I attracted quite a lot of opprobrium on Twitter yesterday for raising questions on the efficiency of vaccines, and for suggesting that there is risk that there might be a third wave of coronavirus, vaccines or not. It was even suggested that I was irresponsible to say this. At one point I saw a quite steady loss of followers as a result, although I note this morning that this has been almost entirely reversed. So, what am I suggesting?
The first thing I am not suggesting is that people should stop having the vaccines. I had my own second dose of AZ on Friday. I would recommend anyone have the second dose of whatever they have been given.
Second, I am not claiming to be a virologist, an epidemiologist, or anything else of the sort. I am not. I am someone who can and does read data and thinks about it contextually. In other words, I look at the work of those who seem to have their heads screwed on with regard to this issue, and seek to interpret what that means for the economy. In that process I am advised quite often by my wife, who was a GP with numerous post-graduate medical qualifications until she was forced to retire on the grounds of ill health several years ago. She is a partner in Tax Research and has taken an active interest in this issue.
The work of Christina Pagel, Deepti Gurdasani, Stephen Reicher, Anthony Costello, John Ashton and others has a lot of influence on this thinking. None of these are lightweights in the field. They are warning that there are major flaws in the Public Health England data and that this is being dangerously politicised in ways that undermine confidence in it.
What they are also saying is that whilst the vaccine roll out has been amazing the efficiency of the vaccines is not enough to place the confidence in them that is now being seen.
They are as a result saying that the current ending of restrictions is too hasty. And they warn that further easing could be very dangerous, especially as the Indian variant does seem (and I stress, seem) to be spreading exponentially and with a higher rate of transmission than has been seen in, for example, the so-called Kent variant which was dominant over the winter.
The modelling for this possibility of lower vaccine efficiency against this variant, higher transmission rating and lockdown release is really quite scary. Take these two tweets as example:
Also worth bearing in mind that's the step 3 only chart.
So technically if they make the June changes we'd then switch maps as it were to the even worse step 3 + step 4 chart (the one at the bottom). pic.twitter.com/2HfZn5BsSV
— Catherine Finnecy (@cfinnecy) May 23, 2021
The data is from Warwick University, and is now relatively out of date in the sense that the concerns are being confirmed. The risk that there could be a major third wave is high.
I then use my judgement on this issue. I admit I suffer confirmation bias on this. I was right by the beginning of March 2020 to think the crisis was much bigger than the government was suggesting. I spent last summer in debate with a well known epidemiologist who assured me time and again that the crisis was over when I was quite sure he was wrong, and was right to think that. I now trust the critical wing of epidemiologists on independent Sage on this issue again.
I think it especially wise to do so when we know the government has lied time and again on this issue, not least when it comes to herd immunity. For once I agree with Dominic Cummings. This glaringly obviously was government policy in March 2020. The denials are flatly contradicted by the evidence. The same herd immunity policy was also evident last September when Sunak brought the herd immunity enthusiasts who signed the Great Barrington Declaration into Downing Street, and we paid a heavy price for that.
The runes read exactly the same now. The trade off is economy v lives, and the economy is winning again.
People are also desperate to think this is over. Johnson is riding high in the polls because some believe it is. The willingness to restrict freedom in the face of danger is absent yet again. And if people want to say I am irresponsible for saying that when the evidence of danger is clear, so be it.
But let's move to what really worries me in addition to the threat to life and long term health for many, and that is the economic consequence of failing to plan for this, yet again. I made this point in one way last Friday. I now make it another way.
Right now I would really like to know what support will be available to the economy if there is a third wave of coronavirus and this summer is, in effect, cancelled, as must be considered to be a possibility. I think that an entirely reasonable ask to make.
Will furlough continue?
Will its faults be remedied?
How will businesses survive?
What changes to relaxations e.g. on tenant evictions will be made?
Will policy take the longer term into account this time?
And how will schools, universities and essential public services, including but not just the NHS, get the support they need to function?
Will there be more QE?
Will the Bank of England be forced to deliver, even when it may have reservations about doing so?
