Corona Virus main thread

[Aggy 764]

2 hours ago, Yellow Fever said:

Yes. I'd noted that. August could be a defacto shutdown including all those nightclubs. What will I do?

Law of unintended consequences. 

You reckon there’ll be a lockdown in August? You really have lost the plot the last few weeks.

[Yellow Fever 3,818]

21 minutes ago, Aggy said:

You reckon there’ll be a lockdown in August? You really have lost the plot the last few weeks.

Good grief Aggy. Do read the comments in the context to which they belong ie. VWs comment and the news today about the increasing number of people being pinged & isolating.

[ricardo 7,396]

Interesting chart showing the preponderance of positives is in the under 40's.

[Tetteys Jig 830]

3 hours ago, Well b back said:

Unfortunate to report that Birmingham hospitals are now having to transfer patients as their ICU wards are full. Please refer my previous post not scaremongering just a fact.

would love to know how often this has been happening the last few underfunded bad flu winters...

[Tetteys Jig 830]

1 hour ago, Yellow Fever said:

Good grief Aggy. Do read the comments in the context to which they belong ie. VWs comment and the news today about the increasing number of people being pinged & isolating.

people are just going to delete the app...

[CANARYKING 644]

Next lockdown round the corner, these numbers can’t just keep going up and up, BJ really cocked this up now, can’t see crowds at CR for quite a few months if at all.

[Tetteys Jig 830]

my go to IndieSage person has set out her stall then... makes a refreshing change from the usual alarmists that would rather shout into the void then actually focus on what can be done (Deepti and Michie could learn a thing or 2... Ding can just crawl into the floor and go away)

so back to step 2 then for an indeterminate duration of time... Reading between the lines, she wants "may levels" back before we think of opening up so that's taking us to September by the sounds of it if we're being optimistic...

I agree with her other points and think the government should have done these long before covid but that's not what right wing government's do sadly... most of them will take years before we see tangible benefits anyway.

I can definitely see some form of "step 2" happening in future if they don't look at vaccine passports and it all goes **** up... Step 1 was always completely absurd whatever the levels since low level outdoor mixing is incredibly safe. I fear the fact we even did step 1 will mentally scar many people to a point where any revision back to restrictions will prove tough. Swedens approach may yet come up trumps...

Edited July 16, 2021 by Tetteys Jig

[Aggy 764]

1 hour ago, Tetteys Jig said:

people are just going to delete the app...

No obligation to have it or download it, only advisory to isolate from an nhs app ping rather than a legal obligation, sensitivity of the app looks like it’s about to be downgraded, kids home from school as of today, double vaxed and kids don’t need to isolate from mid August unless positive themselves…. Even talk of a ‘de facto’ lockdown in August is silly, just isn’t going to happen.

Edited July 16, 2021 by Aggy

[Surfer 1,547]

Not sure where to post this - should it be under Corona Virus, the desperate need for a New Tory Leader or the Brexit Thread?

Either way, it's a complete and utter clusterfook..... there was Parliamentary Question Time and a press conference this week, but noooo... lets change the rules and invent a new category of alert status at 8pm on a Friday evening (widely acknowledged as the best time for bad news to be missed by TV, the Press and Joe Public) and just two days before the UK Government's much ballyhooed "freedom day" 

 

Edited July 16, 2021 by Surfer

[Well b back 3,274]

The flu programme. Last year there was hardly a flu season and as usual this year it’s time to guess the strain a little bit more difficult than usual. Again as usual all us that had our injections last year have our immunity disappearing as we leave summer in a couple of months.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57867955

[Well b back 3,274]

7 hours ago, ricardo said:

Some context.

On an average Thursday 55k people are admitted to hospital in the UK, about 700 were Covids patients

Is that correct ? I thought it was about 1.5 million per 1/4 round about 16,000 per day in England, I would be surprised if there were 39,000 per day in Scotland, NI and Wales. 55,000 per day would mean over 20 million admissions per year. Maybe I have misunderstood your post.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/504012/number-of-nhs-hospital-admissions-england-uk/

[Van wink 2,994]

Valid arguments in terms of economy, wider public health implications, NHS stress etc from both sides of this debate. 
We are going to find out pretty quickly how the graphs for Covid pan out, I hope that Ricardo and Aggy and others supporting this policy are right, if they are and we are through this wave with numbers low and vaccines still effective by the Autumn then we will be in a really good position going into the winter months.

