Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 19

[BigChocFrenzy]

Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 19

Welcome to thread 19 of the daily updates

Resource links:

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
Modelling real number of infections February to date
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 ⏮

We welcome factual, data driven, and civil discussions from all contributors 📈 📉 📊 👍

@BigChocFrenzy I'm in Leicester, yes we are technically in lockdown but no ones acted like it for ages. The kids went back on 26th August, since then, if not before, very few shops are managing numbers, hasn't been anyone on the doors at the supermarkets near me for weeks it's just free flowing, loads of people not wearing masks, pubs and restaurants heaving. To the point they had to invoke emergency powers during EOTHO on one of the main streets in the city because of the numbers of people congregating in and around restaurants.

It irritates the hell out of me because me, DH and DD have been following the rules, wearing masks, not socialising etc but all the kids at school are going for play dates, parents are leaving school drop off and going back to each other's houses for a chat, parks are full of big groups of teens.....

@BigChocFrenzy

"Wow that does feel serious. No politicians and no questions (gulp)"

They obviously want people to understand the briefing, which wouldn't be the case if BJ started piffle and confused everything

It might just be a "this is why you need to stick to the rules" explanation / stern talking-to,
or could be a "this is the action we will take if infections don't come down to X by date Y"

• in the latter case, BJ trying to avoid the flak by not saying this himself

Agree it must serious if Boris isn't allowed near to bluster and puff and Umm and ahh.

This obviously is something that needs to be given as a clear message with no fussing.

I hope it works.

BCF I think the difference with circuit breaker lockdowns and the local lockdowns (Eg Leicester above) is that Leicester still has pubs etc open and shops whereas I understand a circuit breaker lockdown is all but medicine and food closed for short period?

[quote sunseekin]@BigChocFrenzy re Leicester graph - do you reckon it was starting to work maybe but the schools went back mid August..?

I feel like schools is a double whammy - mixing at schools and then mixing because “they’re mixing at schools anyway.”[/quote]
A triple whammy - parents mixing more because its now possible, after months of constant childcare. So lots of parents returning to work in person/coffee meet ups/exercising/shopping in town rather than online/etc.

This is antidotal, so probably doesn't belong on an evidence based thread, but, I have noticed a huge difference in the attitude of parents at drop off / pick up from June/July to now.

In June/July we had a longer window to drop off and pick up, but parents just did not socialise at the school gate. Quick eye contact and smile and go.

The school has sent out emails, but parents congregate, block entrances and chat. No social distancing. I dont think people are willing to modify their behaviour anymore.

AskDan we just got a message that masks are being introduced at school gate and no chatting. Probably good.

[quote sunseekin]@BigChocFrenzy re Leicester graph - do you reckon it was starting to work maybe but the schools went back mid August..?

I feel like schools is a double whammy - mixing at schools and then mixing because “they’re mixing at schools anyway.”[/quote]
....
Every relaxation increases R to some extent

• some threads ago, I posted an article by scientists that each country had its own "transmission budget" where each relaxation would increase R to some extent, so countries need to prioritise

Schools seem to reflect community infection levels, rather than to drive them

Public health authorities in several European countries are saying the rises are mostly due to a combination of:
holidaymakers returning and large parties, also large non-SD crowds at some clubs & other venues

@itsgettingweird

BCF I think the difference with circuit breaker lockdowns and the local lockdowns (Eg Leicester above) is that Leicester still has pubs etc open and shops whereas I understand a circuit breaker lockdown is all but medicine and food closed for short period?

... in that case, Leicester is not a "local lockdown" as we would describe it in Germany, but merely an area with some tighter restrictions

In local lockdowns here - which were all small areas except for the 1 large meat plant outbreak -
all non-esential businesses were closed, plus schools and childcare

I suspect that in some or all German states now, future local lockdowns would no longer include schools, but they would certainly include pubs & restaurants etc, except maybe takeaway

I think it'll be everything closed barring food, medicine, post and schools/ childcare.

If there is indeed to be any short sharp lockdown

At this stage, I'd expect today's briefing to be just a clear explanation of the situation and the prospects for winter - without any confusing piffle from BJ or excuses from Hancock / Harding

It might be that the UK among other countries reaches a crisis or crises over winter and there is a limit to how many lockdowns the economy or public can tolerate

However, the public health bods obviously have the data & expertise and also may be a lot more cautious than we can be here,
since they have the responsibility of their recommendations to govt about 67 million people

If we have food in our bellies, roofs over our head and access to medical care, most of us can tolerate anything (mental health obviously impacts on this, but that's too long a digression). It's up to the government to make sure that we have those things. If they ask us to lock down and don't put those protections in place, that's when we will have wide scale non-compliance and rightly so.

I think they're going to try it. Short, sharp, evidence-based about how it can break the chain. Boris isn't there because most of the spread is in labour constituencies who they've figured will only pay attention if the public health bit is done separately. Keeping only schools open keeps the office-based economy going from home and demonstrates that schools are one of the lower risk activities, or it doesn't show that - but then the answer is clear and before rates get too high with too great a danger for tests.

