The Delta variant

wadacrack

Ballynally wrote: »

I was interested when the case numbers in the UK really went up quite a bit in the last few days. A very likely explanation would be the surge testing results fr hotspots, especially in Scotland. It has to be separated from general test numbers. It is not the graph showing the test uptake that is important but the actual test results fr hotspots. A lot of specific area test and trace implementation will i think result in higher SarsCov2 case numbers because non symptomatic cases will be added which normally wouldnt show up.
If the prevelance of the Delta variant is apparent in certain areas i think a strong corrolation if not causation can be made between surge testing and a strong rise in case numbers.
I cannot prove it but it makes sense dont you think?
Or do you have a better explanation with better proof?
I am open to suggestions and if i am wrong in my way of thinking i dont mind someone pointing it out.

And yes, i have traced the rise in cases in the UK. Coming fr a low point it doesnt seem that dramatic considering the time frame and the near hysteria about it.
I just tried to find an explanation for the recent case growth rate.
I am following dr.Cambell's videos on Youtube in which he mentioned the link between surge testing and higher case numbers.
The tweet and the poster saying that parents might take their children to be tested made me think further.I then went on various sites to see if the corrolation could be made between surge testing and rising case numbers.
You are probably right to say i was looking for a more favourable view of the recent rise in case ("unconcerning explanation". But am i wrong?

Is the positivity rate rising in the UK or stable? This would help answer your question. Haven't seen it mentioned at all in the media in the UK.

Surge testing has proven pretty successful, its probably going to be important in the Autumn /winter

Ballynally

wadacrack wrote: »

Is the positivity rate rising in the UK or stable? This would help answer your question. Haven't seen it mentioned at all in the media in the UK.

Surge testing has proven pretty successful, its probably going to be important in the Autumn /winter

Its highly likely the positivity rate has gone up in the UK, unlike in Ireland.
Edit: cases p 100.000 by area (latest weekly rate):
Northern Ireland: 50.4
Wales: 36
Scotland: 140.4
England: 98.4
UK total: 97.5
Note: 50 seems to be an ok nr.


Id say surge testing is pretty important right now, especially in the UK. And in Northern Ireland with a land border w the Republic. I am keeping an eye on that. If cases grow there it might impact the Republic.
And Scottish people travelling without tests fr Sco to NI to the Republic this summer!
I furthermore think that LFTs would be good to use for specific things currently as they do in other countries. Ireland has deliberately not gone down that route and insist on the often impractical (and expensive) PCR tests. Pity..

dominatinMC

Fils wrote: »

Tony can get us out of this mess, we can’t lockdown.

Who's talking about lockdown? Apart from a few conspiracy theorists on social media. Try to reign in the hysteria..

Fils

dominatinMC wrote: »

Who's talking about lockdown? Apart from a few conspiracy theorists on social media. Try to reign in the hysteria..

Ok Mary.

dominatinMC

Fils wrote: »

Ok Mary.

But my name isn't Mary. Try to keep up

TefalBrain

Doesn't look like Delta has lead to a big increase of hospitalisations in the UK. It's like they rolled out a massive vaccination campaign for the vulnerable and it worked or something.

Virtually everyone i talk to now is sick and tired of the scaremongering and for the vast vast majority this is over. It's tiresome and laughable watching the likes of George Lee still getting freaked out about something that is just boring at this stage.

Lumen

Ballynally wrote: »

I cannot prove it but it makes sense dont you think?
Or do you have a better explanation with better proof?

The most obvious explanation of cases going up is that there are more people infected.

The evidence of this is the linked but lagging rise in hospitalisations, because hospitalisations are unrelated to surge testing effects.

Look the case numbers for Blackburn and hospitalisation numbers for Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The geographies don't align but are close.

Winter wave
Cases: Rise from mid Dec, peak around 4 Jan.
Hospitalisations: Rise from 3 Jan, peak around 21 Jan.

Summer wave:
Cases: Rise from a week into May, peak around 4 Jun.
Hospitalisations: Rise from around 1 June, peak...?

In both cases we have hospitalisations rising around 3 weeks after cases and peaking around 3 weeks after that.

Sources:
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=ltla&areaName=Blackburn%20with%20Darwen
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nhsTrust&areaName=Lancashire%20Teaching%20Hospitals%20NHS%20Foundation%20Trust

If the summer hospitalisations follow the same pattern as the winter they should be peaking around now. They must surely do this because you can't get hospitalisations continuing to rise with cases continuing to fall.

