53,000 cases today

[TingTastic]

Shit

Positive tests are only counted once

ramblings i think they only count the first positive

I wonder how many of these people will be OK? I’d say it would be the vast majority.

So, what's the point of lockdown and all the destruction that goes with it if it's not keeping these numbers "under control"?

Or is it Saint Boris making up the numbers as usual, picking numbers out of a hat, desperately fiddling the figures as they have done since the start, defining "cases" as positive tests, and "accidentally" throwing a few negative ones into the mix? After all, the government's handling of the figures has been absolutely impeccable from the start; at no point did they exaggerate any figures at all, ever, to scare the public into obeying the Orwellian dictats.

Next slide, please.

Very low rates of ‘asymptotic’ people passing on the virus.

I'm not inclined to take on board the epidemiological views of somebody who doesn't know the difference between asymptotic and asymptomatic....

If tests are so inaccurate ,how do you know you actually had COVID @MrsHedgeLegs?

Very true @southeastdweller
We’ve been told all along ‘the vast majority will not die from this disease, a significant proportion will not get this virus at all. Of those who get symptoms 80% mild or moderate. Even in the very high risk groups the great majority if they catch this virus will not die’ Quote by Professor Chris Whitty

Next slide, please

5 people that I know tested positive today. We are tier 4 and weren't allowed to mix on Christmas Day not that we planned to anyway.

All of the people who I know who tested positive had Christmas Day with others (tier 3).

I've gone from knowing no one who had it, to DH and his siblings, plus two of my friends DH all getting positives this week. Just sent off a test for DD and I.

Looks like all the mask wearing and social distancing over the past 6 months has done a lot of good...

@MrsHedgeLegs

They are ‘cases’ where most people are perfectly healthy. The tests are not fit for purpose & detect old viruses. Very low rates of ‘asymptotic’ people passing on the virus. We’ve been had. Protect the vulnerable & let the rest carry on with our lives.

We really need to listen to the scientists mate.

I think this twitter thread is a good explanation of the effects of a more transmissible strain:

twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/1343567425107881986

The illustration from Adam Kucharski's (an epidemiologist at the Londons School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) thread:

As an example, suppose current R=1.1, infection fatality risk is 0.8%, generation time is 6 days, and 10k people infected (plausible for many European cities recently). So we'd expect 10000 x 1.15 x 0.8% = 129 eventual new fatalities after a month of spread.^

What happens if fatality risk increases by 50%? By above, we'd expect 10000 x 1.15 x (0.8% x 1.5) = 193 new fatalities.^

Now suppose transmissibility increases by 50%. By above, we'd expect 10000 x (1.1 x 1.5)5 x 0.8% = 978 eventual new fatalities after a month of spread.^

That doesn't take into account any further preventable deaths because people can't get the treatment for COVID-19 they need because the hospitals can't cope nor deaths from other diseases because the hospitals are full of patients with COVID-19.

@x2boys just saying I had a positive test. So you’re right I may not have had COVID-19 at all. Research into how accurate Oct tests are. The inventor of them has said they’re not designed for this purpose

Protect the vulnerable & let the rest carry on with our lives.

“Keep people who spend their lives isolated anyway, locked up for longer, with even less contact than they usually had, so I can keep going to the pub”

[quote MrsHedgeLegs]@x2boys just saying I had a positive test. So you’re right I may not have had COVID-19 at all. Research into how accurate Oct tests are. The inventor of them has said they’re not designed for this purpose[/quote]
No he didn’t.

It's flu season, hospitals are usually full this time of year.

@MistletoeandGin

There is a Christmas backlog.

Do you know that to be a fact? My nearest walk in testing centre was open on Christmas Day!

Weirdly our deaths are still below normal range in this area. But cases are nearly a vertical line.

Obviously a lag yes but it hasn’t budged for a few weeks and cases have.

@OverTheRainbow88

Is there maybe a delay because Christmas so these are a build up from before Christmas?

Yes, that will be part of it, but the 7 day rolling total is up 22.7% so this remains concerning even if some of today's number should have been attributed to different days over Christmas/weekend/Bank Hol. All of these days saw some sort of increase though

Whitehall sources are telling the press there's a PM chaired covid meeting thus evening and Hancock to brief the House tomorrow.

Perhaps we get Boris after that?

It's not surprising with the bank holiday and xmas numbers being high. It will probably be much higher tomorrow due to the bank holiday lag. My prediction is 80k for tomorrow

@NowellSingWe

Fucking hell. This will surely only increase over next seven days after all the Christmas mixing?

'the Christmas mixing' is surely balanced out by schools being shut. It was going through schools like a dose of salts before term ended.

We I have just heard that my 40 something nurse friend is so poorly with COVID that she is being admitted to hospital. When she got the test she was feeling fairly fine.

This is serious and death isn't the only bad outcome.

@MrsHedgeLegs

Tests are inaccurate.

Yes, they are. They give far more false negatives than false positive, so the number is lower than it should be. If I am kind I would assume that is what you mean.

If you are trying to imply that the numbers are up because of false positives then I am reminded of the case I read about where the customer service people told the person on the help line to send back the computer because that they were too stupid to own one.

Please could someone suggest to the education committee that common sense, critical thinking and reading of basic statistics would be far more valuable than almost anything else.

Deaths are still reflecting the last lot of restriction, the big increases will come in a few weeks time because the pipes in some hospitals cant cope with the demand for oxygen and the country is running out of places to send patients when the hospitals get overwhelmed.

Amazes me how people need to deny what is happening, I guess they are mentally too fragile to cope with reality.