The UK response to Covid-19 [MOD WARNING 1ST POST]

Peregrinus

theological wrote: »

. . . By the by, I'm hoping we'll see a decent study come out on what elements of the lockdown measures actually worked to drive down transmission and what elements were unnecessary. The lockdown is only a measure that we apply when we don't know what actually works. It'd be great to learn what worked and what didn't and use those tools to continue to control the virus in a less extreme way going forward.

Couple of thoughts:

1. You are correct that it's important to find out what has worked and what has not.

2. But it won't be easy. Current experience of rising or falling infections, rising or falling death rates, etc, is the combined outcome of all the relevant factors and influences. Disentangling them after the event to identify the contribution, positive or negative, of each individual factor will be very difficult, technically speaking. You never get to run the experiment in which you apply just one measure, and can measure its impact without the distorting effect of other measures and other circumstances.

3. It will be difficult also for a second reason; it is politically charged. A great many people will be seeking either to influence the process, or to read or present the results, in a way that assigns blame to, or avoids blame for, particular political actors.

4. It's not a given that the outcome of the process will enable us "to control the virus in a less extreme way going forward". It could just as well indicate that more extreme measures are required - e.g. much tougher travel restrictions, or a greater degree of social distancing, or designating many more areas as zones where mask-wearing is mandatory and enforced, or much more intrusive monitoring of people's location and contacts.

5. What it should enable, though, is better allocation of resources. The necessary measures may be very restrictive, but if we know they work then we can allocate more resources to them and fewer to measures that are less significant. Plus, the more successfully we can control the spread of the infection, the fewer resources that we need to use, or to hold in reserve for, the treatment of the infection.

S.M.B.

This are the closest I've seen with both coming out this week but both struggle to really compare individual measures.

https://twitter.com/TobyMPhillips/status/1280095552995315712

https://twitter.com/TobyMPhillips/status/1280411072864956416

A Dub in Glasgo

https://twitter.com/RP131/status/1280923813069422594

theological

The KCL tracker have done an update to their model. The latest figures suggest that 23,459 have symptomatic COVID and they have changed the map to show how many cases per million are in a particular area which is good and probably more helpful than percentages at this stage in the pandemic. The procedure to calculate the symptomatic cases has been adjusted and there's a blog explaining why here. Apparently linking the test results has allowed them to come up with a more accurate figure.

robinph

Peregrinus wrote: »

Couple of thoughts:

1. You are correct that it's important to find out what has worked and what has not.

2. But it won't be easy. Current experience of rising or falling infections, rising or falling death rates, etc, is the combined outcome of all the relevant factors and influences. Disentangling them after the event to identify the contribution, positive or negative, of each individual factor will be very difficult, technically speaking. You never get to run the experiment in which you apply just one measure, and can measure its impact without the distorting effect of other measures and other circumstances.

3. It will be difficult also for a second reason; it is politically charged. A great many people will be seeking either to influence the process, or to read or present the results, in a way that assigns blame to, or avoids blame for, particular political actors.

4. It's not a given that the outcome of the process will enable us "to control the virus in a less extreme way going forward". It could just as well indicate that more extreme measures are required - e.g. much tougher travel restrictions, or a greater degree of social distancing, or designating many more areas as zones where mask-wearing is mandatory and enforced, or much more intrusive monitoring of people's location and contacts.

5. What it should enable, though, is better allocation of resources. The necessary measures may be very restrictive, but if we know they work then we can allocate more resources to them and fewer to measures that are less significant. Plus, the more successfully we can control the spread of the infection, the fewer resources that we need to use, or to hold in reserve for, the treatment of the infection.

Give it ten years or so for enough governments around the world to have changed and enough stats on how each country actually faired in coming out the other side and there will be people doing doctorates in trying to figure it all out based on the outline you've given, and of course all coming to completely different conclusions.

S.M.B.

