Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 25

[BigChocFrenzy]

Welcome to thread 25 of the daily updates

Resource links

UK:
Uk dashboard R, deaths, cases, hospitals, tests - by postcode, 4 nations, English regions, LAs
Interactive 7-day rolling cases map click on map or by postcode
UK govt pressers Slides & data
SAGE Table Interventions with impacts and R
Imperial UK weekly tables & extrapolations LAs, cases / 100k, table, map, hotspots
School statistics Attendance - Tuesdays
ICNRC Intensive Care National Audit & Research reports
UK testing and NHS England track & trace - Thursdays
ONS Roundup deaths, infections & economic reports
ONS England, Wales & NI Infection surveillance report - Fridays
ONS Datasets for surveillance reports
Our World in Data UK test positivity
R estimates & daily growth UK & English regions - Fridays
Modelling real number of UK infections February in first wave

England:
NHS England Hospital activity
NHS England Daily deaths
PHE COVID Clinical Risk Factors Non-respiratory by region, area, district etc
MSAO Map of English cases
Cases Tracker England Local Government
PHE surveillance reports Covid, flu, respiratory diseases - Thursdays
CovidMessenger live update by council district in England

Scotland, Wales, NI:
Scot gov Daily data
Scotland TravellingTabby LAs, care homes, hospitals, tests, t&t
PH Wales LAs, tests, ONS deaths
NI Dashboard

Miscell:
Zoe Uk data
ECDC rolling 14-day incidence EEA & UK
Worldometer UK page
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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Links added to OP:

• SAGE Table of Interventions with impacts and R
• PHE COVID Clinical Risk Factors by region, area

Links changed

• PHE Covid surveillance is now Covid & flu

I find the phrase ‘rip’ not useful as that’s not on the table.

We have some measures in place. Not none.

I find the phrase ‘rip’ not useful as that’s not on the table.

I disagree, I think it describes quite well the disaster we have with no functioning test and trace and too many data gaps and errors to mention, but I also don't like to tell other posters which words to use.

Whitty - we’d be in a much worse place than we are now without restrictions. You can hear it in the briefing.

But we are not controlling the virus , it's controlling us. The brakes have failed so we are dragging our feet on the ground in an effort to slow things. How many successive panic lockdowns can the nhs stand ?

Perhaps I am just having a black day... keep up with the facts please as it does help

Put another way no one is advocating removing all restrictions and just letting the virus run. Which what it sounds like when people quote others as wanting to let it rip.

What we are doing is putting us in a better place than no restrictions even if it’s still hard.

www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/serco-lands-another-45m-for-failing-covid-test-and-trace-scheme/

News report about Serco.

I found these two parts worrying. Have written to my MP to ask if it's true and if so what he's going to do about it (nothing, as per most things I write to him about, I suspect).

"It has also emerged that another big Serco contract for COVID contact tracing, worth up to £432m, has a clause which allows Serco to effectively rewrite key terms on service provision – terms which have been redacted. "

"Serco’s separate £108m COVID contact tracing contract – the value of which could rise to £432m if it continues through to next year – allows Serco to “refine” its own service level agreements, oversee its own monitoring, and also rules out automatic penalties for underperformance."

They're writing their own contracts so we can't get money back if they don't deliver? How is this just not handing over a huge pile of money for nothing?

@Regulus

Lockdowns are to ensure health care is available when you have your car accident, your pregnancy, your heart attack, your child with meningitis

And this needs to be the message.

This is what people are failing to understand. I try to explain it to people I encounter who are totally against the restrictions, but most of the time they just won't listen.

I agree using emotive language like “let it rip” is not particularly constructive.

What all countries across Europe seem to be trying to do is to identify the set of measures that would allow to keep the rate of transmission under 1 during autumn-winter. Circuit breaker / lockdown / etc is a version of the pause button but it will only delay the problem. It is still important to find a sustainable solution.

T&T is probably part of the answer but I would be very surprised if passing the ownership to local authorities will be the magical solution. We will probably need to completely rethink the process, e.g. move to backwards tracing which in theory should increase the number of identified cases by a factor of 2 or 3. Also, I know I sound like a broken record but I am disappointed that SAGE have not spent more time on discussing trade offs between testing speed and accuracy. In the “backwards” tracing model, identifying the first infected case as soon as possible is of critical importance.