I will ask these questions undeterred. They are not being raised in the media generally, where the mood is almost universal boosterism. I see little foundation for that. And I am not going to be told it is irresponsible to go against an economic mainstream that may, yet again, be getting its thinking horribly wrong in this country, aided and abetted by a government that lies for what it thinks to be England, when actually it is lying against the interests of us all. I am worried, and I reserve the right to say so.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
As you point out above there have many occasions during this pandemic, beginning with March 2020, when the government and its supporters got things horribly wrong and there is every reason to believe that the current situation is another such. Like you I have recently had my second dose (AZ), but I will remain cautious, and will continue to mask up before leaving the house as a matter of course.
So do I
I fully agree about having plans in place for adequate responses, but I think you’re doing your readers a slight disservice here Richard. Your statement that “The data is from Warwick University,…” should more accurately read “The projections are derived from a model produced by Warwick University…”which is an entirely different matter.
That model’s central prediction (not shown on the graph) of around 10K hospitalisations a day for 1.5 times extra transmissibility would mean a rates 3x higher than the January peak (in the high respiratory virus season & much lower vaccine uptake) and about 2/3rds that of the highest shown in the entire USA throughout the whole pandemic (about 15K a day IIRC).
This model assumes that only mandated interventions reduce people’s interactions — failing completely to note that people take reasonable actions as cases rise in the community which has shown to be a major factor in all previous waves to the extent that rates of transmissions have always been on the way down before LDs were imposed. It could also be argued that the Warwick model insufficiently accounts for seasonality and a host of other factors too.
As a data scientist and risk analyst of reasonable experience I’d be very sceptical of these headline projections as they rather fail the sniff test – especially as their predictions from February & March were similarly extreme too.
As for trade-offs — your narrow CV19 vs economy trade-off might need a few more factors included too I think — mental health, obesity, child development, civil liberties, xenophobia amongst many, many others.
Behaviour change was heavily government led, and more successful than I think almost anyone dared hope
Will that happen this time? Assuming it will do so to the same degree when people have been told this is over is hard to know
I accept it is a factor, of course. It does not eliminate the risk
Thank you so much for saying this. It’s what I’ve been feeling for some time, based on exactly the same evidence, experience and logic that you deploy. I live in France, but I fear for my family members in England.
Read this
https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1396574267349872644
She is very, very good
https://twitter.com/ProfColinDavis/status/1396783107676778498?s=20
Precisely
I do not believe we are through this and will not be until, we accept that we need to tackle this as a world and not in enclaves of countries. I don’t have hope that our government will make that realisation any time soon eventhough it is self evident. If it wants to tackle this as our little island then, they should have closed off travel.
They started with herd immunity as the goal.
Everything since then has been herd immunity as the goal, but doing it so as to avoid direct blame.
It is not possible for a national govt, which has access to the most specialised advice available, to accidentally get things so wrong.malisious
Then take a look at the way they all piled-into the money grabbing.
Deliberately and maliciously, they proceeded on the path that led to the deaths of over 100,000 people.
Well, I don’t think you are wrong at all.
This is a PR government and they are using the vaccine in a PR way – not a scientific way. That is a recipe for disaster. That is what they are doing.
My second dose of AZ is in early June. AZ does not agree with me at all. I can honestly say that I have not felt 100% well since I had it in late March. I’ve never missed a flu jab in the last 6 years either.
I still mask up and will continue to do so for some time yet. i accept Adrian D’s comments but as I said the PR use of the vaccines is a significant area of concern to me – people will let their guard down.
I interpret your figures much the same. Where i differ is the outcome. Surely, once the adult population is vaccinated then the health service will be more than able to cope with the small number of hospitisations and serious illnesses.
But we are a long way from being there and we have a variant doubling every week…
Read this https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1396574267349872644
RThe n work out how we manage this summer
Back of envelope: ~50% population with 1 vaccination of ~80% efficacy = ~40% population immunity. Herd immunity requires ~70% population immunity.
First lockdown reduced new cases to plateau of ~500/day, which then surged. Currently, new cases reduced to plateau of ~2,000/day.
