AIBU in thinking that there’s a bug in the COVID data this week?

[InkKeepsRunning]

I’ve looked everywhere on line, but I can’t see anyone talking about it. The COVID figures appear to have stabilised at around 40,000 per day across the last 4 days.

That’s not how a virus which grows exponentially usually works. It seems to be far too early to the the natural plateau given only about 50% of the population is vaccinated and we won’t yet have seen any benefits of school holidays.

So - can anyone explain what’s going on, or am I being unreasonable in thinking we are going to hear in the next few days that there has been a data blip and “something” has been missing?

I suppose there are a number of explanations, and probably a combination of all of them:

1. The vast majority of people in the UK now have antibodies (either through natural immunity or vaccination) which will limit spread in the first place.

1. People who want to go on holiday / do summer things will undoubtedly be actively avoiding testing, particularly LFTs, so they don’t end up having to isolate and miss out.

1. Fewer children being regularly tested as standard now that schools are breaking up - a huge proportion of cases were in asymptomatic children who wouldn’t otherwise have known they had it.

And no doubt many more I haven’t thought of.

A lot of schools broke up last Friday so that will have affected the data.

Due to the rise in infections, huge numbers of people have scaled back and are restricting their activities. I've been surprised many times at how quiet are the roads, shops, restaurants, pubs, etc. It looks as if lots of people are making their own decisions about how much risk they want to take and are really cutting back on the non essential stuff at the moment to try to get over the wave of infections, especially those in the worst affected areas.

Just because some people have gone "gung ho" at everything being opened up, doesn't mean that the majority have cast aside all precautions! Plenty have voluntarily gone back a step or two.

Also, with more people testing positive, and more people suffering symptoms (even slight), nearly everyone knows someone with covid at the moment. In the first wave, lots of people didn't know anyone with it, so it did seem to be something that "happened to others"! When you see people close to you with it, it does drive it home to you how common it is at the moment and how easily it's spreading.

Why would it be growing exponentially?

I think that Comtesse has the answer, above. I had been thinking the same. Hoping that schools breaking up will break the transmission chain, and reduce the number of cases, though I suspect a big surge in 18-30 year olds will have started this week now that nightlife has reopened with no restrictions.

Football effects petering out

Schools closing

People being reluctant to test in case it’s positive before going on holiday

Good weather so more outdoor socialising

People limiting their socialising not to get pinged before holiday

Likely due to many not testing or isolating even with symptoms as don’t want their plans disrupted.

There will always be a maximum potential even for exponential rise.

It’s 70% of adults that are fully vaccinated. Plus the 5.9 million adults and children who are confirmed to have already had it, plus all the unknown and untested symptomless cases that have already happened.

We are likely to soon reach a point where the cases start to reduce because the virus can’t bounce around as many people. Those vaccinated and with natural immunity are acting as blockers.

I thought roughly 2/3 of the adult population have been double jabbed? I suppose that amounts to 50% of the total though.

Immunity through infection must be growing exponentially.

So maybe it is levelling off. But more likely someone is using an old version of Excel which has chopped off a ton of data.

@Rioja81

Why would it be growing exponentially?

Exactly. We've been conditioned to thinking that it's automatically going to grow exponentially, but that's just an estimate/projection, and is pretty meaningless anyway, as the term "exponential" doesn't give the full picture, i.e. it doesn't say over what timescale that it's exponential. Basically, it's the scientists/politicians/media way of explaining something that grows and spreads very fast. But like a lot of things, the term is so dumbed down to be meaningless.

But even the vaguest and simplest use of the term was used to illustrate the growth WITHOUT restrictions/precautions.

Despite there no longer being any legal restrictions, most people will be taking their own form of precautions, even the most minimal of changes that don't affect them. Some will still be avoiding crowded places, not going on holiday, not going to pubs/restrictions, not shaking hands/hugging relative strangers, etc etc.

The latest wave has been very well publicised over the last few weeks and I think that will have "nudged" a lot of people to carry on with precautions and scale back on some of the "riskier" things they've started to do again over the last few months.

It's a kind of more "natural" behaviour regulator. When infection rates fall again, I think people will reverse that and start doing more again, and rinse and repeat over the next few months as the infection rates rise/reduce.