Their estimate for the Borough of London I'm about to move to seems to tell an entirely different story to the official figures

Reading that post has added to my concerns about the effects of the virus beyond morbidity and R rates. Having to recategorise the ~50% who show symptoms after 13 days into a new group makes sense but adds to my worries about long term complications.

theological

S.M.B. wrote: »

Their estimate for the Borough of London I'm about to move to seems to tell an entirely different story to the official figures

Reading that post has added to my concerns about the effects of the virus beyond morbidity and R rates. Having to recategorise the ~50% who show symptoms after 13 days into a new group makes sense but adds to my worries about long term complications.

I think it's very helpful to recategorise the map at this stage in the pandemic so that you can see the differences in prevalence. The map with the percentages of active COVID per area was starting not to be that valuable considering most areas are under 1% at this stage.

Taking the overall number of active cases that they have on there the UK average is that is 1 case of active coronavirus per 2890 people. In my area the rate is better. In others it will be worse. It is helpful information that should inform people's risk appetites going forward in terms of how they respond to the easing of lockdown measures.

It is also interesting that the KCL figures and the ONS figures are starting to look pretty similar with the new model.

S.M.B.

Oh I agree it's better to have a more accurate estimate. I just have had major concerns over those who are displaying symptoms (and therefore underlying issues) long after they are infectious and the extent of this recalibration highlights just how common this is.

giveitholly

How long has it been since those scenes at the seaside in Bournemouth? And has there being any spike in cases relating to it?

giveitholly

giveitholly wrote: »

How long has it been since those scenes at the seaside in Bournemouth? And has there being any spike in cases relating to it?

None. And no black lives matter protest related spike either. Outside activity seems totally fine to me. If there’s no pub related spike in 2-3 weeks I’d be feeling pretty good about the outlook

Peregrinus

giveitholly wrote: »

How long has it been since those scenes at the seaside in Bournemouth? And has there being any spike in cases relating to it?

Slightly less than two weeks, and therefore any spike in cases would only start to emerge around now.

Plus, UK tracing mechanism are not that crash-hot. If a spike originated at hat event (or indeed at any particular event) it might be some more time before the link was made, or it might not be made at all. SFAIK UK is not doing genetic sequencing of virus samples, so identifing clusters of related infections is not easy, unless there are obvious signs - e.g. all the infected people are members of the same family or live in the same house.

RobMc59

An interesting article suggesting reasons there hasn't been a second covid wave to date in the UK.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2248216-why-hasnt-the-uk-seen-a-second-wave-of-the-coronavirus/

Zubeneschamali

Story on sky about just how bad those test numbers at the daily conferences were. Worse than even I imagined. Hand written tables, collected over the phone, "buffed" to show a steady increase.

Old news now, of course, fooled enough people at the time to keep the plates spinning.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-the-inside-story-of-how-uks-chaotic-testing-regime-broke-all-the-rules-12022566

theological

Peregrinus wrote: »

Slightly less than two weeks, and therefore any spike in cases would only start to emerge around now.

Plus, UK tracing mechanism are not that crash-hot. If a spike originated at hat event (or indeed at any particular event) it might be some more time before the link was made, or it might not be made at all. SFAIK UK is not doing genetic sequencing of virus samples, so identifing clusters of related infections is not easy, unless there are obvious signs - e.g. all the infected people are members of the same family or live in the same house.

I deffinitely agree that genetic sequencing needs to be added in the mix for contact tracing. From what I've heard this is normal practice in Australia and it seems to be helping their response to the virus. Combining it and contact tracing could be helpful in identifying if people were in reality infected through the same strain of transmission or through another.

theteal

Lovely, news coming through from the wife's old hospital in Romford that cases are on the rise again. And this is before the pub opening shenanigans will have taken effect. Last time around, further out here in the Essex badlands we were about 10 days behind there so the wife and her CC/ITU friends are bracing themselves. Smashing stuff, I had fancied getting home to see the parents at some stage this year.

theological

theteal wrote: »

Lovely, news coming through from the wife's old hospital in Romford that cases are on the rise again. And this is before the pub opening shenanigans will have taken effect. Last time around, further out here in the Essex badlands we were about 10 days behind there so the wife and her CC/ITU friends are bracing themselves. Smashing stuff, I had fancied getting home to see the parents at some stage this year.