Behavioural change? People were wary for a few weeks in March ’20, when it was novel. Closing shops & venues forced people to stay home.
Or maybe I’m wrong?
The third wave is manifested in many parts of the world already. For many of these it is the English Kent variant causing it. Which no doubt will do its boomerang circuit as newer variants from it.
I agreed with analysis months ago that the 3rd wave would happen – just as the misnamed Spanish Flu did and no doubt other new Corona viruses through the ages.
It was likely by the failure to have an elimination strategy like China and a few other smaller countries tried.
But where’s the MONEY in that? The war time economy that is engineered ever few decades to fill the boots of the spivs and their political minions required that elimination didn’t succeed. ‘Pile the bodies high’; ‘you will lose the aged’ …
When last spring and let’s not forget what a beautiful warm one it was – the populace in the U.K. reacted naturally and sensibly and performed the age old almost genetic memory’s, quarantine.
This caused a major headache for the vaccine manufacturers – you can’t test them if there aren’t enough infections in the community to measure against.
That was the cue for publication of Cummings sujourn to Durham- well AFTER it had happened. Same goes for the pillory of Ferguson and a visit by a ‘girlfriend’ in a avazz emblazoned t-shirt, again weeks after the event. It was further encouraged with the message to the Southerners at the bank hols and through their social media platforms they were plugged into for brexiteers ; further on random testing was massively curtailed on the ONS CIS project from September…
All of which ended up in the Kent variant and the greater deaths of the second wave.
The vaccines rolled out and still are – with extermination as the goal with each new unstoppable variant- kerching!
The current spread is being encouraged – a quick example – through the natural compliance to maintain quarantine, we soon got used to limited entry to supermarkets – and waiting in a queue to enter and shop without crowding.
Now , even with newly installed traffic lights at the doors – there has been NO attempt to control numbers of shoppers inside – the last few weeks the local Aldi/Lidl and bigger supermarkets have completely abandoned the social distancing policy.
The dumbed down populace addicted to their propaganda barbies are happily marching along to their great Leader and have never followed Science – from PPE to the great Footy fest which will guarantee the vaccinators with ever more mutations.
That is with the current crop of variants.
The AZ vaccine has an effectiveness of sub-20% to the B.1.351 variant. The Pfizer also has reduced effectiveness, but not that low.
You are absolutely right. The government refuses to understand the exponential growth rates of the virus, let alone future strains that will appear unless the whole world gets it under control with vaccinations, testing, and all the other measures necessary. They thought they had Blackburn and Bolton “under control” but ignored the Bedford outbreak for 10 days. If the Indian variant spreads much more we are in deep trouble, especially if the relaxation on 21 June causes a free-for-all abandonment of all precautionary measures.
That is the mistake people keep making “the government refuses to understand”.
Any government has the total capability of the civil-service, the medical-establishment and the scientific-establishment at its disposal.
if they are “refusing to understand” then it is a deliberate policy.
The savings in state pension expenditure, due to the covid deaths, is well over £1billion per year. That is not including other benefits and healthcare costs of the now deceased.
I won’t even go into the money-go-round of handouts to friends, family, and donors.
Don’t attribute something to incompetence when malice is a better explanation
Bedford is contained. No deaths for 5 days and 12 admitted to hospital the last 7 days.
Maybe
“Hope for the best and plan for the worst”. Cassandra figures are never popular, but your back appears to be broad. What is of catastrophic concern is that none of the lessons of functioning test, trace, isolate, quarantine appear to have been learnt. It is only today that I read of a “pilot” scheme to support and isolate individuals in Bolton and other afflicted areas. Underpinning it all is my lack of faith in the ability of this government to organize the proverbial party in the brewery.
The risk of a third wave is so high as to be as near a certainty as makes no difference. There is abundant evidence of the seasonality of SARS-CoV-2, and new variants will continue to emerge as long as there remain significant case numbers globally. The variants that persist will almost by definition be more transmissible (having a natural selection advantage).
