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
📈 📉 📊 👍

Freedom of worship is a universal human right, backed up by international and domestic law

so it is far more difficult to ban those assemblies than to close gyms
They can only set SD rules as for places of work, except when there are complete lockdowns

I'm a gym rat and tbf, even the most devout person is unlikely to attend their place of worship 5 days per week,
in a room with several others, all panting heavily and none with masks

imo, the significant number of large outbreaks from churches etc here in Germany vs none reported for gyms, pools
is probably because the church-goers, as in the UK, have an average age decades older and many are frail,
hence far more vulnerable both to being infected and suffering symptoms

Here is a question to the well-read ppl of this thread:
Do you have any links (or heard of any) studies that are not anecdotal(ish) like Zoe app predictions on self evaluation?

I know of one study in Bergamo (have to find link), but that's it.

Fear of Covid does keep some people away from seeing doctors, going to hospital etc
just as it probably keeps them away from restaurants and shops

Looking at the numbers of people who have become infected in hospital, there is obviously a risk which needs to be balanced

• and sadly some people judge risk wrongly, because they don't recognise serious symptoms

That can't be helped by laws - there has never been a law keeping away people who have accidents or illness
It can only be helped by giving more confidence that reliable systems are in place and the risks are under control

@TheSunIsStillShining

Here is a question to the well-read ppl of this thread: Do you have any links (or heard of any) studies that are not anecdotal(ish) like Zoe app predictions on self evaluation?

I know of one study in Bergamo (have to find link), but that's it.

... If you mean personal risk if you catch Covid, then you can calculate your personal “Covid age” using the Alamo link towards the end of the OP, which adds on years for various conditions,

then calculate the risk for that age from Spiegelhalter’s table

As a rough guide, IFF you catch it, your risk of dying within a year approximately doubles compared to your normal risk.
A bit less than doubling under age 45; a bit more aged 50+

If you also want your risk of catching it,
you can look at the relative risks of occupations in the ONS study, but that only goes to 30 June
and anyway is also very dependent on your social interactions outside work

I've got a self evaluation form for people coming into our building at work. I'll see if I can screenshot it the relevant bit.

Don't know if this will show up, but I'll give it a go. It's a very simple one to do, but sometimes you need simplicity for people to understand.

Your risk of catching Covid depends on where you live and what you do.

I've put more studies in studies corner but want to mention here they include a higher risk of long covid in pregnant women and at least short term reductions in fertility in men.

@LearnedResponse

“Protect the vulnerable and let everyone else live their lives” is completely impossible. Care homes cost a thousand pounds a week because they employ a vast number of staff on a 24-hour schedule who are in close contact with the residents. In addition to that they normally rely on hours of support from some of the family members who come in and feed/care for/entertain their relatives so that the staff have more time to give care to other residents which goes beyond the bare minimum.

In addition to that there are an army of in-home carers, both professional and family, feeding and washing vulnerable people in their own home.

Most of those carers (80%+ being women) have partners who have jobs, and children who attend school and nursery. They may even, god forbid, have a social life and other jobs of their own. It’s a huge interconnected network of millions which cannot possibly be separated from “the rest of us”.

And that’s before we get to the younger independent ECV people. They can technically sequester themselves from the world if the government is prepared to pay them enough to live on (in the absence of a WFH job) but again they have households. Will the government replace their spouse’s salary so they can also stay in the house full time? Will it provide suitable home schooling for their children indefinitely?

Agree with all this and would add that the 'vulnerable' category should include the 'healthy' people who would go on to have their lives permanently changed by 'long covid', which as far as I can tell are impossible to identify before the fact.

Practising your religion may be a human right but we have restricted other human rights. Many religious leaders have, quite rightly in my view, pointed out that you can practise your religion differently in a pandemic.

