Data and analysis thread, started 12 November

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Data and Analysis Thread, started Oct 29 www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4064113-Data-and-Analysis-Thread-started-Oct-29

Regular lurker but I frequent poster, didn't want to lose the threads.

@FeelingBIue
I'm effed. She is mid 30s, not overweight and perfectly healthy and white. I should be looking for a dentist who is bame, overweight and has diabetes, asthma.

I have a dentist who's BAME and in his 50s, plus he works in hospitals part-time. I'm definitely getting my teeth looked at by Spring!

@sirfred The reason for targeting health care professionals for the trial was because they wanted people who were at higher risk of catching it, so they'd get results faster. It would be a spectacular failure of their targeting efforts if they managed to end up selecting people who were actually less likely to catch it.

Doesn't affect the protection rate though - that's a percentage calculated by comparing the treatment and placebo groups (they're not saying that the 30 odd out of 5000 people given the vaccine who caught it were the only ones who could have done)

@MRex
I might have to DM you in the spring for his contact details :)

You know with hindsight it would have been marvellous to have vaccinated all the students that went off to university in September and then monitored them all. They would have had the results in a fortnight

15,450 cases
206 deaths

Cases certainly seem to be plateauing and < whispers> maybe falling.

Saw this graph on Twitter about the Confidence Intervals of the different vaccines, including versions for both regimens for AZ and an aggregate.

They're falling, finally :) definitely falling, and in every region now. Hospital admissions are plateaued currently but will hopefully fall in a week or two.

Government's winter plan setting out how the new tiers will work has been published if you're interested assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/937529/COVID-19_Winter_Plan.pdf

In short, not much different to how they were before (same rules on household mixing) but pubs must serve meals to be open on tier 2 and takeaway only in tier 3. We have to wait til Thursday to find out which tier we're in.

If we don't find out what tier we're in til Thurs how on earth can the hospitality industry prepare?!

They'll have a week @August. I'd assume that ought to be long enough to get some drinks in stock. Might be a bit tough if you're trying to recruit a chef and turn yourself into a restaurant though!

Does anyone understand why cases are falling so much faster than in the first wave? It’s happening to other European countries that have had similar autumn second waves too.

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel I’d guess it’s the increased testing so the figures this time around are nearer to the total.

I think in the first wave detected cases didn't fall fast at first because of all the care home outbreaks and lack of PPE, and lack of testing causing many infected people to take a chance with light symptoms. Remember we weren't monitoring actual cases at all back then - only serious ones that resulted in hospital admissions were tested. So cases went both up and down a lot faster than the charts show. We also got better at testing during the wave 1 peak, so cases appeared to plateau when in fact they were probably falling, but starting to be picked up better.

Yes, I agree - case numbers reported back in April-May were influenced by two conflicting trends: (i) quickly falling community prevalence and (ii) continuously increasing testing that highlighted new milder infections. As a result, the number of positive cases had plateaued before it started to fall.

SAGE minutes from April and May did suggest that community transmission was decreasing very rapidly. However, we continued to see outbreaks in hospitals and care homes that were only put under control later in spring (with more robust resting).

Realistically, you can't compare testing figures from first wave to this as you are comparing apples and oranges in terms of who was being tested.

Also it's Monday, so just a reminder tomorrow things will go up again, because of the normal weekend lag. I don't say that to worry people just to remind that a rise tomorrow is totally expected! (in cases, deaths and healthcare).

Cases in England certainly starting to take a clearer downward trajectory. Looking at the 7 days to 18th November as opposed to the 7 days prior to that 219 English councils showing a fall in cases. Not quite every region, but give it another day or so of specimen dates coming through and I am fairly confident that at the overall regional level the south east and London will also start to show a week on week fall

Does anyone understand why cases are falling so much faster than in the first wave? It’s happening to other European countries that have had similar autumn second waves too

There is a theory, and it has been seen in other historical pandemics too, obviously with the caveat of lack of solid statistical evidence, but in viewing the curves of these pandemics, each subsequent peak is smaller and sharper, as the general population acquires immunity, and the virus has a smaller and smaller pool of vulnerable to work on. Unless and until it mutates..........and this is, of course, also why it mutates. Clever little things viruses.

Doesn't affect the protection rate though - that's a percentage calculated by comparing the treatment and placebo groups

I gave one scenario before (it only works as a booster in people who already had some immunity from a previous infection) another scenario would be it only works in situations where people get a small amount of the virus - ie even if the individual hadn't been infected before, because they're surrounded by others who were protected and possibly in PPE then it's only protective in small.

It doesn't matter hugely, as it clearly is beneficial, and if it has no serious side effects then rolling it out will enable it to be proven in large scales. I just don't like seeing studies where something about the group is so obviously not representative of the population - or the statistics we get on positive tests are not representative of the population.

@TheSunIsStillShining - as soon as I get my appointments!

Press conference is on now.

Are they actually saying anything? or just blabbering as usual?

Does anyone know the positivity rate please? And also accessibility for tests. The drop seems a bit too fast to be real.

It's a fast drop, but I don't think more than the other countries second wave. Last time it was a slower drop at least partially because testing was increasing at the same time.

I am a bit concerned that areas like ours which are rising (and people are generally being reasonably sensible, but rather uninclined to be tested as "there's so few with it around so it can't possibly be, I'll just take a couple of days off") will bring us up, especially if they release us into a low tier.

People do look at the big picture when it's good news there, but aren't now really looking at the local picture. However when the overall figures were rising, they were looking at the local ones and saying "well we're fine".

Number of tests conducted over the last few days looks on a par with the pattern expected, drops over the weekend as normal but weekday numbers on average slightly higher than the week before. Nothing to suggest any constraints.

And as I said above, numbers will go up tomorrow, as Monday numbers are always low so might be giving a false impression of a dramatic drop.

There has been a slight decline in positive rate since last week but I don't know if the daily test figures include the rapid tests being carried out on asymptomatic people in Liverpool (and possibly elsewhere by now). If they do then this could explain the falling rate.

Last Monday's figures - 278,265 tests with 21,363 positives
This Monday's figures - 273,820 tests with 15,450 positives

No idea about test availability though.