It is very much more difficult to predict the impact of the third wave on the health system, the economy, or our daily lives. From a parochial (UK) point of view vaccinations change the situation, subject to the unknown need for further boosters. That will mean the proportion of infections that are severe and possibly fatal is much decreased, an effect which is amplified by improving knowledge of treatments and in the end is likely to be assisted by emerging variants. Previous infectious agents that caused pandemics became weaker with time until they were less of a problem, and the same is likely this time.
That makes sense. At any point the dominant variant is the one which transmits fastest and is most successful at making more “daughter” viruses, as we discovered with the Kent variant and seems to be happening with the Indian variant. We can expect a future variant which is more transmissible because it has milder effects; one that is so benign we no longer need to take precautions (distancing, masks, etc) will gain an enormous natural selection advantage in terms of ability to spread and replicate. It can be predicted to happen, but we can’t predict how soon.
So the way I see it, the risk of a third wave is extremely high, but the risk of being overwhelmed yet again by the health and economic consequences I think is only medium. It does need planning for!
(By the way, my eyebrows raised at seeing you agree with Dominic Cummings whose veracity is unlikely to be better than Johnson’s. Do you remember the point a year ago when he said there was a failure of government planning because the pandemic was so predictable he had written about it in his blog? It turned out that he had edited that old blog entry just a few days before to make it look like a prediction. With his ability to rewrite history in his favour, I wouldn’t be surprised if behind the scenes he had been the major protagonist for a herd immunity strategy back in March 2020).
I am afraid I have to disagree again
We do know the risks because at best only 30% of the Uk population is vaccinated and we will not reach acceptable rates of vaccination until September and as such the progress this time is pretty predictable, unfortunately
I very much hope that by then it will be predictable
But that depends on there being no vaccine escape variant and we cannot know about that
It seems quite possible that many people who have had one or two vaccine shots are still vulnerable to infection by the so-called Indian variant (about 2/3 after the first AZ shot, about 1/3 after the second; those with Pfizer significantly better protected; but in each case both remain vulnerable for some weeks while effectiveness to develops).
Do we have clear picture of what level of symptoms the vaccinated infected might suffer, immediate and longer term? If infections so shoot up again to the tens or hundreds of thousands per day, it won’t take too much to threaten to overwhelm the NHS again, even if only a small fraction suffer severe symptoms.
There is a clear weekly rhythm to the infection numbers reported at https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases (lower number of tests taken on Saturday and Sunday, lower number reported on Sunday and Monday) but you can get an idea of the direction of travel by comparing infections each day to those reported on the same day the previous week. Through February March and April to about 6 May is was pretty much one way down each and every day. From around 6 May, the number of infections has been growing on more days (compared to the same day the previous week) than decreasing. Just a little bit, perhaps, but it looks like we had already turned a corner well before 17 May.
So, if we are back to R>1, infections could get out of control for a fourth time. Exponentials have a nasty habit of getting out of control very quickly. The government would have to be idiots to make the same mistake FOUR TIMES wouldn’t they?
But that is precisely what I think they are doing
Agreed Richard – you are not ploughing a lone furrow – Reicher, Pagel, Stephen King et al, have set the standard for analysis and public dicussion with their Friday webinars, and regular reports . They are largely ignored by BBC who take their clue from the daily self congratulatory government statements, – most recently presenting the increased vulnerability of the singly-dosed and non vaccinated to the new ‘Indian’ variant (over 50% of adults) as a great good news story – ( ‘Minister: jab beats variant’).
We are still at moe than double the minimum rate of infection reached last July and have stopped trying to suppressed it further – giving the prospect of a third wave later this summer.
aren’t you missing the bigger context here, though?
the governments plan has never been to bring cases down. It’s been to simply stop the pressure on hospitals/hospital capacity.
That’s all they’ve ever knee-jerk reacted to.
Even if the vaccines are only 50% effective, i think in all studies done, they have proven to be almost completely effective against hospitalisation/death, if not symptoms. So the point is, we could have a massive 3rd peak driven mainly by the younger population, but with most people over 50 fully vaccinated, and assuming the vaccine with 2 doses is in line with the reported effectiveness, then the chances of more covid related death/hospitalisation will be minimal.
