Data & analysis thread, started 1 December

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Data and analysis thread, started 12 November www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4077794-data-and-analysis-thread-started-12-november

[quote TheSunIsStillShining]@NuttyinNotts
Very good idea, but...
"keep measures in place in schools, probably keep masks in shops as they are hard to entirely avoid for some people etc."
There are no proper measures in schools! For anyone (E)CV school is a nightmare in itself either side they are on.
Apart from that it's not a bad solution potentially.

If we were truly a society who cares about it's more vulnerable than we would already have in place a basic income scheme for them, not just the ubi of £96/week. We would have online school options/ or something where you don't lose your place. But we don't. And it tells a lot about the society we live in.[/quote]
Oh I absolutely know schools aren't anywhere near as safe as they should be. That's why currently my ECV husband is locked away in the attic whilst my daughter self isolate downstairs. But I'd be terrified of them removing any further restrictions before he is vaccinated and am deeply concerned about the lateral flow plan.

Nutty I think the plan has always been to do phase 1 before lifting them. I know you must be worried - it’s hard to be sure these days of plans.

@Firefliess I think the data from the Oxford trial suggested that even though 30% of people were not fully protected and so still able to catch Covid, none of them were seriously ill - so if that holds up then it would work ok for the older age groups. Presumably those people with mild Covid would still spread it though - so matters more that they're not the people who come into contact with the most other people during the course of their lives.

I think you misunderstand me, I'm happy to have either vaccine, or any other that gets approved. The issue is protecting the most vulnerable now and just at the moment the only one on offer is the Pfizer one.

I could easily jump the queue as I do work in a care home so could go on their list and they will get the vaccine before me based on my age but as my job can be mostly done remotely I won't do that as I respect why the priority list has been drawn up the way it has. If everyone follows the list we will all be protected in due course.

@MarshaBradyo I think the plan has always been to do phase 1 before lifting them. I know you must be worried - it’s hard to be sure these days of plans. I'm sure you are right, I was talking to a senior manager in a hospital yesterday and that was his understanding.

[quote Chaotic45]@Burpeesshmurpees I agree. I think one of the attractions of the current approach is that it is simple and there aren't many complex arguments against it- which the government will shy away from....

Once you try to measure the exposure risk and value of people's jobs all sorts of people will have all sorts of opinions....

I'm not saying the current approach is right- just that it removes a degree of angst and debate.[/quote]
I think you're spot on there. It's a bit like the argument for and against means testing. In order to means test you have to try to account for every possible eventuality and circumstance so that it is demonstrably fair. The admin cost is astronomical. The alternative is a universal benefit which might go to some who don't need it but is simple and cheap to implement.

I think you're spot on there. It's a bit like the argument for and against means testing. In order to means test you have to try to account for every possible eventuality and circumstance so that it is demonstrably fair. The admin cost is astronomical. The alternative is a universal benefit which might go to some who don't need it but is simple and cheap to implement. Particularly with the Pfizer vaccine and the size of batches.

@ancientgran

Now on the opposite you have a 9x year old, where vaccinating 5 ppl would solve the trick. You really think 5 ppl would protect them? Who is being naive now? Even in a small care home you would have far more carers than that, then family visiting, community nurse visiting, GP visiting. Five doesn't even start to cover it.

Please take out the emotion. No, we aren't machines emotion is part of being human. Think of the emotions of the staff in care homes, some have had dozens of elderly people dying quite horrific deaths. The carers are suffering, hospital staff are suffering. MarshaBradyo is right about protecting the NHS and vaccinating in age order is the most effective way to do it. It just so happens that the first vaccine to be approved is the one you want, well that's just one of those things. The Oxford Vaccine will be out soon but don't expect to be able to go into your GP and pick the one you fancy, it won't work like that.

on 1st point: those you mentioned are HCP, so they would be vaccinated.

On your 2nd point. As harsh as it is - when you are a government you have to base your actions more on facts and logic than on emotions. As a person, I agree that emotions play a huge part. But we are theoretically talking about societal level things.
Re:Being able to go to the GP and picking it up.
I don't want to pick. I want the system to take all factors into consideration and make vaccine A/B/C/x available that is best suited to that medical condition. But I don't see this even being floated or considered. Again, it's not about personal preference. It's about science and long term consequences for everyone.

Just as a thinking exercise and I'm making the numbers up apart from the first: 30m ppl in work. 10m (E)CV or have children that are. They get AZ vacc. It's 70% effective. 30% end up in hospital. Need care. 3m. 1/5th get long covid. 450,000 ppl who don't pay tax, don't consume as much as they could - the revenue side. Cost side: NHS, care staff for decades....
The implications are costly at best.
If we could reduce that by giving them P. vaccine, wouldn't you say it's beneficial to the whole of society?
If there is this huge additional cost, the remaining 29.5m will have to pay a bit more tax, get on with a bit less ... and low income is already an issue in the country.
And this is just a snapshot calculation saying that as of tomorrow... reality is that this should be a rolling calculation because of how long vaccinations take.

@NuttyinNotts
We're in similar situation (albeit it's me, not H) and we have not sent our son back.
In sept I said to HT that if all time mask wearing was enforced I'd send him in. Even now that has not happened....

I’m sure who gets which vaccine will be reassessed once Oxford gets approved. It also depends on trial data for age groups.

Right now Pfizer is available and so group 1 gets it. Still sticking with order as it mist quickly reduces pressure on NHS - the objective.

I’m not even putting emotion into it. I can see why the decisions have been made.

