Why a rates in some areas so high?

[Musicforsmorks]

But yet there doesn’t seem to much dialogue going on about it.

Take Cumbria for instance, it looks shocking. I come from there so have watched from start and it’s rates were comparatively high from the get-go.
I’m in a town right now with my partner which has the same population density of the entirety of Cumbria but only has 11 known cases .

But I can’t find anything in local press or anywhere, it’s as if nobody wants to discuss why.....

Tourism perhaps, but in the entire county, only so much of it would be populated, that won’t include Carlisle, barrow, Workington, etc.

So I’m confused. Hampshire looks bad too, and Sheffield.

Here’s a map, the darker colours are worst affected.
Thoughts?

I don’t think you can always find simple correlations like the wealth in an area or student population for this type of virus. This is the frightening thing, all it takes is one Asymptomatic person to bring it to an area. That one person might come into contact with 1000s of people via there job and being out and about in crowds.

Could it be the the similarity is due to older people or those with health conditions having more severe cases requiring testing perhaps?

So who's getting tested at the moment? Is it the same criteria across the UK?

I think the numbers correlate with where it arrived (and started spreading) first.

^^**

Re Cumbria - one of the clusters (in the South) was caused as an elderly man went to Italy and came back without realising he had contracted Coronavirus. He went to a quiz night in the local village hall and infected 10 other people directly. He has since sadly died. Who knows how many people have been infected by those other 10 people, but don’t know it yet.

You are right in saying that this is an area with a higher proportion of the elderly than cities, some of whom will have underlying conditions.

A good friend of mine lives in the village and is worried. Everyone is being very careful. Voluntarily self isolating prior to the lockdown.

OP, an earlier response to my ? Re Cumbria numbers.

Actually the second highest number of cases per 100k inhabitants is within Aneurin Bevan Health Board in Wales. No idea why tbh, the only things I can think of are maybe there were more people not adhering to the rules (including local factories as I read) and also, sadly, weakened miners' lungs. But then you'd think Cwm Taf would be the hub. It's very odd.

South Wales is not renowned for it's health, nor is Glasgow which also seems to have quite high numbers...

Not the whole of South Wales is "renowned for its health" though. Re coronavirus, there are far less cases in certain areas of SW than others and one can't explain that easily e.g. wealthier or less populated areas as it doesn't necessarily follow that trend.

Hampshire numbers don’t include Southampton or Portsmouth as they are separate cities.

Cruiseblogger - top attractions close to Southampton cruise port - Winchester, New Forest...

www.thecruiseblogger.com/top-attractions-close-to-southampton-cruise-port/

Hampshire residents popping over to France and Spain via Portsmouth?

Cases in Cumbria -

Some of it is bad luck, some of it is that that's where some of the early cases were when everyone who might have it was being tested so recorded numbers are slightly misrepresented.

But yes, it just so happens that there were a number of people returning from Italy to Cumbria who brought it back with them. I think the Italian strain is particularly vicious. Just bad luck that they then attended/worked in very public places and spread it further.

What they thought in Wolverhampton was it was the combination of older people in poorer health along with a pocket of spread...

Lancaster (edge of Cumbria) and Sheffield may have large numbers of international students at the universities. Morecambe Bay cockling disaster - Chinese community?

Lancaster and Morecambe will be in the Lancashire figures not Cumbria.
There are Chinese students, but afaik no particular 'community' or more than any other university eg UCLAN.

I don't think that theory holds much water.

What they thought in Wolverhampton was it was the combination of older people in poorer health along with a pocket of spread...

There was a West Midlands cluster which started with a church with a lot of older people who were infected by someone who didn't realise they had it - is that te one?

I'll try and find the thing I read...

It follows the outward trajectory of main routes in and out of major airports

I can't find the one i saw bit found this which yes says more about religion.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/20/sharp-rise-in-number-of-coronavirus-cases-in-west-midlands

I agree regarding income. I would imagine a depressed area overall might have been less likely to have people coming from or going to the continent.

Thanks for sharing thoughts on this, lots to think about. Cumbria possibly just unlucky then.

I did notice it leaned upwards from south to north more towards the west of the country. Many areas in east seem to have less cases reported. No idea what this may suggest, possibly just a visual pattern my mind is playing with....

I live in Hampshire and I know that a lot of people where I live went skiing in Italy at half-term, which could be a factor.

I'm in Cumbria, in Carlisle.
The first few cases had come home from Italy, one of those was a teacher in a large secondary school. The teacher was at work for 2 weeks before being diagnosed, so lots of contact with lots of people. This was all while there was no advice to self isolate from the areas of Italy that teacher had visited. The kids from that school will have had contact with kids from elsewhere before they were symptomatic (most are still not symptomatic tbh), and they've passed it on to others around them. Everybody was following official advice at the time, nobody thought they were doing anything wrong, they were doing what they were told.

Taking to hospital staff they're coping fine art the minute, running at about 50% capacity as they've cancelled anything non urgent. They're expecting things to get worse over the next couple of weeks though, and they'll need every one of the currently empty beds.