COVID-19

I was shocked this weekend. I visited a cousin at a caravan park that I've not seen for months as she is old, overwight and has a few issues, like her partner, and they'd been avoiding outsiders. We wanted to chat outside while the kids played but got forced in by rain. We wanted to go into the quiet large pub bar but that had gone to food only to discourage people getting too relaxed with drink so we were forced into the busy socially spaced performance suite/theatre where I was surprised to find a turn on but dancing was banned. Tables were spaced but trouble was it was ear-ringingly loud so people were having to communicate by shouting at each other from inches away and this was with a cousin who had previously turned down a suggestion to meet up about 5 weeks ago - though she seemed much more relaxed about it now. Just for good measure I noticed a few were drunk on toilet trips with the kids, despite shows being broken into 2-hour slots with a clear out in between.

So I was shouting at people indoors and mixing with drunks in small toilets but I can't watch football yet outside. I might add the toilet rules don't work well. I've seen in a few places that blocking off sinks and urinals just created congestion and then people spend time close together in a confined toilet area. (Studies have shown highest viral density in hospitals was in toilets.) It's better to just let them get on with it and leave. I think some of these ill-thought-out rules actually make us more likely to spread the virus than not. The common masks don't work anything like as well as rash-inducing N95s (say studies and my fogged glasses) but everyone ignores spacing when they wear them. It's all a farce.

 

They are cranking up the household infection survey from its original rolling 10k and now rolling 28k every few weeks to 150k per fortnight in coming weeks. Ultimately they are aiming for 400k. Testing keeps rising so allowance needs to be made for it. Rising testing also means false positives keep rising. I don't know what allowance is being made for them. Because testing is so variable and they keep chasing hot areas, I take positive tests with a pinch of salt and concentrate on the hospital admissions and deaths. They still seem to be just about easing of late though it looks like the falling trend might have turned flat.

The problem we have now is we have a cold and flu season that has started to turn up already and news that some other common coronaviruses might give false positives on Covid blood tests. (I don't know about swabs but they are already known to have their own false positive issues so also more tests equals more false positives for them.) Millions will get colds and flu in the next few months and some will die. How many will get put down as Covid that were not? Excess deaths will be a cross reference but they could reach thousands of deaths per week and just be a mild flu. It's going to be an even greater mess of statistics, and probably with lots of different opinions, but it should be remembered that Covid was never likely to go to zero and was always likely to end up moderating eventually (when?) and behaving like a seasonal cold or flu. We'd be getting thousands of cases for them each week if we were testing for them in the same numbers as Covid - so higher test numbers could be bad news or not. We'll have to watch the hospitals and try work out if there is any misdiagnosing from testing error.

 

But i am sure the government would have hoped to have had this well down by now? I get we may be testing more but for all the lockdowns cases are not coming down. Time of year I think hospital admissions will always be down.

let’s see where we are come flu season like you say. A bad flu period and covid double whammy could see the NHs fall over.
I know for the main this won’t matter because the young don’t generally die from it but if the NHS hit capacity, that’s the fear of the government. I think we know it won’t kill into the millions as we feared originally but we know the NHS won’t cope

 

Hope you’re right on the last part. I think that’s the only reason we are seeing these local lockdowns at the minute. Government don’t want us to get too complacent and sort of stay in lockdown mode a bit and see how we get through this winter

 

No. They usually start a slow rise in late August and it seems early this year - but its hard to know if they don't test for them like Covid. The Flu Tracker survey has shown a marked upturn in Rhinovirus in recent weeks and Flu-like and Pneumonia deaths rose from 793 to 944 between Aug 7th and Aug 21st. The flu season seems to start when care homes shut their windows (to oversimplify). Then it spreads from care homes to hospitals, and then to schools and community, probably spreading most quickly once it hits schools and nurseries (little immunity and poor hygiene in first years). It's been cool and a bit wet this summer outside of the Southeast. Some areas of East Yorkshire had their lowest sunshine levels on record in July and summer overall. The signs of early start to cold and flu season suggest the flu spike might well come ahead of Christmas this year, though vaccine timing, virus traits, social spacing and weather patterns will all have their influence.

http://covidtracker.uksouth.cloudapp.azure.com/

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/weekly-national-flu-reports-2019-to-2020-season

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-actual-and-anomaly-maps

 

I’m absolutely no expert, but surely seasonal flu will be down anyway. More people eligible for flu jabs, plus the transmission rate will be significantly down due to social distancing.

 

Bloody hell. That's a hell of an increase.

I know there will be other factors taken into consideration but that will surely set alarm bells ringing.

I think we're all looking at the hospitalization numbers and hoping that they don't follow but the government will probably view waiting for those as being late to react.

We probably all have to take our own actions to reign it back in again but doubt anybody will.

 

My wife and I are in Dorset on holiday. She was feeling poorly so decided to try to get a test before we visit vulnerable relatives. She went through the online system which told her the nearest place she could get a drive through test was Cardiff! The same day my daughter in London also tried to get a drive through test and was directed to Birmingham.
Some friends told us about a test centre in Poole which people had just turned up to, without appointment, and been tested. So we turned up there at 4pm last Friday and explained that we hadn't been able to get an appointment online for a test there. They let us straight in. The place was virtually deserted. There were six lanes of testing booths and about three or four cars in the whole place. There must have been at least 30 staff stood around doing nothing. We were in and out in under ten minutes.
It's outrageous. There is massive spare testing capacity there, yet people are being directed hundreds of miles away by the online system. Makes me wonder how many other test centres around the country are being under-utilised while people decide not to get tested because they don't want to drive halfway up the country. It's a shambles.

 

Not really. Cases have always been at a higher level than the statistics have shown. The fact we're now doing more tests and finding more cases just confirms what everyone knew already.

 

Well yeah, definitely, we know were never going to pick up 100% of the cases, or even close.

But if we assume that the percentage of cases we pick up would remain constant (within the constraints on testing) the finding 3k rather than 1,500 must cause some concern.

 

Of no. I agree. Over the period of the pandemic it will change - that's why I put "within the constraints of testing"

I can't see any reason why it would change since this time last week though, can you?

 

True. One of my mates is doing the same thing as well.

Not sure they've increased it enough to justify a doubling in the infection numbers but hopefully the scientists will be able to tell if that's a contributing factor.

 

But her result came back in only 18 hours, which suggests that the local lab had plenty of capacity too.

 

UK Covid deaths were 2 yesterday, making a 7-day average of 7 deaths per day from a 7-day average 830 new positive tests a month earlier. The week of 3rd to 9th of August had an estimated 3800 new infections per day just in England, according to the household infection survey. Even without the rest of the UK's estimated actual infections, that's an estimated infection mortality rate of only 0.18%. Add in the rest of the UK and that puts mortality bang in line with that of UK average seasonal flu.

Https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/englandandwales14august2020


We could have a problem if we get a Covid outbreak and a normal flu outbreak at the same time but the numbers are suggesting that people need not fear Covid on its own any more than seasonal flu now. Of course, the old and impaired still need to be careful about both. Hopefully. Covid will continue to get less deadly.