COVID-19

You're looking at that like the wave is a natural phenomenon. The only reason it looks like a wave and not just a straight upward line from March to now is because we all spent 4 months limiting our contact with other people.

If you take no action the "wave" doesn't come down the other side.

 

Waves, peaks, whatever you want to call them are perfectly natural. They are often seasonal. Google "pandemic waves" there are a ton of articles about them, including on the NHS site.

 

They are, but not with something that is this level of contagious and without control.

Otherwise they wouldn't have locked down. They'd have just waited for the seasons to change.

 

Why are Luxembourg deaths so low? In the last 4 months they've had 15 deaths from 5032 cases. That's a CFR of 0.30% so the true IFR will be likely lower with missed cases. They currently have 18 in hospital and 1 in intensive care. Infections are running over 50 per day and over 1000 are currently thought to be infected. Their last death was August 14th.

https://msan.gouvernement.lu/fr/graphiques-evolution.html

Luxembourg has one of the highest testing rates in the world at very nearly 1% of the population each day. They can't possibly be getting all the infections but are testing a little over twice as much as the UK. They seem to have lower infections amongst the old. On this basis, I'd suggest their recent IFR is not likely to be higher than 0.2% (a slightly worse than average UK flu). Brasil recently estimated 0.17% on a blood study of a hard hit area.

At 0.2% infection mortality, 3m of Sweden's 10m would have had it. At 0.2%, maybe 20m of UK's 67m have had it. We would be showing herd immunity patterns at those rates of infected. We are.The latest Weekly Surveillance report is show all sorts of divergences that suggest building herd immunity in southern and eastern parts of the UK. (Lots if very interesting stuff in there this week - big North/South split. Big ethnic splits. Huge increase in outbreaks in education to half of all locations. Big cold epidemic might be influencing hospitalisations? Strong signs the increase is not exponential and not taking off in all areas. Possible signs wave 2 was already topping out amongst certain regions, ethnicities and age groups.)

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/921561/Weekly_COVID19_Surveillance_Report_week_39_FINAL.pdf

 

Bake off did the same. All the crew and contestants stayed in one bubble for 7 weeks with no outside contact

 

Just seen that London has been added to the government Watchlist as an area of concern

 

Only up to the 19th but you can see in the last few weeks how northern areas take off as some southern areas actually fade.

 

Scottish cases in those aged 15-24 have exploded in August and September to 10 times the April peak while numbers of 75+ cases remain 1/10th of April. This will mean the hospitalisation and death profile should be far far weaker in wave 2 id we can keep them clear of the explosion in the young. (Note - Scottish testing has fallen slightly since the start of September.)

 

Superspreading 15-19s

 

English chart is far less pronounced but same trend. I reckon slower spread amongst kids is due to higher immunity than Scotland. (Note - English testing has risen about 2/3rds since the start of September.)

 

Could also be that Scottish Unis traditionally return a week or two before English

 

Is it still a logic fail that it was spreading among the younger end of the population before leaking up the age groups?

 

I never said was a logic fail at all. I said the rise in young cases as a share of all cases did not account for the fall in hospitalisations and deaths through July and August because the absolute number of old people being exposed did not fall. The %age fell but, because total cases rose, old infections were pretty flat and yet hospitalisations and deaths fell. Something else was reducing mortality amongst the old - weaker virus, better treatment, whatever - but not because more young people were getting it. I don't think I've ever passed comment about how much young spread it among themselves and then leaked it into other age groups. It's pretty likely to some degree so why would I suggest that would not happen? It just does not seem to have happened yet this summer and autumn.

I have said that it might change when EO2HO ended. I've seen more very old people at cafes and restaurants at lunchtime now they are less busy. The latest PHE Survellance report actually shows a 2 week rise for the over 70s and then a slight fall again while the young rate continued upwards. I think the two week rise was the end of the old hiding in August but the fall since still tends to suggest young are not spreading it much to old as yet. I never said it could not happen. I only decided that the data did not show it yet and I still think it shows no real spread from young to old. I'm not saying that can not happen. It might well in time but infection maps suggest it is fairly contained around Universities at the moment in the South. Maybe not so clearly in the North and Scotland. I think the difference in pattern might be down to the degree of herd immunity. Overall, I am optimistic that hospitalisation and death rates will be lower in wave 2 on the age distributions so far. If we can get enough immunity into superspreaders. R will drop greatly. I just hope they don't shut Unis down and send them home, which would spread it far and wide and make it much more likely to get to the old.

 

But now the virus is spreading into the older age range and also hospitalisations are increasing? Does that not suggest there was a correlation?



On a slightly separate note. I've just come across this. Think it's relatively clear the previous hopefulness about several areas peaking was misplaced.

What I also can't figure out is why the South (excluding London) would have more immunity than the North when it was hit less hard in the first wave.

 

Hospitalisations are probably rising (not all regions) because some more older people got infected in early September but the latest week shows a slight fall again, meaning the correlation with rising young cases is weak for now.

That's a useful comparison image you've posted. Remember that English testing has increased by about 2/3rds through September so a few of the Southern regions might only have very modest underlying rises, despite the explosion of case amongst education establishments. As I have been saying, the rises in NE, NW and Scotland have been alarming. I reckon the difference is in the degree of immuniity from wave 1. The areas that got it bad then are not as bad this time and vice versa. That's what was seen in the USA, too. You see better versions of the contrast if you drill down more locally to those that had it really bad and those that had little. The large regions tend to water the effect down bit.

 

If that was the case wouldn't you expect to see the exact opposite to those graphs.....the places that got hit hard in wave 1 to get off lightly in wave 2?

Whereas it seems to be showing that all the places with effective spread before are showing effective spread now. If anything it shows me that whatever was causing the regional difference before are the same thing causing it now. It's that things are the same rather than anything has changed?

Is there anything at all that suggests the North got off lighter than the South (excluding London) before?

 

Yes. I gave you that timeline heatmap a few days ago. The places that got off lightly in wave 1 are the ones getting hit hard now and they are predominantly in the North. It's very clear. More so than the US timeline heatmap that shows the same.(Click through a couple of times then right click to enlarge.)

 

That doesn't show how hard anywhere was hit, it's purely a timeline. That was the issue originally with that graphic. Many of those places had never been above single figures but it showed them like for like against places that had hundreds.

I'm talking the amount of virus detected North vs South not the timing. It will be that that affects the immunity of course and those charts from before looks like the South was lower in wave 1 - the SE, SW and EM never got above 7 of 8 cases per 100k but the North got up to 12-15+.

 

I think it's disgraceful students have been encouraged to go into accommodation for mainly online only courses. Young people have been royally screwed yet again

 

imagine if they just stopped everyone in blocks of apartments or flats leaving, or whole streets because a few people had tested positive. No warning just police and security turn up and seal off street