F**k me

[notevenat20]

In case anyone was doubting that we should stay home, take a look at www.covidmessenger.com/. The columns to compare is the one third from the right which is the most recent week and the one second from the right, which is the week before.

Oh shit.

Thanks @Quarantino, yes more than happy to comment on the data. I run www.covidmessenger.com

@notevenat20 is correct - the appropriate columns to look at are the third and second from right ie:

• cases per 100K last 7 days (30 Dec - 05 Jan)
• cases per 100K prior 7 days (23 Dec - 29 Dec)

Looking over a 7 day period is particularly important at the moment because we have had so many public holidays which changes peoples behaviour (willingness to turn up to be tested etc).

We generally see big dips in positive cases over weekends and we saw massive falls in positive cases on Dec 24th/25th/26th as well as Dec 31 and Jan 1 as people were less likely to be tested on these dates.

These holiday dates were then followed by significant increases in cases the first working day or two after - as there was, presumably, a backlog of people who had symptoms but had not presented to be tested over the holidays and presented to be tested as soon as the holiday was over.

This has had the result of causes a lot of noise in the daily data - but if we stand back, all things considered, the vast majority of people with symptoms will surely have been tested within a 7 day stretch - even if the holiday resulted in them presenting to be tested a 2-3 days later than if we were in a "normal" period.

Hope this makes sense.

And for anyone interested in the transmissibility of the new variant I did an analysis of Kent (where the variant was first prevalant) on Friday here:
www.covidmessenger.com/latest-analysis/

I will update it tomorrow morning with the latest data to bring it bang up to date.

I do feel tentatively optimistic about Kent - there are subtle signs that we may be close to reaching the peak there.

That would give us an interesting insight into the effectiveness of lockdown as one could argue that the restrictions in Kent from third week of Dec plus schools being closed for the holdiays and many people on extended vacation anyway, it was pretty close to a full lockdown.

So the govt has a pretty interesting and fairly comprehensive dataset to work with.

I've just watched Prof Pagel's discussion of the data at the last Indie Sage meeting.

She said 75% of patients in ICU are below 75.

So vaccination of over 75s, which is happening first, will really not dent the number of people in hospital as much as needed. The lockdown needs to bring infection rates down, we can't rely on the vaccine (unless they really do something amazing with the vaccinations).

Thank you little owl, very informative.

@amusedtodeath1

I think the point is that by lowering the spread, you lower the chances of mutations. If we had been more careful about spread in schools this mutation might never have happened, or might not have spread beyond a certain locale. What we did was provide perfect breading grounds for mutations. We knew kids were largely asymptomatic, rather than immune.

I don't mind admitting that I'm scared.

We really need to take this seriously and yet still people are minimising and looking for loopholes.

THIS

@IloveJKRowling

I would very much like to see Prof Pagel's data discussion. Do you have a link to it?

It’s worth noting how much testing has increased as well over the last week. We tested over 650000 people yesterday, the average used to be about 350000 you test more you find more.

This is true but you don't get more hospital admissions and more deaths from more testing.

If we had been more careful about spread in schools this mutation might never have happened, or might not have spread beyond a certain locale.

I know this is all really serious and scary but this isn't accurate. The mutation has totally taken scientists by surprise and it didn't happen because of children staying in school, it is thought to have happened in a patient who was ill for a long time with Covid and who was being subjected to certain treatments.

And there is no evidence it wouldn't have spread if schools were shut - it is highly contagious and the virus is clever about spreading via people who are asymptomatic. I don't doubt schools should have shut sooner and it would have had impact but it wouldn't have kept it contained just in Kent. You have to think back to China and how draconian the measures were there early on - the virus still slipped past them, unfortunately. We are just dealing with something which is able to spread very easily.

Yes, it's very, very concerning.

Very few areas with 'falling' rates, and even those are small falls and still high numbers.

I completely agree re: schools. It was very evident from the end of Sept (when SAGE recommended a 'circuit breaker' lock down) that schools were the primary driver of community transmission. By keeping them open in such an unsafe way, not only has transmission been spread, but the virus has mutated amongst, surprise, surprise, school aged children.

It's interesting that surveys indicate that people are scared, but certainly behaviour local to me - lots of people queuing for coffee, exercise classes in the local park involving people huffing and puffing over each other in very close proximity etc - doesn't back that up.

In term of public health, I'm feeling the most anxious about the virus that I have since the pandemic started, which is probably because I'm in London where the situation that hospitals are in is truly frightening.

@littleowl1

The Indie Sage youtube page with all recorded meetings is here www.youtube.com/channel/UCqqwC56XTP8F9zeEUCOttPQ

I was talking about the 8th January (Friday's) one.

Prof Pagel usually starts with a presentation on the data. I find it the most interesting bit, usually (although recently there have been questions from a lot of frontline doctors and nurses which has also been fascinating / frightening).

@littleowl1 COVID Messenger is a fab site. Thank you

Mutations in viruses don’t take scientists by surprise, it’s what viruses do. There’s certainly evidence that the old version didn’t spread when schools were shut, so we can be pretty sure the new one would have behaved in a similar way. What we do know is that the old (and possibly new, because it was around) version started spreading from September and increased until half term, after which it dropped back, implying that schools were a factor in spread.