I may be unpopular in saying I hope they only do it regionally. We were always going to get a bit of an increase this time of year and it's not exponential by any degree in some regions. Let those regions stick by the new rule of 6 and see if it works but hard lockdown those regions that are getting out of control

Otherwise you will have rebellion and people refusing to stick to the rules if you're using a sledge hammer to crack a nut in areas of low cases

There are no boroughs with zero cases and it's only just about to get cold. We are in a low case area, but I'd happily toletate a 2 week sharp break now rather than 2 months Dec/Jan plus a load more deaths. I would expect it to take us to zero new cases very quickly in this area, which I would like.

evidence-based

What evidence could there be that locking down communities where there is no virus is the right thing to do, it would have to have no damage at all?

My suspicion is that a national lockdown (or more accurately threat of) is much more of a stick to get compliance rates up.

A two week shutdown won't get infection rates down a lot. We saw this in the first lockdown. The rate of cases was doubling every 3 days by the time we did lockdown but it took a week for that to reverse.

At best it would be a stop gap to get us to Christmas (where we would have another 2 week lockdown - and yep no meaningful Christmas though im not entirely sure how that would be enforceable apart from due to the sheer number of deaths frightening people).

And then from there the early part of next year would still be extremely messy but slightly less messy than if there was no national lockdowns.

The message about compliance with rules is the one that they have to get out. If people want to go on about how Sweden did it, they need to understand how adherence to the rules that are put in place is key and that since we have a much higher population density than sweden this isnt going to be sufficiently viable at some stages anyway either (hence need for local lock downs at some points).

I think my point is that the only thing the public really is bothered about is a national lockdown and the threat of it is something that behavioural scientists will understand.

Could be wrong, but thats how im reading it.

And if we get a second national lockdown, i very much doubt we will escape a third and Johnson being labelled forever as the Grinch who stole Christmas which would be an enduring image come the next election (and why Johnson will want to do everything he can to avoid it but circumstances may well conspire against him especially with Brexit).

It will be interesting to see play out.

@MRex

There are no boroughs with zero cases and it's only just about to get cold. We are in a low case area, but I'd happily toletate a 2 week sharp break now rather than 2 months Dec/Jan plus a load more deaths. I would expect it to take us to zero new cases very quickly in this area, which I would like.

But how many times would this be needed?

I think possibly this is required in some areas, but areas like mine may be able to limp along until half term and then have a lockdown for 2 weeks.

I do think the travel restrictions should be brought in so that people are only leaving county for essential reasons.

"My suspicion is that a national lockdown (or more accurately threat of) is much more of a stick to get compliance rates up."

I really hope you're right @RedToothBrush and it gets through to people

I think we all need accept low levels are going to be around until a vaccine. That's why a total lockdown for people in low case areas is OTT

There seems to be an increasing amount of activity on Twitter from those who feel that the whole virus is some kind of hoax to restrict individual liberty.
Their arguments seem to centre around the false positives, eg there are 8 false positives for every one case.
Can anyone explain clearly why this false positive argument is flawed as I'm struggling to put it all together right now.

@CoffeeandCroissant Thank you so much, just what I wanted....

@EducatingArti

There seems to be an increasing amount of activity on Twitter from those who feel that the whole virus is some kind of hoax to restrict individual liberty. Their arguments seem to centre around the false positives, eg there are 8 false positives for every one case. Can anyone explain clearly why this false positive argument is flawed as I'm struggling to put it all together right now.

If it was all about false positives then hospital admissions wouldnt be going up in the same places that are experiencing high numbers of cases.

We've discussed that several times @EducatingArti, I think you asked before and people already answered, or someone asked the identical question. if you scroll back then you'll find it.

Short lock downs of two weeks are not thought to be effective by many (R4 scientist this morning and other on LBC)

If cases double every 3 to 4 days it takes 3 to 4 weeks down the other side to halve them. Fast up, slow on the down. And once you release from two weeks they climb again as before.

@EducatingArti

There seems to be an increasing amount of activity on Twitter from those who feel that the whole virus is some kind of hoax to restrict individual liberty. Their arguments seem to centre around the false positives, eg there are 8 false positives for every one case. Can anyone explain clearly why this false positive argument is flawed as I'm struggling to put it all together right now.

I don't know the actual numbers, but if you are testing a LOT of people at low risk of infection, then a seemingly low false positive rate will produce more false positives than true diagnoses.

e.g. if prevalence of infection is 1/1,000 of people tested, then testing 1,000 people will identify 1 true case.
And if the false positive rate is 1%, then of those 1,000 tested 10 will be given false positive results.
So you have 10 false positives per 1 true cases identified, even though a "99% accurate test" on the face of it might sound reassuring.

It depends which groups you are testing - if testing a group where 50% of people tested actually had covid (say hospital admissions with suggestive symptoms) you would identify 50 true cases in 100 patients, with 1 false positive. So the false positive there is less of a problem.

I do not know what the true numbers are for false positives with covid and current prevalence, just an example with easy numbers of the difficulties when testing in a group that has relatively low prevalence of infection.

@EducatingArti

For a start the rate of false negatives is expected to be much higher than the rate of false positives, and false positives do not have a significant public health effect (in that false positives can't actually spread the disease).

This is useful but from June so possibly things have moved on since then. This estimates that on day 3 of symptoms (day 8 of infection) there's still a 1 in 5 false negative rate. www.gov.uk/government/publications/gos-impact-of-false-positives-and-negatives-3-june-2020