Covid-19 the unlockdown

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raven
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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by raven » Mon Jun 29, 2020 9:18 pm

Oh dear. That's not good. Hope they all get through it ok. At least getting tested doesn't seem to be an issue, so that bit of the system is working better.

The mayor's just been on telly grumbling that the statistics for Leicester aren't that bad, though... Think he might regret that. They just said on the news Leicester has had 10% of the cases in the UK over ?some time period I didn't catch. Shutting down nonessential shops etc again, but as a neighbour said this morning if they knew cases were rising a week ago why talk about it for a week, why not shut down asap?

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by EllyCat » Tue Jun 30, 2020 7:14 am

To be fair, they locked down more Leicester more quickly than they did the nation back in March. Never know, maybe by 2021 they’ll be managing to lock down within a day of a spike being identified :roll:

I’m interested to know whether there will be local extensions to the support schemes that they’re busy cutting off since everyone is coming out of lockdown.

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by shpalman » Tue Jun 30, 2020 7:18 am

EllyCat wrote:
Tue Jun 30, 2020 7:14 am
To be fair, they locked down more Leicester more quickly than they did the nation back in March. Never know, maybe by 2021 they’ll be managing to lock down within a day of a spike being identified :roll:

I’m interested to know whether there will be local extensions to the support schemes that they’re busy cutting off since everyone is coming out of lockdown.
Well, who knows, since Leicester doesn't even know which areas to lock down yet since Matt Hancock hasn't told them.

Leicester City council’s website said they were awaiting confirmation of the exact areas affected. However, Hancock cited the town of Oadby and the villages of Glenfield and Birstall as examples, adding: “We will be publishing the exact details of which wards are included in these measures imminently.”
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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by Gentleman Jim » Tue Jun 30, 2020 7:37 am

Gfamily wrote:
Mon Jun 29, 2020 3:54 pm
Gentleman Jim wrote:
Mon Jun 29, 2020 1:10 pm
If Crown Estates owns a majority of the seashore, why not just get Betty to rescind the right of the public to use it ;)
She can't.
The Crown granted people the right to piscary* under Magna Carta


*Fishing and gathering shellfish on the foreshore.

I bet there is nothing in Magna Carta about sunbathing! :lol:
Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools.

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by EllyCat » Tue Jun 30, 2020 8:02 am

shpalman wrote:
Tue Jun 30, 2020 7:18 am
EllyCat wrote:
Tue Jun 30, 2020 7:14 am
To be fair, they locked down more Leicester more quickly than they did the nation back in March. Never know, maybe by 2021 they’ll be managing to lock down within a day of a spike being identified :roll:

I’m interested to know whether there will be local extensions to the support schemes that they’re busy cutting off since everyone is coming out of lockdown.
Well, who knows, since Leicester doesn't even know which areas to lock down yet since Matt Hancock hasn't told them.

Leicester City council’s website said they were awaiting confirmation of the exact areas affected. However, Hancock cited the town of Oadby and the villages of Glenfield and Birstall as examples, adding: “We will be publishing the exact details of which wards are included in these measures imminently.”
The local MPs are all over Twitter/Facebook trying to show some leadership and empathy with people, but all with the damming caveat of “we are awaiting more information and will let you know as soon as we do”. So the usual open communication channels at work there then!

For whoever was looking at data, Oadby, Glenfield and Birstall (areas confirmed to lockdown) are all Leicestershire local authority, but there’s continuous housing between them and the city so they’re suburbs rather than discrete towns.

“Excitingly”, the area now being cited locally as the centre for the outbreak is also where one of the local hospitals is 😕

raven
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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by raven » Tue Jun 30, 2020 10:12 am

That was me, I think. Nothing showing in the publicly available figures for Leicestershire either. Looking at the numbers for cumulative cases:

Leicester:
1st June: 913 cases
30th June: 1056 cases

Leicestershire:
1st June: 1316 cases
30th June: 1417 case

So that's an increase of 143 and 101 respectively this month. Nothing like the 900 odd being reported.

For comparison, April's increases were 523 & 677 , May's were 219 & 369 respectively - so going by the official figures, looks like everything is nicely trending down. Which means that my plan to keep a casual eye on the data to see how things are going where I live is all a bit pointless.

But, hey, Hancock muttered something about making local data available in the House yesterday.