Stepping back, it seems that what's happening in the UK is a series of fairly localised outbreaks which last a couple of months, exactly the same as previously with national waves, except that previously the waves were suppressed with the help of harsher restrictions, whereas now the outbreaks are being suppressed by....well, some combination of sensible behaviour change and the virus running out of susceptible people due to vaccination and natural immunity.

Because the outbreaks are local the national picture looks more like the international picture we had previously - the outbreaks are linked but separated over time and space.

This has consequences for hospital capacity, if anyone really cares about that any more, because you can in theory move patients between regions if capacity becomes a problem.

These delta-driven summer waves have been a real blow to my optimism, because I believed a couple of months ago that Israel's success with squashing the virus at ~55% population at one dose could be repeated elsewhere. It hasn't been, and Israel is now seeing outbreaks again.

But the last week has been quite positive, because there are early signs that each UK outbreak is not being sustained, and are somewhat isolated geographically.

I still can't make up my mind about the appropriate policy response for Ireland. How the hell is anyone supposed to model whether our cases will continue to drop, like France, or rise sharply like Portugal?

I realise that there are some people who don't care about cases. I still do care, at least until the over 60s are fully vaccinated.

gral6

Paul Murphy wants hard lockdown and MHQ for all arrivals again because of Delta. I wonder, what planet he is from?

Ballynally

Lumen wrote: »

I still can't make up my mind about the appropriate policy response for Ireland. How the hell is anyone supposed to model whether our cases will continue to drop, like France, or rise sharply like Portugal?
.

Policy response should be based on calculated, clinical proportionality, not on fear though the former is a hard sell w the levels of anxiety in society.

Personally i think basing your policy on modeling alone wont do you any good. And there are a multitude of models to pick from.
There are other factors involved as well.
And there is no solution. Just a trade off.
I think that at this moment there is no good reason to delay easing restrictions in Ireland, looking at the nrs and the progress of the last 3 weeks.
There has been something like the 'final' easing of restrictions but that delays things and the carrot keeps on hanging a little further in perpetuity. Another 3 weeks can lead to another few weeks etc.
The point of no return might not come in the foreseeable future. We have had enough damage done to let that happen.
Ease restrictions fr july 5 w a series of caveats. You can retain restrictions for visitors fr certain other countries if need be. If cases rise exponentially in a 3 week period , coupled w rising hospitalisations in the weeks after you THEN have the excuse to reimpose restrictions because you are forced by reality.
And the majority people will understand.
I think the easing on july 5 will actually happen. It is about 10 days before they have to make a decision. Too short for nrs to rise much in Ireland/Northern Ireland. Despite the ramping up of concern.
I hope im not wrong.

Turtwig

The problem there is if you have a 3 weeks of exponential growth it'll take longer to reverse that than if you only had two weeks. Or one week. Or just a few days. There's a long tail when it comes to reversing the curve. The later the suppression begins the longer it will take to reverse.

The ransomware attack has to be considered here too. If patients start showing up with covid the ability to provide health care to non covid patients will be more disportionately severely impacted than it would have been previously.

I'm just glad we have a few more weeks before the decisions regarding restrictions has to be made. Time and information from here and abroad should help.

Lollipop95

Has anyone been following Australia? Looks like Sydney is on the brink of lockdown and the variant has appeared in Melbourne now

Lumen

Ballynally wrote: »

Personally i think basing your policy on modeling alone wont do you any good. And there are a multitude of models to pick from.

The data looks fairly stark though. The European countries where delta is very high, proportionately, tend to be seeing a significant increase in infection.

The most likely outcome over the next couple of weeks is that delta % goes steadily towards 100% and then cases start to climb, and then NPET sh!t the bed and the government postpones indoor re-opening.

It'll be more interesting if that happens a little after re-opening on July 5th. I can't see the government rolling back at that point.

Micky 32

Something i have noticed about the so-called Delta variant. Now i’m no expert or do i claim to be. It seems the virus is affecting the upper tract mostly . Cough etc seem to be a lesser symptom of this new strain and acts more like a head cold.

So it makes one wonder, is this new strain having problems penetrating the lower tract where it would usually cause the most havoc? Is that not a good thing? Thoughts?

Turtwig

Haven't a clue. Have you a source for mostly upper respiratory involvement?

Tyrone212

Turtwig wrote: »

Haven't a clue. Have you a source for upper respiratory only involvement?

I think Public Health England released a report last week that loss of taste had fallen outside the top 10 common symptoms since delta had taken over and the most common symptoms mimicked those of a head cold.

