Is the situation deteriorating?

[Snowrabbit]

John Swinney wouldn't rule out a lockdown on the basis of a 'deteriorating situation' across UK and Scotland? Are things actually worse here yet? Numbers look better to me! I don't want the nonsense of Wales and NI where lockdowns can now be announced weeks in advance. It's either necessary or it isn't. You can't say, things might be bad in 2 weeks so we will lockdown. WHO says lockdowns should be an absolute last resort so I don't see how governments can say we need to lockdown on 28 December etc. Insane. Heard on news last night that someone on SAGE also pointed out that numbers might not be that bad with Xmas because of all the other things that will shut - schools/ unis/ nurseries etc. Are things really getting worse? I thought Scottish numbers looked better!

For schools I mean

@Ninbus, probably she is right now cooped up with her husband trying to work out a strategy that looks different from England's.

Or cooped up trying to get their story straight?

@WaxOnFeckOff, she is woman, she can multitask :D

Arkadia what 'don't you really think so'? I'm not really sure what your argument is and again it was ByTheLoch that brought up Glasgow originally so I was responding to that.

@StarryEyeSurprise, that it is a recipe for disaster.
It will be interesting to see what the government's narrative will be if Armageddon is not unleashed in the new year.

Let's hope you're right and I'm wrong.

I think it depends which are you look at. The BBC graph of total cases is definitely trending upwards again and a long time of it going downwards. Some Local Authorities have definitely gone up, Edinburgh and Midlothian were in the low 70's per 100k and are now back up at 110 and 174, they've not been above 100 for quite a number of weeks. Likewise, the Borders was down to about 25-30 cases per 100k when they were lowered to level 1 and now it's back up at 95.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53511877

Well yes, the lower you drill it down the bigger any fluctuations become. I live in an area of 3500 people, as soon as we get 4 cases (1 family probably) then we in the red, but we are in stirlingshire so overall low. As a country are we in a deteriorating situation? Everything points to "No", are there some areas with rising cases? Well, yes and that will continue to go up and down and isn't necessarily a trend and certainly isn't something that a nationwide lockdown is appropriate for.

@emmathedilemma, yes indeed, but you must remember that you are looking at very small regions (Edinburgh) or sparsely populated regions (borders). In both cases there are only few people living there (Scotland is small and has a very small population), so it doesn't take much for averages to move up. All you need is a handful of cases and the statistic will shoot up (see Clacks).
What must'n do is compare Midlothian with, say, Yorkshire (random example) that has the population of the whole of Scotland. It is a totally different scenario. All you can do is compare the whole of Scotland to Yorkshire, but that would be considered offensive in some quarters, hence the confusion with the English and Scottish statistics.

I was sent this earlier

I think its all relative.

If they are working from home and have no kids then they are relatively low risk even if they are in London.

I come from a relatively low area of infection. More than Highlands but less than Glasgow.

I have DC who have been at school, so even though its not rife in schools here, it does increase the risk.

So I don't think its fair to say someone's location totally determines their risk (even though I know there's effectively do), its more their daily lives.

stats aside @Arkadia (which i fully understand) the total number of cases is still going up not down!

@emmathedilemma, I stopped looking at "cases" a long time ago. At most I look at deaths or hospitalizations.
However, even claiming that "cases are going up" is a bit of a stretch. At most one can say that they are oscillating from week to week.
(Stats taken from Tavellingtabby)

See someone has already quoted the most excellent Travelling Tabby graphs.

Cases are meaningless, give that the numbers go up and down like nobody's business. The key figures are new hospital admissions. Not people currently in hospital, as they are quite possibly very ill people who would be in hospital irrespective of Covid.

Whichever way you cut it, we are most definitely not in a deteriorating situation.

Even new hospital admissions isn't correct @RaspberryCoulis. For example DH was admitted with a DVT, had he tested positive he would have been counted as a covid admission even though it would have been unrelated and he was out the next day. Definitely better than positive pcr tests or really anything that is quoted as a "case". Now 9 months down the line you'd think we would be able to get some stats on those who are actually ill or died because of covid rather than after a positive test within 28 days regardless of what they were actually ill with.

Dh passed through a ward in a main hospital today that had 4 empty 4 bed rooms "reserved" to bring down wait lists when they get too long. This is apparently in a pandemic with worrying figures and in the middle of the peak winter annual health crisis. No crisis evident anywhere else in the hospital either.

Very true.

But it's still more accurate counting hospital admissions than "cases". We're told we need lockdown to protect the NHS. Fine. But when the numbers are coming down it doesn't need protecting. According to Travelling Tabby, there were 1264 people in hospital including 94 in ICU at the start of November. That's now down to 1032 in hospital including 50 in ICU.

New admissions down even more sharply - 127 on Monday 26th Oct, 52 last Friday.

Oh I'm not disagreeing @RaspberryCoulis, I'm following the same as you as it's the best we have available at the moment (or probably ever).

The number in ICU has been pretty steady and what you'd expect at this time of year. Other figures falling - also what you'd expect.

@Puffalicious I hope you don’t mind me asking but what part of Glasgow is your school in (obvs no need to be too specific just north, south, east, west!) but I’d be interested to know. My kids are also at secondary in Glasgow and their school has only been very minimally affected. We are in the West End area. I have friends in East Dunbartonshire schools but who live in Glasgow and one of their schools seem to have been hit harder than ours. It’s so scattergun!

Awaiting Nicola’s announcement now. We are staying put in our house all of Xmas - just the 4 of us. No family nearby anyway. Feel for all those who were hoping to come together with other family members and who may not be able to now

We’ve literally just been moved to level 1. I work in community nursing so get hospital updates on number every week. Less than 5 in hospital with suspected (not confirmed) covid and 0 in ITU. I am furious at the latest announcement. The only
Silver lining is that my kids are able to go back to school as normal but don’t honestly know what every other working parent is going to

Higherheaven my school is East, but my DCs' school is in the South and also hit badly. Random!