Corona Virus main thread

[Creative Midfielder 1,996]

2 hours ago, Well b back said:

Not the way I see it Ricardo. Surely you have to split Europe into 2 groups, those with lower vaccine uptakes as % of the population and no vaccine passports or mask wearing, the likes of us, Germany, some of the Eastern European’s against those that have much bigger vaccine uptakes as % of population, vaccine passports and mask wearing such as Spain, France and Portugal.

 

 

Exactly so - France is the only one that I've been keeping much of an eye on - they are well ahead of us in vaccinations and at about 20% of UK cases, hospitalisations, and deaths and this has been the case for months now.

[Well b back 3,200]

44 minutes ago, ricardo said:

The  Netherlands with a quarter of UK population recording over 12.5k cases today.

Belgium with one fifth UK population recording over 10k cases today.

Denmark with one tweflth UK population recording over 3k cases today.

Difficult to dispute that Europe is now at the lift off stage.

Indeed that shows what I said, Belgium retracted their mask wearing on 17/9 and Netherlands after relaxing rules brought in new rules on 6/11 https://www.government.nl/topics/coronavirus-covid-19/tackling-new-coronavirus-in-the-netherlands/basic-rules-for-everyone

7 day averages

France cases 8768 deaths 37

Portugal cases 1102 deaths 8 ( did boosters well early )

Spain cases 2155 deaths 19

Italy cases 5870 deaths 47

Then

Germany cases 41000 + today 200 deaths

Poland nearly 14,000 cases today and 24 deaths today with 108 7 day average, going up quick.

Personally I am happy to make my choices in the U.K. with the freedoms we have, however there are those adding restrictions and forcing people to be vaccinated that currently are doing ok. Of course this is an unpredictable virus and of course things can change and those countries can be dragged in to a bad scenario. 

If you want a country to compare to the U.K. to make us look amazingly good you need to use Brazil who used the Ivor Cummins theory and America who when Donald Trump asked 50% of their citizens to put their head in the oven those 50% ( the Republicans ) obliged.

Any country that follows the example set by Israel and Portugal by getting their citizens boosted rapidly will see out the winter well, however who knows what will happen in 4 or 5 months, my best guess is the treatments will be good enough to save the anti vaxers, but that will also mean less and less will bother to get vaccinated.

Israel 7 day average cases at 5 months after dose 2 ( Pfizer ) 8924, after boosters complete 512, deaths 33 before and 3 after.

 

 

 

 

 

[Barbe bleu 822]

3 hours ago, Well b back said:

Not the way I see it Ricardo. Surely you have to split Europe into 2 groups, those with lower vaccine uptakes as % of the population and no vaccine passports or mask wearing, the likes of us, Germany, some of the Eastern European’s against those that have much bigger vaccine uptakes as % of population, vaccine passports and mask wearing such as Spain, France and Portugal.

 

 

I think you have to be careful not to come to a conclusion and then look at the data.  We all do it of course but the risk is that we only then see what we expected to see.

You say that vaccine uptake and mask mandates explain the differences between the UK, Germany and Poland figures and those of Spain, Portugal and France. You might be right of course but the date of autumn onset or previous infection rates must surely be  possible factors? 

I don't believe in direct test data comparison but comparative rates of growth/ decay are probably where we need to be looking for answers.

 

Edited November 10, 2021 by Barbe bleu

[ricardo 7,384]

1 hour ago, Creative Midfielder said:

Exactly so - France is the only one that I've been keeping much of an eye on - they are well ahead of us in vaccinations and at about 20% of UK cases, hospitalisations, and deaths and this has been the case for months now.

They are now on the way up just as everyone else in Europe. A couple of months behind us perhaps but we are now seeing the inevitable rise. Mask mandates are a red herring and vaccine waning is going to happen there just as it has here, only a few weeks later. Thankfully boosters have been stepped up in the UK and they need to do the same everywhere else.

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

11 year old Granddaughter has just got it. In bed with cough, sore eyes and temperature. Mum, Dad, big Sister and little brother all clear. But all taking another PCR tomorrow.

