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.

It's not really solid evidence, but at DD's sixth form the rota has meant that they are only in college for 4-5 days a fortnight, so if they catch Covid there's only a 1 in 3 chance of them being at college when infectious prior to having any symptoms. The college report 8 students (out of around 2500) have had Covid, and only 2 of them have caused any other students to have to isolate. And much less chance for outbreaks to really get going as they're getting a 9 day firebreak every fortnight. Yes you're right that the students do still have some contact with one another outside college, though I'm not sure there's much extra during the online week compared with the face to face week. Cafeterias, corridors, toilets, and public transport getting to college all less crowded too.

@sirfredfredgeorge

So rotas makes sense

It seems to be commonly said here, but I struggle to see that it's so self evident. You need to isolate for 14 days, how does 7 days in change that, you still have the vast majority of people infectious whilst at school. In any case, the children would not be isolating during the other 7 days and so are still likely to catch it in non school situations and then take it to school (if they are isolating then that's a whole different kettle of fish, and the lack of exercise that isolating results in would be too much harm for it to be medically warranted).

So the only benefit is that the school only has half the pupils in at a time, if they halved the close contacts by doing half size classes that might benefit, but there aren't the teachers and in any case irregular teachers half the time and no teachers the rest of the time is not a positive.

To me, the benefit of rotas is not obvious, can someone actually provide evidence for the benefit, I can see harm, but the benefit only appears extremely marginal.

I find this confusing, too. I see people post on MN all the time that 'I'd rather have part-time school than unpredictable periods of self-isolation', but I don't fully understand why they think that part-time rotas would mean that?

One thing with rotas is you have only have half the children in at a time, so more space.

There's also:
Let's say:
Week in school: Day 1, pupil A has covid (asymptomatic). Any children they pass it to would be most likely coming out around day 6-by then they're off school for a week, so by the time they're infectious they aren't there to spread it. They may well be over it enough by the time they're back not to be spreading it full time.
Plus if you start getting clusters coming out over the week at home it gives the school time to make a decision with thought rather than having a snap decision.

You also have the situation that the children and teachers are set up for online learning, so if you do need to keep them off longer it should be easier to move onto that.

However in some ways 2 weeks of school on/off might make more sense.

Take the headline the other day that supermarkets were the main transmitter of coronavirus, followed by secondary schools then primary schools... add secondary and primary schools together and it turns out that schools are actually the main source of coronavirus.

This was NOT what the report said. It said that the place most people who tested positive had been in the days before their test was the supermarket followed by school. As there were very few other places anyone could go, most people would have reported a supermarket and/or school as the place they'd been in the previous few days, including those who didn't test positive.

Please can we put this misinformation to rest.

Yes that's right@amicissimma The research was commonly missquoted as being where people had caught Covid but was in fact just where they had been (checked in via the app I think, so excluding private homes and outdoor places) I'd be really interested to know how the last check in of people who tested positive compares with the last check in of those who tested negative. That ought to be possible from the data and would give some actual insight into how people are catching Covid. Does anyone know whether this analysis has been done?

I'd be really interested to know how the last check in of people who tested positive compares with the last check in of those who tested negative. That ought to be possible from the data and would give some actual insight into how people are catching Covid. Does anyone know whether this analysis has been done?

It isn't possible, the only collection of check-ins is when you test positive, the data is not otherwise collected, it remains on the device, if it wasn't then the whole "this is anonymous" does not work, you can re-identify people easily by just a few locations - which check-ins are.

I think people who can't see the benefit of rotas may not fully understand staff absence and its impacts but most importantly how overcrowded schools really are. Football matches aside , I am not sure you would ever come across such a crowded place as a school corridor/lunch queues/bus/.

Reducing overcrowding has very big impact. Ergo , fewer cases, and less transmission.

