Summer Solstice Unlockdown

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Will the UK achieve unlockdown by the Summer Solstice?

Yes, easy peasy
1
2%
Yes, but only because the govt won't want to u-turn
19
42%
There or thereabouts, might be pushed back a couple of weeks
5
11%
No, the numbers won't allow it, and each stage will be delayed adding up to a couple more months of measures
9
20%
No, not a chance, the virus will have another serious wave and relockdown will be required
11
24%
 
Total votes: 45

Herainestold
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by Herainestold » Sun Sep 19, 2021 6:36 pm

shpalman wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 6:23 pm
Herainestold wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 6:16 pm
Thats 50 000 deaths over the year, plus whatever we see over the winter. Are we looking at 70 000 or 100 000 per year?
Well, it would be 50 000 deaths over the year, if the next 51 weeks were to be the same.* But I doubt they will be. Maybe the next week or two will also be similar but then it will come down, because cases are coming down quickly for some reason. Then, who knows what effects schools and autumn will have along with the growing degree of immunity in the population.

* - there have been more than 90 000 deaths since this time last year, and more than 60 000 deaths since the beginning of 2021.
I guess the question is will we get more deaths from a big spike like last winter or a slow and steady accumulation? Given that the last years numbers include the Winter Surge, i expect we will probably be in the 70-80 000 deaths over the next year. And cases are going up again.

The Torygraph has an article describing three possible outcomes for the winter, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. I am voting for the Ugly scenario.
The fear in the UK is two-fold: that the NHS would not be able to cope with two respiratory outbreaks simultaneously and that a flu outbreak - if it did occur - could be especially nasty as we have been nearly two years without one.

“We are likely to be more susceptible to flu since the overall population immunity will not have been built up last winter and so will have waned”, said Dr John McCauley, the director of the Worldwide Influenza Centre at the Francis Crick Institute in London.

On the other hand, we may be less vulnerable to an outbreak because the level of flu in circulation globally remains relatively low. That’s “the balance”, he said.

It’s this uncertainty that is causing leading voices to urge stronger government action.

“The Government has set out the measures it believes can allow the country to manage the autumn and winter period,” said former prime minister Tony Blair in a new report released today which, among other measures, calls for the rapid introduction of vaccine passports.

“In our view this plan needs to be accelerated and additional measures introduced, or we run the risk of further lockdowns,” Mr Blair added.
I am pretty sure lockdown is inevitable, the motto of this government is "Too little, too late"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-heal ... -good-bad/
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by lpm » Sun Sep 19, 2021 6:42 pm

Herainestold wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 6:36 pm
And cases are going up again.
Cases are falling.

The lags are unwinding so hospitalisations per day is now also falling.

And total in hospital, with its additional lag, is starting to fall.

Deaths are not yet falling, but are certain to do so because cases in the old age groups are falling.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Sep 20, 2021 10:26 am

lpm wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 6:42 pm
Herainestold wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 6:36 pm
And cases are going up again.
Cases are falling.

The lags are unwinding so hospitalisations per day is now also falling.

And total in hospital, with its additional lag, is starting to fall.

Deaths are not yet falling, but are certain to do so because cases in the old age groups are falling.
Cases haven't been falling over the past week (at least by date reported). Probably too early to declare a new trend though.

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by wilsontown » Mon Sep 20, 2021 10:38 am

Usual graph of the change in the 7 day case average up until yesterday. Pick the bones out of that...

cases_19082021.png
cases_19082021.png (31.9 KiB) Viewed 2362 times
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by lpm » Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:00 am

The chart shows two days of zero after two weeks of respectable falls, hence showing Woodchopper to be wrong. You obviously can't over-interpret two zeros, given the error bars, and you can't proclaim a change in trend.

Obviously cases could start going up again any time, those two zeros could be followed by positives, it's all finely balanced. But for now cases are falling.

Hospitalisations are what we care about, and after their standard lags they followed cases downwards - showing it's not some testing rate quirk.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by shpalman » Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:28 am

Monday's number is always low because of less testing at the weekend so I'd wait until ~Wednesday evening before declaring a trend. But last week cases were coming down off a peak.
Last edited by shpalman on Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:28 am

lpm wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:00 am
The chart shows two days of zero after two weeks of respectable falls, hence showing Woodchopper to be wrong. You obviously can't over-interpret two zeros, given the error bars, and you can't proclaim a change in trend.

Obviously cases could start going up again any time, those two zeros could be followed by positives, it's all finely balanced. But for now cases are falling.

Hospitalisations are what we care about, and after their standard lags they followed cases downwards - showing it's not some testing rate quirk.
I did say that its too early to declare a trend. Lets wait a week and see what the case numbers do.

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by sTeamTraen » Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:52 am

shpalman wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 5:24 pm
I make it 1003 but yes, today's number of reported deaths, 56, is the same as last Sunday's, so it's still 1003.
I use the Johns Hopkins data. I think they include Gibraltar or some other outpost under the "GBR" ISO country code.

Similarly, the numbers for NLD from Johns Hopkins are always a tiny bit higher than those from the Dutch government and Worldometer because of the differences between (the Netherlands) and (the Kingdom of the Netherlands).
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by lpm » Mon Sep 20, 2021 12:27 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:28 am
lpm wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:00 am
The chart shows two days of zero after two weeks of respectable falls, hence showing Woodchopper to be wrong. You obviously can't over-interpret two zeros, given the error bars, and you can't proclaim a change in trend.

Obviously cases could start going up again any time, those two zeros could be followed by positives, it's all finely balanced. But for now cases are falling.

