COVID-19

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lpm
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Re: COVID-19

Post by lpm » Tue Jul 27, 2021 11:11 am

Can't be arsed to get too deeply into it. but men vs women vaccination rates in 20-34 are more than sufficient to explain men vs women Covid cases in the 20-34 age group in late June and July.

The Euro 2020 final was 11 July. On that date, the ONS figures for first dose vaccinations show:

18 to 24
Men 57%
Women 66%

25 to 29
Men 63%
Women 70%

30 to 34
Men 74%
Women 79%

Men were slower to get first doses but this isn't as interesting a story as football, and the media can't illustrate an absence of vaccinations while they can lazily show a photo of men watching football in a pub.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by wilsontown » Tue Jul 27, 2021 11:20 am

Probably too early to draw firm conclusions, but it seems that the number of tests needed to find each positive case has increased slightly. Would suggest that the fall in cases is not just because of a decrease in testing.

test_case_ratio_27072021.png
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Re: COVID-19

Post by bob sterman » Tue Jul 27, 2021 3:08 pm

Today 23,511 vs 46,558 7 days ago - 50% drop!!! :shock:

What on earth is going on? I think this just shows how little we really know and understand about this virus.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by lpm » Tue Jul 27, 2021 3:39 pm

We've had doubling in a week loads of times due to our f.cked up government. But I don't think we've ever had a halving, even in strict lockdown.

It's got to be freak outliers, randomness taking it too high in the week 13 to 20 July, then too low 21 to 26 July?

Models have all broken. Were there any that even said cases could be falling now under X, Y and Z assumptions?
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Herainestold » Tue Jul 27, 2021 3:45 pm

lpm wrote:
Tue Jul 27, 2021 3:39 pm
We've had doubling in a week loads of times due to our f.cked up government. But I don't think we've ever had a halving, even in strict lockdown.

It's got to be freak outliers, randomness taking it too high in the week 13 to 20 July, then too low 21 to 26 July?

Models have all broken. Were there any that even said cases could be falling now under X, Y and Z assumptions?
I was listening to a pod last week, think it was BBC? government covid modeller,he said he expected this wave to crest around the end of the month.
Also said they expect a major wave in the autumn. We're not out of the woods yet.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by wilsontown » Tue Jul 27, 2021 3:51 pm

Here's my rate of change in cases plot for the whole pandemic. Current rates of decrease aren't exactly unprecedented but they're not far off.

cases_27072021_all_pandemic.png
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lpm
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Re: COVID-19

Post by lpm » Tue Jul 27, 2021 5:18 pm

Herainestold wrote:
Tue Jul 27, 2021 3:45 pm
I was listening to a pod last week, think it was BBC? government covid modeller,he said he expected this wave to crest around the end of the month.
Also said they expect a major wave in the autumn. We're not out of the woods yet.
Firstly, it's rather different for a model to suggest a plateau at around 100,000 at 31 July, and then see an actual peak of around 50,000 at 15 July. Nobody has a clue what will happen after schools reopen in Sept because we have zero functioning models.

Secondly, going into woods is good, they are pretty with lots to see, so we should reverse the meaning of "not out of the woods" to be a positive thing.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by wilsontown » Tue Jul 27, 2021 5:52 pm

Indeed, the modelling has hardly covered itself in glory during this whole pandemic...owt could happen in autumn.

Some potential explanations - in the worst hotspots the virus has run out of people to infect so overall cases are going down, but we're still vulnerable to outbreaks in other areas and might see spikes associated with those. Maybe some sort of stochastic model would give us a better idea of the realistic range of scenarios?

Or there's a new variant that is taking off but is not being picked up by tests? Not sure if that's even remotely plausible but it would be bad if it was.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Herainestold » Tue Jul 27, 2021 6:04 pm

lpm wrote:
Tue Jul 27, 2021 5:18 pm
Herainestold wrote:
Tue Jul 27, 2021 3:45 pm
I was listening to a pod last week, think it was BBC? government covid modeller,he said he expected this wave to crest around the end of the month.
Also said they expect a major wave in the autumn. We're not out of the woods yet.
Firstly, it's rather different for a model to suggest a plateau at around 100,000 at 31 July, and then see an actual peak of around 50,000 at 15 July. Nobody has a clue what will happen after schools reopen in Sept because we have zero functioning models.

Secondly, going into woods is good, they are pretty with lots to see, so we should reverse the meaning of "not out of the woods" to be a positive thing.
We honestly dont know what is going to happen next, we know it isn't done with us yet, there are many unvaccinated, we must keep our guard up.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jdc » Tue Jul 27, 2021 9:06 pm

wilsontown wrote:
Tue Jul 27, 2021 5:52 pm

Or there's a new variant that is taking off but is not being picked up by tests? Not sure if that's even remotely plausible but it would be bad if it was.
Theoretically, a mutation in the virus genome at the site to which either oligonucleotide primer should bind, may destabilise the interaction such that, despite the presence of virus genome, a negative result ensues. To mitigate against this possibility, primers are chosen to highly conserved regions of the genomes. In addition, tests can rely on more than one pair of primers that bind to different conserved regions of the genome, so that any single mutation is unable to prevent a positive test result.

