Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 18

[BigChocFrenzy]

Welcome to thread 18 of the daily updates

Resource links:

Uk dashboard deaths, cases, hospitals, tests - 4 nations, English regions & LAs
Imperial UK weekly LAs, cases / 100k, table, map, hotspots
MSAO Map of English cases
Cases Tracker England Local Government
ONS MSAO Map English deaths
CovidMessenger live update by council district in England
Scot gov Daily data
Scotland TravellingTabby LAs, care homes, hospitals, tests, t&t
PH Wales LAs, tests, ONS deaths
NI Dashboard
Zoe Uk data
UK govt pressers Slides & data
ICNRC Intensive Care National Audit & Research reports
NHS t&t England & UK testing Weekly stats
R estimates UK & English regions
PHE Surveillance report infections & watchlists each Thursday
ONS England infection surveillance report each Friday
Datasets for ONS surveillance reports
ONS Roundup deaths, infections & economic reports
ECDC rolling 14-day incidence EEA & UK
Worldometer UK page
Our World in Data test positivity etc, DIY graphs
FT DIY graphs compare deaths, cases, raw / million pop
Covidly.com world summary & graphs
Alama Personal COVID risk assessment

==> Our STUDIES Corner

I agree @Timeforanotherusername the sheer misinformation and frankly bullshit was astounding.

We had to switch off.

[quote Ecosse]@BigChocFrenzy

I suspect the positivity rate will be higher simply because most testing capacity has been moved to areas of high transmission.[/quote]
...
Testing has been more targeted at hotspots for several weeks now though
If amnything, the last couple of weeks school returnees around the country have been taking more of the tests

The 100k tests reserved for the NHS & care homes won't have reduced

I wonder why 2/3rds of Blackpool are not included as Blackpool is a town with an elderly, deprived and generally unhealthy population. I think it had the lowest life expectancy in the country at one point so I'd have thought more at risk.
I wonder if it could be their council arguing for economics as the illuminations have just started

[quote Ecosse]@Timeforanotherusername

Why is anyone who doesn’t join in with the scaremongering a ‘looney’?[/quote]
...
You go too far in the other direction though
Whenever an increased figure for anything is given, you deny that it is worse

it's fine to analyse and give perspective, but not denial

On another thread you claimed that Long Covid didn't exist
You must know better

talkRADIO@talkRADIO

Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham says it would be "too easy" for the Government "to hit people with the default option" a second lockdown, adding it would "cause such damage to the north."

► http://youtu.be/ELMP_kUkWi0

France

Record 10,593 new confirmed cases

Previous record was 10,561 new cases on 12 September.

Reuters reports that the sharp increase is a result both of a higher infection rate and also of a massive increase in testing

@BigChocFrenzy

But long covid doesn’t exist in the way some on here seem to think. Yes, a small number of people do suffer longer term effects from COVID.

But this can be the case with any virus, it is not anything new or particular to COVID and there is no evidence that it is more prevalent or serious in COVID patients.

@midgebabe

For the people wondering why Northumberland was included , are the rates in south east Northumberland ( Cramlington, Blythe valley, ashington ) perhaps higher than Northumberland as a whole?

Yes that's a good point.

Demographically it could get out of control easily and quickly. .

I'm wondering why they are suggesting national lockdown against local or regional.

There's no denying the evidence it changes rates of infection dramatically but all the graphs I've seen show such variation nationally in cases.

I wonder if they suspect the low case areas also have much higher infection rates than currently showing in data and it's to prevent a rise in those areas as well as lower cases in areas already in concern, watch etc?

Ecosse is still living in fantasy land. Fortunately the lung damage does seem to be improving but a higher percentage of people are hospitalised with Covid than with other viruses, an indication of it's greater severity.

Estimates of how many people had Covid at the peak of the epidemic need to be explained and justified on a data thread. The Diamond Princess had a fatality rate of about 1%. Multiplying deaths by 100 therefore gives a reasonable estimate. Around 1,000 deaths a day =100,000 infections. Alternative estimates are available but if you want to argue for twice that figure explain the basis.

Hospitals advised to clear out in 2 weeks,
how so?

It wont be "advice", it'll be an instruction. It means you stop doing anything that can be stopped and discharge people as soon as they are on the road to recovery, when sometimes it would be better to keep them longer. Some will end up being readmitted. You cant discharge someone you have just operated on so it doesnt happen overnight, it's a gradual process, then the wards need to be rejigged for Covid.

National lockdown would mean that staff or patients could be moved to/from hospitals in other areas and stops those in high infection areas fleeing to their holiday homes and spreading the virus further. It's bad for the economy and best avoided, there may have to be travel bans though.

Higher positivity could be affected by moving to areas of higher transmission. It isn't affected by too many kids with colds, that would be lower positivity. It also doesn't explain the very high rates in Bolton and Liverpool; less people getting a test would have access tests in about the same proportion. Higher positivity = more people infected, it's that simple.

