I am aware that there are those who think I am a Covid pessimist. I would suggest that to describe me as a realist is more appropriate.
My concern is that undue optimism is creating expectations that cannot be fulfilled. In turn this will lead to lack of preparedness for three things.
The first is reopenings that may not happen, or which cannot be sustained.
The second is consequent economic cost resulting from continued disruption.
The third is the public anger as expectations are not met.
In my opinion it is entirely reasonable to anticipate such risks. It is also entirely reasonable to look at the evidence that they might be justified.
In that context this Tweet from Christina Pagel, who is Professor of Operational Research at UCL and a member of independent SAGE, is relevant:
I've been looking at latest English data by age.
Cases in school age children are definitely going up while other age groups are flat or falling (slowly).
Some of this increase is undoubtedly because of mass lateral flow device testing rolled out to schools. But NOT all. 1/7 pic.twitter.com/bTU9wfgwbd
— Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) March 24, 2021
As Prof Pagel says in the following thread, primary school children are not being routinely tested, and any testing impact on secondary children should have only had an impact for a week, but it is continuing. This does not prove school transmission but it is consistent with it. Whether the unvaccinated parents of these cohorts are impacted will, of course, be known in the next couple of weeks. But the likelihood that reopening is seriously increasing R already looks to be high, and as yet there is nothing else to explain this because no other change has taken place.
The Easter holidays may offer temporary respite from this growth in cases. But it will be temporary. It seems certain if school reopening has had this impact then the other reopening that will follow will have similar impact but in different parts of the population.
In that case will there be repercussions? I think so. The UK seems to believe that this pandemic is over as far as we are concerned. That seems to be very unlikely. We still face significant risk. It would be very wise for the government to recognise this. Johnson is not.
As I have already said elsewhere this morning, we could be in for a long hot summer of raised temperatures resulting from overheating tempers arising from new, and necessary, Covid restrictions that the government has done nothing to prepare the country for. It's that, or the possibility of a great many Covid deaths. And neither is a great prospect, but both are the reasonably foreseeable consequences of government decisions.
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The rush to get children back to school when not all the schools have been able to make the essential precautionary measures – adequate distancing, ventilation etc has been the problem recently and was a major factor in the September 2020 surge. We have a government refusing to learn from its mistakes.
I don’t think the public think this is over and the Johnson / Whitty etc are trying to manage expectations by talking about the possibility of another wave..BUT people want to move back to some sort of normality albeit slowly. We can live with covid amongst young children so long as hospitalisations are manageable and through the incredible rollout of the vaccine this seems possible. International travel will almost certainly be highly restricted until the situation has improved in Europe and elsewhere. Of course variants will emerge and science will pre empt and hopefully cope with it with ongoing booster vaccines.
It is good to be in a mindset of guarded optimism as opposed to feeling negative and fearful. I feel that’s where many of us are.
Your faith in a half completed vaccine programme is impressive
“Your faith in a half completed vaccine programme is impressive”
Its not misguided faith its based on the efficiency of the first jab with regard to hospitalisations, serious illness and death and the data in the UK seems to be reflecting this..unless you are calling out all the pharmaceutical companies for one big conspiracy theory why wouldn’t you be enjoy guarded optimism going forward?
AZ calls themselves out
Pfizer has never suggested a delay
And 26 out of 28 million people in the U.K. have hakf a dose
Meanwhile, we gave ample evidence lockdown works
“Meanwhile, we gave ample evidence lockdown works”
Yes lockdown works..but the public on mass want to be released and the vaccine, we hope, allows for that..you are a vaccine sceptic, or more so a “single dose with a gap to the second” sceptic, which is fair enough..there seems to be enough evidence out there to the contrary..but neither you and I are not properly understanding the complete story and are relying on others to provide that info to make an interpretation. Anyway lets hope I am right!
I know you are highly likely to be wrong
That’s the problem
The best case scenario of release is 30,000 excess deaths
There is now evidence and it’s clear this best case is not likely
I don’t need to be a sceptic
I just need my eyes open and clear reasoning
Yes we know lockdown works. But we also know that once it ends it stops working. It is not in the interest of the nation’s mental health, or our children’s education, or those working in the parts of the economy that have been closed down, for the country to rely solely on lockdown.
