Infection drop due to lockdown not vaccines?

[freezingcoldsnow]

This news article is obviously an attempt at a good news story - lower rates, study shows lockdown working etc etc. There's a paragraph though that says:

This uniform decrease in age groups means that there is no evidence that the vaccination programme is behind the fall in infections. If that was the case, the researchers said, they would expect to see a bigger drop in people aged 65 and over.^
^
Is it too soon to see a drop in vaccinated people? I maybe naively thought we would start to see a drop like Israel did....or is it the lack of second dose driving it? Or is it really not affecting transmission?

Anyone with greater knowledge help me out here?!

news.sky.com/story/lockdown-is-working-dramatic-fall-in-england-covid-infection-rate-says-imperial-college-study-12221339

@JKW36

This concerns me if I'm honest. Since March 2020, 4 million people have had covid in the UK (which SHOULD provide them with some immunity). In addition to this there has been 15 million vaccinations given since December. That's a third of the entire UK population. Surely we should be seeing a higher decrease in cases considering we are in a lockdown as well?

But we're in lockdown "lite", not a real lockdown. In the first lockdown, lots of businesses, shops, offices, construction, closed down. This time, it seems most are open and operating unless specifically told they have to stay closed (like non food shops etc). Roads are a lot busier than the first time, hospitals are actually doing some other things besides covid this time. So, it will be continuing to spread in workplaces, hospitals, etc.

@RosieLemonade

I am starting to think the vaccinations were just a decoy to make us think there was away out of this. In reality I think that will be in lockdown for the rest of this year at least.

No chance.

The whole world is not looking at vaccination as a decoy - look at previous history - vaccination works - give it time. Only a very small percentage have had the 2 vaccines. A large and growing number the second but the % of people vaccinated needs to increase before a proper judgement can be made.

I meant vaccination is not a decoy - no chance that it is.

@DenisetheMenace

RosieLemonade

I am starting to think the vaccinations were just a decoy to make us think there was away out of this. In reality I think that will be in lockdown for the rest of this year at least.”

Why do you think that?

IF vaccines are just a decoy and don't work, then the restrictions etc would last a hell of a lot longer than the rest of the year!

Vaccines DO work, but they're not an instant/magic bullet. None have ever been 100% effective and some people can't/won't have it. The rollout will also take many months, until at least late Summer/early Autumn before all adults have been offered both doses.

They're "part" of the way ahead, not the only way ahead, which is why other restrictions/precautions will stay in place for many months to come. Some relaxations will happen pretty quickly, then there'll be a gradual relaxation of others over the next few months, but even after all adults have been offered their jabs, there'll still be some restrictions/precautions, probably into next year and beyond, but hopefully those remaining for the long term will be the kind of restrictions/precautions that have minimal impact on most peoples' lives.

user1497207191

I agree with much of what you say. I was asking Rosie why they believed the vaccines were a “decoy”, intrigued by that word.

@Hollyhead

I think there is some early evidence that the death rate in the over 80s is falling faster than in other groups which is potentially a sign.

Yes I'd read fastest drop was over 80's and next group was 20-30's who were always high anyway

Too soon to tell, by this time next month it should be obvious. As for transmission, see attached.

"Critically, even if vaccines’ effects on COVID19 transmission are imperfect and temporary, vaccination will still lead to massive decreases in the number of cases if—and only if—there is wide uptake of vaccines in the general population."
www.thedailybeast.com/anti-vaxxers-are-not-the-only-ones-selling-coronavirus-vaccines-short

(Don't be put off by the article being on 'The Daily Beast'; both the authors are epidemiologists at John Hopkins University, not Daily Beast journalists.)
mobile.twitter.com/JohnsHopkinsSPH/status/1361799208433553417

This concerns me if I'm honest. Since March 2020, 4 million people have had covid in the UK (which SHOULD provide them with some immunity).

I don't know where you get this number from, but the ONS estimate is more like 20million cases, which means for only 4 million to have had it, each of them would've had to have it 5 times, which doesn't match any prevalence of re-infection known.

I don't know where you get this number from, but the ONS estimate is more like 20million cases, which means for only 4 million to have had it, each of them would've had to have it 5 times, which doesn't match any prevalence of re-infection known.

The ONS has said its estimate is around 8.3 million, not 20 million. Not 4 million either, to be fair.

(I can’t see anything else the ONS has put out? Really sorry if I’ve missed it.)

Hi
Can't recall exact words but Chris whity said on Monday that at this stage it wasnt easy to see the impact but combining lots of different statistics had given them very very tentative early signs of hope
. But that he expected that in the next week or so that the impact would be clearly visible in the data

Surely whilst we are still all in lockdown then that will be whats mostly preventing transmission anyway? The vaccine could have 100% efficacy and totally prevent transmission too, but whilst people aren't mixing then transmission will be pretty low regardless?

The real test will be once restrictions are eased and people start to mix more.

When you say infection rate, do you mean number of cases, where a case is counted as a positive PCR test?

I understand that the cycle threshold for the PCR was to be reduced - I don't know if it has been - so because of the nature of the PCR test, a reduction of the ct will reduce the number of false positives in the tests (false alarms in signal detection theory) which might lead to the reporting of decreased infections?

