Data & analysis thread, started 1 December

[NoGoodPunsLeft]

New thread!

Link to previous:

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

ceeveebee Thanks for that, last week I heard Johnson say it would be reviewed on the 9th and change on the 16th. I thought that wasn't great, like the changes for this week being announced last week when things were falling so would have been better to leave it a few days. I'm much happier with review being closer to the date tiers due to possibly change. Although on the downside the changes on the 16th moving to the 19th is sneaky. I can't see the point really when the Christmas changes start on the 23rd, too many changes too close together will just confuse people and I suppose things will change again in January. Maybe it's my age but I think people will get confused.

Tier 2. Many cases in schools, primary and secondary. I work in a secondary school and we have new cases nearly every day. We are in east London it’s the borough with the most cases in Greater London, and my local neighbourhood has 652 cases per 100 000. There are 4 primary schools and 1 secondary schools locally. Madness isn't it. Where I am it think it is 32, or maybe 35, per 100,000, I don't think anywhere is Devon is over 100 per 100,000 but we are tier 2 as well. To be fair I think it is hospital capacity down here, we are traditionally underfunded and it is showing.

@QueenBlueberries

Can it significantly go down now that shops, restaurants and pubs with ‘significant meals’ opening up?

Liverpool’s rates were 662 when they went into the “old” tier 3 which is pretty much the same as the new tier 2. They were down to 286 when the national lockdown started on 4 November.

My MP has posted tonight that he has been assured my Boris that next review it will be done on council led rather than county....

Liverpool, didn’t they have mass testing and localised track and trace?

I don't think they'll move anywhere down to Tier 1 before Christmas - it would be madness really to open up pubs to groups of friends partying and everyone seeing all the people they're not seeing in Christmas day in 6 person household gatherings. They will most likely move a few of the local authorities with the lowest rates in Tier 3 down to Tier 2 - and possibly some the other way, just to appease Tory rebels and show that it is possible for areas to move tiers. If we get through Christmas without a dramatic rise in cases January is the soonest we might see some bigger changes.

Mass testing in Liverpool started on the day after the national lockdown started

That came in in Liverpool much later @queen. The cases were already falling quite steeply while it was still in tier 3, and even before then. So it's hard to say what caused the fall. Either the start of a degree of herd immunity, or a change in behaviour because people got scared of catching Covid seem most likely to me.

My MP was a rebel, he won't be happy if we don't go into tier 1.

Devon MSOAs with a rate over 100; and those with none / suppressed

The median MSOA has just under 8,000 people. Just 8 people with covid in one MSOA therefore becomes a rate of over 100,000. An MSOA with 52 cases gets to 650 per 100,000.

At MSOA level, 8 could be just two families who are linked, so on its own that rate per 100,000 doesn't mean a great deal. If it scales up to a whole town or you have a number like 52, then that's more significant.

@Chaotic45

Exactly *@Piggywaspushed*, this is the way that information is given and where we find out what we should and should not be doing. It's rubbish not to be able to watch.

But DH and I are usually still at work (although I'm finished today). It kind of makes you feel forgotten and then you have to catch up via the news which very often gets things a bit wrong especially immediately after each conference.

I agree it is a difficult time of day to watch tv. Also there’s often not much notice. I have recorded the tv every day at 5pm then if there is a press conference I can watch it. If not I just delete.

@Chaotic45 @piggywaspushed we missed a briefing last week, and were able to watch the full briefing later on YouTube, it was by one of the newspapers, possibly the Telegraph, I’m sure there are others doing it too if you search on YouTube. I agree it should be at a more convenient time, but this is a good solution to catch up.

JVT on bbc breakfast at 08:30

To those worried about missing the 5pm briefings - you can watch on BBC news 24 on iPlayer and rewind to the start.

boys3, I was looking at local authorities, e.g. Exeter, Plymouth, Torbay, as MRex says some MSOA are so small it is hard to get a fair picture.
So if you look at areas like the ones I mentioned plus South Hams, Teignbridge, are all low, admittedly in my town which is well over 100/100000 there is an area that is higher but that has to be a place between the whole county and MSOA with a population of under 5,000.

Sorry I meant well under 100/100000

23 minutes worth of JVT. Does he have an official fan club?

@ancientgran sorry my mistake, although delving a little deeper in the murk of MSOAs is always interesting.

South hams had a slight blip a couple of weeks back just straying over the 100 per 100000 mark, and now is back amongst the very lowest at just over 30, and will hopefully see another drop this week. It would be great to see some council areas getting into single digits as it’s been quite a while since we’ve seen that.