They were all down in Cornwall last week but the kids are back in school so anyone's guess where she got it.

[Well b back 3,200]

44 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

11 year old Granddaughter has just got it. In bed with cough, sore eyes and temperature. Mum, Dad, big Sister and little brother all clear. But all taking another PCR tomorrow.

They were all down in Cornwall last week but the kids are back in school so anyone's guess where she got it.

All the best to her KG, let’s hope the rest remain clear.

[Mark .Y. 352]

11 hours ago, Creative Midfielder said:

Exactly so - France is the only one that I've been keeping much of an eye on - they are well ahead of us in vaccinations and at about 20% of UK cases, hospitalisations, and deaths and this has been the case for months now.

Well ahead of us in vaccinations ??  as far as I can tell, we have also done around three times as many booster jabs as France

[Barbe bleu 822]

2 hours ago, Mark .Y. said:

Well ahead of us in vaccinations ??  as far as I can tell, we have also done around three times as many booster jabs as France

I'll defend CM here.   Of course its not really right to say that france is well ahead of us in vaccines, they have done less jabs per head of population and the graph above shows the % with some vaccine induced immunity is almost the same.

However,  by getting jabs in arms a bit later than we did they likely have higher average blood antibody levels than we did when boosters were started.  Perhaps 'well ahead' wasn't the right term, but ' currently in a better part of the cycle and in less need of boosters' I think can be argued

 Obviously though that will change over winter and they will be put in the same boat sooner or later (maybe sooner if the graphs ricardo posted a link to continue to show the trend they now are)

[Mark .Y. 352]

39 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

I'll defend CM here.   Of course its not really right to say that france is well ahead of us in vaccines, they have done less jabs per head of population and the graph above shows the % with some vaccine induced immunity is almost the same.

However,  by getting jabs in arms a bit later than we did they likely have higher average blood antibody levels than we did when boosters were started.  Perhaps 'well ahead' wasn't the right term, but ' currently in a better part of the cycle and in less need of boosters' I think can be argued

 Obviously though that will change over winter and they will be put in the same boat sooner or later (maybe sooner if the graphs ricardo posted a link to continue to show the trend they now are)

You seem to be suggesting that it would have been better for us to have vaccinated more slowly ???

From what I have read from Macron, he seems pretty sure that they need the boosters. 

[Barbe bleu 822]

1 minute ago, Mark .Y. said:

You seem to be suggesting that it would have been better for us to have vaccinated more slowly ???

From what I have read from Macron, he seems pretty sure that they need the boosters. 

Haha, no, not at all. I guess we could call it and unintended side effect of their slower initial rollout.

Its a bit like natural immunity levels in the UK.   It's great to now have good levels, but they did come at quite a cost...

 

  

[ricardo 7,384]

It shouldn't be difficult to understand that different countries are at different parts of the cycle at different times. The speed and extent of vaccination and the timing and easing of restrictions merely exacerbates this differential. While the UK now appears to be over the peak infection period, others are still approaching it and yet others are only just beginning to rise.

If cases continue to fall then the UK will have taken the correct decision by easing restrictions early and getting the peak out of the way before the worst of the winter period. As always we await the data.

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

8 minutes ago, ricardo said:

It shouldn't be difficult to understand that different countries are at different parts of the cycle at different times. The speed and extent of vaccination and the timing and easing of restrictions merely exacerbates this differential. While the UK now appears to be over the peak infection period, others are still approaching it and yet others are only just beginning to rise.

If cases continue to fall then the UK will have taken the correct decision by easing restrictions early and getting the peak out of the way before the worst of the winter period. As always we await the data.

This is how I see it plus we’re on the “road to endemicity” and it’s about managing the level of Covid, not hoping it will go away .  Booster vaccines at this point are the key.

 

is there anywhere in the world that now has real restrictions in place (internally - I’m not talking about international travel restrictions)? I mean restrictions on socialising/requiring working at home etc?  I know it’s been mentioned that China is still being pretty restrictive (which let’s face it suits their government as a default state of affairs) but I’m not sure exactly what that means in practice.

