COVID-19

"Have a clearly picture" What does that mean?

How many people get tested and whether everyone who needs a test can get one is what capacity is. Do you know what the word means?

Oh no, I'm not at all. I was in the pub with different groups of mates Friday and Saturday and I've been into town for lunch with a group of people today, however ,I'm keeping to the social distancing rules and am limiting contact with my parents because I know they're higher risk. I'm accepting that if I've got it and have spread it around by my actions that it's my fault, not the governments.

 

I don't love any Covid data. Spanish hospitalisations have now fallen sharply since the end of August and ICU admissions have dropped sharply and are not much above zero. Deaths will fall, though Spain have notoriously late reporting. It could have peaked last week for all we know. France will probably take a bit longer to turn, but that will be less of a problem than wave 1 if Vallance is right that the mortality rate is now down to 0.4%. (He projected 50k infections to give 200 deaths. I don't see 50k if the current trend is flat at just over 3k.)

Why should I not concentrate on UK data when the emphasis has moved to the UK in the media and on this thread?

 

The figures presented lack context. We have a better idea now than we did 6 months ago of mortality- and for the vast majority of people it's not a dangerous illness. Why is there nothing contextual being shown about the severity of cases in relation to the number of positive tests? Why do the fear mongering stats make no provision for the signficnantly increased volume of testing - test more people, more people will test positive that were previously flying under the radar!

Its madness. Let's lock the country down again, absolutely rape our economy, deny our kids an education and deny everyone the basic freedoms we should have, deny people effective medical care for all manner of health issues because a tiny proportion of the country might fall ill or die?

 

You can concentrate on any data you want. As i said it just makes me giggle when you switch it around from source to source to get the outcome you want. Literally to the point of taking graphs from a random twitter guy with 4k followers. It is quite funny.

 

Good thread this. Raises a lot of issues with the bed wetting predictions from earlier.

 

you seem to be ignoring that the percentage of positive tests are rising as well as the over all number of positive tests

 

I’m not ignoring anything. I haven’t seen that specific data point - I’d be grateful if you could direct me to it - but its only 1 part of the context. Over recent weeks, we’ve relaxed, bit by bit, the level of social interaction that‘s taking place. We’re testing more people. When we started to ramp up testing, wasn’t there an immediate prioritisation of testing NHS and key workers, regardless of whether they had symptoms? Isn’t testing now more targeted and based on whether someone displays symptoms? There’s bound to be a level of increase. There are so many angles to consider. Everything I’ve seen tells me that this disease is of minimal risk to the vast majority, and that the approach being taken will be a bigger risk to most people than Covid is. The level of risk can’t be quantified solely through an increase in positive tests, when the goal posts keep moving.

 

But here's the big problem with
@uksciencechief
's scary illustrative chart: it's predicated on two presumptions. 1) that we are indeed seeing the disease double every 7 days. 2) it presumes that growth rate will continue. There are quite important challenges to both assumptions.

Quite right. Doubling every 7 days? Did they decide not to show that graph, but that’s not what the one they’ve shown displays.

 

Positive share seemed to jump from 0.8% to 1.4% in the first two weeks of September. It seems to have stablised since but it's hard to say for sure. This week's rise looks to be mostly increased tests processed, though that seems to be easing off . +16%, +15% and +9% last 3 days compared to a week ago. Calculating an up to date positivity has the same problem that most of today's latest figure is a summary of 4 or 5 previous partial days of samples. This was the breakdown on yesterday's lab report by day of sample. We should not get carried away by the latest published number if it s a variable hotchpotch. We need to look at the table by date of specimen after it's been given a few days to settle.

 

Patrick Valance literally said it wasn't a prediction though and mentioned those two assumptions.

It was just an indication of how quickly things can go from a low lever to an unsustainable one to show the potential severity and get people's attention. It wasn't supposed to be literal.

Giving people a lower 'prediction' lessens the impact and as Chris Whitey found out with his statement about a "good outcome" can quickly bite you in the backside.

 

That’s kind of my point. Make specific assumptions - that I don’t see being held up by the data - and lets force everyone to panic. The cure is now worse than the disease, for most people. I think that’s exactly why this government will take more drastic and unnecessary action - because if the doomsday scenario that’s been speculated doesn’t materialise, they can claim victory. If it does, they can blame the public.

We’re getting this all wrong. And its by design.

 

So, the school holidays and summer holiday season saw an apparent increase, which has now started to taper off and fall as people are moving around less?

 

Nobody is forcing anyone to panic though. Who is panicing?

I don't disagree but setting out the worst case scenario to get people attention at a time when they need behavioral change is surely pretty standard as long as they don't present it as an actual prediction.

 

‘The most important thing you need to do right now Prime Minister is panic. Look at this graph which at the moment shows a fairly stable and understandable pattern. But look what happens if something starts to happen that hasn’t been happening’.

 

regarding the quote watch the two scientists today and one of them says it

 

Threatening lockdown when Covid is 1% of all daily deaths is panicking. Imagine if we did that for flu. We'd lockdown 3 or 4 weeks every year and kill more people with the economic consequences than we saved with lockdown. Flu gets over 500 per day sometimes. We should weigh up the number of deaths locking down will cause when we get nearer levels like that.

 

Am I supposed to comment on a quote you've made up?

 

All I see is panic. And messages of panic. And restriction of what people can do. Criminalising social norms. Encouraging people to see other people as vectors of disease. There’s no common sense or context. The level of behavioural change needed has already far exceeded what we needed.

Setting out a worst case scenario that’s completely lacking in context is one thing. Using that worst case as an unchecked platform to needlessly destroy the economy and education system, restrict medical care for many, many ailments, and deny a myriad of personal freedoms, is another.

 

You just did. ;-)

 

They gave context and they gave checks.

I see no panic at all, if anything people are too relaxed (probably including me) and the major problem is that people wait for the actual brown stuff to hit the fan before they make changes. Unfortunately with this that is too late as we saw from March.

It is getting worse. If we don't make changes it will continue to get worse. If we leave it too long the changes will have to be severe rather than slight.