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by raven » Tue Jun 30, 2020 10:39 am

So I took a look at Hansard & I dunno if local data will be publicly available.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham):
The Secretary of State said that data has been made available to public health officials in Leicester, but the reports yesterday said that that was quite late in coming. I have talked to local government colleagues in Kirklees, and they are still struggling to get granular data at a street level. If we are going to rely on local authorities and local public health officials to manage this outbreak, we need postcode-based data, so that outbreaks on a street, on an estate or in a ward can be picked up very early and dealt with, and preferably broken down by ethnicity, given the demographic issues that have been highlighted in Leicester. Why is that not available in real time, as the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) asked? What is the problem with making that data available immediately at that level?

Matt Hancock:

That data is available to directors of public health in local councils who have signed a data protection record. I am committing to the House to publish it at as local a level as possible, so that everybody will be able to see and analyse that data.
Ok, if you need to sign something (as you'd expect for postcode level data) I'm guessing that 'everybody' doesn't include the public. This bit from yesterday was interesting though:
Dr Phillippa Whitford (Central Ayshire): Public Health England began publishing combined data from commercial as well as NHS labs at the beginning of this month. Since then, it has become clear that Leicester has had far more covid cases than it was previously aware of, with almost 900 over the last three weeks. This data is published only weekly, however, which is of no use for tracing contacts or the early identification of an outbreak.

The Secretary of State tends to focus on the number of tests, but does he accept that it is actually tracing and isolation that stop the spread of the virus? How does he expect local public health teams to identify an emerging outbreak if they cannot access accurate data, and how can they manage one if they are not sent individual test results in realtime? When will he be able to guarantee that test results are sent immediately to GPs and local public health teams, so that they can trace contacts and isolate patients?

The lack of accurate data can also affect Government decisions. On 10 May, when the Prime Minister eased lockdown across England, almost 40,000 positive cases from the commercial labs were not included in the data of the four nations. Even now, the UK Government website claims that there have been just over 160,000 covid cases in England, despite Public Health England reporting that there have actually been 240,000. Does the Secretary of State really think it safe to go ahead with opening pubs and restaurants across England when there have been 50% more cases than previously reported? If the UK Government were aware of this much higher incidence, why have they knowingly been publishing false information on their website?

Matt Hancock: I think the best way to explain that is that all the data we have on Leicester has been made available to Leicestershire County Council. I pay tribute to Ivan Browne, director of public health at Leicester City Council, who has done a superb job through this. All the data available to us is available to him. Indeed, I can commit to the House that we will publish all the data on test results, in order to ensure that the wider public, as well as directors of public health, are able to access that data.​

The hon. Lady frequently tries to divide the testing system between those tests done in hospital labs and those done in the labs that we have built over the past few weeks. That is the wrong approach—it is only because we managed to build those labs that we have such large testing capacity across the UK. Those tests from the lighthouse labs are available in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as England. I pay tribute to the work of those labs, which have done so much to deliver what is now an extraordinary testing capability that we can bring to bear on specific problems, such as this one in Leicester.
So I tracked down the weekly PHE reports, which seem to be here. They're great & there's even an infographic to go with.

But no local authority /county level data that I can see. (The ONS excess death data goes more local than that & it's public, but it's not as current.) It sounds like PHE is publishing county-level data somewhere though. Does anyone know where?

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by AMS » Tue Jun 30, 2020 10:49 am

EllyCat wrote:
Tue Jun 30, 2020 8:02 am

The local MPs are all over Twitter/Facebook trying to show some leadership and empathy with people, but all with the damming caveat of “we are awaiting more information and will let you know as soon as we do”. So the usual open communication channels at work there then!
The lockdown area includes the constituencies of both the Shadow Health secretary (Jonathan Ashworth, Leicester South) and Shadow Social Care minister (Liz Kendall, Leicester West), so I imagine the opposition front bench will be pushing for more clarity from the government.

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by bagpuss » Tue Jun 30, 2020 2:18 pm

Not sure if this adds any additional data but looking at the daily stats for both Leicester and Leicestershire here there's no sign of any spike or, indeed, anything other than a nice general downward trend.

The daily positive tests per 100k population for the last non-provisional day (24/6) for both areas are well above the median daily positive tests per 100k for all England unitary authorities but they are also well below the max. And since the median for that day is zero, it only takes one person to test positive to be above the median. It doesn't say which authorities are higher and unless you have some clue where to start looking, it's going to be a slow old task going through them all one by one, if anyone fancies it and has the time.

Leicester did have the highest actual number of cases testing positive that day, at 6, but that works out at only just over half the max per 100k population, wherever that was - ie 1.7 per 100k vs 3.1 per 100k.

So while Leicester does appear to be towards the upper end of cases testing positive, I'm not seeing anything to indicate that it is deserving of special treatment while nowhere else is. Unless, of course, the data at an even more local level is showing something more concerning.