Most

Does anyone know where to find hospital admission by age data on a timeline? gov site only has the aggregate.
I'd be interested to see what the age dispersion is for sept-dec. Because it makes no sense to look at aggregates when we know for a fact that it ripped through care homes in MArch/april making the 85+ tally high.

Right now Pfizer is available and so group 1 gets it. Still sticking with order as it most quickly reduces pressure on NHS - the objective. Exactly.

I'd be interested to see what the age dispersion is for sept-dec. Because it makes no sense to look at aggregates when we know for a fact that it ripped through care homes in MArch/april making the 85+ tally high. Wouldn't give a full picture as many are dying in care homes so the pressure is on community care rather than hospitals in many cases.

We had a resident die last week and the community services were there for support all the way, we aren't a nursing home so no nurses on staff.

Unfortunately DH has had two positive lateral flow tests (last night). He was able to bring me a lateral flow which was negative.
We've both had regular tests today and are awaiting results. DS 14 has had no symptoms and no test.

DH is holed up in our bedroom and I'm hating being separated when he's unwell and anxious. We are both pretty independent but it's odd to be apart when the going gets tough.

Has anyone seen any factual stuff on transmission over time?? Obviously we will isolate as needed until Boxing Day but I would love to be able to be in the same room before then especially Christmas Eve and day.

I hear so much about people not passing it on in the home. But I'm mindful that it has turned out that 11 out of 17 at his workplace have tested positive today and yesterday and they have masks, and are distanced. So it feels pretty contagious!

@TheSunIsStillShining

Does anyone know where to find hospital admission by age data on a timeline? gov site only has the aggregate. I'd be interested to see what the age dispersion is for sept-dec. Because it makes no sense to look at aggregates when we know for a fact that it ripped through care homes in MArch/april making the 85+ tally high.

www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/

Here, in the Dec activity doc.
It needs collating though, and it should be noted that it separates "admissions with" from "inpatients diagnosed with" , the latter being far higher at the moment. Which begs the question, how much of that is hospital acquired infection?

The weekly sheet on that page also shed some light on that - it seems that approx 20% of cases are being identified more than 7 days after admission, which would suggest those infections were hospital acquired.

It's 70% effective. 30% end up in hospital

No, even among critically vulnerable the hospitalisation rates are nothing like 100%

And no one in the vaccine group developed severe illness at all

Obviously we will isolate as needed until Boxing Day but I would love to be able to be in the same room before then especially Christmas Eve and day. That is a tough one, we are in the same position with some of our staff/residents. So hard to leave people in their rooms when the rest of the home will be celebrating.

@Chaotic Sorry up hear that. I recommend a long video call to talk with each other. And a kettle in the bedroom for DH to be more self sufficient. I had a week in isolation from DH with possible Covid (pre mass testing) and it was hard.

Do we have any idea yet as to which of the currently approved or about to be approved vaccines might be best at preventing transmission? Any reason to believe ones using particular techniques might be better or worse?

It could well be that the best vaccine for preventing individual illness might not end up being the best one for preventing transmission. Until we've got that data, it would be hard to design a complex targeted system that would actually do what we want. Once we do have that data, then it seems likely some vaccines will be targeted at demographics more likely to be out of the home interacting with people.

The NHS will have to do the usual QALYs (or whatever they are) calculations at some point, I assume, but surely we don't know enough yet about the vaccines to be sure of how to even make those calculations? Likeliness of severe illness from covid seems the best criterion for vaccination right now, which we do know is highly correlated with age.

There's no getting away from it, the ECV are in a pretty awful position no matter what happens, for quite a while, as some can't have a vaccine at all and will be waiting for true herd immunity as talked about by Chris Whitty.

I'm in a Tier 2 area in SE England where case numbers are going up fast, with the line steeper than at any time other than the second week of April. Rates per 100k now well above average. Do people think we're likely to see places like that going into Tier 3 tonight/tomorrow?

@eeeyore - that's a really important issue and I don't think they know yet. Because you can't really tell from trials how infectious people were (though I do wonder whether they ask people whether anyone they live with caught it - a statistically significant difference between the vaccinated and the placebo group would suggest that the vaccine does prevent transmission.)

In terms of how vaccines work generally I think there's every reason to think that all the vaccines should significantly reduce transmission. Other vaccines do, and if someone has less live virus multiplying in their body (because it's been fought off by their immune system) then they ought to be much less infectious. This is how immunity works and also the only reason that vaccines create herd immunity. I think they must be pretty confident that they will do this because otherwise there's little point in vaccinating NHS and care home staff.

I'm not sure how they're planning to find out which works best, other than a natural real world experiment where different countries use different vaccines and see what happens. But it's a messy type of experiment with many countries using more than one type.

Presumably if you have an effective tracing system (as some countries do) it should be possible to tell which vaccine has been had by the person who gave you covid in a very large number of cases.

@ancientgran - It's likely that some of the Oxford vaccine will be available alongside the Pfsiser one. So if they do what they're planning to do and cascade down in priority order, they'll have to give some of each to some of the over 50s and other priority groups.

Personally I'm rather hoping the decide the Oxford one is to be used for the under 50s and the first doses go to the 45-50 age group (most at risk out of healthy under 50s) - but there may be some self interest here! Realistically I think it's more likely they'll give the first Oxford ones available to some groups within their priority list.

I don't think you can @countess. People might tell you who they might have given it to. Most don't know who they caught it from, at least not when case rates are high. You could give different vaccines in different regions, but I suspect that would be politically unacceptable

Well today’s data is grim

25,161 positive
612 deaths