Thanks for the comments - the lack of school testing could be part of it.

Interesting those saying people in their area haven’t loosened behaviour, it must be location specific, as where we are, they definitely have.

For those asking about exponential, until the start of the week, it was doubling every 3 weeks (exponential growth) and suddenly virtually one day on the next it flattens? Just doesn’t feel right - if it continued exponentially but doubling every 4 weeks, then every 5 etc, then I might get it… but from every 3 weeks to completely flat, doesn’t pass the sniff test to me.

I didn’t think it would continue growing for ever, but the scientific consensus I had seen, seemed to indicate this change couldn’t happen with the level of immunity we have yet. Will be interesting to see.

What's the number of tests doing? Has % positivity gone up?

I spoke to a teacher who speculated that some of growth a while back was people testing pre holiday. Hence more infections found. Also there was a shortage of LFTs which may have affected numbers.

Yes, test positivity is up. This is from Prof Kit Yates’ thread on Twitter…

It's exactly what you would expect when you start to get close to herd immunity. It's starts to run out of hosts, the r number decreases then infections contract.

@gogohm

It's exactly what you would expect when you start to get close to herd immunity. It's starts to run out of hosts, the r number decreases then infections contract.

But surely if it’s natural, it turns slowly, it doesn’t flip one day on the next… or does it?

I don’t have the scientific knowledge but from a data perspective it seems “unusual”.

The scientific info I’ve seen says were really not even close to proper herd immunity with only 50% of population immunised.

I hope you are right - but the fact the govt isn’t crowing about it, also makes me suspicious.

Don’t forget those who have had covid also have immunity. 6million confirmed and goodness knows how many unconfirmed considering it was well into last summer before mass testing really picked up and not until much much later we started using LTF tests to find asymptomatic. If 2/3 of people have no symptoms thats nearly 10-15million people who have had covid.

Also Scottish schools broke up 4 weeks ago so that has to hit some of the data?

Infections in Wales are dropping slightly. Vaccines won't prevent all cases but surely they are preventing some or making it mild enough to be asymptomatic therefore no tests ? X

Look at ONS infection rates rather than case rates as that isn’t affected by people avoiding testing due to holidays etc as they test a random sample.

Infections in school kids are slowed due to the holidays, rising in other age groups and extremely high in the 16-24yrs category.

Some parents whose kids were sent home last week to isolate following bubbles bursting will not have gone for PCRs if they then developed symptoms or already had them but didn't mention it.

Once you're already stuck at home, to some, it's not worth the hassle or it's impractical to try and book, then travel for a PCR, as you're already isolating (for example when the nearest test place is only accessible via public transport as it's too far to walk, but the instructions say you must not travel there by public transport and you don't have a car, it's not exactly easy to translocate to the test centre and back, after all - our nearest ones are five miles away and three miles, but the second is drive in only). Others will not test because they are due to go on holiday and don't want to miss out on that because they're arseholes .

@Rubytinsleslippers

Also Scottish schools broke up 4 weeks ago so that has to hit some of the data?

Yes - rates in Scotland are well down thankfully. It was E&W I was looking at.

@noblegiraffe

Look at ONS infection rates rather than case rates as that isn’t affected by people avoiding testing due to holidays etc as they test a random sample.

Infections in school kids are slowed due to the holidays, rising in other age groups and extremely high in the 16-24yrs category.

Is there an overall chart of this? I can’t tell whether the overall is plateau-ing as it looks like some ages groups are, but of course depends how many are in each category too.

Our school broke up a week ago and we were told that LFT aren't necessary during the school holidays. (They are suggested just before school starts in September though)

Would the weather had an effect? People not socialising or meeting outdoors rather than indoors?

I wonder how many samples can be processed in a day and how close we are to that limit ?

ink here are the by region infection rates from the same data, you can see drops in the North and looks like it's stalling in the East, but swinging up in other areas.

More graphs and breakdown here www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/23july2021

I’m slightly shocked at so many being double vaccinated. I’ve got another month before mine, dh (over 40) has his second in a few weeks.then obviously 2 weeks for it to kick in.