That is not true of all studies done
I have shown that
What make stuff up?
i’m not sure if you’re being pendatic here, quoting my use of the word ‘all’, or you don’t believe at all that the vaccines do provide some significant protection against hospitalisation/death, either way, going around telling people they are lieing and flat out making stuff up is not a way to have a discussion on anything. I’ve certainly not read every single covid-19 related efficacy study out there, but i’ll leave you with a sample of the main ones below who all support what i just said.
i mean i guess we’ll see who’s right in a few months time won’t we – i’m not at all denying there will be a 3rd wave, quite the contrary, but i am definitely saying deaths/hospitalisations will be significantly less than anything experienced in the previous waves, due to vaccine efficacy. Place your bets.
March 2021 – https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n793
May 2021 – https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1088
APril 2021 – https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2101765
Of course vaccines will help
I have never denied it
But the gov’t have made claims about vaccine efficiency that are wildly too optimistic
And right now only 30% of the ul population are vaccinated
“But the gov’t have made claims about vaccine efficiency that are wildly too optimistic”
I don’t know about that, but it is certainly the cases that hospitalisations and deaths have both fallen off a cliff since the vaccine began to be rolled out.
Of the 30 million people in the UK who have had one or both jabs, how many have subsequently been hospitalised or died with COVID?
And, of course, earlier in the year you stated many times on this blog that the delay in the getting second jabs was harmful and would cause deaths. It has now been proven that the delay between jabs is wise and beneficial. Will you now apologise for that spectacular error?
Currently the government is doing all it can to reduce that delay between jabs because it knows it has a very large number of non-vaccinated people (two jabs are required to be vaccinated)
Why is it doing that if the policy was right?
The reality was that delay was all about politics and like so much of the politics of coronavirus, this one is rebounding
“We are still at more than double the minimum rate of infection reached last July”
This is true. However we were averaging 60 or so deaths, per day, last July whereas we are down to a seven day average of 5. It is still falling even with the incidence of the new variant. Possibly there is more testing done now which is turning up more cases or the vaccine is reducing the severity of the illness.
I don’t know if we will have a third wave. It is possible but I’d be more optimistic than Richard that we won’t have more than a ripple. I agree that we do have to be vigilant and avoid complacency.
Sorry…but I suggest you do some reading including on how exponential growth works
An exponential growth function is one that is biting into an infinite pool of susceptibles.
That’s not a good way to mathematically model an epidemic where the number of susceptibles reduces as the disease moves through. There’s a range of functions to describe this and some are alarming, but none are exponential. It’s been nearly 18 months and still people are talking about exponential growth and talking like it makes them smart.
I think I will back the smart people
It looks like you are not in their number
Cool. The smart people go with epidemiological curves, which can show alarming increases, but the mathematical functions underpinning them also explain why they decelerate, plateau and then decline. This can be due to some combination of acquired immunity, vaccine induced resistance, voluntary behavioural changes and compulsory behavioural changes.
Exponential growth functions do not explain mathematically the complexities of this, which is no surprise as they describe growth into an infinite population of people vulnerable to infection. Anyone using the term exponential to describe the spread of an infectious disease, Vallance is a good example, is treating their public to simple explanations to get a point across.
They are not describing the reality of epidemiology. After 18 months, anyone using the term exponential to sound intelligent isn’t.
With respect, I will go with the experts
And note Johann’s reply
Hello Zoe “Math(s)” – it is a U.K. site, after all…
I’m afraid that at this point in time, you are just plain wrong.
Covid growth still is, and likely always will be, described by exponential functions.
Your assumption that enough people have had a prior infection to dampen outbreak growth (not to mention that we know people can catch Covid more than once) is hugely faulty.
It also just denies how infections propagate – surprisingly (not), in an exponential fashion. I.e. the more infected people you have, the more people will become infected.
Now, you’re correct to point out that at some point there will be no more population to infect – but we’re very far from that point, and the curve until that point will be… exponential! What a surprise!
