I am well aware that there are those who think I enjoy being a Cassandra for bad news. I don't. No one wants bad news. But if Dominic Cummings taught anything yesterday it was that the inability to spot a coming crisis is literally fatal.
I have been suggesting there is another Covid crisis coming, based on my reading of the work of leading epidemiologists. I offer this as unfortunate evidence that this might be the case:
Hospital admissions now starting to rise in England toohttps://t.co/fMZCN7lo9m https://t.co/kIVcTScE2E pic.twitter.com/Pe7vudXvmV
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) May 26, 2021
And before you say ‘that is insignificant', that is always the case with exponential upturns.
I am worried.
We do not have long before the errors of reopening too soon (again ) are very apparent.
When will the government act? It should be now, because the rule with exponential growth is that if you act when it becomes apparent you have always acted too late. That may already be true, but we need a chance, and this is the moment to grab that opportunity.
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Hello again.
Given that the vaccine isn’t 100% effective, it would be natural to see an upturn in cases and deaths. Say it’s 90% effective, a 10% level of deaths compared with the peaks we have seen would seem acceptable (statistics speak not humanity speak). Hospitalizations would go above this as a vaccine is not the be all and end all, but in many cases is preventative of the worst case scenario, that is, death.
If deaths recorded go beyond 10% of the previous peak, that would signify to me that we have an out of control variant. IMO.
It’s wise to be careful.
Already in the Midlands the Indian variant is present (Nottingham, Leicester and there are cases in Glossop North Derbyshire).
You are right to be wary about sounding crass about avoidable deaths.
Deaths are an outcome.
The major precursor is hospitalisation and intensive care limits which then leads to these deaths.
And the poorly paid and under resourced specialist staff.
They carry the brunt and no one seems to care. Are they disposable slaves?
Calm down Richard…..The rise is mainly in the un-vaccinated.
The deprived areas with high ethnic-minority populations also have a higher percentage of their aged population refusing vaccination. Those will suffer in the upswing of infections.
The other rising groups are the 2yr-12yr age group, who are not able to be vaccinated yet (unless at-risk) and the 25yr to 34yr group (probably parents of the 2-12yrs group).
As vaccination proceeds [rapidly] down to younger persons the current rise should slow down.
Many people did not pay attention to the intense propaganda by various people/groups/ and the anti-vaxxer agenda. Unfortunately, the higher ages of ethnic minority groups are prone to believing that the vaccine is made from pigs blood and deceased foetus parts.
Fortunately, those at-risk groups are now showing-up at vaccination centres.
Hopefully you are going to be wrong and a large increase won’t happen. There is still time for this govt to pull another collection of disasters out of its hat though…
65% are unvaccinated
And do not tell me to calm down or 1,484 comments or not you’ll hit the bin as a Covid denier
You are also talking what looks like nonsense
The spread is from young people upwards – proven by epidemiologists. This is the risk
You may not care about young people. I do.
So do not tell me to calm down
School children and their parents are the vulnerable now
“The spread is from young people upwards — proven by epidemiologists. This is the risk”
Based entirely on non-scientific personal observation, ever since the last lockdown was eased local, mainly pre-teen, kids have been flocking together. They attend a number of different schools in something like a 2-mile radius of their homes.
If you wanted almost certain spread potential from young people upwards, this is it – being replicated every day in every street, and then in every school.
If we’re going to have another wave – and I agree we almost certainly are – then it’s already under way, and has been since the last lockdown was eased.
According to the Coronavirus Data website, some 54.4% of the total population have been vaccinated.
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations
According to ONS stats the main rise is in the age-2 to school-year-6 group, followed by age 35-49. With small[er] rises in the 70+ group. The ‘error-bars’ are quite wide though.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/latest
I live in one of the “hotspots” (Bedford). Currently there are 10 people in hospital with covid-related problems and zero people have died from those problems in the last 7 days.
Life would be considerably easier if flights from India had been disallowed a long time ago, and if all those who returned from India had followed the quarantine rules. Neither happened though.