We also know vaccination works. We don’t know whether it will stop working, but it is encouraging that people who gained immunity through catching Covid are still relatively protected 12 months later since we expect vaccines to behave similarly. Sure there can be a discussion about whether the chosen roll-out strategy was optimal, but there is encouraging evidence that a single vaccine dose has helped reduce severe disease and death (I hope we will get an updated report from PHE soon, the last real world analysis is now about a month old).
There are concerns about variant viruses, but they might cause problems whatever approach is taken.
One encouraging aspect is the very high calibre and personal expertise of the scientific advisors – and the fact that since Christmas the government seems to have been following their advice. But I do see that an economist is always going to be sceptical, the track record of government economic advice justifies pessimism.
I quoted one o the scientists with one of the best track records and she would not seem to agree with you
Sorry – but where is the UK vaccine effect? It is apparent in other countries. It is by no means clear in the UK as yet – which may be why we do not have the data
Apologies, I was not intending to denigrate a particular scientist or conclusion which I don’t disagree with. School opening was delayed beyond the point most people wanted, but it is a matter of opinion whether 8th March represented the right risk/benefit. It isn’t controversial to suggest there would be fewer cases among school age children if schools hadn’t opened, but against that is the continuing damage to children’s education if they remained closed.
You ask about the vaccine effect. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, the last PHE analysis was at the beginning of March based on data which is now over 4 weeks old; we do need an update. But it did analyse positive diagnoses against vaccination status and concluded there was around 60% reduction in cases among people who had had a first dose of either vaccine 28 or more days previously. And among symptomatic cases there was also reduction from vaccination in the likelihood of needing hospitalisation. So there is some proper data, albeit old. And a little less analytically we can all look at the daily figures for cases and deaths and easily realise that wheras deaths had been roughly tracking cases with a 2-week or so delay they are now falling significantly faster; the question which can only be addressed internally is whether that is actually driven by a fall in deaths from patients now vaccinated.
I noticed that the number of positive tests, nationally, had started to flatten off at the start of March. The previously downward slope had started to level off. It was just as the children, were going back to school so there was something else starting to happen then which can’t be associated with that. It is still on the same flattish trajectory, maybe just very slightly downwards, so there is no real evidence that a return to school has had any significant effect -at least not yet.
I’m not sure just what is happening. One factor will be the number of false positive tests. Even if there were no more Covid circulating in the population, there would still be a number of positive tests for this reason. If the incidence of the virus is low the effect will only be able to be measured by the number of deaths and hospital admissions. These are still showing continued falls so there are some grounds to be slightly more optimistic.
See Christina Pagel’s work
The evidence that the return to schools has had a significant effect is very strong
@ Richard,
You ask “where is the UK vaccine effect”?
I do believe Germany is very much better than us when it comes to such matters as track and trace and a general willingness of the population to do the right thing and obey lockdown rules. Their impressive figures during the first lockdown, last year, is evidence of that. Looking at the amount of traffic on our motorways at the moment, no-one would think we were still actually in lockdown. Where is everyone travelling to?
And yet the number of deaths in the UK is 74 with some 5,500 cases reported. Germany has 181 deaths with 15,000 cases. All figures are 7 day daily averages. UK figures are falling. German figures are rising.
So, whilst this may not be conclusive proof, it is solid evidence that we might just be doing something right with the vaccine program.
I am sorry, but this does not amount to analysis
We just had that batch of deaths earlier
Maybe you have forgotten 126,000 deaths and the highest death rate in a Europe?
No, I haven’t forgotten both the previous high death and infection rates. I agree with you that these are factors which need to be taken into account. I could have added this, but I didn’t want to provoke you by getting dangerously close a “herd immunity” argument.
This is likely to be a factor, but I would argue that the vaccine program has been more effective in this direction than immunity built up by natural infection.
Cases are rising, significantly
We do not have enough second doses of vaccine
Please feel free to be complacent about that
I am not
This was the last modelling I could find and clearly shows that the expectation is for more deaths and cases once physical restrictions are lifted.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/963565/S1130_SPI-M-O_Summary_of_further_modelling_of_easing_restrictions.pdf
This corresponds to similar modelling in europe :
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/Integrated-COVID-19-response-vaccination-era.pdf
Only when everyone is fully vaccinated and it is proven to work to prevent transmission, serious ill effects from infection, and for immunity to be retained as new variants evolve will it be possible to return to normal.
It may take a long time and any rush to return to normal will plunge the country into a fresh wave of infection , the overrunning of the NHS and an enduring health crisis for non -covid cases.
Johnson seems to be inviting hubris with his inflammatory remarks.