I'm wondering where this is coming from considering that Havering hasn't had many positive cases recorded recently, and neither has Barking and Dagenham. There are slightly more in the neighbouring borough of Redbridge, but still not lots. Is the hospital serving cases from much further afield?

Admissions in London hospitals are also pretty low. 18 on the 6th of July for example.

If you've got more information on this, that'd be helpful. Is this based on new hospital admissions?

CelticRambler

RobMc59 wrote: »

An interesting article suggesting reasons there hasn't been a second covid wave to date in the UK.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2248216-why-hasnt-the-uk-seen-a-second-wave-of-the-coronavirus/

That's a desperate bit of copy-and-paste journalism that should have no place in any publication with the word "Scientist" in the title! Did they subcontract it to the Daily Mail writers? :pac:

There's no "second wave" yet in the UK/England because the first wave hasn't come to an end, and (despite the government's best efforts) people and the economy are not returning to normal, and the conditions required for a good rate of spread.

A Dub in Glasgo

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Story on sky about just how bad those test numbers at the daily conferences were. Worse than even I imagined. Hand written tables, collected over the phone, "buffed" to show a steady increase.

Old news now, of course, fooled enough people at the time to keep the plates spinning.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-the-inside-story-of-how-uks-chaotic-testing-regime-broke-all-the-rules-12022566

Fooled enough people who wanted to believe in the competence of Johnson and his cronies. The minute they included test kits sent out by post in the 'test completed' figure should have been a wake up call for those people but alas it was not

Dave0301

A Dub in Glasgo wrote: »

Fooled enough people who wanted to believe in the competence of Johnson and his cronies. The minute they included test kits sent out by post in the 'test completed' figure should have been a wake up call for those people but alas it was not

Not to mention that they can't actually give a figure for the number of people tested.

World beating :rolleyes:

Peregrinus

theological wrote: »

I deffinitely agree that genetic sequencing needs to be added in the mix for contact tracing. From what I've heard this is normal practice in Australia and it seems to be helping their response to the virus. Combining it and contact tracing could be helpful in identifying if people were in reality infected through the same strain of transmission or through another.

Genetic sequencing is being done in Victoria but I'm not sure if its being done in (all of) the other States.

I imagine it's a matter of resource allocation; adding genetic sequencing to the test protocol gives you more information, and it's very useful epidemiologically. But presumably means that each test takes more time/consumes more resources, which might have implications for the amount of testing you can do.

It doesn't seem to be having those implications in Victoria, which not only runs genetic sequencing as standard in all tests but also has the highest testing rate in Australia and one of the highest in the world. I suspect they are throwing money at testing.

But, the cautionary lesson: having all but eliminated community transmission, Victoria has seen a sudden and alarming surge in infections which has caused a reimposed lockdown. Their admirable testing programme means they are immediate aware of this surge, where it is coming from, how it is spreading, etc, etc. But none of that stops the surge.

The full picture is still emerging, but it's suggested that the surge has been traced to recently-returned travellers in quarantine, who have passed the infection to some of the staff at the quarantine facility, who have brought it back to their families and neighbourhoods, where it has taken off. And, unlike other States, Victoria has contracted out the operation of its quarantine facilities to a great extent, and stories in the media suggest that the much of the contractors' staff are untrained and ill-equipped for their role. (We are not talking nurses here; we are talking, e.g., people hired casually on minimum wage to provide security, or do the fetching and carrying involved.)