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

Also good to see daily case numbers still falling - as shown in the daily PCR test reports and on the Zoe app. I think the ONS numbers out tomorrow will be the first that cover a period since numbers were dropping by other measures, so I hope and expect we’ll also see a decline in cases shown by the ONS numbers tomorrow.

[Creative Midfielder 1,996]

13 hours ago, ricardo said:

They are now on the way up just as everyone else in Europe. A couple of months behind us perhaps but we are now seeing the inevitable rise. Mask mandates are a red herring and vaccine waning is going to happen there just as it has here, only a few weeks later. Thankfully boosters have been stepped up in the UK and they need to do the same everywhere else.

They are edging up now but only very slowly and from a base level which is only a small fraction of ours - I think the boosters are a bit irrelevant to this particular discussion, more pertinent is that France (amongst others) is well ahead of us on the fully vaccinated and nearly all of them with the highest efficacy vaccines rather than AZ. That, I suspect, is the major reason why they have been much more successful in containing cases and limiting deaths than the UK over the last 6 months, although the more intelligent easing of restrictions obviously played its part as well - who knows, or cares really, how big a part when it is the actual outcomes of the whole response that really matters.

Although as far as boosters as concerned you may, or may not, have seen that Macron is phasing in the requirement that people have a booster in order for the vaccination certificate on their app to show as fully vaccinated, which is only the latest in a line of very clear and forceful messages which he has consistently given about their vax campaign - quite a contrast to the shambles that marked the start of our booster campaign and much very mixed messaging that went before it. Also bear in mind that certain groups over there were given three jabs as part of their original vaccination.

So given what we now know about the virus, virtually all European countries will be expecting some problems this winter but the French certainly have less to worry about than we do - they are better prepared vaccination wise, they are going into winter with very low levels of infection, and they have a government that hasn't spent the last few months trying to pretend that the pandemic is all over.

Oh, and they don't have an under-resourced health service already stretched to breaking point before the winter even gets underway!

[Creative Midfielder 1,996]

2 hours ago, Barbe bleu said:

I'll defend CM here.   Of course its not really right to say that france is well ahead of us in vaccines, they have done less jabs per head of population and the graph above shows the % with some vaccine induced immunity is almost the same.

However,  by getting jabs in arms a bit later than we did they likely have higher average blood antibody levels than we did when boosters were started.  Perhaps 'well ahead' wasn't the right term, but ' currently in a better part of the cycle and in less need of boosters' I think can be argued

 Obviously though that will change over winter and they will be put in the same boat sooner or later (maybe sooner if the graphs ricardo posted a link to continue to show the trend they now are)

Its probably unwise to contradict you when you claim to be 'defending' me (a first if I'm not mistaken 😀) but I'm afraid France are (well may be a bit subjective - but I'd say the difference is quite significant) ahead of us as I stated in terms of fully vaccinated - UK: 68.4%, France 75%.

The fact that they may have done less jabs per head of population is pretty irrelevant - they made much more use of the single jab vaccines than we did (if at all?) so not surprising they have higher levels of protection with fewer jabs - also presumably a significant factor in why they were able to start later and still overtook us quite some time ago in terms of fully vaccinated.

Edited November 11, 2021 by Creative Midfielder
Clarification

[ricardo 7,384]

 

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

It still boils down to, are we doing as well as we should? And the indications are we were but are not now, in terms of protecting our population.

The threats to care and NHS staff about the jab are ridiculous. If all the surgeons in the NHS said we are not being double jabbed then they wouldn't dare sack them. Of course if a cleaner or porter said the same thing then on yer bike.

[sonyc 5,510]

Lots of graphs and commentary on JMB's latest tweet (click for extra graphs and trend analysis). 

 

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

25 minutes ago, sonyc said:

Lots of graphs and commentary on JMB's latest tweet (click for extra graphs and trend analysis). 