As a final parting shot – lockdowns work so effectively because the probability of infection extinction, in a given population, is inversely exponentially proportional to the population size. In simpler words – if you reduce the effective population size via lockdown, the likelihood of disease extinction increases massively (exponentially). That’s it. Nothing magic. And as you can see, all tied to exponents.
Thanks
I’d add that the growth, turnover, and decline can all be described by a function that is exponential (that is, one where a variable appears as an exponent or “power” of another figure). A gaussian “bell curve” is exponential all the way through, for example: it doesn’t stop being exponential when it slows down and stops; rather, the exponential function describes how that happens.
What matters most is whether the rate of new infections is increasing (in which case, things are likely to blow up unless some measures are taken to prevent it) or declining (in which case you may be able to safely relax some of the measures you have already taken). Social distancing and vaccinations effectively reduce the reproduction rate. Conversely, “unlocking” and more infectious variants put it up. We are in the “dance” phase than Thomas Puyeo described over a year ago. https://tomaspueyo.medium.com/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56 We have to hope we don’t need the “hammer” for a third/fourth time, and that vaccinations eventually get us out of this mess.
Not sure what numbers you are using but according to https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths the daily death figure on 1 July 2020 was 27 and on 31 July 2020 was 14. Both were pretty typical – around 30 deaths per day at the start of the month, and around 10 to 15 at the end.
Yes, deaths are currently running at around 5 per day. Which no doubt reflects the vaccinations and also better healthcare practices bought at great cost.
But we are four months past the January 2021 peak. So the proper comparison to the April 2020 peak would be August, when deaths were around 10 per day all month.
And we all saw what happened in September, October, November.
Precisely
“And we all saw what happened in September, October, November.”
I don’t know if you’ve been following things, but last September, October and November we didn’t have a vaccine.
Not one single person had ben vaccinated. Deaths have occurred primarily in the elderly and those with underlying health conditions.
The vast majority of the most vulnerable have now been vaccinated.
You are fear-mongering and you are desperate for things to go wrong. Just as you are desperate for the economy to falter. Because if things go well, your relevance, such as it is, diminishes. Your constant Cassandra-like prophesies of doom will look sillier by the day. Last year you predicted 10,000 deaths a day, 600,000 deaths in 2020, wide-spread starvation, the collapse of society. This year you predicted hundreds of thousands of deaths because of the government’s strategy of a12-week gap between vaccinations. All predictions that now look ridiculous. No wonder your only credibility is with fruit-loops, conspiracy theorists and crack-pots.
Sure I predicted a lot of deaths last year
And the government, thankfully, changed policy
So they did not happen
I did not predict hundreds of thousands of death by vaccine delay, but the policy is now being heavily criticised and the government is scrambling to correct it
But let’s talk about what you ignore. We are only 30% vaccinated. And much less so when the death rate fell this spring , as it also did last summer. So, it fell twice and vaccines can have only played a small part the second time. In other words, elimination strategies work. We do not know if vaccines will. I strongly suspect they will help in due course, but they did not achieve the current situation. Lockdown did. And what epidemiologists are saying is that since was have nothing like enough vaccinated people as yet, keep lockdowns going. You don’t want that. So the question is a simple one. Why are you so keen on people dying early? I am not. That is the difference between us.
@ Andrew,
“Not sure what numbers you are using but according to….”
Google “Covid Statistics”. Set the graph for UK, Deaths, All time. The data comes from JHU CCE Covid-19.
On the 1st July 2020 there were 167 deaths with a seven day average of 112. The numbers fell over the course of the month so we had ‘only’ 114 deaths with a seven day average of 61 on the 31st July.
So we are doing a lot better now with deaths per day in single figures.
There will naturally be a range of opinion on what will follow. The experts are as divided as anyone so it is perfectly reasonable to err on the side of caution. Zoe Math makes a fair point on the implications of the word “exponential”. We can have exponential decay as well as exponential growth. So even a vaccine with a level of 50% efficacy can be useful if it turns the latter into the former.