Fully-vaccinated, locally, stands at 42.1%.
There is a considerable proportion of people who are not taking-up the vaccine offers.
I have had both doses, so am fully-vaccinated!
The chance of me becoming infected is very low. The chance of me being seriously ill is, according to the govt, lower than a slugs belly.
First your data is wrong: 54% have had a dose. They are not vaccinated.
Second, you ignore that you can transmit the disease.
And candidly, your callousness has won you the ban I warned would come. After 1,485 comments you are now on the blocked list. I would not choose to have you in y compan y in a pub, and do not want you here either if you are so utterly indifferent to the condition of others.
It is the government’s intention to not stop the spread, as It has been from day one.
The only thing that nearly upset their applecart last year was human nature of self preservation, through self quarantine and severe social distancing. Which they had to scramble to override with pantomime actions.
We are repeating the mistakes of the past. We left ourselves open for weeks last spring, allowing multiple seeding and spreader events that made infections explode, although there was still government dither and delay. It would be grown up of the government to admit that the initial plan was to let the disease propagate, and flatten the peak to keep it within acceptable limits, but they needed some time to formulate and implement a new plan when that became untenable. Someone needed to write the emergency coronavirus regulations, for example.
There are multiple sources of the Indian variant in the UK now, and it has spread to many places across the country. Its prevalence has been growing for weeks and it is on the cusp of becoming dominant. I suspect it is probably already too late to contain it without a lockdown, or at least winding back some of the unlocking steps. As you say, it is only a question of when we act, and sooner is better than later. Infection numbers have been getting very slowly worse for a week or two already, but we might need to see another week of deterioration (and increased hospitalisations, and no doubt deaths) to say for sure. And then I expect the government might simply put back step 4 on 21 June, because this is irreversible, right? Wrong.
I’ll be more explicit. The R number for the “old” variant appears to be below 1. The R number of the “new” variant appears to be over 1. Until we can get the reproduction rate down again, we are putting millions of unvaccinated people, plus millions whose vaccinations we now know are not 100% effective, at increasing risk. Not necessarily of death with 28 days but perhaps long term and significant health problems.
Many number of people who are hospitalised, but recover and are released, suffer very significant complications, many are back in hospital within a few months, and a substantial number die within a short period. Some studies last year suggested about a third were readmitted, and perhaps one in ten died, within a few months, both much above the usual expectation. I am well aware that some people who suffer minimal symptoms when infected have worse affects afterwards. No doubt the vaccines will help, but there will still be many thousands of people with adverse health outcomes.
Total hospitalised so far is over 450,000. Over 152,000 with COVID on their death certificate, significantly above the 127,700 figure for “28 days”.
I agree with all that
And let me also explain my frustration with indifference now. We are at best 35% vaccinated. So 65% unvaccinated. Children do get Covid. Mutation can take place anywhere. The risk of a vaccine escape mutation is real. And it is that right now that we need to also protect against. And we aren’t. That, the NHS and lives, of course.
I’ve been watching Independent SAGE scientists every Friday. Their predictive strength is high. I found them invaluable for calculating my personal risks. Also, given Cummings evidence yesterday, plus past experience, we know that Boris Johnson will not do what is necessary to stamp out viral spread. Test and trace is undermined by lack of support for isolation. People won’t come forward for tests because if positive they would have to isolate, as would family, and without support of employer this can cause a significant loss of income. So not enough people will take tests, and more so if cases are rising as increases probability of having to isolate. People should get good support for isolating – they should be rewarded for their personal sacrifice of time and comfort for the public good and thanked by the community.
On top of this, not everyone is vaccinated with 2 doses + 4-5 wks for developing an immune response. Approximately 35% of the UK population are full vaccinated, that leaves 65% of the population unprotected and vulnerable to infection. Even if proportion of younger people susceptible to severe illness and death is small – ‘small’ multiplied by a large group of people is still enough to create an NHS crisis.
