New strain stuff.....

[MistressoftheDarkSide]

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/18/boris-johnson-calls-crisis-meeting-to-discuss-response-to-new-covid-strain

So,it's just a variant, nothing to see here, blah blah blah..... I'm pretty sanguine about this stuff but dropping this late at night as a headline right now..... I'm getting mightily pissed off with the uncertainty and the subtle fear mongering......

Any thoughts?

I’ve noticed the disconnect between Zoe numbers and government numbers. According to the gov cases are soaring in my area, but are going down in the app. Could be a time lag thing, or could be that people are fatigued/no longer using the Zoe app?

@tigerbear I’m not suggesting everyone is or should be, they only need a representative sample, but that those who are probably include their whole family?

I do think there is a self selecting bias for users of the Zoe app to probably be more cautious/rule following etc so I am not sure how representative or reliable their estimates are, certainly on a local level they are all over the place

@ceeveebee

I do think there is a self selecting bias for users of the Zoe app to probably be more cautious/rule following etc so I am not sure how representative or reliable their estimates are, certainly on a local level they are all over the place

Zoe is a load of bollocks precisely because its self selecting. I ignore it as being worse than useless.

I only log for myself on the Zoe app. I do feel a bit bad but the thought of trawling round everyone every day asking them how they feel is too much. It's bad enough getting them to draw their curtains and put their pants in the wash.

A massive thank you to the science bods on here for all the clear explanations, especially @everythingthelighttouches. All absolutely fascinating and made me wish I'd had a go at studying something useful all those years ago.

Wonder whether it's the case that areas getting hit hard by the new strain did not get hit hard in previous waves - certainly this is true in my area, which is very rural (tbh it's hard to see what's driving the infections other than schools and workplaces, as hospitality never re-opened after November)

Be interesting to see what happens in places like Manchester. London seems to be getting hit hard again but there's a question about how hard it really got hit by the first wave - lots of people in London, and the first wave was suppressed quite effectively by the March lockdown when compliance was high and schools were closed.

@Em777

I’ve noticed the disconnect between Zoe numbers and government numbers. According to the gov cases are soaring in my area, but are going down in the app. Could be a time lag thing, or could be that people are fatigued/no longer using the Zoe app?

The home page of the app tells you how many users are in your area. I've noticed my area went from a few thousand in the summer down to about 650-700 now, which probably makes the data less accurate. I definitely think people are going off it for various reasons. I know quite a few people like PP who found it fuelled their anxiety to focus on potential symptoms every day, and the UI has become bloated over time with more pages of symptoms to scroll through, so it's less simple than it used to be and requires more thought to fill it in daily. I have to complete it for all 4 of us in the household so it's quite a long winded job when we have colds and need to find the right symptoms to tick for everyone. Plus people are getting fatigued with covid stuff in general, which is obvious when you see people wandering around the town centres with little to no attempt to social distance from strangers anymore.

It's a shame, I'm starting to wonder at what point some regions are no longer accurately represented by the app and I think some of them might be diverging from government data because of this.

"New evidence on VUI-202012/01 and review
of the public health risk assessment"

With detailed data from the Lighthouses on the number and proportion of S-negative cases. In a sense number is most important.
mobile.twitter.com/theosanderson/status/1341366269421993987

Really fascinating thread. Thank you to all contributors.

I do Zoe but not on behalf of my family. Just heard of a friend whose year 2 classmate got asked to do a test, it was positive and now the whole class has to isolate for Christmas. Zero symptoms. I mean good that the chain of transmission has been caught but who would want to be that parent!

BBC NW news saying that 17% of cases in the NW are the new strain. Its currently 18% for the NE and 60% for London. London was on 17% 5 weeks ago. Figures to the week ending 9th December.

(That was all the information they've given).

Oh dear. So it is quite widespread now and we won’t really be able to stop it becoming the dominant strain in most areas. Going to have to rely on the vaccine to save us !

Interesting though that deaths have fallen for the second week running. And the biggest case increase is in kids, who are more susceptible to this but obvsiously contagious.

There is more going on with this variant than we yet know.

My concern is I don’t trust valence snd witty through out this they have been merchants of doom. Always presenting the very worst case scenario even when it’s abundantly clear what they are presenting is nigh on impossible. They have been called out on it so many times

So now I’m wondering if this is more of their fear mongering, or is it a case of the boy who cried Woolf.

Age heat maps from dashboard for London and north west. You can look at them for each region and local authority.
Northwest never got to purple in the age 10-14 bracket but London is there. Not so much difference in the 0-9 range though?

@Ninbus

Oh dear. So it is quite widespread now and we won’t really be able to stop it becoming the dominant strain in most areas. Going to have to rely on the vaccine to save us !

Well its hardly the story that came out of the T4 press conference which suggested New Covid was only in the SE is it?

You would expect deaths (or at least excess deaths) to have gone down over the last two weeks btw.

The NW had the most number of cases pre-Nov lockdown and had the biggest reductions in numbers. The SE was on the rise during the lockdown but only exploded AFTER the lockdown. We know that deaths occur about 3 weeks after infection. Three weeks ago was the end of the November lockdown.

What you want to be looking for, therefore, is what happens in this week and next week's figures. Its only really then you might start to get an idea about mortality (and even then you have to be mindful of whether its covid or overwhelmed hospitals that are causing any increase in mortality rates). We should also be aware that the virus was apparently spreading in the young during the november lockdown so it might yet be another week or two before it reaches older populations too.

I think realistically its about 3 or 4 weeks before you can draw too many conclusions on death rates (unless we start seeing large numbers of deaths in groups we haven't seen previously).

The Scotsman @TheScotsman
The First Minister said analysis suggested that in the week beginning December 9 around 14% of positive cases in Scotland already had a gene linked to this new strain – adding it was “not unreasonable to assume that the proportion may be higher now”.

Why another three or four weeks? It’s been about since September and it’s well over three weeks since the case spikes started?

www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/mutant-coronavirus-united-kingdom-sets-alarms-its-importance-remains-unclear

The herd immunity through mass infection crowd are reaping what they sow.

The more a virus spreads across a population, the greater the chances of mutations - depending on the genetics of the hosts (67 million of us so a great variation), host lifestyles, host immune systems, initial viral loads and any treatment received.

This could be a minor 'blip' or the start of a series of vaccines and lockdowns.

@ceeveebee

Age heat maps from dashboard for London and north west. You can look at them for each region and local authority. Northwest never got to purple in the age 10-14 bracket but London is there. Not so much difference in the 0-9 range though?

How do you access that experimental version of the website? I can’t find a link via the normal dashboard.

% of New Covid Strain cases by area.

You want to look at the orange bit...

The herd immunity through mass infection crowd are reaping what they sow.

They didn't 'sow' anything though, did they?

Britain has been under Covid restrictions of varying levels of severity since March.

@Gingernaut

www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/mutant-coronavirus-united-kingdom-sets-alarms-its-importance-remains-unclear

The herd immunity through mass infection crowd are reaping what they sow.

The more a virus spreads across a population, the greater the chances of mutations - depending on the genetics of the hosts (67 million of us so a great variation), host lifestyles, host immune systems, initial viral loads and any treatment received.

This could be a minor 'blip' or the start of a series of vaccines and lockdowns.

It only took one event for this new strain

@Bluntness100

Why another three or four weeks? It’s been about since September and it’s well over three weeks since the case spikes started?

Why? because of the number/percentage of cases involved.

You can extropoliate a lot from a low number with any degree of confidence.

sorry *can't extropoliate

Thanks for those charts/maps red.