For my part all of this has come to soon, we should have stayed under restrictions until more vaccinations had been administered and then opened up in a measured way when community infection was low. It should have been made absolutely clear a long tume ago that vaccine passports will be required for those wishing to return to a “normal life” 

Will be delighted to be proved wrong.

 

Edited July 17, 2021 by Van wink

[Herman 9,820]

8 minutes ago, Van wink said:

Valid arguments in terms of economy, wider public health implications, NHS stress etc from both sides of this debate. 
We are going to find out pretty quickly how the graphs for Covid pan out, I hope that Ricardo and Aggy and others supporting this policy are right, if they are and we are through this wave with numbers low and vaccines still effective by the Autumn then we will be in a really good position going into the winter months.

For my part all of this has come to soon, we should have stayed under restrictions until more vaccinations had been administered and then opened up in a measured way when community infection was low. Will be delighted to be proved wrong.

 

Yep. Seems a lot of unnecessary pressure and hope being put on the vaccine and the risk being put on the younger members of society. Yes we need to open to keep the economy ticking over but it could easily have been done more gradually and sensibly. This better work.

[Aggy 764]

8 hours ago, Well b back said:

Is that correct ? I thought it was about 1.5 million per 1/4 round about 16,000 per day in England, I would be surprised if there were 39,000 per day in Scotland, NI and Wales. 55,000 per day would mean over 20 million admissions per year. Maybe I have misunderstood your post.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/504012/number-of-nhs-hospital-admissions-england-uk/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-45783005

Your link is average across all days, but Tues-Thurs is busiest and week days are significantly more busy than the weekends.

Also your link refers to July-September, where the rates will be much lower as it’s summer, Ricardo’s average is presumably across the whole year. 

As below, the average across a whole year is around 30k a day, with an average of around 22.5k at the weekend, around 52.5k week days, and around 56k a day Tuesday-Thursday.

All of that only England, not including Scotland, Wales, NI.

Edited July 17, 2021 by Aggy
Added graph from article

[Yellow Fever 3,818]

France

Following on from my comments two of three days ago as to vaccine escapees not needing to be so infectious to thrive vs Delta - it  seems the government (Sage) has realized too and acted swiftly at the first signs  (I could say panicked 😉 ). From the BBC. - 

Professor John Edmunds, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said ministers were right to be concerned, PA news reports.

He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme:

The Beta variant has remained a threat throughout. It is probably less infectious than the Delta variant that is spreading here in the UK at the moment. Where it has an advantage is that it is able to escape the immune response to a better extent.

As the population here becomes more and more immune, the conditions are right then for the Beta variant to get an advantage, so I can understand the concern.

Of the variants that are out there and are known about, that one has always been a threat to us. There is some good evidence from South Africa that it can evade the immune response generated by the AstraZeneca vaccine more efficiently.

 

 

Edited July 17, 2021 by Yellow Fever

[ricardo 7,396]

8 hours ago, Well b back said:

Is that correct ? I thought it was about 1.5 million per 1/4 round about 16,000 per day in England, I would be surprised if there were 39,000 per day in Scotland, NI and Wales. 55,000 per day would mean over 20 million admissions per year. Maybe I have misunderstood your post.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/504012/number-of-nhs-hospital-admissions-england-uk/

[Aggy 764]

16 hours ago, ricardo said:

Some context.

On an average Thursday 55k people are admitted to hospital in the UK, about 700 were Covids patients

And that is why hospitalisations/whether hospitals will be overwhelmed is the key, with the point WBB inadvertently made also showing why unlocking during the summer might not be a bad idea.

WBB’s link suggests in England during July-September, the average across all days is around 16k admissions a day. The overall average you’ve linked to shows across the whole year, it’s around double that a day - therefore in the winter months it must be over 40k a day (inc weekends).

Given we’re going to have an increase in not only covid hospitalisations but hospitalisations from other things too (due to reduced immunity), I’d suggest trying to deal with some of those ‘other things’ when hospitals are less busy makes sense.

Edited July 17, 2021 by Aggy

[Well b back 3,274]

43 minutes ago, Aggy said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-45783005

Your link is average across all days, but Tues-Thurs is busiest and week days are significantly more busy than the weekends.

Also your link refers to July-September, where the rates will be much lower as it’s summer, Ricardo’s average is presumably across the whole year. 