It’s useful to remember that only in September we were asking people to quarantine if they were returning from somewhere where the rate was >20/100000 and it was about then that our cases started increasing. Additional mixing over August will have had some effect, of course, but sending schools back as normal with no mitigation measures bar so-called “bubbles” and hand gel can’t have done anything other than encourage the spread. Add in the new variant and we have this nightmare on our hands.

@christinarossetti19

Yes, it's very, very concerning.

Very few areas with 'falling' rates, and even those are small falls and still high numbers.

I completely agree re: schools. It was very evident from the end of Sept (when SAGE recommended a 'circuit breaker' lock down) that schools were the primary driver of community transmission. By keeping them open in such an unsafe way, not only has transmission been spread, but the virus has mutated amongst, surprise, surprise, school aged children.

It's interesting that surveys indicate that people are scared, but certainly behaviour local to me - lots of people queuing for coffee, exercise classes in the local park involving people huffing and puffing over each other in very close proximity etc - doesn't back that up.

In term of public health, I'm feeling the most anxious about the virus that I have since the pandemic started, which is probably because I'm in London where the situation that hospitals are in is truly frightening.

I am also very worried, and I live in a rural part of Wales where cases look relatively low compared with towns and cities. However our nearest hospital covers a huge area and like other Welsh hospitals has very few beds, we also have an older population . People here became complacent, but we now have care homes suffering, and with the new variant here we need to be extremely careful, with hospitals an hour away, ambulances can take an age here even in normal times. Weather can made roads difficult. I am hoping that people are being sensible now, but there is definitely more traffic than there should be.

Yes the CM site is very stark, I'm very worried about my local area which has increased from the low 100s to almost 600 in just a week.

I've always found that words like scaremongering, fear mongering and hysteria have been used together right through this whenever truth is being told. I understand people don't like the truth and don't like seeing it so starkly but surely it's vital that people can be informed about what's actually happening, not least so that they will change behaviours if they are stuck in a mindset of 'making their own risk assessments'.

Scaremongering is spreading false information to put fear into people. This isn't that.

borntobequiet yes, absolutely. It's been glaringly obvious for months, with information freely available in the public domain, that rates in schools were going up very rapidly and that they were the main driver of community transmission.

And, yes, just a week ago, Johnson was assuring people in areas with rates of 800+ cases per 100,000 people that 'schools are safe.

Just seen a news report regarding a giant emergency mortuary in Surrey. Very alarming, the stuff of nightmares.

We've seen the mortuaries in New York, Italy and Spain during the pandemic so why not Surrey? The most alarming thing is the consistent head-in- the -sand response of the government and to a large extent, the public.
We watched it happening last year in Italy before it reached us. I remember seeing all those bodies in makeshift mortuaries - and the refrigerated lorries in New York too, which were horrific. It was always going to be us too at some point, which of course is why the most logical thing to do was minimise the transmission opportunities in every possible scenario.
Instead we opened schools fully instead of being cautious. We failed to lockdown in the Autumn term at various points, disregarding all Scientific knowledge. Even last Monday, the mantra that schools were safe was being bandied about.
Being an island, we had every opportunity in the early days to prevent this from happening but every advantage we possessed was frittered away.
Part of the problem is that a sizeable part of the population is evidently only just waking up to the scale of this pandemic and the predictions of the scientists have a very hollow ring to them now, when there were so many people who thought we were invincible and refused to listen to the voice of reason.

Are we still here?

Giant, alarming, emergency morgue, stuff of nightmares.

And you don’t think that’s a bit sensationalist?

And I repeat, the most alarming thing is the consistent head-in- the -sand response of the government and to a large extent, the public.

I fail to see how temporary mortuaries in Surrey are sensationalist.

But that’s not what she said.

She said they were giant, emergency ones. You really cannot see the hyperbole?

@CountessFrog

But that’s not what she said.

She said they were giant, emergency ones. You really cannot see the hyperbole?

They were giant, I can't remember exactly how many slots they had , and they have been set up to cope with emergency numbers so what is wrong with what I said ? It's hardly exaggerating ?

Well they're very large (giant) and they've been erected to respond to a sudden and immediate need (emergency). No hyperbole there, just some effective adjectives.

(Hyperbole (pronounced is a figure of speech in which an author or speaker purposely and obviously exaggerates to an extreme.)

I was quoting myself and reflecting again on the continuing inability of the government and the general public to see the facts for themselves.

I think I rest my case.

On the contrary, people aren't scared enough, hence, the non-compliance and going out, meeting up with folks.

I don't think it's that simple. The restrictions are essentially a huge prisoner's dilemma. There is huge benefit to all if everyone sticks to them but the personal increase in risk from a small infraction is tiny compared to the huge benefit of (for example) seeing family.

Most people are not stupid, they know this calculation on some level. What motivates people to co-operate is trust:

• They need to feel the same rules apply to all.
• Those rules need to feel fair, logical and proportional.
• The rules need to be clear.

I don't really think I need to enumerate how the government has screwed the pooch on all those so people default to serving their own interest. It's not (usually) selfishness or stupidity- it's perfectly rational.

We had those type of temporary morgues put up in NW London last April and they were big. It brings it home when you see it as it clearly means these are not usual times.

It IS a giant emergency mortuary and it IS the stuff of nightmares. This isn't hyperbole or sensationalist.
Have you watched the BBC report?
twitter.com/BBCMarkEaston/status/1348388989728927746?s=19
"The emergency body storage facility in Surrey as hospital mortuaries reach capacity. Special report on #bbcnews at ten. t.co/xkiVu91jwI