The real danger is that we’ll need a completely new vaccine, for new variants, which we won’t be able to develop in time. If so we are in big trouble! That could possibly happen.
Tom
Your inconsistency is getting to be irritating
Your last para is rational and appropriate
But much of what you write is nonsense and does not flow to a conclusion
Decide what you are trying to say please or deletion n is coming your way
Supporting the Zoe Math position is utterly inconsistent with your last para
Richard
PS I’ve just noticed that I had set the graph for England rather than the UK as whole! So the above figures are an understatement. This wasn’t meant to imply anything. It was just a slip on my part!
@Neil – yes we have the vaccine, but millions of people have a vaccine that might be perhaps 30% effective after just one shot and about 60% or 70% after two. Better than nothing, for sure, but hardly a shield of steel. So between a third and two thirds of vaccinated people are still vulnerable, and the millions who are unvaccinated too. (How many people received AZ and how many Pfizer or something else – are the statistics available anywhere?)
I don’t know about you, but I have friends and relatives who are elderly or have underlying health conditions, and I don’t want them to suffer or die. It is not “fear mongering” to be concerned about their safety, or indeed the long-term health implication for younger people like my friend’s son who tested positive months ago with minimal symptoms at the time, yet still has episodes of sudden fatigue.
I want things to go right. I want as many as possible to remain healthy and thrive. I don’t want the government to screw it up AGAIN. It is clear that going fast and hard was the right thing for people AND the economy. Countries that did that are looking much better right now. We have failed to do the right thing at least three times already.
@Tom – I don’t know where Google / JHU gets all of its data from. The link at the bottom says “Data comes from Wikipedia, government health ministries, The New York Times, and other authoritative sources, as attributed” Wikipedia?! Oh brother. But the JHU link says it comes from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ So how do they get 167 COVID deaths in England on 1 July, when the UK statistics say 97 (date reported) or 27 (date of death) or 54 (death certificate)? If you set for UK you get 97. So – passing over the inconsistency of how deaths in England could be greater than deaths in the whole of the UK – they appear to be working from date reported. On 31 July, it was 20 with a seven day average of 13.4.
Yes, things are looking ok right now – “only” 10 COVID deaths per day, as I said like last August. You need to compare equivalent place in the exponential decline otherwise it becomes misleading. How much would you like to bet on that staying the same until the end of the year? Your life? The life of your friends and family? Infections are already ticking up, like last September. Hospitalisations and deaths are not, yet. Let’s see in a few weeks’ time.
Thanks Andrew
My day has not let me follow that one up
All relevant data on covid can be found in the Greenbook chapter 14A
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/984310/Greenbook_chapter_14a_7May2021.pdf
Greenbook, a wealth of information:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/immunisation-against-infectious-disease-the-green-book
Locally, the AZ vaccine is not given to younger females or males.
Incidentally, the clotting problem with Adenovirus-vector vaccines was known in 2007:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17148587/
Thanks for the link, JohnM. I must admit, I’d never seen or heard of that vaccination Green Book. Lots of good information in there, but I suspect there is relevant data in other places too.
Perhaps it is just me, but I don’t see a breakdown of the numbers of people who received each type of vaccine. Is it approximately 50:50 Pfizer:AZ, or more like 40:100? Overall, we seem to have ordered about 500 million doses, which should be enough to vaccinate everyone in the UK 7 or 8 times.
I already sense here and at work some sort of tolerance of Covid – an acceptance that it is here – based on the horrendous levels we’ve had in the past. By making us go through ‘herd immunity’ many of us will I feel that it’s ‘just too bad’ or ‘Oh well’.
This is what happens when you brutalise a society whether by Covid or austerity – a new ‘hardness’ sets in that lowers expectations and as if by magic you are living in a different society. I’m not sure if the original nudge theorists had this sort of outcome in mind. This management of public perception by the Tories is masterful – but it is also cynical and morally reprehensible.
Like their slave master ancestors, the Tories will create a world for us with their rules.
The only way questions will be asked is the next wave is indeed worse than the previous ones. That is the gamble Johnson is taking with our chips.
