R rate between 0.9-1 could this be why?

[stirling]

I'm just sitting here with absolutely no scientific background to back up my thoughts, but I'm wondering if the decrease is more to do with the spread and less to do with lockdown.
Because I'm not sure where you live but in my area and neighbouring areas that I've driven to, the streets are swarming with people, supermarkets packed, and many people I know of are ignoring the rule and visiting friends /family. Plus there's the fact that millions of children are attending school so lots of cross exposure.

The more severe lockdown in March/April which everyone took seriously didn't really have the same quick effect on the R number. I'm sure it took longer to get it down...

So was the Swedish infectious diseases guru right after all? I wonder if it would be wrong to assume that many many more people have actually had it now, and therefore no's are decreasing. I personally know of at least ten families that have had it, whereas in April not any just the tragic stories on the news /this board. I think that the symptoms changed for many (since Sept) more like cold symptoms.

Your thoughts please.

(Can I ask that there's no nastiness on this thread please? Seen too much of it this year on mumsnet. Thank you)

I agree completely. It just seems to be showing itself everywhere. If it was down to the restrictions/lockdown, how do you explain the cases falling much faster in the worst affected places e.g. Liverpool and not in others where it was less. It just screams to me that regardless of our measures it's finding populations where there was very little immunity, cases are flaring up and then it recedes. That's not to say it will disappear but it is to say I struggle to see that it would continue as a pandemic as time goes on.

I was reading an article yesterday about Germany and what had gone wrong there as they were no longer containing the virus and their death rate at the moment (deaths per infections) was higher than others like us and France. The article was going down the track that we must be better at treating it now but surely the more obvious explanation is that in UK/France a lot of the most susceptible have already sadly succumbed whereas there is a much bigger pool in Germany as up to now they've held back the tide better. I honestly believe we will look back on all this and the different measures between countries will have had little effect.

I agree and so hoping its true!
I am of a biology background though and of the belief that this was how it was always going to go...

I actually agree. We’ve had a kind of lockdown but loads haven’t complied, workplaces open, schools and universities open, bibles everywhere, childcare happening, bad weather so more people inside. Cases should be rising but instead they are falling everywhere. It’s too early for it to just be lockdown and lockdown wasn’t strong enough to cause this big a fall either.

Bubbles not bibles!

For comparison Spain’s cases are also falling quickly and they were one of the hardest hit at first. They’ve had tougher measures too recently but no where near what we have had, yet still falling.

I’m with you. Seems obvious to me.

Why do you think cases are falling when the numbers of positive tests is through the roof? We have better treatments certainly, hence the fewer deaths, but the virus hasn't changed one bit.

Herd immunity starting to kick in ?

It is well known that subsequent waves after the first of an infectious illness will decrease each time

Hopefully the 3rd wave ( and thete will he one) will be smaller again, and so on

Repeated "lockdowns" start to make less and less sense.

No. Look up the ONS infection survey which swabs thousands of people, regardless of whether they have symptoms.
It shows the vast majority of the population have not had coronavirus.
We have no idea what the true infection rate was in the first lockdown as there was hardly any testing - so impossible to say how quickly the infection rate or R dropped

@titchy

Why do you think cases are falling when the numbers of positive tests is through the roof? We have better treatments certainly, hence the fewer deaths, but the virus hasn't changed one bit.

I’m not sure what you mean? Cases are falling, have you seen any of the figures in the last week? It shows a significant fall and r rate has lowered.

At the peak in March, well over 100k (and it might be 200k or more) were getting infected every day and the numbers getting infected daily were doubling every few days. The total number of people with infection was somewhere between 800k and 3.8million probably. This was reflected in the number of deaths.

In October, we were approaching 100k infections daily (from the national survey research figures). However, we had social distancing and hand washing and masks. So the doubling was slower, more like every 2 weeks. This also meant that the number of total infections was lower, more like 500-700k. That is why numbers came down fast.

If we had had a lockdown in September as the scientists advised, then numbers would be far lower and the lockdown could have been shorter and would still have had more effect.

The natural best time for this to spread is likely to be the depth of winter. So if we take away restrictions we will have widespread illness and death.

And a) no we don thave widespread herd immunity yet and also b) herd immunity from mass infection is not going to solve this. New infectious diseases don't wipe themselves out by causing herd immunity, sorry.

Cases are falling, have you seen any of the figures in the last week? It shows a significant fall and r rate has lowered.

We've been in lockdown for the past three weeks - that's why cases have fallen.