Currently, the low level of changes in the SARS-CoV-2 genome make such false negative results improbable. In addition, the availability of new SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences as they are deposited openly in GISAID, enables the commercial manufacturers of test kits to monitor whether the primers chosen for current tests are likely to remain sensitive and specific, or require updating
https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy ... alysis.pdf

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Re: COVID-19

Post by raven » Tue Jul 27, 2021 10:19 pm

wilsontown wrote:
Tue Jul 27, 2021 5:52 pm
Indeed, the modelling has hardly covered itself in glory during this whole pandemic...owt could happen in autumn.

Some potential explanations - in the worst hotspots the virus has run out of people to infect so overall cases are going down, but we're still vulnerable to outbreaks in other areas and might see spikes associated with those. Maybe some sort of stochastic model would give us a better idea of the realistic range of scenarios?

Or there's a new variant that is taking off but is not being picked up by tests? Not sure if that's even remotely plausible but it would be bad if it was.
Personally, I'm of the opinion it's a combination of 1) behavourial change and 2) social networks being more cliquey than we expect so it reaches saturation in some parts of the network, but doesn't cross over into the rest.

As I said in the Gupta/Heneghan thread - here - I don't think we have a full understanding of what exactly causes waves of disease to crest and fall so dramatically.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Millennie Al » Wed Jul 28, 2021 12:49 am

One factor worth bearing in mind is the way the disease spreads. Despite lots of articles expressing R=3 as "each person passes it on to 3 others", or similar, the way it actually spreads is highly non-uniform, with a few people infecting very many and most people infecting nobody else or just one person. The few super-spreaders may have something in common (other than being super-spreaders, of course), so there may be some factor which disporoprtionately influences them. If they were to do something like stay at home for a week, that could have a very large effect.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Jul 28, 2021 9:57 am

lpm wrote:
Tue Jul 27, 2021 3:39 pm
We've had doubling in a week loads of times due to our f.cked up government. But I don't think we've ever had a halving, even in strict lockdown.

It's got to be freak outliers, randomness taking it too high in the week 13 to 20 July, then too low 21 to 26 July?

Models have all broken. Were there any that even said cases could be falling now under X, Y and Z assumptions?
I don’t have time to look them up but I’m not sure that all the models are broken.

I recall several modellers and scientists offering qualified support to reopening on 19 July based upon assumptions that cases probably would not explode. I don’t think anyone was certain. But I definitely don’t recall a consensus that cases would keep rising exponentially to hundreds of thousands per day.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Jul 28, 2021 10:21 am

Woodchopper wrote:
Wed Jul 28, 2021 9:57 am
lpm wrote:
Tue Jul 27, 2021 3:39 pm
We've had doubling in a week loads of times due to our f.cked up government. But I don't think we've ever had a halving, even in strict lockdown.

It's got to be freak outliers, randomness taking it too high in the week 13 to 20 July, then too low 21 to 26 July?

Models have all broken. Were there any that even said cases could be falling now under X, Y and Z assumptions?
I don’t have time to look them up but I’m not sure that all the models are broken.

I recall several modellers and scientists offering qualified support to reopening on 19 July based upon assumptions that cases probably would not explode. I don’t think anyone was certain. But I definitely don’t recall a consensus that cases would keep rising exponentially to hundreds of thousands per day.
See here, page 10: https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... 5-may-2021

The central line in the Warwick model on figure 5 page 10 doesn’t seem much different from what happened.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by lpm » Wed Jul 28, 2021 12:01 pm

But, if I'm reading it right, that model was based on Alpha. Figure 23 shows a hypothetical extra-transmissible variant, which we did indeed see with Delta.

Delta is around 40% more transmittable, yellow line, which they model as giving something like 10x the hospital admissions we'll be getting.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Jul 28, 2021 1:23 pm

lpm wrote:
Wed Jul 28, 2021 12:01 pm
But, if I'm reading it right, that model was based on Alpha. Figure 23 shows a hypothetical extra-transmissible variant, which we did indeed see with Delta.

Delta is around 40% more transmittable, yellow line, which they model as giving something like 10x the hospital admissions we'll be getting.
Are we looking at the same document, I can’t see a figure 23?

I’m looking at: SPI-M-O: Summary of further modelling of easing restrictions – roadmap step 3, 5 May 2021

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Re: COVID-19

Post by lpm » Wed Jul 28, 2021 1:40 pm

Sorry, yes, I went down a rabbit hole of looking at each model. I think they all are based on variant B.1.1.7 - Alpha - because Delta wasn't underway in the UK at the time.

The Warwick paper was this one:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... _and_4.pdf
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Re: COVID-19

Post by shpalman » Wed Jul 28, 2021 4:01 pm

Wow, even the usual Wednesday numbers shock isn't too bad and the UK average is still clearly headed down even if deaths haven't peaked yet. There's a bit of faffing gone on with the Scotland data though.

Maybe Italy is also beginning to peak, and we haven't done anything obvious to either open or close more than before. (Currently averaging a bit less than 5000 cases per day and 15 deaths per day).

