Heading into winTier ..... the one we hoped it would be over before...

[dancemom]

New thread Tierers ...

Well its over 100 000 cases in the UK today

@neveradullmoment99

Well its over 100 000 cases in the UK today

Yep and hopefully given we are a week or two behind South Africa we will see the same and plateau out and start reducing.

Covid is definitely here to stay long term just have to accept it.

Yes, today's UK numbers seem to be following the usual weekly pattern of lower numbers on mon/ Tues (having tested on sat/Sun, presumably), followed by a peak on weds/ Thurs. If you look at the specimen date data on the UK dashboard, there doesn't seem to be a huge increase in numbers since last week's surge.

There's also a promising study that omicron is potentially quite a bit milder than previous variants in terms of hospitalisations (either intrinsically, or because of immunity/ vaccination) - with only a third of "expected" admissions in Scotland. Of course there is still uncertainty, but it does potentially allow for a more transmissible variant without "simple arithmetic" necessarily causing hospital overload. Especially if, as seems to be the case, it is about 3 times as transmissible!

The Big Rise in hospitalisations should start next week as it's usually 1 week to 10 days behind positive cases but hopefully it won't come

It might be milder, with less hospitalisations but people still get sick, and they can pass it onto others, who could get more sick, and without measures, whatever they may be, this 'mild' variant, could evolve into a not so mild variant. In short, being a 'mild' variant doesn't necessarily mean we should relax!

We should. Either way. We’re fucked: relax cos can’t do anything. Or we’re not: relax

I can't help but wonder if this what happened with Spanish flu; that it just mutated so much into something so mild it became ultimately unrecognisable.

And then I wonder if we took modern day science out of things, would we be any worse? But that's the way my weird mind works.

I think people forget that for most people it infects there is mostly some sort of variation! Thousands of different genome sequences have been found in the 2 years it's all slightly adjusted it's just those haven't been advantageous so don't become a variant of concern - one patient was recorded as having 34 different separate mutations.

Viruses typically get milder over time but more infectious because they are the ones that survive. If heavily deadly then virus dies out.

• 6,215 new cases of COVID-19 reported*
• 54,863 new tests for COVID-19 that reported results*
◦ 12.7% of these were positive
• 11 new reported death(s) of people who have tested positive
• 38 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 540 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 4,377,002 people have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination, 4,003,377 have received their second dose, and 2,782,462 have received a third dose or booster.

• On 22 December, Public Health Scotland (PHS) experienced a technical issue that meant that the new reported positive case number was lower than expected (2,434). This has been resolved and the new cases figure for 22 December should have been 5,967. This has been corrected in our trends file and these cases are included in today's cumulative figures. PHS also note there continues to be an impact on turnaround times between specimens being taken and results reported, due to larger volumes of tests being processed by labs.

Wow. So case numbers are down on last week?

Hospital numbers edging the wrong way though.

I'm mysterified by the reporting.

Hospital numbers go up in the winter, covid is endemic, so it stands that as hospital numbers go up, more people will be positive for covid regardless of whether they are ill with covid.

I get the sense that some parties will be disappointed if there isn't a huge rise in hospitalisations just to prove a point, but then as discussed before, they'll just say it was their swift action in ensuring that supermarkets have an in or out door and not shared.

Cases not increasingly massively and might even be levelling out (albeit with data problems), % positive down again slightly, ICU down a bit (broadly stable), hospitalizations edging up but may be incidentals due to higher community prevalence. On top of that recent studies confirming what most serious scientists have known for a while - it is milder, very significantly so in the those with prior immunity (which the vast majority have). Overall I'd say its looking very positive and the dire warnings are looking a bit overegged. I can see why so many politicians are now erring towards being 'proportionate' rather than 'cautious' as in previous waves (given the well documented harms of restrictions).

I suppose the only caveat is that more people might not be reporting positive LFs. Maybe deciding to follow the English guidance on isolating instead?

That is a point @mibbelucieachwell. I've heard of people 'identifying as English' and managing infections themselves informally with lateral flows rather than going for a PCR and condemning their entire household to 10 days isolation whether infected or not. I can't imagine that's more than a relatively small proportion of total tests though.

Not sure if this is completely up to date, but since 27th Nov, Omicron 7 deaths - average age 83, Suicide 239 deaths between age 25 and 44. I'm not saying our elderly have no value left in their lives, but it's sobering.

Wow @ElephantOfRisk that's quite a statistic. Of course governments don't think they'll be judged on things like suicide stats but will be on covid stats. And longer term or more indirect consequences will be attributed to something/anything else.

• 7,076 new cases of COVID-19 reported*
• 55,780 new tests for COVID-19 that reported results*
◦ 14.6% of these were positive
• 10 new reported death(s) of people who have tested positive
• 34 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 536 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 4,378,172 people have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination, 4,006,076 have received their second dose, and 2,841,703 have received a third dose or booster.

• PHS note there continues to be an impact on turnaround times between specimens being taken and results reported, due to larger volumes of tests being processed by labs.

Thanks @dancemom and merry Christmas to you and dancedaughter

Aw thank you @ecceromani

She's actually retired through injury but I'll always be a dance mom 😆

Happy Christmas to one and all on this thread, let's hope they end in 2022 🙏🏼

Hospital numbers still stable. Encouraging.

Merry Christmas dancemom thank you for being my data source this year (it reduces my ScotGov rage)

I've really appreciated the stats too, thank you Dancemom

@2319inprogress @Mistressiggi

Thank you, that's so nice, it's kind of become an ingrained habit now, however one I'll gladly stop if all this ever comes to an end 🤞🏼🤞🏼

Merry Christmas all! Thanks for your doses (dozes?) of sanity over the figures over the past year And a special thanks to dancemom for not only posting the figures, but coming up with a seemingly endless supply of tier pun titles . Though, indeed, in the nicest possible way, I'll join you in crossing fingers that 2022 will be the year we no longer need them...

Merry Christmas Tiery folks.

I see no daily stats will be published by PHS for the next 2 (?) days. Enjoy those well-deserved days off @dancemom

Wishing everyone (who's doing them) negative lateral flows and hoping we'll not be using them next Christmas.