Sweden have acknowledged that their original herd immunity plan was crap and are adopting the same lockdown as the rest of the West.

We were not testing much in March. It went from the community to care homes and then back out again. Hence a slow decline.

This time there is a lot of testing. Liverpool was in tier 3 before this "lockdown" (which is lockdown lite anyway) and had a lot of rapid tests. Hence Liverpool's rate dropped rapidly.

There are still lots of positive test in areas hot hardest in the first wave, very little sign of immunity doing more than slowing spread.

People were less sick in summer, vitamin D probably does help your immune system. We are going into winter when that will have less benefit and infections may become more severe unless everyone keeps up their supplements.

If anyone thinks the rates are falling because covid has become harder to catch/transmit, do you therefore believe that rates from the second week of January will be low?

If that was true then Leicester would be a low incidence area by now, instead of in Tier 3 and still having high levels

@Oly4 The thing is that survey can only test for antibodies. What it doesn't show are:

• people who have had it but used T cell immunity & never created antibodies
• people who created antibodies but those have now disappeared from their bloodstream, however they will most likely still be immune due to memory cells reactivating antibodies when exposed again
• those who have innate immunity to this virus for whatever reason (previous Coronavirus infection) which there is increasing research to show is true.
• children who seem largely unaffected for whatever reason.

So once those 4 groups are taken account of in addition to those showing "current antibodies" there could be a significant number of "blockers" in any community to stop huge spread.

@herecomesthsun
New infectious diseases don't wipe themselves out by causing herd immunity, sorry.

I think my objection to what you say here is a) increasing evidence is showing this is not completely "new" and there was already some immunity due to it being a Coronavirus and b) noone is suggesting it will wipe itself out, merely that the spread might limit to the point where we get small flare ups and cases but its no longer a "pandemic" that threatens to overwhelm health services

Not this again.... no herd immunity you can get it more than once.

And it’s the second and third waves which are usually more deadly not the first. So the second wave is not less deadly as someone pointed out.

The rate might be lower as a result of half term?

And to my last point, I think this is where the herd immunity causes people problems. Often reading on here I get the impression people think the pandemic will be over when noone or hardly anyone catches Coronavirus again. Whereas surely once we're at the point where it's a virus which people still get but there's no threat of it affecting so many people at once that the NHS is overwhelmed then that's the point we just need to get on with life. And population immunity CAN get us to that point!

Mummabeary yes you’re right about T-cells though I don’t think of any of the points you make are scientifically proven with regard to Covid, Just suggested in scientific papers at the moment.
The ONS isn’t flawless by any means,I agree, but there is nothing anywhere to suggest we are near herd immunity.
And we don’t have enough data on reinfection either

I’m in Tier 3 in a major city. However it seems to have moved out of the cities into the towns. I don’t understand this. The rates in my city have dropped hugely, but the surrounding towns are really high.

It's the restrictions of the tier system followed by 3 weeks of lockdown that are causing the fall in infections, OP.
Just because you see plenty of people out and about, and hear about people mixing households and generally breaking the rules doesn't mean everyone is. Enough people are complying for a slow decline in cases.
You are correct to some extent, there seems to be a natural drop off in cases in some hotspots with very high numbers and rapid surges - N and S Dakota in the US seem to be the latest example - but we've been under some degree of restrictions since mid March in the UK therefore we're unlikely to see that speed of growth again.

Does it really matter? Just be glad it IS coming down and follow the rules so it doesn't get worse.

No-one knows the detail of how it spreads in any given population. The scientists (the experts) only know that it is likely to spread faster the more people you spend time with. We shouldn't be second-guessing it based on anecdotal information as we don't have the full picture either.

I actually think the rate is high and so are the deaths considering we have had 9 months to get to know this virus and put in place social distancing, PPE in care and clinical settings, mask wearing in public, increased testing (resulting in increased targeted isolation in theory) and 2 lockdowns with pubs, restaurants, hair salons, gyms and non-essential shops closed. The question should't be why is the R rate low, it should be why is it this bad? 500-690 deaths per day on average. If you had told me in June that we'd have a second lockdown and 600 deaths per day in December after it, I wouldn't have believed you. I would have said that tracking, mask-wearing in public and better treatment in hospitals would have limited deaths to 200 per day in winter.

I don't think you can really compare waves. There was no testing in March so no one really knows what was happening then.

I also disagree that it has changed since to September to 'cold like symptoms', we have saw far more seriously ill people in my hospital this time round.

Remember, in March loads will have had it very mildly, but could not get a test.