There are also parts / sectors of the economy that may have to remain closed for many months but we need to understand what the minimum scope is. The circuit breaker does not answer this question - it will just kick the can further down the road (assuming people comply).

@wheresmymojo

Question as I'm quite confused now...

How often do reviews take place of which areas should be moved within tiers?

Which body makes and announces these decisions and when?

My question too!! Maybe @BigChocFrenzy may be able to advise later..... My suggestion would be that numbers are reviewed on a Tuesday, post weekend dip, govt briefing to general public Wednesday with effect from that Friday at 6pm. That’d give businesses (some) time to prep/ sort but I expect many will already be ‘on stand by’, schools same to some extent and then would prevent any partying as seen last night and previously. Also, what about areas dropping down from say very high to high or high to medium....??

Surrey Local Outbreak Engagement Board – Established to provide political ownership, public-facing engagement and communication for outbreak response

I've noted this before. But in Surrey, all schools are now encouraged to wear face masks in all communal areas. Decided by local council, for the local community. I think we are very lucky in Surrey.

Why is 'let it rip' emotive? It doesn't seem to be to me. It's more a more conversational description of allowing exponential growth, is it not?

Let it rip implies no restrictions and is rarely used related to functioning test and trace and too many data gaps and errors- instead it's emotive language used to describe anything that is not strict lockdown.

Lockdowns are to ensure health care is available when you have your car accident, your pregnancy, your heart attack, your child with meningitis

I was a supporter of lockdown in March. I entirely agree with this principle.

The problem is that using the NHS over the last six months has shown that lockdown has completely fucked it. The principle hasn't worked. Not locking down at all would have led to a few weeks of total chaos and disaster, but would have been fairly time delimited. I don't wish we'd done that, but I think we have to accept that the current situation has left many people in the country with very little reassurance of receiving adequate medical care. Not just for a few weeks, but for half a year, a year, maybe longer.

I haven't been able to see a GP in 2020. I went to A&E in August with stomach pain and was meant to have follow-up tests. It's now the middle of October and my surgery hasn't yet been able to give me a blood test. I have had to stop the antidepressant I took for years abruptly, because it's out of stock and no pharmacy will put it on special order because it's too expensive. DC1 wasn't seen when he had a serious and worrying rash (not meningitis, but it didn't feel too great photographing it on my phone and hoping the essential attributes went through).

Most of all, DM died of cancer, which was diagnosed in lockdown (much delayed b/c of lockdown) and which went untreated (because of lockdown).

So given that 1 member of my family has died, and I am now in chronically poor health, all because of lockdown, I don't have any faith that locking down again is going to provide me with medical treatment in the future. Alas. What we do, however, I have no fucking idea.

That's not the context of this discussion. The post being criticised said this

We need to get away from the idea that letting the virus rip reduces economic damage. All the evidence we have suggests that in fact economic damage is reduced by controlling the virus.

So specifically considering amount of economic damage relative to control of the virus. And 'let it rip' being used in that context and in the context of rapidly increasing numbers of infections in the UK to the point that a two week 'circuit breaker' is being discussed (not full lockdown - nowhere was that mentioned).

I think discussions of tone and specific wording of other posters comments are a little pointless to be honest, as well as quite rude. I think discussing the ideas in the comment more useful - and those ideas were crystal clear.

It seems to me the question is this - is the economic harm of further restrictions greater than or lesser than the increased economic harm of the number of infections from NOT having those restrictions.

Unfortunately I don't think our data is good enough to answer that yet - but it would be an interesting analysis if possible.

We need to get away from the idea that letting the virus rip reduces economic damage.

But where is that idea evident? On this thread?

@hopsalong I'm so sorry for your loss.

Can you change GP? If you're not getting the care you need I think you can change.

As I can’t see anyone advocating doing this on here.

As for describing exponential growth usually people are specific with that too. It’s more useful to state a figure 1.6 for example .