These threads have provided a real insight into more local geographies. I know these are not in Devon but I had never heard of places like Wyre and Wyre Forest, and the assumed perhaps given the Wyre bit they neighbour each other. They are of course in completely different parts of the country as I know now. Waverley sounds like it should be somewhere in Yorkshire rather than Surrey, and Tandridge should surely be in Devon along with Torridge and Teignbridge, rather than being also in Surrey

I really hope they do go to county level. I'm in South Glos, and currently our overall case level is 164.5 according to the government website, although my own ward is 84.2. We are in Tier 3 however because we have been put in a group with Bristol (and North Somerset) and Bristol is still 236 (though down from 325).

If it is county level there is a chance we may move to Tier 2 before Christmas. Neighbouring Wiltshire now has higher levels than South Glos but is Tier 2. None of it makes any sense to me!

not a weekend but,

quick partial update on p2 testing positivity levels. Areas with the highest positivity rates attached , bear in mind there will be an overlap with the last 7 day period shown.

A number of London Boroughs appear in the list.

As such a second extract just showing all the London Boroughs; quite some variance, and a lot including the ones higher up are still better placed than many areas in terms of the rate per 100,000 in the aged 60 and over.

bathsh3ba raised South Gloucs so the third one shows the SW LAs; whilst SG is quite near the top at the SW level its cases have shown a declining trajectory, and positivity is coming down. I would caveat that whilst the case rate has fallen considerably over 200 Council areas have lower rates, and SG remains just in the top quartile for case rates in the over 60s.

@boys3 no need to apologise, it is interesting how you can break it down in different ways.

I live on the South Hams/Teignbridge/Torbay borders so I tend to look at them as when shopping I tend to go to Totnes/Newton Abbot/Torquay, then I look at Exeter and Plymouth as if I am going to a city it is one of them. So you could say I'm not taking a very broad view and at the moment I'm not going anywhere!

I think the South Hams blip might have been connected to Torbay, for most of the pandemic Torbay has done well, although it was one of the early hot spots due to skiing holidays, but the October half term triggered a big upsurge, I went into Torbay on the Sunday at the start of half term and it was like August Bank Holiday Monday but without the advantage of people being on the beach. It was quite a rainy, miserable week here, bars, restaurants, arcades etc were packed and over the next 2 weeks the numbers soared but they have really tumbled since, figures hitting over 70 a day at one point but in the last week I think we have had 2 days in single figures. Lots of people cross borders, like I do, and South Hams people quite often come into Torbay for schools, particularly the grammars, and some Torbay people go the other way as the don't like the two teir system so infections spread.

We had lots of holidaymakers in the summer but I think numbers were lower all over the country and people were outdoors enjoying the weather so it didn't seem to cause an issue.

Anthony Mangnall is our MP, he was one of the new intake last year and generally seems to tow the line, voted against holiday meals for FSM children for example, but he was one of the rebels this week. He isn't a patch on Sarah Wollaston though, she was a brilliant MP. An experienced doctor like her could be very useful now.

I understand Cornwall are now worried about Devonians crossing the border to access pubs with tier 1 rules and the police have put on special patrols to deter them.

@bathsh3ba, I thought everywhere was in a tier by county, I didn't realise Gloucestershire was different. I thought that was what MPs were complaining about, I mean that they thought by county was too big and too big a variation like in Kent.

I suppose the question is would you go down to tier 2 with the rest of Gloucestershire or would they get put in tier 3 with you.

So SGlos being affected by Bristol?

Thank you @boys3, that's really interesting to see it like that. I think the thing with South Glos is that it's a very varied county, if you drill down to ward level, there are higher levels in the suburbs of Bristol that come under South Glos, but as you get further out, much of the county is rural and has levels below 100.

@ancientgran, South Glos is a different county to Gloucestershire in terms of councils. It covers part of the outskirts of Bristol, but also goes out almost as far as Bath and Stroud and borders Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and B&NES.

The government, in their wisdom, are considering Bristol, North Somerset and South Glos to be one unit, because they share a health board.

However it's really not that clear cut as where I live in South Glos, we are referred to Bath hospitals in the main, as we are closer to Bath.

Interesting to see the over-60s rate is still high, but at least it's under 200 now and falling. I can live in hope!

@boys3 I was getting excited about how the numbers had dropped in your chart of the SW, then I realised that the column dated 6th December isn't complete yet. I think I need to go to Specsavers.