COVID-19

I don't care about Labour or Conservatives either. Boris is all you want to talk about though because you've found an easy little line that requires no thought. I'm bored of this whole thing being viewed down party political lines.

It's the logic behind the decisions and the detailed balance between restrictions and the economy that I'm interested in.

 

I am happy to go into more details later as I'm busy at the moment but 2 points.

We have speed limits but we don't ban cars to deal with those speeding, which effective is what we are doing by closing pubs to stop non same households turning up.

46% of all secondary schools sent home pupils or entire classes in the last week alone due to CoVid outbreaks so I have no idea where you are coming up with this tiny transmission between school age kids.

 

Please do because I'm genuinely interested in the debate.

Fair point about the speeding, possibly not the best analogy, but I still don't see a solution that guarantees that only people from the same household can go into pubs.

But that's because of people being in close contact with others who have symptoms rather than actual spreading events. I'll see if I can find the stats on transmission linked to schools. Primary schools are as close to zero as you could possibly be.

 

Oh I am vastly interested in the economy but with the tiers how do a tier 3 get out of it?

Looking at the presentation yesterday those in T2 and T1 were still seeing an infection rate.

All the tiers lead to is unemployment and less money in the economy because we will have a circuit break in the end. Just look at the heat maps again. No area is falling.

The tier system is bollocks just like all the measures Boris has done. Problem here he is a rubbish leader and sinking the country in everything he does.

 

So if we agree he's a rubbish leader let's separate that out and not mention it again.

Right so if you're in tier 3 I'm guessing that the R rate has to get down to below 1, hospital capacity has to increase and the numbers of infections have to significantly drop. That seems fair.

Right, so after the 2 week circuit breaker - when everyone gets back to normal and cases are still rising and it gets back to the same position that we're in now what do we do. Another 2 week circuit breaker?

 

Found it - this is the percentage of the population testing positive for coronavirus according to the ONS



Primary aged kids have seen little difference. Collage/universities have seen the dramatic rise and the secondary school kids are starting to see the uptick as well but they're still at below 1%.

The difficulty in the data is the same as normal - they don't actually know where it's passed so whether they are actually transimitting it in school or socially. The assumption is that all things being equal primary and secondary kids would show the same trajectory if it was purely in school so the difference is that teenagers socalise more in less controlled environments but that's just a theory.

 

New cases in Bradford might not be rising any more. The recent trend shows the rate of increase dropped to around +12% per week to Oct 13th and looks to be slowing. However tests processed in England in the last week are up about 25% on two weeks ago. (Now up to roughly 250k per day from 200k per day). It's not clear underlying prevalence in Bradford still rising when you adjust for testing increases.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/cases?areaType=ltla&areaName=Bradford

The 7-day average for England new cases rose from 13.0k to 13.6k in the week to Oct. 13th. That's only a 5% rise in a week and seems to be slowing. Adjust for increasing testing and underlying true infections have probably stopped rising and could actually be falling in England. It depends where the increasing testing is happening. It's certainly not much of an upward trend any more.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/cases?areaType=nation&areaName=England

This is reinforced by the hit rate on UK testing having been flat since October 10th.

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&minPopulationFilter=1000000&time=2020-10-02..latest&country=GBR~CHE&region=World&positiveTestRate=true&interval=smoothed&aligned=true&hideControls=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc

I should caution that this does not reflect changing age profiles as university regions are now seeing some very big decreases in infections amongst students after some very big rises. It does not indicate what might be happening in older age groups. However, some regions adjacent to and further from universities are also showing modest decreases which is a good sign for other age groups (and they are possibly big decreases when adjusted for increasing testing).

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/cases?areaType=ltla&areaName=Newcastle upon Tyne
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/cases?areaType=ltla&areaName=Northumberland

More important is what hospitals are doing. The flattening of the new case trend in Bradford is reflected in Covid cases in hospital not changing much in the last few days after some big rises. The figures are about 10 times the lows of a couple of months ago but the strong upward trend of the last two months looks to have gone. It might have stopped rising with a bit of luck.

https://www.bradfordhospitals.nhs.uk/2020/10/20/information-about-coronavirus/

If cases might not be rising when adjusted for increased testing , and England hospital admissions look like they might be slowing (and Bradford even stabilised) , why should we implement more restrictions and create more economic damage that will hit NHS funding in future and so DEFINITELY cause more premature deaths? I think it's time we had a pause to see what happens next if several more troublesome areas have started improving. If figures then continue to creep up over the next couple of weeks, it might then seem reasonable to then tighten up some more.

There is not enough consideration being given for the long term economic damage and resultant deaths that will bring.

 

would be good if it was real

 

Sheffield mayor Dan Jarvis appears to have had a bit of a dig at Burnham today by saying that South Yorkshire have
acted responsibly and come to a sensible agreement with the Government before agreeing to go to tier 3.

Boris now outmanouvered Burnham by swerving the
mayors office and distributing the £60m financial package directly to the boroughs of Manchester.

 

As per my posts above I still take Burnham's side which from the start was are these measure going to work seeing as they haven't worked since July (and I have put my opinion of why I think there will be only a marginal effect) and if you are forcing them to close after making them trade restrictively since July how will you support them.

Sheffield to my knowledge along with South Yorkshire have enjoyed the lowested level restrictions throughout, as have Liverpool.
Manchester, Bradford, Kirklees, Calderdale, Blackburn, etc have been in some form of lockdown with no results for months.

It's far easier to bring areas that haven't suffered local lockdown on board than it is to continue to enforce lockdown on those who have.

Where I live in the Bradford region is in single figures for the number of cases, the school my children go to has not had one case. If I travel 10miles to central Bradford there are 100+ cases in single 7000 population areas and its that level which will dictate the restrictions I have to abide to and it has since July.

The media in London went nuts just moving up to tier 2, where as huge parts of the north have had similar or worse for months. When London catches up, and it will then maybe a different approach will be taken.

(I will responde to the debate as mentioned earlier as I'm still at work and just having a coffee)

 

Regarding the various comments above re: SAGE and the 2 week circuit breaker.
I think Jonathan Van Tam was asked the question directly last night in the press conference. Apologies if I'm paraphrasing. One of the media asked if and why SAGE advised the circuit breaker back in September and do they still advise it now. I believe he said that they did advise the circuit breaker back in September, but the way in which the virus has spread since means that advice is no longer as relevant. He said circuit breakers work best when infection rates are relatively low, but we are beyond that now and the geographical distribution means that targeted lockdowns are currently a better option.
Out of all the advisers wheeled out I do tend to like JVT as he seems never to shirk a question.

 

An absolute sickening waste of police resources.

 

By the looks of it they are looking for someone rather than just checking it out

 

Fordy ?.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8863559/Britain-faces-second-Covid-19-peak-CHRISTMAS-SAGE-adviser-warns.html

I'll leave it to @Aaron Baker to argue with the Sage adviser who says we need to do a second COUNTRY lockdown now.

 

More chance of him answering me a question than you I suppose

 

Ypu are aware that SAGE don’t take into account anything except the disease. Such as economic issues caused by their suggestions

 

Fully aware but it was the government that said they follow the science.