Richard is correct, we are walking into another health crisis and unnecessary deaths.
You do realise that the first chart has a log scale, don’t you?
Meaning it is showing and exponential DECREASE in hospital admissions.
Or I guess you could keep banging on hysterically the way you are. It’s not like you’ve been right much so far.
At all. On anything.
I do
And they are going up….
On a log scale
“And before you say ‘that is insignificant’…….”
I was going to suggest this is something to be aware of and it could possibly be an early indication of a developing problem. Alternatively, it could be just an uptick in a ‘noisy’ graph. We probably need a few weeks of additional data to answer the question.
I’m not on twitter, so I genuinely don’t know the answer, but has Prof Christina Pagel been posting her graphs continuously to inform us all of the number of hospital admissions in recent months or has she just started to do this in the last few days now that the previous strong downwards trend has paused (hopefully) or reversed (hopefully not)? In other words, is she an inherent pessimist?
I’d like to think I’m neither a pessimist nor an optimist on the Covid question. There could be evidence of an uptick but it’s nowhere near what we saw last September when we had a near fourfold increase in case numbers. That was clear evidence we needed to lockdown earlier than we did.
On the question of vaccine efficiency, it is reasonable to compare what is happening in the UK with other European countries which have also had lockdowns, and most of which have been much tougher than we’ve seen here. Judging by the amount of activity in the streets and on the roads we have only been in a lenient lockdown for most of this year. On this basis the vaccines do look to be having a significant effect.
This could of course change if the new variants turn out to be less susceptible to vaccines than we might hope for. At the risk of being called pedantic, they could be less susceptible to the antibodies generated in the body which are induced by vaccines. So the situation isn’t quite the same as a bacteria which might evolve to be resistant to an injected antibiotic agent.
Christina Pagel has been the most reliable data source throughout the pandemic and has never made wrong call, yet
@Tom
Hmm, I’m afraid that I don’t agree with your (in my eyes) optimistic interpretation of “just an uptick on a noisy graph”
To my eye there is, at the very least, a levelling off of cases – which should already be ringing alarm bells, given the repeated experiences we’ve had over the past year and a bit.
I do think that any other interpretation is unfounded optimism – especially as we know the pandemic follows an exponential growth pattern.
Giving it a couple more weeks so as to be certain that we’re not just seeing noise will mean that we’re too late (again)
To adapt a common saying: Hope for the best, and act for the worst
The levelling off is the Kent variation declining whilst the Indian variant rises
That’s a statistical freak then
The Indian variant is the issue
You say that you want the Scottish government to act.
What actions that they are currently undertaking would you stop? Personally I’d stop surge vaccinations which appear to deliver net negative outcomes compared to the alternative of vaccinating by priority groups.
And what actions are they not currently undertaking that you would implement?
Better to ask Devi Shridar
“the errors of reopening too soon (again )”
Richard,
Has there ever been a point since March 2020 when you have supported a relaxation of restrictions? If so, I’d be grateful if you could tell what time that was.
If not, am I right in saying that you would have had us locked down continuously since March 2020?
You entirely miss the point
We should have locked down earlier last March
Then we might have been in a much better position come summer 2020
We unlocked too early then. We paid the price. We locked down too late in September 2020
The real point is that if we had got all that right, and locked borders, we would not have needed to lock down so hard in 2021
But you are just trolling and not looking to understand what was really required
Greg
Richard is correct. If we had been lock down sooner and consistently for a period (no eat out to help out etc., and better lockdowns on international travel – the real pig in the poke in all this BTW in this country ), then we WOULD be in a far better position now.
Why do you assume anyone would want lock down in perpetuity? It’s just a gross over-emotional reaction. Please look at the countries where there has been a timely, TOTAL and unbroken lock down (severe – yes!) and see where they are now in terms of deaths and getting back to normal.
Honestly!
I’ll need to go back and check what I thought at the time, but in retrospect I think the slow and gradual unlocking from May onwards last year and March onwards this year had been more or less right. To its credit the government has stuck to its five week timetable for each unlocking step.