This is what ‘inevitability politics’ looks like then.
You may be right
It reminds me of the First World War on a slightly smaller scale. People dying day after day: 57,470 casualties (19,240 killed) in the first day of the Somme, but most days it was a few hundred or thousand, for four years. You only get a grasp on the numbers when it is physically laid out, row after endless row, as they were for the Shrouds of the Somme, at the Olympic Park in 2018. . There will be a reckoning.
I share Richard’s pessimism. Government strategy has been to use vaccination to minimise deaths from COVID. Minimising transmission would have required a different strategy.
I thought initially that this was a cosmetic decision, but in fact it makes sense. The chance of dying of anything in the next 12 months increases exponentially with age and last year David Spiegelhalter showed that the chance of dying of COVID was approximately equal to the chance of dying of something else..
https://medium.com/wintoncentre/how-much-normal-risk-does-covid-represent-4539118e1196. Because the curve is exponential!!, it means that vaccinating vulnerable groups gives the greatest number of added years per jab.
However, the risk of spreading the virus is likely to follow a completely different age distribution. This raises the question whether there is a crossover point, where the risk of killing someone else by spreading the virus is greater than the risk of dying from it.
Is it time to start using vaccination to limit spread? I am not sure that the data are there, and I know my maths are not good enough to answer the question.
However, weakening the barriers to transmission, while cases are starting to rise, and before replacing them with vaccination, does not seem a great idea.
I am afraid you must feel like Cassandra at times Richard but thank you for all that you do and thanks to all those with their knowledgeable replies.
I agree that “I already sense here and at work some sort of tolerance of Covid” but much of it seems sadly at the level the child who, putting hands in front of their eyes, thinks that if they cannot see you, you cannot see them.
We seem to have had various Lockdown Strategies but have not formed a working Suppression Strategy which we need to get out of lockdown and stay out of it. At the moment it seems Suppression has no leadership at all. Having watched the efficiency of the vaccination role out by local teams I wonder why this is not being done.
This PR government is careful to prevent any mention of the longevity of the efficacies of the vaccines.
Unfortunately I was given 2 jabs of AZ, so 15 days ago I was apparently protected at maximum level – a miserable 60% against the Indian variant – barely useful! But what is the figure for me now? And how long before the efficacy has fallen back to 50, 40, 30, 20%? Shhh! Don’t mention it. Open up fully in June. Kill off a few more thousands of lower class wastrels!
Might the situation be different in the other three nations in the UK?
Not much
One thing which hasn’t become clear yet is how likely it is that those who are ‘partially’ vaccinated will become seriously ill if infected with the ‘Indian’ variant. A single dose of vaccine might not provide great protection against symptomatic infection, but should still hopefully prime the immune system to provide good protection against serious illness. Those most at risk of serious illness (elderly and people with co-morbidities) are generally already fully vaccinated, of course.
I suspect that this is why the government are continuing with their “all looks good for full opening in June” rhetoric for now. You’d hope and expect that there will be intense scrutiny of the hospitalisation numbers over the next couple of weeks and the ability to screech to a halt with relaxations of regulations if it is required.
The unknown, of course, is how many additional unvaccinated people will end up suffering from ‘Long Covid’ in the event of another wave of infection, even if this wave didn’t lead to a great number of deaths thanks to the protection provided by vaccination.
These things are not unknown
They can be predicted
And those who can predict them say there are very likely to be many serious illnesses with risk of the NHS being overwhelmed – which has been known for several moths now
This to me eloquently, musically and humorously explains everything:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2gm-wMWSIY
Hmmmm…..you have offered better in the past 🙂 Musically, that is
Yeah I know but given the Windrush debacle and BLM I thought that this bit of ‘urban’ music said all that needed to be said to be honest.
🙂
This might add to the discussion. It’s 3 months old but its breaks down the theoretical numbers in achieving herd immunity and “getting back to normal”.
Horizon, 2021: Coronavirus Special – What We Know Now (Watch from 48 minutes)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000slmx
I’m interested in what people think about this.