Micky 32

Turtwig wrote: »

Haven't a clue. Have you a source for mostly upper respiratory involvement?

Here’s one article anyway:


https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6069831

JimmyVik

Dempo1 wrote: »

Cyber Attack, albeit that too will no doubt be blamed on the CMO

Surely they've been able to count since the cyber attack.

Bit cynical

Micky 32 wrote: »

Something i have noticed about the so-called Delta variant. Now i’m no expert or do i claim to be. It seems the virus is affecting the upper tract mostly . Cough etc seem to be a lesser symptom of this new strain and acts more like a head cold.

So it makes one wonder, is this new strain having problems penetrating the lower tract where it would usually cause the most havoc? Is that not a good thing? Thoughts?

Still too early to say but if true it is a good thing.

However I think from the point of view of ISAG and other fanatics it is a bad thing. A non-lethal form of Covid is their worst nightmare because how can you persuade people it's a deadly virus that needs to be eliminated if it is no longer deadly?

Hub D15

The existence of the Delta variant cannot logically be used to continue any lockdown restrictions.

We are already about to be up to Epsilon or number 5 (for Nepal). That's a new variant roughly every 3 months.

The covid vaccine rollout is a year and a half and counting. The flu vaccine is usually only able to be updated once a year. So new variant creation seems to be in the region of every 3 months whilst new vaccine creation is in the region of every 12 months.

If variant creation is faster than vaccine production then stalling reopening to await vaccine catch up, will never work.

So using a new variant as a reason to close down makes no sense.

Unless someone has massively sped up everything to do with vaccines, then there are only 2 logical options... Either reopen despite the existence of variants, or never reopen.

Ballynally

The sad thing for me is to see the shift in focus over the course of the pandemic. In the beginning it was about preventing death which was linked in a certain way to hospitalisations and infections. That link was pretty much established at some point with version 1 and over time the percentages became clearer between infection, hospitalisation and death.
Hospitals were struggling with both the large amount of people coming in and treating them appropriately. As we know,many died.
Fast forward to now, for the western world at least, death has dropped off the table. It is hard to find anybody who thinks large amounts of people will die from any variant, current or future, of SarsCov2.
So, now the focus has moved to hospitalisations and infections. That link has a totally new structure compared to what happened w version 1. The Delta variant seems both more transmissable AND less severe or lethal. That is quite normal for a virus to develop like this over time and it is the way influenza turned out although i dont think we are quite there yet.
Younger people get infected more but there is a big question mark about severity. If people end up in hospital, how long do they stay, how severe are their symptoms? I cant find the data atm. Might it be that people actually get treated and recover quickly and that less and less people move to the pulmonary phase? That picture is radically different from the one in version 1.
Right now, looking at hospital nrs it doesnt seem to follow the old pattern.
If we just disgard hospital admittance and focus on nr of people in hospital we are likely to see the difference. So, people get well and sooner, possibly because a large percentage is younger.
Edit: hospital nrs in the UK are still low (1600+ yesterday). Growing relatively slowly week on week and certainly NOT incremental, just like infection nrs.

So, what matters is what endpoint or aim are you targetting?
In other words, what is acceptable?
Ok, lets take influenza. We know x amount of people die from it every year. Most healthy people shake it off. We know the pattern but nobody suggests we shut off large sections of society. We accept it.
This is imo the way we are going to have to accept SarsCov2.
Not only that, we have both vaccines AND treatments that work (IVM protocols etc.) Very few people have to die if we have facilities in place. Unfortunately India didnt but all western countries are in a much better position.
Speaking of India. There has been a dramatic fall in cases there despite the low vaccination percentage. It came and went quickly.

The latest news is that pharma have now been given the goahead to develop treatments w big grants awarded to them. It will be a form of tweaked IVM, the molecule whos name we are not allowed to utter, and patented, so for sale f a more expensive price with an 'improved' formula.
This, after most vaccinations have been administered.100.000s of people could have been saved if we all had focused on treatment.
Anyway, too late now.

In the meantime everybody is in a panic about Delta infections.
I am not. If i get it despite being fully vaxxed i have the protocol and IVM ready, ready to fly out after july19 w a brand new Covid Cert.
Unless the government decides to act 'responsibly' and delay international travel.

hmmm

Hub D15 wrote: »

If variant creation is faster than vaccine production then stalling reopening to await vaccine catch up, will never work.

So using a new variant as a reason to close down makes no sense.

It's just this variant, and people who are fully vaccinated still seem to have very good protection.