It's tempting to conclude that maybe Victoria is financing its world-beating testing programme by skimping on other things, like paying what it costs for quarantine arrangements that will be better at controlling the spread of infection. Which, if true, means the reason why they know so much about their second surge is also partly the reason why they have it in the first place. That's much too glib and simplistic, certainly, but it does illustrate the importance of every aspect of the pandemic reponse. Good testing-and-tracing facilities are a necessary part of the response, but on their own they are not sufficient. If this fails at any point, it fails comprehensively.

bob mcbob

RobMc59 wrote: »

An interesting article suggesting reasons there hasn't been a second covid wave to date in the UK.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2248216-why-hasnt-the-uk-seen-a-second-wave-of-the-coronavirus/

Who wrote this drivel?

To summarise why has there not been a second wave
- Herd immunity - no
- Summer - maybe (Texas, Florida, Brazil, etc, etc - would suggest not)
- Better infection control in care homes - maybe (this will keep the death rate down but it has zero impact on infections)
- People are still cautious and restrictions only been lifted for a couple of weeks and it takes time to grow in the community - probably

RobMc59

CelticRambler wrote: »

That's a desperate bit of copy-and-paste journalism that should have no place in any publication with the word "Scientist" in the title! Did they subcontract it to the Daily Mail writers? :pac:

There's no "second wave" yet in the UK/England because the first wave hasn't come to an end, and (despite the government's best efforts) people and the economy are not returning to normal, and the conditions required for a good rate of spread.

Wikipedia does describe some of their articles as'speculative'.

Peregrinus

I didn't think it was that bad. The headline is misleading, but the journalist didn't write the headline.

The gist of the article is - there's no clear reason why the UK hasn't experienced a second wave yet and, therefore, nobody should assume that it won't. Makes sense to me.

The UK has opened up faster than comparable European countries, and has experienced a slower decline in infection rates than comparable European countries. These two facts are possibly connected.

JP Liz V1

Boots and John Lewis closing some stores in UK

JP Liz V1

JP Liz V1 wrote: »

Boots and John Lewis closing some stores in UK

The fallout of this is going to be much worse than people think and are prepared to even contemplate. Sunak alluded to that outcome today.

theological

Deleted User wrote: »

The fallout of this is going to be much worse than people think and are prepared to even contemplate. Sunak alluded to that outcome today.

The fallout was always going to be significant. There's only so much the government can do. There's only so long that people can be furloughed for. Its going to be a significant process in order to convince people to go out and shop again, to go out to pubs and restaraunts and to be out and about. The government have had to scare the hell out of people in order to get people to stay at home and isolate. Rewinding that is not easy.

Despite talk of the economy recovering like a V shape, I think it is going to take a long time for people to engage in it like they did before.

theteal

theological wrote: »

I'm wondering where this is coming from considering that Havering hasn't had many positive cases recorded recently, and neither has Barking and Dagenham. There are slightly more in the neighbouring borough of Redbridge, but still not lots. Is the hospital serving cases from much further afield?

Admissions in London hospitals are also pretty low. 18 on the 6th of July for example.

If you've got more information on this, that'd be helpful. Is this based on new hospital admissions?

I don't know what to tell you, theo. I don't know how they're being reported. This is just word from the shop floor in a phone call to the wife from an ex-colleague. Queens could well be taking all Havering cases. I'm told it's new admissions to the "covid" ward, none have escalated to ITU as of yet (yesterday). Hopefully it's a bit of preemptive exaggeration but after the few months these guys have had I can't blame them for being on edge.

4068ac1elhodqr

Deleted User wrote: »

The fallout of this is going to be much worse than people think and are prepared to even contemplate. Sunak alluded to that outcome today.

On the plus side he's offered triple galzed windows, heat sink thingies, new solar panels on re-insulated roofs for free/disocunt/cheap.

Ideal for folks that won't have two sticks to rub together for any heat generation come winter.

A Dub in Glasgo

https://twitter.com/RP131/status/1281278128799780866

Enzokk

Anybody know what the R-rate in the UK is? Does it correspond with this graph the government released and the opening of the economy?

https://twitter.com/liamyoung/status/1281258504460910592?s=20

Don't worry, I know they don't care about R-rates, their objective is the stop the bleeding in the economy so what they told you before is not what they want you to remember now.