And this is one example of why you should www.newsweek.com/new-hampshire-church-covid-outbreak-prayer-session-1537329

Or did you mean studies that tracked prevalence through self identification of symptoms? If so , I have a recollection of a study that showed it was possible to predict outbreaks early by looking at frequency of web searches for various symptoms. I believe it also helped them identify loss of smell as a symptom, as it was being searched for in areas with outbreaks. Sorry, I can’t recall any more details.

Herd immunity will be the end state, whether we get there by vaccine and/or infection. Unless we live in lockdown forever.

The dilemma is that if some groups can’t tolerate a vaccine, for example immuno suppressed or vaccine supplies are slow, how do you manage a tanking economy and the other side effects of crippled infrastructure against overwhelming the NHS and deaths.

No right answer without losses somewhere.

Covid-19 cannot be ignored because it's potentially less significant than, eg, sepsis. We can and should be treating all conditions. If Covid takes off to even half of March/April levels we will struggle.

An ICU doctor who had first hand experience of dealing with COVID patients in one of the major COVID hotspots back in March - April would never recommend ignoring it. However there is a wide range of options between “ignoring COVID” and “treating it as the most serious threat to your personal health and overall humanity and being willing to lockdown the whole population for the second time without considering all potential consequences”.

I cannot find the exact tweet but his message was: “We should respect and fear COVID but if you think it is the worst thing that may happen to you and your family, please think again”.

@whatsnext2

Herd immunity will be the end state, whether we get there by vaccine and/or infection. Unless we live in lockdown forever.

The dilemma is that if some groups can’t tolerate a vaccine, for example immuno suppressed or vaccine supplies are slow, how do you manage a tanking economy and the other side effects of crippled infrastructure against overwhelming the NHS and deaths.

No right answer without losses somewhere.

If there is no longterm immunity and no vaccine there will be no herd immunity.

I agree that I think some outside sports should be able to continue, but I don't think it's helpful to start saying "that's open therefor that should be open

I am not saying that though, I am saying the evidence for why the vicar in a church is able to make suitable risk assessments to continue worshipping but a similar representative in a secular organisation is not. Those sort of choices need particular evidence even more than "let's close everything", closing everything could just be done on a precautionary principle - without evidence. Saying the vicar is able to make that judgement requires evidence.

I disagree that closing places of worship is difficult, it's already been done, it's perfectly accepted that rights can be restricted during public health emergencies and it's right to assemble not worship that's being restricted really, worshipping can continue not in person as all the religious groups did for months already.

I absolutely agree it's not a race to the bottom, but that's why special casing groups is bad, it perpetuates the fact that some people keep their privileges while others lose.

I was wondering if anyone knows about the Oxford vaccine trials. They remain paused in the USA. Over the summer there was an issue with the trial here in the UK as not enough virus about to test. Now tat we have several areas of intensive transmission I wonder whether the UK arm might expand?

Not sure about that table Witchend. I mentally ran it through my team at work and noticed that it would put a twenty year old Afro-Caribbean man in a higher risk category than a 69 year old Caucasian woman which seems unlikely given the dominance of age in the risk factors.

The Alama “risk adjusted Covid age” tool in the OP’s list of links is pretty easy to use and more nuanced.

In the ONS infection survey, 77% of people who had a positive coronavirus test had no symptoms on the day of their test and 86% did not have the three key symptoms of a cough, temperature or loss of taste/smell.

I saw this in the Telegraph but it's a UCL paper using the ONS data:

The analysis looked at data for 36,061 people who had a test between the end of April and the end of June.

Some 115 (0.32%) had a positive test result, the study found, of whom 27 (23.5%) were symptomatic and 88 (76.5%) were asymptomatic on the day of the test.

When looking at cough, fever and loss of taste/smell - seen as the three main symptoms - 86.1% of those who tested positive had none of these.

These are obviously, as random samples, less likely to have symptoms than people who have booked tests- but it's still interesting to see. Shows the enormous challenge of containing infection.

