If a second wave is inevitable could we get it out of the way now.....

[Mallowmarshmallow]

It seems a second wave is fairly inevitable....scientifically, is it an option to get it over and done with now the hospitals seem to be under less pressure....?

(I realise this might be a totally stupid question...)

The increase in cases across pretty much the whole of Europe can’t just be down to the ‘incompetence’ of every nation government or the refusal of the public to ‘follow the rules’.

Viruses do what viruses do.

I think this is down to the bad decisions across much of Europe.

The nations operating on SARS plans are not seeing a resurgence.

People regularly say Europe can't react like e.g. Taiwan or Thailand.

My view is you pay your money and take your choice - the UK and much of Europe attempted a major reopening over summer and now we are where we are.

We could have followed a different path.

@TheDailyCarbuncle

Viruses tend to spread more quickly in winter. That's true of every virus out there. Numbers will go up and down. But none of that is a 'wave.' The UK death rate isn't even close to half of what it was in the first wave. Higher number of 'cases' is due to higher rates of testing picking up people who don't even have symptoms. If testing were done in the same way as it was done in March/April - almost entirely in hospitals and only on those with symptoms - it would look like covid was hardly present at all.

The death rate isn’t the marker to use as the advances made in the last few months have improved treatment. Hospital admissions is a better indicator, and we’re now close to 2/3 of the admission rate we saw in March/April, and it is still rising.

Also, from the point of view of the North of England and parts of Scotland, this is a bigger wave than the first one.

What would you need to see to be convinced this was a second wave?

Presumably it is only a true second wave when hospitals in London are overwhelmed, until then it is just a little blip?

@WiseUpJanetWeiss - it's true that treatment has improved but it's also true that survival rates are better because people are being admitted to hospital earlier. That, of course, pushes the hospital admission rates up. If you were actually comparing like with like, ie the numbers of people turning up to hosptial severely ill in March/April vs the numbers of people turning up severly ill now, again it would seem like covid had dropped hugely.

A basic (in fact the most basic) principle of data analysis is to compare like with like. It's impossible to compare data from now, where people in some professions are tested weekly regardless of symptoms, to March where it was often difficult to get a test for seriously ill patients. March was the outcome of covid spreading for months with absolutely no measures at all. Unless you believe that lockdowns have no effect at all, pure logic will tell you that the situation in March is not being repeated now - things are very very different. I don't see what can be gained by claiming there are 'waves' and other such nonsense when that's clearly not the case.

@TheDailyCarbuncle

Viruses tend to spread more quickly in winter. That's true of every virus out there. Numbers will go up and down. But none of that is a 'wave.' The UK death rate isn't even close to half of what it was in the first wave. Higher number of 'cases' is due to higher rates of testing picking up people who don't even have symptoms. If testing were done in the same way as it was done in March/April - almost entirely in hospitals and only on those with symptoms - it would look like covid was hardly present at all.

Have a look at the first graph on this page - coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare. On your own criteria of people in hospital, we are very clearly in a second wave with average daily hospital admissions of 1800. The death rate is irrelevant to whether there is a second wave.

That, of course, pushes the hospital admission rates up. If you were actually comparing like with like, ie the numbers of people turning up to hosptial severely ill in March/April vs the numbers of people turning up severly ill now, again it would seem like covid had dropped hugely.

No-one is admitted to hospital with coronavirus for the fun of it: they are only admitted if they are seriously ill. They may be admitted at at earlier stage and therefore not quite as ill as was the case in the first wave, and fortunately we are better at treating them now than we were; but absolutely none of that means that they don't have coronavirus or that there is no second wave.

I never said they don't have coronavirus @MoonJelly - I'm saying they have it at a less critical stage, which makes treatment more likely to work.

I think it comes back to the idea of what a 'wave' is. You lock down, infections go down, you open up, infections go up. That's not a wave, that's just plain cause and effect.

My point still stands about the data though. The data from March/April cannot be compared in any meaningful way with data now. The data from March/April is so incredibly incomplete that you can say pretty much nothing about it tbh. They're saying now, for example, that fewer people are dying so the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) must have gone down. From a statistics point of view, that's a completely stupid conclusion to draw. Testing was so poor in March that no one had any idea how many people were infected so any IFR calculated then was pure guesswork. Now that we have more accurate data (but still rather flaky considering that many people don't get tested and there will be some false positives/negatives) it's clear the IFR wasn't as high as the original guess. That's to be expected and yet the conclusion some idiots draw is that covid has suddenly become less dangerous. That's the least likely conclusion, out of every possible situation. The ability to interpret data seems to be entirely missing.

I don't understand why people call this a second wave.

It was inevitable that once the initial lockdowns ended and measures were relaxed the virus would simply resume its initial course...

Lockdowns don't put a stop to the virus. Only the countries who lockdown early, closed their borders and have effective track and trace and testing managed to control it to some degree.

It was never going to work in the UK. Just like this one won't.

We are just endless pushing things by a few weeks, and destroying our economy in the process, in the hope that a vaccine is ready. That is all.