But the “tiers” system and reliance on “rule of six” last autumn just did not work very well. Look at Manchester or Liverpool. The constant recent refrain that it is is “irreversible” is so wrong. The idea of a protective shield around care homes was a fantasy, or at best an aspiration. In fact care homes were imperilled, not protected, by taking away their PPE, sending untested elderly and potentially infected people there from hospitals, and allowing workers with jobs in different homes to cross contaminate
What it demonstrably got wrong was delaying for at least a week on the first lockdown, perhaps two. On failing to lock down by the end of September, when cases and deaths had been rising for weeks. Delaying the second lockdown to November and then stupidly unlocking again and then delaying *again* until January. These missteps undoubtedly caused tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.
This is not captain hindsight. People were saying it at the time. In an emergency you have to act, not dither and delay. Look at the interview with Rory Stewart last March. Politicians need to take responsibility for the consequences of their decisions and their indecision, not blame others.
Richard, I share your worry. And my husband and I ARE fully vaccinated (Pfizer) and we have waited the required time for immunity to build afterwards. But I’m still not going anywhere I don’t need to go, will continue to wear a mask and take precautions. This is NOT over yet. Not by a long shot.
Our loose international border is still a major problem–which, sadly, a not-yet independent Scotland can’t legally control. Countries that have managed to control the virus well, and are now operating reasonably normally (Australia, New Zealand, etc) clapped their international borders shut right away. I recently read the updated travel restrictions to those countries, and they are still very very strict. Compliance with domestic restrictions in those countries was also very high. Anti-maskers didn’t gain much support there. The reward for their compliance are two countries that are now operating more or less normally WITHIN their own borders.
People in the UK who moan about how their lives have been wrecked by draconian regulations, etc, fail to understand that IF the regulations had been strictly implemented and adhered to, right at the start, we’d be in a much better position now. We would not have needed the second full lockdown at all.
Vaccines are certainly helping, but we are far FAR from being fully vaccinated yet. Children DO catch and spread the virus, by the way. One of the two people I personally know who has died of the virus had it brought home to his house by a 9-year-old schoolboy. The whole family caught the virus, and my friend’s brother (who had no underlying health issues) died on a ventilator, less than a week after showing symptoms.
We still need to be curbing overseas travel–not encouraging it. I’m appalled when I see all the adverts for overseas cruises, etc, now taking bookings again. Variants are still an evolving factor, aren’t they? And the more people who catch the virus, the more chance there is of mutation. We need to STAY HOME.
However, instead of taking immediate precautions while providing financial backup people needed to weather this crisis without a huge loss of income, the UK government dithered and swithered until after the horse had left the barn. Waiting for ‘herd immunity’ was a mighty gamble that did not pay off.
“We should have locked down earlier last March. Then we might have been in a much better position come summer 2020”
It depends what you mean by a better position.
The characteristic of an exponential increase is that we have a doubling time. If we start off with say 8 infections, after td where td is the doubling time, we have 16 and then 32 and then 64 etc.
Say we have an early lockdown for length 3 x td. Infections half during the lockdowns rather than double after the same time period. We then have:
8, 4,2,1, 2,4,8,16 Total Infections = 45
And for a slightly later lockdown we have
8,16, 8,4,2, 4,8,16 Total Infections = 66
So, the total number of infections is lower for an early lockdown but the infection rate ends up being exactly the same, at 16, in both scenarios. Therefore once a virus becomes established we can only reduce its severity by having longer lockdowns. Earlier lockdowns are obviously preferable but unless they are strict enough to eliminate the virus completely they only delay the spread of the virus rather than prevent it.
The difficulty with an early lockdown is political. Persuading the public of the need to lockdown when the numbers are low is always going to be problematic. We are seeing that now. The counter argument will always be along the lines of “we don’t close the roads when we have a few deaths in a motorway pile up so why should we close the economy for Covid now?”