On a thread like this where we come for information there’s nothing wrong with being accurate. In fact it’s useful.

@BigChocFrenzy

Ari I would avoid blended pt schools for the reasons described by many already

If things got that bad, I'd rather cancel secondary school for half the years and spread the other years out over the classrooms -
but the most important secondary school years are the 16+, who unfortunately bring higher risk than younger ones

I work in education and actually think that blending learning is better educationally than random groups self isolating at different times, particularly when it gets to the numbers of groups self isolating that we are getting now in the NW

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54538028
Covid in Scotland: Nicola Sturgeon warns Scots against travel to Blackpool

She said trips to Blackpool - and in particular coach parties - had been linked to "a large and growing number of cases" of the virus in Scotland, with a specific incident management team set up to deal with them.

Over the past month, around 180 people have told contact tracing teams that they had recently been in the Lancashire holiday resort, with 94 of them in the past week.

Ms Sturgeon said the town was being "mentioned in Test and Protect conversations far more than any other location outside of Scotland", with a particular concern about coach trips.

She said she knew many people would have trips planned for the half-term holidays in October, but said: "If you don't have to travel right now, do not travel.

If holiday coach trips are connected with outbreaks, there's a good argument for halting organised trips of this nature as they do fall under 'non-essential'.

You also have to ask what people are doing in Blackpool which is proving to be problematic.

There was a lady on LBC this morning who said there had been a study into which countries recovered best from the 1918 Spanish flu, those who prioritised health or economy. She said that those who prioritised economy at the time of the pandemic took longer to recover economically AND had more deaths.

Actually I was asking the question under the assumption that suppression is not happening , then is it better to let the virus be totally uncontrolled or is it better to keep with the current approach of restrictions which slow everything down , continually closing bits of the economy , but don't achieve suppression ?

Suppression through test track and isolate to me would give health and economic benefits

I am not sure if the current approach however kills off the economy just as effectively and costs long term more lives ( cancelled operations and reduced testing and poverty ) for than just accepting defeat and picking up the mess afterwards.

I guess if you can guarantee vaccine or treatment long before you have lost everyone who would die in the uncontrolled situation then you benefit. If that doesn't happen you end at rock bottom after 2 years rather than 6 months and so you have been killing the economy , which costs lives , for far longer than in the uncontrolled case. Dragging everything out but getting to the same endpoint , but in a worse state?

Going on a coach for a couple of hours doesn't sound a great idea.

I don’t think you can compare the health v economy trade offs in Spanish flu for many reasons. Both the health care systems and economic systems were too different, not keast our heavy reliance on the service sector in the U.K. which wasn’t present in 1916, and of course we didn’t have the same expectations worldwide about what effective health care looked like.

Also we don’t know now how we end this, if we did it would be easier to know the right course of action but in a sense the countries who got Spanish flu right probably did so because it was a two year pandemic if it had gone on for five years as this easily could then different decisions need to be made.

I don’t know where I sit on health b economy and the two ate very interlinked anywhere since one pays for the other and the other provides the healthy workforce we need to it’s complicated but I think a lot of “priories health economy can wait” assumes a shorter term problem than this is turning out to be and why people get more nervous about lockdowns as time goes on.

@IloveJKRowling

Thanks for suggesting this. I live in West London and spent hours yesterday morning calling round other surgeries to ask a) if they would register me and b) 'if I were a patient today, would I be able to book a blood test?' My own surgery had the perfect catch-22 excuse that 'we don't have any spaces for the next 3 weeks, the calendar isn't open for more than 3 weeks, and there's no waiting list'!

I only found one surgery with space in the next two weeks (if I had been registered yesterday) but it's over a mile from my house, difficult to drive to, and they can't register new patients until someone comes back from leave at the end of next week!

The only other option is to go to Chelsea and Westminster. But it seems a really bad idea to go to a hospital in the middle of a pandemic. I don't know what to do, but am starting to become extremely anxious about not having access to basic medical care. My last blood results had various abnormalities (e.g. 25% eosinophils) that weren't urgent but were meant to be followed up. That was two months ago.

Maybe will pay to see a private GP, but can't afford this as a regular thing.