As below, the average across a whole year is around 30k a day, with an average of around 22.5k at the weekend, around 52.5k week days, and around 56k a day Tuesday-Thursday.

All of that only England, not including Scotland, Wales, NI.

So he misled everyone then.

[Well b back 3,274]

35 minutes ago, ricardo said:

Does this not include a &e visits, specialist visits people going in for arranged appointments like x rays. 

[Well b back 3,274]

Between 1987/88 and 2019/20, the total number of NHS hospital beds fell by 53 per cent – from 299,4000 to 141,000 (see Figure 2).1 Within this total number, there are different categories of bed across which the scale of change has varied considerably. 

[Well b back 3,274]

46 minutes ago, Aggy said:

And that is why hospitalisations/whether hospitals will be overwhelmed is the key, with the point WBB inadvertently made also showing why unlocking during the summer might not be a bad idea.

WBB’s link suggests in England during July-September, the average across all days is around 16k admissions a day. The overall average you’ve linked to shows across the whole year, it’s around double that a day - therefore in the winter months it must be over 40k a day (inc weekends).

Given we’re going to have an increase in not only covid hospitalisations but hospitalisations from other things too (due to reduced immunity), I’d suggest trying to deal with some of those ‘other things’ when hospitals are less busy makes sense.

The immunity on flu begins to run out every year around now, hence why the flu jabs are given in September. The problem this year is the guess work as to what the strain will be. 
 

[Well b back 3,274]

If I read your post wrong I apologise guys but I read it as 55,000 admitted into hospital as in staying there. 
COVID cases will need a bed, along with around 12,000 others at this time of year. 

[Well b back 3,274]

What we should be discussing today is how we keep out Beta ( the mutation that originally occurred in South Africa ). Delta has indeed become the main dominant strain, however Pfizer incredibly well and Astra Zeneca fairly well ( based on varying world data ) has held up fine, and depending if it carries on holding up in the likes of the EU ( I still have my reservations ) Pfizer and Moderna could well keep it at bay.

Beta is a different kettle of fish, we do not know how the vaccines will hold up. The data to date is on very small samples of people but for the vaccines at present they do not look promising, certainly in regards infection. The confirmed data has Oxford as low as 10% and Pfizer 2/3 of 95%, but these are very small samples as it did not really spread around the world, up until now for some reason. We need to delay it taking any sort of hold in the U.K. as by September 6 - 8 weeks away Oxford are confident their booster can work. 
There is no evidence to suggest that Oxford will still not protect against serious illness, but no certainty, which is very positive, but we really must take every measure possible to keep it at bay.

[Well b back 3,274]

This is quite a good article on Beta and all the angles. Interesting Sage comments re the vaccine protection.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57869880

[ricardo 7,396]

I think this bloke won't be far out with his predicted model.

https://twitter.com/goalprojection/status/1415430787374145541/photo/1

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

1 minute ago, ricardo said:

I think this bloke won't be far out with his predicted model.

https://twitter.com/goalprojection/status/1415430787374145541/photo/1

Or he ran out of blue sharpies and sneezed while using the red one.

[ricardo 7,396]

1 minute ago, keelansgrandad said:

Or he ran out of blue sharpies and sneezed while using the red one.

Hopefully he was wearing a mask at the time.

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

1 minute ago, ricardo said:

Hopefully he was wearing a mask at the time.

Only if he is public spirited.

[Upo 91]

21 hours ago, ricardo said:

Some context.

On an average Thursday 55k people are admitted to hospital in the UK, about 700 were Covids patients

1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536, 131072, 262144, 524288, 1048576, 2097152, 4194304, 8388608, 16777216, 33554432, 67108864, 134217728, 268435456, 536870912, 1073741824, 2147483648, 4294967296, 8589934592

[ricardo 7,396]

National

54,674 - 41

rate of increase 40% (7 days)

Local

Norwich infection rate up from  230.5  to 238.3 (3 patients in N&N)

Vax

1st Dose       67,956                87.8% done                 Norwich numbers   74.8%

2nd Dose     188,976              67.8% done                                                   52.2%

Patients in Hospital

15-07-2021	3,964
14-07-2021	3,801
13-07-2021	3,626
12-07-2021	3,416
11-07-2021	3,145
10-07-2021	3,002
09-07-2021	2,909
08-07-2021	2,740