Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 22

[BigChocFrenzy]

Welcome to thread 22 of the daily updates

Resource links:

Uk dashboard deaths, cases, hospitals, tests - 4 nations, English regions & LAs
R estimates UK & English regions
Imperial UK weekly LAs, cases / 100k, table, map, hotspots
School statistics Attendance
Modelling real number of UK infections February to date
NHS England Hospital activity
NHs England Daily deaths
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
PHE Surveillance reports & LA Local Watchlist Maps by LSOA
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 GB test positivity etc, DIY country graphs
FT DIY graphs compare deaths, cases, raw / million pop
Alama Personal COVID risk assessment
Local Mobility Reports for countries
UK Highstreet Tracker for cities & large towns Footfall, spend index, workers, visitors, economic recovery

⏭ Our STUDIES Corner ⏮

We welcome factual, data driven and analytical contributions
Please try to keep discussion focused on these
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Confirmation bias. I looked at several sources, this is a good list:

www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/classrooms-school-europe-education-coronavirus-covid-19-pupils/

Nothing I am reading is any different from what is happening in my school.

twitter.com/RP131/status/1313806856201043969?s=19
I think this shows the positivity rates for various regions of the UK

Still going up in Liverpool. Yesterday was 23.2%

Coronavirus cases by area
Report published 7th October 2020
Cases data from week 28th September - 4th October 2020

Data extracted covering testing up to 4th October 2020 show that the total number of confirmed cases for the last 7 days is 2747, an increase of 1042 cases on the previous week. The latest weekly rate of Covid-19 in Liverpool is 551.6 per 100,000 population and the latest positivity testing rate* is 23.9%.

There has been a rapid and worrying increase in cases in Liverpool since the 1 September, when there were 94 cases per week, to the current level of 2747 cases per week.

The challenges of lockdown for learning for many is WHY I think there should be better mitigation in schools. To keep them open consistently (and by that I mean without children in and out isolating all the time which is hugely disruptive and means the class is at different levels and has covered different subjects)

One acquaintance did tell me her daughter had gone up 2 sets over lockdown though (I didn't say that probably doesn't say much for her education in school, does it?).

I have to say, in the summer when DD was in SD school she definitely achieved more than in her normal crowded class. She also really enjoyed not sitting next to the boy who likes to smear bogies on everyone. She was a BIG fan of social distancing. It really helped her focus and achievement. I'm always a bit surprised people are so content to have some of the biggest class sizes in Europe - of course the education will be worse. Teachers aren't miracle workers. Especially during a pandemic.

Many countries in Europe don't have mask-wearing and also have far less strict restrictions on other gatherings outside

e.g. Germany mostly does not have mandatory mask-wearing in class, just in communal areas
2 states are trying it, but legally they cannot send home or punish kids who refuse, so it is in practice basically optional.

Apart from schools, the govt only recently discussed a 100 indoor crowd limit and allowed the 10,000 football spectators to watch Dusseldorf

This sounds like the old argument that the 1st UK lockdown was softer than anywhere else
The problem was that it was too late
Some countries had tougher lockdowns; some lighter
e.g. Spain's was obviously tougher,
but Germany's lockdown was less strict, with no national advice on individuals time-limiting outdoor exercise, sunbathing or sitting on benches

Small class sizes are proven to be beneficial - but they are not possible to achieve during ft schools

I'd expect that children taught in small groups by teachers during lockdown would mostly do very well indeed

Scotland data out:

1,054new cases of COVID-19 reported; this is13.0%of newly tested individuals

1new reported death(s) of people who have tested positive

28people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19

319people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19

But the UK doesn't even have mandatory mask wearing in communal areas of schools unless you are in an additional lockdown area ( which I admit is a rapidly increasing part of the UK).

BigChoc the report you link from Indie Sage in section 3 has a diagram that suggests the following:

When community levels reach 10-50 per 100k then masks in secondary, no group working, and class sizes no bigger than 15 (I presume primary and secondary they don't specify)

When community levels above 50k per 100k then masks in secondary AND primary, staggered break times, and children kept in bubbles for all classes.

So actually they do recommend masks for children for large parts of the UK now.

www.independentsage.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Schools-v-short-consultation-v3-1.pdf

@EducatingArti

twitter.com/RP131/status/1313806856201043969?s=19 I think this shows the positivity rates for various regions of the UK

I think that shows number of people/ million tested per week.

But why are numbers falling in all areas? Is this some further problem that I missed? I thought they were supposed to be increasing test numbers?

One acquaintance did tell me her daughter had gone up 2 sets over lockdown though But that is just the sort of thing I find interesting. Just thinking of how things were in lockdown I think my one GS benefitted by changing his working hours i.e. he normally gets up before 7 am so he has time for a shower/wash, breakfast, walk to the bus and bus journey. In lockdown he started his set work at about 11 am, it suited him really well and it made me think of how hard it can be to get some teenagers up, many teenagers seem to go through this phase so is looking at school times useful. When I was at school we started at 9 am, local schools seem to start at 8.20, 8.30 or 8.40, is that a positive, a negative or makes no difference. I don't know but I do know he seemed happier, more relaxed and his work improved.

