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)

Why wouldn’t it be lockdown?

They do work. Take ages to get numbers down and only work whilst in place but they interrupt transmission.

People are still complying even if you hear about people you know not.

This will differ by area and who you know. People are here.

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

It matters hugely. If it is immunity that's halting the spread in some towns/cities/countries, then restrictions should be really relaxed there. People's lives are being hugely affected in a myriad of ways by all these lockdowns and restrictions so how terrible would it be if we maintained all these restrictions when they're not actually necessary!

I also don't understand why you think lockdown isn't pushing down the rate. All of my friends and family are complying. We're in a tier 2 city.
A very high proportion of people on the high street wear masks and I'd say compliance in my big Sainsbury's, which is well run, is 98%, and compliance in my chaotic, local Iceland is around 65%.

I don't know about herd immunity, but I do think there's more to the variation in infection rate than just the restrictions. Liverpool and the surrounding region had astronomical infection rates two months ago, but they'd already started falling by the time the tier system was introduced. I think it could be down to a combination of herd immunity within specific high-risk communities (e.g. secondary schools, student halls, prisons), and people in higher rate areas getting worried and changing their behaviour of their own accord.

That said, it would be a massive coincidence if infection rates suddenly started falling across the country a few weeks into the lockdown for completely unrelated reasons. And I don't think we can possibly have herd immunity nationally yet - even if there had been 100,000 new infections every single day since the first lockdown began, we'd only be up to 25 million cases, or a little over a third of the population. Unless it turns out far more people are naturally immune than previously thought, that wouldn't be anywhere near enough to slow the spread so dramatically.

It could be a combination of both restrictions and immunity, even if not at herd level.

Both can interrupt transmission chains and slow down growth.

It could be a combination of both restrictions and immunity, even if not at herd level.

Both can interrupt transmission chains and slow down growth.

Especially as the people who have the widest group of contacts, and are therefore the most likely to spread the virus to lots of people, are for the same reason also among the most likely to have had it already. Even if only say 10% of the population has had it, if it's the 10% that's the most 'connected' in terms of how many people they interact with daily, it could have a disproportionate effect on overall transmission.

Absolutely no herd immunity here and not even in Sweden. Sweden themselves are now questioning whether it was the wrong approach as cases are still rising there.

Here
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/15/tegnells-predecessor-blames-wishful-thinking-swedens-soaring/amp/

Herd immunity less than a year in for a highly infectious disease like this? No chance.

Isnt Liverpool’s decrease in cases due to rapid testing?

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/12/covid-infections-in-sweden-surge-dashing-hopes-of-herd-immunity

@TheEmojiFormerlyKnownAsPrince

Isnt Liverpool’s decrease in cases due to rapid testing?

Exactly.

I dont know. I still dont personally know anyone who has had it in my close circles. Neither does dh so that would suggest their are still plenty of potential people with no immunity floating about.

Maybe some areas are just lacking the tinder of a few super spreaders? I'm quite surprised how fast Medway kicked off. It went from around 100 to 400 in a week. Plenty of large groups not even following the mask rule for months and months and yet it has only just kicked off there. Why? I guess we dont really know.

@Mumof3andlovingit
We're not talking about Herd Immunity though. We're talking about some immunity in the population slowing the growth of the pandemic. Think about chicken pox for example, there's no herd immunity and it's more infectious than Covid and most people will encounter and catch it at some point before they're 10. But it's not like all children catch it the moment they're born or the moment they stop breastfeeding as scattered throughout the population there are blockers- adults who had it, children who have already had it and more recently a small number of vaccinated people. In fact some people avoid it all the way into adulthood because the chains block them.

With Covid we have now got a fair number of blockers in the way whether that be 10% or 30% or more. Back in March there were many less blockers in the way and thr virus could just spread and kill 50000 people. But now if the virus wants to find the next 50,000 people to kill it will take a lot longer as there are many more people who have had it and are blocking its path. And the excellent point @psychomath makes is that the very people who are most likely to spread it due to their position in society or their behaviours have most likely already had it. So this has another profound effect.

I'm sorry if this is all obvious but I just get so frustrated by the lack of acceptance of the effects of immunity. So many people seem to think it's full herd immunity or nothing!

@TheEmojiFormerlyKnownAsPrince There are very few cases of people being infected more than once. Recent studies have shown that immunity from infection lasts 6+ months.

Like many of the possibilities there will be studies looking into this. The difficulty is that things are changing so often it's hard to know what is having an impact.

It also arrived here in November/December 2019 and so has been running through the population for over a year.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts. I've finally sat down and seen this so just glanced over the responses. Going back to read each one now. Really interesting discussion.

I think it’s obvious now that there is some community immunity plus the lockdown. Would explain London that has a lower second wave than first.
Boris did not catch it again after being in close contact with an infected MP and that is presumably because he has immunity right now so that particular chain of transmission at that particular moment in time was disrupted. Multiple by that lots of other people in other encounters and the virus spread slows down. Which is great news

Sweden isn't an example of no measures as people claim anyway. Sweden did put measures in place but their constitution doesn't allow lockdown outside of wartime.
They do have a very high proportion of the population living alone as well.

@sashagabadon

I think it’s obvious now that there is some community immunity plus the lockdown. Would explain London that has a lower second wave than first. Boris did not catch it again after being in close contact with an infected MP and that is presumably because he has immunity right now so that particular chain of transmission at that particular moment in time was disrupted. Multiple by that lots of other people in other encounters and the virus spread slows down. Which is great news

I hope it’s true that everyone develops immunity once they’ve had it, but I’ve not had it and I’ve been in contact with positive cases twice without them or me knowing it and I haven’t caught it.

Just looked at the rate of decline in Liverpool - for first wave peak to half took about 4 weeks and this wave 19 days. Considering the amount of testing now and the very considerable problems in Liverpool hospitals (that should have been making people more compliant) I dont consider that much faster.

In our Indy prep with have a lot of chinese and Japanese children as we have some large tech companies nearby who send the children of the workers who come over to the UK to our school.

We had an awful virus doing the rounds in late January - classic Covid symptoms. Lots of children and staff off with hacking coughs, temps that went up and down and came and went. At one point there were 8 children off in Year 2 out of a class of 15!

We’ve always wondered if this was Covid as most of those families went back to China and Japan for the Christmas break.

Interestingly we have had no cases of Covid in school since September and 1 case of a parent and teacher catching it over the October half term. That’s all.

Could our school have built up a bit of immunity?

I agree that even a 25-30% immunity can have some impact on spread. It’s not all or nothing.