[quote MRex]Without mentioning the name of the lunatic to try to preserve sanity in the discussion... Obviously he seems to have recovered from covid-19 and was given the monoclonal antibodies. I've also seen interesting comments that these could be given to elderly if they can't tolerate a vaccine (just everyone? only if ill?). Can we discuss the evidence on them so far please, might they be a game changer?
Looks like there are two types; Regeneron and Eli Lilly. I've only seen limited info so far, happy to read anything others have found?
www.statnews.com/2020/09/29/regenerons-covid-19-antibody-may-help-non-hospitalized-patients-recover-faster-early-data-show/
www.statnews.com/2020/10/07/eli-lilly-monoclonal-antibody-cocktail-covid-19/[/quote]
Does anyone have any information about how much these cost/are likely to cost as I can see that being a huge barrier to them being used as an effective treatment?

I had a monoclonal antibody for an entirely different purpose and it cost the NHS £60,000!!! I know some of this is inflation by big pharma as exactly the same treatment in a larger dose but licensed for a different disease actually costs half of that. I have no idea how much it actually costs to produce, though.

Regardless of production costs, I'm sure there will be some degree of inflation as they'll want to milk the US market. Might make it unaffordable to the NHS. Unless there's some kind of nonprofit agreement around Covid?

Only could be suggested by ruthless people who call the NHS the last bastion of communism (Prof Sikora ) Social Darwinists who want to let the strong have their fun while the weak go to the wall

Yes. Of the two parts of this declaration ('protect the vulnerable' and 'everyone else back to normal'), only the second one is easy to implement. The 'protect the vulnerable' part is incredibly complex and does need a strategy, but they haven't provided one. That's very revealing - it makes it clear that, of the two, that's not the one they see as important. It's there to make the 'everyone else back to normal' part seem more acceptable to people's consciences, but if in reality it doesn't work out that well, well that's not really a problem, as it was never the important one anyway.

It's worrying that this could lead some people not only to not bothering to avoid spreading the virus, but also to seeing spreading it as somehow a good thing, without realising that the effects of doing that will not only be on vulnerable people, but on everyone.

I would be really interested on data on the distribution and take up of different ideas like this, how much they're spread organically and how much by bots and so on.

1027 new positive tests with 13.5% of test positive in Scotland.
5 new deaths and number of people in hospital with Covid doubled since last week.
We shall see if the new restrictions help.

We know the biggest source of fake news medium.com/beingwell/study-of-fake-news-spread-shows-us-president-biggest-source-of-misinformation-5524590635d5

That report of an outbreak 'in' a New Hampshire church doesn't really tell us anything.

It doesn't say how many people went to the meeting or how long they spent there. It does say that in a county where there are just over 100 cases per 100,000 (again no time mentioned), 7 of them had happened to go to a particular prayer meeting.

@GetAMoveOnTroodon

downloads.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/english/covid-19_proposed_social_distancing_framework_briefing_aid.pdf

I know this is a leak and a draft, but I’m intrigued by the wording on the level 3 rules which says “no social contact outside your household in any setting [replaces alert level 2 restriction]”. In level 2 it specifically mentions support bubbles, does this mean support / childcare bubbles would be abolished in level 3 do we think?

I’m actually in favour of that as I think the current childcare bubbles are driving a lot of household mixing, and if that is the primary place of transmission that’s what needs focussing on

How does this make sense:

• People should only travel for essential reasons
• People can holiday outside of your area....

@Regulus most virus become endemic at some point, for example Influenza A is what became of Spanish flu. Just a question of how long it takes and at what costs. Most mutations by Covid so far are neutral or deleterious to the virus.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567134820301829

Excuse me, my computer crashed before I could re-read
Question (again)

Do you of studies that are follow up and related to long-covid (symptoms, damage done, how irreversible the damage seems,...) - apart from the zoe app self-diagnosed/self-reported predictions?
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There are multiple risk calculators, I come up above 100 in all of them :( I do look young for my predicted age though :)