Thanks for explaining that @sirfred. So people only tell the app about positive tests, and not negative tests, so they can't compare the two groups. It's a shame they can't extract some generic anonymised data on check ins for all app users to compare to the check ins of possitive test results. Or could the Zoe app collect some data on where people have been whenever they take a test and compare the results of those who test positive and negotiate?

It's frustrating that a year into this virus we still don't really have good evidence on how or where it's spreading. Just lots of speculation, some pretty simulations on FB and a lot of arguments. Very little science or real evidence.

The British government wanted to gather anonymised data like that, as did the French and various other governments. Apple and Google decided it wasn't allowed. There are varying views on whether technology providers should really be the arbiter on data sharing rather than their users opting in and out. People at the time were quick to criticise the UK government for not immediately toeing the line, even though the decision from Apple/ Google came quite some time into the app development process. Anyway, that's why it isn't happening.

Mixed economy views on BBC, www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-55062425 quoted below:

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) expects the economy to be about 3% smaller in 2025 than if the pandemic never happened and that the government will still be spending £102bn more than it earns by 2026.That means raising a lot of tax to plug the gap.

Too gloomy, says Ruth Gregory, senior UK economist at Capital Economics.
"We think the OBR’s forecasts are underplaying the effect of vaccines on economic activity which would go along way to filling any fiscal hole. Second, it is not necessarily the case that there will be a fiscal hole anyway if the economy eventually gets back to its pre-virus level as we think it will," she says.

There's a risk that raising taxes too soon will pinch off growth, she adds.

The problem with location data is that it's essentially not anonymous at all, you can identify anyone from a few locations - if you imagine in "normal" times you have an office and a corner shop - chances are you can identify to which of the employees in the office a particular individual is by which corner shop they visit (they go to the one near their home) Let alone once you add more locations and temporal data - so you know when people were checking in to places.

Apple and Google were not arbiters, an app could have been created, but the compromises of the public api's were considerable, having those public api less compromised would have made the platforms themselves even more unsafe than they are for stalker-ware and similar.

Oh, and I forgot to add, there's nothing about Google / Apple that prevents the app from sending check-in data to a central server to enable the analysis of where people who weren't positive checked in, so it's a decision on privacy by the app developers rather than anything imposed on them by the phone operating systems.

11,299 positives today
608 deaths

Really dramatic lockdown result!

@NightmareLoon

11,299 positives today 608 deaths

Really dramatic lockdown result!

Oh facepalm that was yesterday! slinks off

🤣

Thought it looked familiar.

LOL, I was getting annoyed that I couldn't find todays update and wondered how you were getting it NightmareLoon. Lets think positive thoughts till we get todays results.

One wonders if another sofa moment is pending. Whilst I’m fairly confident it isn’t, the thing is given everything that has gone before you never can be quite sure

Monday specimen date has been the big day in recent weeks.

For England last Wednesday saw 13250 cases for monday to go with the 1291 initially reported the day before.

Sooooo 585 reported yesterday. Adding any number under 10000 would be promising, and 8000 or lower really starting to get positive.

@boys3

One wonders if another sofa moment is pending. Whilst I’m fairly confident it isn’t, the thing is given everything that has gone before you never can be quite sure

Being late always makes me nervous. I guess I'm really hoping for another around 11-13k again which would be brilliant currently.

When they were late I was wondering if there was a briefing today!

I'm excited and nervous for today's numbers! My own local area appears to be dropping dramatically with for example, 67 cases on Saturday 14th and 22 cases 1 week later. Its such a relief to have that hope that the wave is over AND vaccine/faster testing is on the horizon.

Friends tried to get tests and website said none available which doesn’t seem to tally with the low numbers.

It makes me nervous when they are late. Particularly as this is the last day before they announce the tier allocations (although I suspect that decision is already made in reality)

paces nervously

I'm afraid I just don't trust the last few days' worth and suspect we're about to find a few thousand more. Happy to be wrong (and also just because I'm in an area that is definitely still increasing doesn't mean everywhere is).