This is a timing problem where the risk is that the virus outpaces the vaccine rollout before everyone who wants a vaccine gets one, and before all the more vulnerable people are fully protected with their second dose. Delaying slightly (weeks) some parts of reopening looks more likely, but we're not talking about going back into lockdown.

The situation with future variants is likely to be very different when everyone who wants a vaccine has been vaccinated.

Red Silurian

An interesting update at the HSE briefing today from Paul Reid, Of the 602 hospitalisations in the UK, 8-9% of them are fully vaccinated people, this is being atributed to the delta variant. To me this suggests a vaccine efficacy against hospitalisation to be 91-92% but notably they are not telling us which vaccine these 55ish people have taken

hmmm

hmmm wrote: »

It's just this variant, and people who are fully vaccinated still seem to have very good protection.

This is a timing problem where the risk is that the virus outpaces the vaccine rollout before everyone who wants a vaccine gets one, and before all the more vulnerable people are fully protected with their second dose. Delaying slightly (weeks) some parts of reopening looks more likely, but we're not talking about going back into lockdown.

The situation with future variants is likely to be very different when everyone who wants a vaccine has been vaccinated.

The way things are going, I wouldn't be so sure about that. I don't hear anyone from Government/NPHET saying we are a few weeks away from normality either.

What are the chances that this time next year we'll be talking about maybe reopening when everyone has had a booster that wants one.

amandstu

Ballynally wrote: »

The Delta variant seems both more transmissable AND less severe or lethal

Where have you learned that Delta seems "less severe or lethal" ?

JimmyVik

Red Silurian wrote: »

An interesting update at the HSE briefing today from Paul Reid, Of the 602 hospitalisations in the UK, 8-9% of them are fully vaccinated people, this is being atributed to the delta variant. To me this suggests a vaccine efficacy against hospitalisation to be 91-92% but notably they are not telling us which vaccine these 55ish people have taken

I thought I was the only one that finds their info very selective.
It would not be hard for them to include which vaccines, what ages the people were and if there were underlying conditions.
Yet they dont provide this info. How do they expect people not to believe they are manipulating the message here, because thats the only reason to give out incomplete data

fun loving criminal

gral6 wrote: »

Paul Murphy wants hard lockdown and MHQ for all arrivals again because of Delta. I wonder, what planet he is from?

By the time they talk about things, it's too late. It's already here. Better to have MHQ for all arrivals for the next variant. But nobody will like that because it doesn't even exist yet

TefalBrain

gral6 wrote: »

Paul Murphy wants hard lockdown and MHQ for all arrivals again because of Delta. I wonder, what planet he is from?

Planet money grows on trees.

PokeHerKing

Every year the old and vulnerable die of the flu. They're the most likely to be vaccinated as well. So realisticly the well run and long established flu vaccination programme still results in a lot of deaths and pushes our health system to the brink during particularly virulent seasons.

So I think until health systems worldwide have been sufficiently beefed up to deal with covid as BAU we're going to be looking at some level of restrictions.

Doctor Jimbob

fun loving criminal wrote: »

By the time they talk about things, it's too late. It's already here. Better to have MHQ for all arrivals for the next variant. But nobody will like that because it doesn't even exist yet

Better to blow up all our ports and airports and build a border wall with NI just to be sure.

Ballynally

amandstu wrote: »

Where have you learned that Delta seems "less severe or lethal" ?

I was speculating. I said i didnt have access to data. But it seems a logical assumption that deaths will follow severe cases. Deaths have been flat (ish)
With weekly nrs .76 (16-23 june), 70 (june 9-16), 55 (june 1-8), possibly fr patients already on ventilators.
Now, one caveat. It IS early days so that picture might change. It is probably the reason the UK delayed easing the last restrictions.
But still, the link infections> hospitalisations> deaths does NOT show that Delta is more severe or lethal atm, something that has been suggested by health officials who know full well that it is likely the opposite.
That equation is going to be different this time, firstly because more young people are involved who have a better chance of recovery and also because the history of virus development points to less severe and lethal variants but more transmissable ones. And of course there are the vaccines.so, that is an educated guess.
I assume people like Paul Reid know that. Still, today he came out and said he did not want to go back to the situation in january. He knows there is almost no chance of that happening. Just a little white lie to keep the fear factor in a healthy state.
Colm Henry warned about an increase in hospitalisations.
Thats kicking in an open door. More people mixing means more infections and (likely) more hospitalisations.
But i no longer see any mention of incremental growth which was waved about some time ago but never materialised. Ah well..