Seems a shame if we can't even look at it.

It says cases as a percentage of those tested?

@whatsnext2 - you're quite right to challenge for some sources related to virus mutations. Here is an interesting article about strains: www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6. We know some people have been infected more than once by different strains. We have no information to say that someone who is effectively fighting the disease would be safe if they caught another strain at the same time, it's a big risk to take.

As an aside I particularly like Christina Pagel on Indie sage and her clear explanation of the data - here she is on More and Less today saying in terms of hospital admissions we're less than two doublings away from where we were when we went into lockdown in March.

twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1313793180832333824?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

twitter.com/MayorofGM/status/1313829236667449347?s=19
Greater Manchester hospital admissions here.

Greater Manchester 7 day rate of positive cases here.
twitter.com/MayorofGM/status/1313827971619315713?s=19

Small class sizes are proven to be beneficial - but they are not possible to achieve during ft schools Why aren't they? When I was at primary school in England in the 50s I was in a class of 48, it was normal where I lived. I can remember when it was decided that class sizes had to be reduced and they were. It took money, there was alot of building new schools and new classrooms, presumably they trained more teachers but I can't see why there should be some reason why it would be impossible if it was agreed that is what we should do. Obviously it couldn't happen overnight but if that is a target why couldn't it happen?

What is importance is compliance with measures

You can make them tougher and tougher, with ever harsher penalties,
but if more & more people are swerving them altogether, then the situation just deteriorates

This seems to be what is happening in some deprived areas that have had local lockdowns for weeks
They are just pissed off and getting more so.

Neither SAGE nor Indi-SAGE are advocating compulsory masks or pt learning for the UK at this stage

What qualifications do people have for thinking they know better than the experts ?
Or are we channelling Gove and "the people have had enough of experts" ?

These additional measures may indeed be necessary at some point over winter,
so we should be working at not pissing off so many people in advance that new measures get ignored in a real emergency

Only the Us4them fanatics would oppose ECV staff & students being allowed to stay home - i.e. the ones whose risk may not be tiny
So in the interim I suggest campaigning for them to have this right, without penalties.

But Bigchoc. Where is your evidence that it is compliance with the measures rather than the measures themselves that are the main problem?

@EducatingArti - mask wearing policies can vary by school. My area is not one with restrictions but I happen to know of 4 secondary schools in the area that have all encouraged masks on the way to/from school and in corridors, and I know of none that haven't. Meanwhile parents are strongly encouraged to wear masks at primary drop-off and pick-up for all the local schools, and most do. As far as I'm aware, nobody has objected. I'm also aware of a secondary school in another area where they say kids have to take OFF their masks going into school; why a headteacher would have that as a policy I've no idea, but they do. I'm not closely involved with schools, but perhaps local authorities are driving a view on what's acceptable/ expected?

@ancientgran well as you note there aren’t nearly enough teachers. So this isn’t a solution that would be able to help with the pandemic.

If more parents start lobbying for better investment in education long term though that would be great. We can’t reverse the years of cuts and the impact on buildings, infrastructure, approach and teacher recruitment overnight to allow for smaller class sizes.

Maybe greater engagement in lobbying for investment in education might occur post all this - it would be great if it did ( along with investment to allow SENd children to access the education they need).

Listening to Andy burnham’s weekly Covid conference and one very interesting statistic. Although the numbers in hospital WITH Covid are rising quickly the vast majority are in there For other reasons and diagnosed while there? So the high number of people in hospital with Covid is very misleading as they were not admitted as Covid patients

What qualifications do people have for thinking they know better than the experts ? Who said they knew better than the experts? We are all allowed to observe what is happening around us and think about what might be a positive. Covid has been a nightmare but it doesn't mean we can't use what is going on as a chance to re-evaluate some things that we have just gone along with for years.

[quote IloveJKRowling]As an aside I particularly like Christina Pagel on Indie sage and her clear explanation of the data - here she is on More and Less today saying in terms of hospital admissions we're less than two doublings away from where we were when we went into lockdown in March.

twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1313793180832333824?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet[/quote]
...
Some important differences, because lockdown gave us time to prepare for a "novel" virus:

.The rate of doubling now is 9 days or more, vs 3 days then

.R then was ~ double what it is now

.No track & trace system whatsoever then

.No mass testing then

.Health services did not have systems in place to cope with Covid patients, e.g. testing, isolation etc of patients

.Neither did care homes, nor was their realsiation how residents needed to be protected

.No treatments or drugs developed then

[quote MRex]@EducatingArti - mask wearing policies can vary by school. My area is not one with restrictions but I happen to know of 4 secondary schools in the area that have all encouraged masks on the way to/from school and in corridors, and I know of none that haven't. Meanwhile parents are strongly encouraged to wear masks at primary drop-off and pick-up for all the local schools, and most do. As far as I'm aware, nobody has objected. I'm also aware of a secondary school in another area where they say kids have to take OFF their masks going into school; why a headteacher would have that as a policy I've no idea, but they do. I'm not closely involved with schools, but perhaps local authorities are driving a view on what's acceptable/ expected?[/quote]
I know. This is another reason why it is difficult to make comparisons between UK and other countires. So much variation within the UK.