I feel strongly that the cycle thresholds should be available to people when they submit a PCR test so that data can be compared like for like in the future. PCR tests can be very useful (preferably with a clinical diagnosis) so I'm not criticising their use here, but it is really unhelpful for the cycle thresholds to differ between countries and to differ between different months within the same country - particularly if a government is going to use the results as a basis for restrictions.

The ONS has said its estimate is around 8.3 million, not 20 million. Not 4 million either, to be fair

That's their value for antibodies, I said cases, which is what you get when you add up their prevalence for the non-overlapping 14 days they publish, and a low estimate for infections before those started (less relevant now given the very high prevalence over the last 3 months)

We know some, indeed many people, do not still have detectable antibodies after infection.

Thanks. I wasn’t aware that was a reliable measure - can you share where the ONS has confirmed it as such?

I couldn’t find it, but as I said I could have missed it.

@Hollyhead

I think there is some early evidence that the death rate in the over 80s is falling faster than in other groups which is potentially a sign.

This

Thanks. I wasn’t aware that was a reliable measure - can you share where the ONS has confirmed it as such?

I haven't seen an official ONS claim. You can work it through yourself pretty simply, I'll just do England, by 8th of June 8% of people in England were positive for antibodies - www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveyantibodydatafortheuk/3february2021
Which means a minimum of 4.5million cases (almost certainly more given the knowledge we have of waning antibody testing that only shows the 8.3million now despite the majority of the deaths and almost certainly the majority of cases have happened since)
And then from the infection survey www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19infectionsinthecommunityinengland/characteristicsofpeopletestingpositiveforcovid19inengland9february2021
You can add up the independent percentages which give cases since june 8th, and you get 12million cases on the low confidence interval, so you get to around 20million (with a low estimate for before the ONS study, and taking the lower confidence interval since)

As I said though, I haven't seen a specific announcement, and like any statistics it could be inaccurate in some way, but it's certainly a much larger number than the 4 million I was questioning.

Oops, sorry about the 12+4.5 adding up to 20, the other 3.5 comes from the other nations being added in!

Surely at some point the only numbers we need to be looking at are deaths and hospital admissions?

Which my guess would be 6ish weeks after the top 4 groups were vaccinated we should see numbers well below 100 deaths a day and hospital admissions dropping rapidly.

We all know this is endemic and will be a yearly thing now. So at what point do we not bother counting or caring about cases and only concentrating on hospitals and deaths?

Surely if we are getting 100,000 cases a day is irrelevant if barely any people are getting seriously ill or dying?

@InterfectoremVulpes

Surely whilst we are still all in lockdown then that will be whats mostly preventing transmission anyway? The vaccine could have 100% efficacy and totally prevent transmission too, but whilst people aren't mixing then transmission will be pretty low regardless?

The real test will be once restrictions are eased and people start to mix more.

This.....

We will not get a clear picture until restrictions are lifted. Horrible position for the government to be in as they are desperate to avoid another lockdown, but also need to open up to get the relevant data.

@Chatterbox1987

Surely at some point the only numbers we need to be looking at are deaths and hospital admissions?

Which my guess would be 6ish weeks after the top 4 groups were vaccinated we should see numbers well below 100 deaths a day and hospital admissions dropping rapidly.

We all know this is endemic and will be a yearly thing now. So at what point do we not bother counting or caring about cases and only concentrating on hospitals and deaths?

Surely if we are getting 100,000 cases a day is irrelevant if barely any people are getting seriously ill or dying?

Case numbers are still really, really relevant. The more it spreads, the more mutations happen, and that increases the likelihood of a vaccine escaping mutant. We really need to keep case numbers as low as we can by any means possible at the moment, until the current vaccines have a chance to work and thus reduce the spread to manageable and traceable amount. It's quite a dangerous time at the moment really, as if people start to think that case numbers don't matter if they only cause mild disease, and start to let it spread, we could quickly be back to where we were with no vaccines. Once there is a large effect on transmission etc by vaccines, lockdown, hygiene, etc then it will be much easier to control. But the vaccines have to have that chance to work first and reduce the cases enough

Asymptomatic 'cases' (based solely on positive PCR tests) or cases with symptoms? These are very different things and caution should be used when talking about asymptomatic cases.

One could argue that 100,000s of asymptomatic cases with no correlation to hospital admissions/deaths is a good thing as it would suggest that there is no link between cases and seriousness of an illness.

Voluntary tracking of cases for research/new variants is different - research is useful. But lockdowns and policy shouldn't continue solely based on asymptomatic cases.

I’m not sure you can use the data that way - I don’t know enough about how the data is collected and used to present the weekly figures to do that with confidence. And then there is the proportion of cases that may be PCR-positive after 14 days.

Agree that antibody testing is far from ideal and tends to be a lagging measure as well. The the modelling I’ve seen based on the death rate puts it higher. But absent an ONS confirmation that their data has been collected in a way that would make the 20m a reliable figure, I don’t think it’s right to attribute that figure to the ONS.

@Thimbleberries oh I get that and I know now is not the right time... however unless the whole world went for a zero covid approach then mutations are going to possibly happen forever. What's to stop it mutating in 2-3 or 5 years time?

I'm not saying now but at what point do we accept the risk... once all adults are vaccinated do we just move on and then if another very dangerous mutation comes (not one of concern but one that is proven to evade vaccines) do we then ask the vulnerable to shield for the winter)

This is endemic now and there will always be a risk or mutations all over the world. What is the long term strategy?