High positivity means high rates of community transmission. When people are still not getting enough tests it means out of control virus and exponential growth, that's frightening. If I was in Bolton I'd do everything I could to stay away from people and have surgical masks when I couldnt.

Thanks for these threads
BBC was reporting a glimmer of hope with the Caerphilly lockdown, now 10 days in, resulting in some reduction of cases.
Neighbouring RCT went into local lockdown last night. Have been impressed with how RCT council handled it, ensuring additional local testing (welsh lab capacity) put in place this week. Slightly different restrictions in each LA to deal with slightly differing reasons for transmission in each LA area.
Potentially these local measures could end when 'circuit break' comes into force. I hope folks can with these longer periods of restriction and don't return to the complacency that has led to these Welsh LA measures needing to be imposed.

I've had a tin hat moment where I feel like the NE is a test case for the type of restrictions being used, for the rest of the country.

But I know it's been from local councillors.

And Dh said exactly the same as I did re Northumberland; so many commute both ways and to Durham too it's necessary to close the whole area. Of course Durham has had a big spike linked to that football match and another to a pub and it could easily happen further north.

We mentally act as a little country; even with a north (of the Tyne) and south thing. There was a type of brexit suggested a number of years ago; (NEXIT?!) which no one was interested in. I bet it would be different now.

www.newcastle-hospitals.org.uk/news/news-item-17092020-1.html

This will help but no idea when it will be up and running?

[quote Ecosse]@BigChocFrenzy

But long covid doesn’t exist in the way some on here seem to think. Yes, a small number of people do suffer longer term effects from COVID.

But this can be the case with any virus, it is not anything new or particular to COVID and there is no evidence that it is more prevalent or serious in COVID patients.[/quote]
...
You are posting misleading information and on the other thread, statistics you seem to have made up

Long COVID is recognised by doctors & scientists around the world, with several quoting estimates of around 1 in 20 incidence in confirmed Covid case

The NHS are setting up the infrastructure to cope with sufferers in the UK

Public health experts in the UK say the rise over the last few weeks is genuine,
but that the rise in the daily figures has been a combination of this plus increased testing

The increase in positivity is more evidence for the rise in cases
as does the fact that some other European countries are experiencing very sharp increases,; others very gradual

The restrictions proposed for Lancashire are tougher than those currently in place in most of Greater Manchester. Does that mean they think the situation is actually worse there or just that every time they introduce restrictions they do it differently?

Interesting bigs and pieces from this article:

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/greater-manchester-dodged-further-covid-18953567
Greater Manchester may have dodged further Covid-19 lockdown measures - for now
Ministers want more time to consider the region’s proposals before changing current rules

Some senior sources are confident there will be no new restrictions for the next week, although others are more cautious, warning ministers could still change their minds tomorrow.

It is understood extra restrictions are now expected in parts of Lancashire and Merseyside, but that government has decided to spend some extra time considering proposals put forward by Andy Burnham, which were only received today.

Those proposals included the ability to close non-compliant businesses far more quickly, rather than having to apply to the Secretary of State each time, as well as targeted curfews on individual businesses or those in very localised areas, depending on where public health departments see the virus spreading.

Plans have also been drawn up to deploy hundreds of police community support officers and fire service staff onto door-to-door contact tracing work, as well as a temporary ‘self isolation’ fund to go with it - but ministers have been asked for financial support in order to make that move sustainable in the longer term.

It then talks about how Oldham and Tameside will have less strict measures than the NE if no new measures until next week, justifying it in this way:

In the case of the North East, it is understood one of the government's biggest concerns was the scale of the increase in cases from a 'standing start', however, rather than simply the current case numbers.

@NeurotrashWarrior - early December.

The BBC had a video about Valencia sewage testing, nothing new but in itself it's interesting that they are still saying they can find covid in excretions from the first day of infection and can narrow it down by area. Which made me wonder - would a faeces test be potentially more effective for covid? It won't have been rejected just for being gross, so it must be that it takes too long to process or uses too many reagents or something? I tried a Google and this article says virus is excreted from up to 1 33 days after infection: www.cebm.net/study/covid-19-persistent-viral-shedding-of-sars-cov-2-in-faeces/. Has anybody seen anything about why we aren't testing faeces instead for less false negatives? (At least for home tests, toddlers etc it could even be easier.)

Those Greater Manchester plans sound helpful, apart from immediate business closure. Surely there needs to be some checks and balances for closing down businesses; licence removal can swiftly become permanent and the difference in cost of a business as a "going concern" or not is immense. Could they not have demanded dedicated attention to get same-day approval / rejection instead? Or ask for a temporary warrant to require a business to close the a couple of days to get the approval? It seems like an extreme power with scope for huge variation of application when we consider for example for Derbyshire police approached lockdown enforcement.

MH did a good job on R4 despite interviewer trying to catch him out as usual. I didn’t realise he was a trained economist.

@MarshaBradyo

MH did a good job on R4 despite interviewer trying to catch him out as usual. I didn’t realise he was a trained economist.

he did i agree