Cases rising?

[Dodie66]

Are cases rising in your area?. Getting a bit despondent about the number of councils where cases are now rising and wondering why this is happening. See on this site www.covidmessenger.com/
The list of councils has if the cases are rising on the left

We can’t keep cases low for long covid because the knock on effect of the restrictions caused bigger and more serious issues than long covid

It’s a balancing act

Preventing deaths yes

But the restriction knock on effects are far worse than long covid

@duffeldaisy

I don’t get the lack of concern over case numbers.

It’s a relief that hospital admissions will be down, but Covid isn’t a die or have no symptoms thing.
A large minority have Long Covid, and some of them have it for months with organ damage to varying degrees.

We do need to keep case numbers low, especially in children, who are still growing. Why risk their future health if we’re able to reduce numbers close to zero like several other countries? That’s what we should be aiming at.

Zero Covid is not an option for the UK, the government has been clear on that so you may as well get it out of your mind.

Witty once said they are happy to accept annuals deaths similarctp flu

Given flu can be upto 20,000 a year then 55 deaths a day would be acceptable

Numbers of cases are not the important metric any more. The whole point of restrictions and lockdowns was to protect the health service. Not to prevent illness. As long as the illness being experienced (if at all) does not lead to hospitalisations and therefore deaths it really doesn’t matter how many there are.
Strongly disagree with this. Every person with Covid is an opportunity for the virus to mutate. I have read that the Kent variant derives from just one person. So if we want to minimise the risk of further "home grown" dangerous mutations we need to keep case numbers low. With about half of adults vaccinated in this country we are at a particularly dangerous point because the non-vaccinated portion of the population gives plenty of scope for the virus to spread, but a mutation that could "beat" the vaccine would have a significant evolutionary advantage. Another point is that debilitating long Covid doesn't just occur in severe cases. It commonly occurs in people who were not hospitalised, but its effect can still be devastating.

You could have mentioned in your OP that the website you were sending people to was England only.

Zero Covid is not an option for the UK, the government has been clear on that so you may as well get it out of your mind.
Getting Covid cases down to zero is unlikely to be achievable for the UK in the foreseeable future, but some posters on here are suggesting number of cases doesn't matter. That's not true for the reasons I've explained upthread.

Going down in my area. Really low now thankfully. Our infection rates were sky high over Christmas and New Year, so I actually wonder if a certain amount of herd immunity occurred around then? Just a theory of course...

My area is down this week. Honestly, I'm amazed that we haven't seen an increase, we have lots of large secondary schools in the area and even with all those lateral flows we still have a downward trend.

Finally falling in my area over the last 2-3 weeks, we are almost down to average. But we didn't see the really high peak in January, it was more of a very long plateau!

Reducing where i live, went up a couple of weeks ago but then started dropping again. We are 30 per 100k now.

@LilyPond2

Numbers of cases are not the important metric any more. The whole point of restrictions and lockdowns was to protect the health service. Not to prevent illness. As long as the illness being experienced (if at all) does not lead to hospitalisations and therefore deaths it really doesn’t matter how many there are. Strongly disagree with this. Every person with Covid is an opportunity for the virus to mutate. I have read that the Kent variant derives from just one person. So if we want to minimise the risk of further "home grown" dangerous mutations we need to keep case numbers low. With about half of adults vaccinated in this country we are at a particularly dangerous point because the non-vaccinated portion of the population gives plenty of scope for the virus to spread, but a mutation that could "beat" the vaccine would have a significant evolutionary advantage. Another point is that debilitating long Covid doesn't just occur in severe cases. It commonly occurs in people who were not hospitalised, but its effect can still be devastating.

And in addition, having large numbers of staff off sick or isolating isn’t great for critical services.

It’s no good saying ‘people aren’t dying of it anymore’ if your food chain has been disrupted or your rubbish isn’t being collected because everyone has Covid.

@RafaIsTheKingOfClay (and others) yes good points about cases. However it was never “stay at home, protect your bin collection” was it? At some point we are going to get to a point where this is an endemic virus and we are going to have to accept that. The economic and societal implications of constant lockdown (which is what it would take to achieve the zero Covid nirvana that some seem to be advocating) cannot be ignored or minimised

I find the posts on mumsnet have always been a good indicator of cases! Sounds silly but as soon as you see the “I have a cough, do I need to test” posts, cases start to rise. Or the “I’ve been feeling ill all week, kids have been at school - I know it’s not Covid, should I still test?”.

And no wonder cases start to rise if people still don’t understand the very basics

They are rising in urban areas in the North and Midlands.
Places like Greater Manchester, West & South Yorkshire, the West Midlands It's been happening for a week or so now

Interesting that all of these are heavily populated by BAME communities, and interesting again that this is where vaccine resistance is said to be highest

An ongoing issue perhaps?

@Puzzledandpissedoff also the areas where working at home is less possible / prevalent due to local reliance on factories, warehouses, textiles, food prep type workplaces where social distancing is not possible. Add that to low car ownership rates you get more people on public transport.

Greatet Manchester is not seeing a rise

More tests have given more cases but the test positivity hasn’t changed for many weeks

@AllThatFancyPaintsAsFair

As long as hospitalizations and deaths are going down it doesnt really matter if more asymptomatic cases are being picked up in schools. Aren't numbers of tests at an all time high?

We're never going to get down to zero cases

My thoughts exactly.

Who cares if the whole population get Covid? The vulnerable(the groups which are responsible for 90%+ Covid deaths and hospital admissions) are vaccinated, and we are well on our way to have everyone vaccinated this year.

So if everyone gets Covid, but we just have flu like symptoms, who gives a shit? No ones dying, no NHS is overwhelmed. We stop life, society and the economy cos people are getting flu like symptoms.

My daughter’s school did 4,500 tests last week, 2 were positive, they later did a drive in test which was negative but still weren’t allowed back at school. With that amount of testing numbers will go up but on the whole, where I live anyway, the numbers have significantly gone down.

Here shows test positivity

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/testing?areaType=ltla&areaName=Manchester

It’s not about cases

You can have a rise in cases as a result of more tests and still actually have a shrinking covid level

That was definitely the thinking a year ago. Now the aim seems to be to prevent all death and disease.

NOt true only last week witty said they will not be going for zero covid and we will shortly be getting to the point of ‘acceptable deaths’ like flu and cancer etc

Yes very good point and you're absolutely right. I've not heard that from the scientists or politicians to be fair. Mainly on here and from family.

Schools going back in my area has pushed the positive tests higher - article in my local paper this week. It was expected, and Jenny Harries talked about it on a press briefing a couple of weeks ago. She said that this would happen for a few weeks, but they expected it to settle as increased testing picks up and deals with it.

Of course cases are rising in some areas, schools are back and people have begun mixing again. It doesn’t matter if cases rise as long as hospitalisations stay low. We aren’t going for zero covid, there will always be cases around and some deaths.

@StealthPolarBear

That was definitely the thinking a year ago. Now the aim seems to be to prevent all death and disease.

It really isn’t, it was said on a recent press conference we aren’t going for zero covid, the virus will be around but we will get to the number of deaths we can live with.