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by EllyCat » Tue Jun 30, 2020 2:31 pm

AMS wrote:
Tue Jun 30, 2020 10:49 am
EllyCat wrote:
Tue Jun 30, 2020 8:02 am

The local MPs are all over Twitter/Facebook trying to show some leadership and empathy with people, but all with the damming caveat of “we are awaiting more information and will let you know as soon as we do”. So the usual open communication channels at work there then!
The lockdown area includes the constituencies of both the Shadow Health secretary (Jonathan Ashworth, Leicester South) and Shadow Social Care minister (Liz Kendall, Leicester West), so I imagine the opposition front bench will be pushing for more clarity from the government.
We need someone to! Labour have actually been quite good* at kicking Team Boris in the hopes that competence falls out, in my opinion without undermining the government in a crisis (though to be fair, the govt can manage to undermine itself well enough).
Matt Hancock: I think the best way to explain that is that all the data we have on Leicester has been made available to Leicestershire County Council. I pay tribute to Ivan Browne, director of public health at Leicester City Council, who has done a superb job through this.
Hmm they’d be two different organisations you’re talking about there Matt, and they don’t always talk to one another. I’d like to hope it’s just a slip but...

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by AMS » Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:40 pm

This twitter thread is significant about the rise in Leicester (I've not read the FT article it links to, but presumably it says something similar):

https://mobile.twitter.com/jburnmurdoch ... 2691273728

Briefly, when you look at public data on cases by local authority, you're seeing the Pillar 1 test results (ie hospital swabs). But at this point, 90% of the cases are in the Pillar 2 data (wider community testing).

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by AMS » Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:52 pm

Adding to that, in the Leicester data, 90% of the cases are in Pillar 2 - that's not the case everywhere.

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by AMS » Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:57 pm

Image

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by jimbob » Tue Jun 30, 2020 6:09 pm

Yes I was just about to post those...

The FT has been very good over this epidemic.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by Martin Y » Tue Jun 30, 2020 7:13 pm

So if I understand correctly the vast majority of the positive tests are people who are not going to hospital but are getting tested either because they have symptoms or because they've been in contact with a case? Which might indicate that contact tracing is actually working. Is there any info on how those numbers break down between those with and without symptoms?

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by raven » Tue Jun 30, 2020 7:41 pm

Thanks for posting that AMS. FT has been very good on this.

So I was right, testing from the Serco/Army run test centres wasn't being included in the public stuff. I do hope that isn't because they're still failing to collect full addresses for testees...https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... hs-records

It's almost as if getting Deliotte to organise a national network of test centres was a bad idea. :roll:

raven
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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by raven » Tue Jun 30, 2020 8:53 pm

Ah-ha. There is some local data in the PHE National Covid Surveillance Report Week26 There's a map showing weekly rate of cases by county/area

Missed that this morning. Found it because it's on this blog:

http://www.duncanrobertson.com/2020/06/ ... a-problem/

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by bagpuss » Wed Jul 01, 2020 9:25 am

AMS wrote:
Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:57 pm
Image
Ahhhhhhhh. That makes sense. Thanks, AMS

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by JQH » Wed Jul 01, 2020 12:43 pm

What is pillar 1 and pillar 2 data?
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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by jaap » Wed Jul 01, 2020 1:19 pm

JQH wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 12:43 pm
What is pillar 1 and pillar 2 data?
AMS wrote:
Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:40 pm
https://mobile.twitter.com/jburnmurdoch ... 2691273728

Briefly, when you look at public data on cases by local authority, you're seeing the Pillar 1 test results (ie hospital swabs). But at this point, 90% of the cases are in the Pillar 2 data (wider community testing).

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by JQH » Wed Jul 01, 2020 1:56 pm

Thanks
And remember that if you botch the exit, the carnival of reaction may be coming to a town near you.

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by Gfamily » Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:05 pm

Why are they claiming that Weston-super-Mare is an example of 'local handling of a local flare up in cases'; all that happened at WsM was that the hospital said "we're not taking any patients, go elsewhere"
My avatar was a scientific result that was later found to be 'mistaken' - I rarely claim to be 100% correct
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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by shpalman » Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:30 pm

https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2020/07/lin ... -old-data/

Lincoln also wonders about its Pillar 2 numbers.
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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by RoMo » Thu Jul 02, 2020 9:19 am

If anyone's interested, here's the preliminary investigation into the Leicester increase:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... 720_v3.pdf

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Re: Covid-19 the unlockdown

Post by EllyCat » Thu Jul 02, 2020 12:13 pm

RoMo wrote:
Thu Jul 02, 2020 9:19 am
If anyone's interested, here's the preliminary investigation into the Leicester increase:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... 720_v3.pdf
Thank you!

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