Tom
I think you are joining those whose time here is over because you do talk utter nonsense
You ignore test and trace (we could have had it), border closure (ditto), NHS capacity, vaccine generation, mutation control and other issues and spout nonsense as a result.
There were in other words a host if it her factors your simplistic model completely ignores
This is a final warning. Government apologists are really not very welcome here because all you do is say you are happy with tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. At least Cummings had the decency not to do that
@ Richard,
I agree that my model is just a set of simple numbers. Deliberately chosen to be so. I’m not a Government apologist. I’m not at all happy that people have died from Covid. I do agree that we should have had and still should have tighter border controls. My numbers, albeit that they are simple, show that the number of cases, and so the number of deaths which are proportional to the number of cases, are lower when we have earlier lockdowns. There’s no disagreement on this point.
However, my numbers are intended to show there is more to tackling the virus than ordering early lockdowns. Lockdowns, and border restrictions, are necessary but are no more than a way of buying some time. There is a feeling in some circles that the Aussies have solved the Covid problem by having tight border controls. You might want to take a look at what’s happening in Victoria where they have multiple cases of the Indian variant on the loose. If it’s as infectious as many fear they may not be able to contain it.
Even if they do this time, there will be something else that appears in the future that they won’t be able to control. Vaccines are the only real longer term hope.
Sorry Tom – but I made clear there are many more factors
They make your modelling make no sense
And right now your claim there are lower deaths is not substantiated either – we are very early in this variant
We can hope you are right of course
But transmissibility looks to be 50% higher and without lockdowns that suggests a peak higher than January despite vaccines
I hope not – but why not stop making very naive models and read those by independent sage? Yours is deeply misleading
You’re ignoring the 1 -> 0 step. The elimination step. Admittedly this requires a working test & trace facility, border control, a government that gives a damn.
@ Mike,
No I’m not ignoring the possibility of elimination but we’d have to ‘hermetically’ seal our borders. This would have to include not allowing non UK truck drivers into the country. Loads and cargoes would have to be transferred to lorries at UK ports.
@ Richard,
“Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton said the reproduction number of the strain (the so-called Indian variant or B.1.617.1 variant) was yet to be determined, but could be five or more, meaning one person would infect five others.”
If this is correct the Australians probably won’t contain the outbreak and neither will we with the near identical B.1.617.2 variant becoming dominant here. Even with a 100% effective vaccine we would need 80% coverage.
So a pessismitic outlook could turn out to be the correct one after all!
The evidence for r for this variant is over 1 now and the transmission rate is more than 50% higher than the U.K. variant
That combination could be disastrous
I note papers are now beginning to acknowledge this
@Tom Edmunds: As far as I can see, this is pure trolling. I’ve explained where your model is deficient – you need to extend the first lockdown to allow the 1 -> 0 step. Goodbye.
My apologies to @Richard for wasting his time.
I have agreed with you
You were not wasting time
@ Mike,
I’m sorry you feel this is trolling. I agree with you that it is theoretically possible, if we had an ultra strict lockdown, and a hermetic sealing of the borders, we could eliminate Covid in the UK. It would mean keeping everyone at home under a state of near house arrest. No-one would be let in or out. Even quarantine for new arrivals isn’t a reliable option as we’ve just seen in Australia. Such exceptions as foreign lorry drivers, air and ship crew would have to be kept in isolation at airports and ports until their departure.
Rather than express my own opinion, I’ll just ask a couple of questions:
How long would this take? Is there any possibility that any Government could impose such draconian restrictions in a democratic country like our own?
Tom
You continue to write utter drivel so this is your last comment
Suppression does not mean house arrest
It does mean border control, for sure – but we have none at all for all practical purposes
And Australia has worked 0- not perfectly because that is not possible – but vastly better than here
And yes, in democratic countries this is happening
Like Australia and NZ
I have come to the conclusion that you are here to troll or are stupid. Maybe both but I have had enough
I will happily reclaim my life from heaving to read you
Richard