The announcement that you will eventually need a Green Pass to go to a bar or take long-distance domestic transport may have pushed a few more people into getting vaccinated (as opposed to getting vaccinated to, you know, not die) but still we seem to be mostly using the doses as fast as they arrive. However, it may be the case that this won't come into force next week but rather at the end of August so that it doesn't stop people from taking long-distance domestic transport in order to go to the beach, for example. So there's still hope for the virus to make a resurgence in the beach clubs.

sh.t graphs of 7-day averages of daily cases and deaths per 100,000 for the UK, Italy, various Italian regions, and the provinces of Como and Milan.
Italy-regions-cases-20210728.png
Italy-regions-cases-20210728.png (84.17 KiB) Viewed 2248 times
Italy-regions-deaths-20210728.png
Italy-regions-deaths-20210728.png (74.85 KiB) Viewed 2248 times
(Day 316 is the 1st of January 2021, the minimum in Italy's case rate was exactly 1 month ago).
having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Herainestold » Wed Jul 28, 2021 6:58 pm

It has been obvious for some time now that Delta variant is transmissible between vaccinated people. Now finally the CDC concurs.
But with the delta variant, the level of virus in infected vaccinated people is “indistinguishable” from the level of virus in the noses and throats of unvaccinated people, Walensky said.

The data emerged over the last couple of days from 100 samples. It is unpublished, and the CDC has not released it. But “it is concerning enough that we feel like we have to act,” Walensky said.

Vaccinated people “have the potential to spread that virus to others,” she said.
The vaccine still does a good job of saving lives. We have to use other tools to stop transmission. Lockdowns, masking (double), distancing.
This thing is far from over.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/20 ... uidelines/
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jimbob » Wed Jul 28, 2021 7:52 pm

wilsontown wrote:
Tue Jul 27, 2021 5:52 pm
Indeed, the modelling has hardly covered itself in glory during this whole pandemic...owt could happen in autumn.

Some potential explanations - in the worst hotspots the virus has run out of people to infect so overall cases are going down, but we're still vulnerable to outbreaks in other areas and might see spikes associated with those. Maybe some sort of stochastic model would give us a better idea of the realistic range of scenarios?

Or there's a new variant that is taking off but is not being picked up by tests? Not sure if that's even remotely plausible but it would be bad if it was.
If it was severe enough to spread you'd expect to see hospitalisations with covid-like symptoms but negative testing
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: COVID-19

Post by shpalman » Thu Jul 29, 2021 7:40 am

shpalman wrote:
Wed Jul 28, 2021 4:01 pm
Wow, even the usual Wednesday numbers shock isn't too bad...
Javid obviously hadn't got used to the Wednesday numbers shock though.

It's almost as if he's only been in the job 10 minutes and knows less about what's going on than some moron with a spreadsheet.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by wilsontown » Thu Jul 29, 2021 8:06 am

It's been mentioned on here before, but the press reporting daily numbers rather than 7-day averages really hasn't helped public understanding of what is going on. But if they haven't figured that out after 18 months it's probably a lost cause.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by sTeamTraen » Thu Jul 29, 2021 8:52 am

shpalman wrote:
Thu Jul 29, 2021 7:40 am
shpalman wrote:
Wed Jul 28, 2021 4:01 pm
Wow, even the usual Wednesday numbers shock isn't too bad...
Javid obviously hadn't got used to the Wednesday numbers shock though.

It's almost as if he's only been in the job 10 minutes and knows less about what's going on than some moron with a spreadsheet.
To be fair, he was probably responding to an equally poorly-informed question from a journalist. That's a whole Guardian article about one day's data.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by shpalman » Thu Jul 29, 2021 3:56 pm

sTeamTraen wrote:
Thu Jul 29, 2021 8:52 am
shpalman wrote:
Thu Jul 29, 2021 7:40 am
shpalman wrote:
Wed Jul 28, 2021 4:01 pm
Wow, even the usual Wednesday numbers shock isn't too bad...
Javid obviously hadn't got used to the Wednesday numbers shock though.

It's almost as if he's only been in the job 10 minutes and knows less about what's going on than some moron with a spreadsheet.
To be fair, he was probably responding to an equally poorly-informed question from a journalist. That's a whole Guardian article about one day's data.
Fair enough, the correct behaviour especially from someone in authority is usually to be cautious when numbers go down and to say "there you see I said we should have been cautious" when numbers go up. "Yeah great unlock everything" when numbers go down a bit for a few days is certainly unhelpful but "fuckit YOLO unlock everything anyway" when they were going up was worse.

Today's numbers being higher than yesterday's is not what you'd normally expect from a Thursday.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Lew Dolby » Thu Jul 29, 2021 6:49 pm

According to french tv news, Israel is about to start giving third doses of vaccine to the over-60s.

Are the rest, inc UK, going to follow ?
WOULD CUSTOMERS PLEASE REFRAIN FROM SITTING ON THE COUNTER BY THE BACON SLICER - AS WE'RE GETTING A LITTLE BEHIND IN OUR ORDERS.

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