that the infection % for Year 12-Age 24 group looks to have peaked, and other adult age ranges below age 50 looks stable, though rates in 50+ age groups are still growing.

As children are now on school holidays, their infection rates should reduce for the next few weeks as they will have fewer chances to get infected. Unless they get vaccinated, I expect their infection rates to rise again once they return to school and are exposed to other infected children.

Children account for about 20% of the population, so we may well see an temporary dampening of the overall trend in infection rates between now and September.