 

Its good news if the assumption that we are over the worse is correct. But "may" is not "are" and until we "are" then its still obeying guidelines for me.

[Creative Midfielder 1,996]

1 hour ago, keelansgrandad said:

Its good news if the assumption that we are over the worse is correct. But "may" is not "are" and until we "are" then its still obeying guidelines for me.

Quite - predicting that the autumn/winter peak may have passed before winter has even begun might seem a bit premature to some 🙄

The steady decline in cases is certainly good news (in isolation) but let's not forget it is a decline from a peak which was way above other Europeans countries and we are still trying to get down to their peaks.

As you said before, the absolute numbers are not so important - the real question is whether or not we are doing as well as we could and should be doing and it seems pretty clear IMO that we are not.

[ricardo 7,384]

National

42,408 - 195

rate of decrease of 12% over 7 days,

 

Local

Norwich rate 233.6  down 21% (7 days)

N&N Patients

09-11-2021                        30

Vax     

1st Dose      119,188             87.7% done                               Norwich numbers   76.7% 

2nd Dose     47,766             79.9% done                                                                  69.8%

Booster     532,238     total          11,452,654

In Hospital

10-11-2021	8,767
09-11-2021	8,866
08-11-2021	8,936
07-11-2021	8,798
06-11-2021	8,779
05-11-2021	9,027
04-11-2021	9,236
03-11-2021	9,392

[ricardo 7,384]

42 minutes ago, Creative Midfielder said:

 

The steady decline in cases is certainly good news (in isolation) but let's not forget it is a decline from a peak which was way above other Europeans countries and we are still trying to get down to their peaks.

 

Not at all. They have by no means reached their peaks yet by a long way.

For example the Belgium 14.5k and Netherlands 16.2k figures today are already well in excess of our peak on a population adjusted basis. As for Germany, I don't want to speculate but it is not looking good. The idea that everybody else has kept things in check with more restrictions than us is about to be sorely tested.

[ricardo 7,384]

A note of caution

Compared with last Thursday, todays numbers show the first daily uptick in 18 days. This may be half term related with schools back or possibly a levelling off after a considerable drop. We will need to wait a few days to see if a new pattern is emerging or if it is merely a reporting issue.

[ricardo 7,384]

It still seems that the majority of cases are in the younger groups.

The oldest group still declining and others declining slightly or stable.

[Yellow Fever 3,767]

 

14 minutes ago, ricardo said:

A note of caution

Compared with last Thursday, todays numbers show the first daily uptick in 18 days. This may be half term related with schools back or possibly a levelling off after a considerable drop. We will need to wait a few days to see if a new pattern is emerging or if it is merely a reporting issue.

Thanks Ricardo - I really didn't want to point out the obvious.... (42400 is up from 39300 yesterday and far too many)

This virus has too many tricks up its sleeves. Caution should be the order of the day. We might be lagging Europe after all or is it that new variant or just the school lull passing?

Edited November 11, 2021 by Yellow Fever

[ricardo 7,384]

Here's another view.

massively in school age kids and the age group most likel;y to be their parents.

[ricardo 7,384]

4 minutes ago, Yellow Fever said:

 

Thanks Ricardo - I really didn't want to point out the obvious.... (42400 is up from 39300 yesterday and far too many)

This virus has too many tricks up its sleeves. Caution should be the order of the day. We might be lagging Europe after all or is it that new variant or just the school lull passing?

I've seen no evidence of a variant so schools more likely as the last chart seems to highlight.

[Yellow Fever 3,767]

2 minutes ago, ricardo said:

I've seen no evidence of a variant so schools more likely as the last chart seems to highlight.

Such as https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/local-news/new-fast-spreading-delta-coronavirus-22122127

[ricardo 7,384]

Going by the dogs breakfast chart, the West Midlands spike seems to have subsided.

Todays figures from Scotland appear to show a possible new spike emerging there.

[ricardo 7,384]

50,196 cases in Germany I am hearing.

Once it gains ground the explosion is not long in coming.