Hospitalisations are what we care about, and after their standard lags they followed cases downwards - showing it's not some testing rate quirk.
I did say that its too early to declare a trend. Lets wait a week and see what the case numbers do.
You said that last week.

It doesn't matter here because it's just Idiot Doom Guy but it's worse on twitter. Previously credible commentators now cherry pick any bad news they stumble across - to the extent that their misinformation is verging on outright lying. And they don't get called on it, cos they're the goodies who are veterans in fighting the pandemic's baddies.

I suppose it doesn't make much difference now the epidemic stage is ending, but there's a chance a new variant will return us to the exponential world and we'll need credible arguments to push the govt into action.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:05 pm

lpm wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 12:27 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:28 am
lpm wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:00 am
The chart shows two days of zero after two weeks of respectable falls, hence showing Woodchopper to be wrong. You obviously can't over-interpret two zeros, given the error bars, and you can't proclaim a change in trend.

Obviously cases could start going up again any time, those two zeros could be followed by positives, it's all finely balanced. But for now cases are falling.

Hospitalisations are what we care about, and after their standard lags they followed cases downwards - showing it's not some testing rate quirk.
I did say that its too early to declare a trend. Lets wait a week and see what the case numbers do.
You said that last week.

It doesn't matter here because it's just Idiot Doom Guy but it's worse on twitter. Previously credible commentators now cherry pick any bad news they stumble across - to the extent that their misinformation is verging on outright lying. And they don't get called on it, cos they're the goodies who are veterans in fighting the pandemic's baddies.

I suppose it doesn't make much difference now the epidemic stage is ending, but there's a chance a new variant will return us to the exponential world and we'll need credible arguments to push the govt into action.
I agree, and with your earlier comment that its finely balanced and could go either way. Its good that hospital admissions seem to be trending down.

We're into the endemic phase now. The problem with that is its still running at circa 1000 deaths per week while a lot of people in risk groups are still being very careful.

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by shpalman » Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:11 pm

lpm wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 12:27 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:28 am
lpm wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:00 am
The chart shows two days of zero after two weeks of respectable falls, hence showing Woodchopper to be wrong. You obviously can't over-interpret two zeros, given the error bars, and you can't proclaim a change in trend.

Obviously cases could start going up again any time, those two zeros could be followed by positives, it's all finely balanced. But for now cases are falling.

Hospitalisations are what we care about, and after their standard lags they followed cases downwards - showing it's not some testing rate quirk.
I did say that its too early to declare a trend. Lets wait a week and see what the case numbers do.
You said that last week.
Last week we couldn't declare last week's trend, this week we can't declare this week's trend. But we can declare last week's.

"It went down".

In a week from now, when things are obviously going up again, PHE will come out with their meaningless estimate of the R value based on that data as being "0.9 - 1.1".

You still have the highest case and death rates of just about any reasonably sized area of Europe.
lpm wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 12:27 pm
It doesn't matter here because it's just Idiot Doom Guy but it's worse on twitter. Previously credible commentators now cherry pick any bad news they stumble across - to the extent that their misinformation is verging on outright lying. And they don't get called on it, cos they're the goodies who are veterans in fighting the pandemic's baddies.

I suppose it doesn't make much difference now the epidemic stage is ending, but there's a chance a new variant will return us to the exponential world and we'll need credible arguments to push the govt into action.
If anywhere in Western Europe is going to breed a new variant, it'll be the UK.

I'm not entirely sure if the numbers in hospital are actually going down yet though. That data will probably come in tomorrow evening.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by lpm » Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:29 pm

shpalman wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:11 pm
You still have the highest case and death rates of just about any reasonably sized area of Europe.
Ballpark figures:

Total deaths: 1,000 per week.

Breakthrough deaths of double vaccinated: 10 per week.

Sorry to be blunt, but it's basically voluntary deaths at this stage.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Sep 20, 2021 2:03 pm

lpm wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:29 pm
shpalman wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:11 pm
You still have the highest case and death rates of just about any reasonably sized area of Europe.
Ballpark figures:

Total deaths: 1,000 per week.

Breakthrough deaths of double vaccinated: 10 per week.

Sorry to be blunt, but it's basically voluntary deaths at this stage.
Not at all.

From the last two Public Health England vaccine surveillance reports, tables on page 16 in both:

During weeks 32-35 there were 2758 deaths, of which 25% were not vaccinated, 4% had one dose and 69% had received their second vaccination more then 14 days after getting infected.

During weeks 33-36 there were 3429 deaths, of which 12% were not vaccinated, 3% had one dose and 84% had received their second vaccination more then 14 days after getting infected.

Hence all the earnest talk of waning immunity.

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Sep 20, 2021 2:07 pm

lpm wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:29 pm
Sorry to be blunt, but it's basically voluntary deaths at this stage.
Almost all the deaths are among adults. Circa 95-97% of adults have antibodies.

Almost all the deaths are among people who have a protection card (and the infection card appears to be stronger than the vaccination card).

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by lpm » Mon Sep 20, 2021 2:09 pm

Sorry, yes. I was doing an invalid multiplication of rates, forgetting the huge volume difference for vaccinated vs the few unvaccinated.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by shpalman » Mon Sep 20, 2021 2:54 pm

lpm wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 2:09 pm
Sorry, yes. I was doing an invalid multiplication of rates, forgetting the huge volume difference for vaccinated vs the few unvaccinated.
If by "invalid multiplication of rates" you mean "completely inventing the rates"...
Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 2:03 pm
From the last two Public Health England vaccine surveillance reports, tables on page 16 in both:

During weeks 32-35 there were 2758 deaths, of which 25% were not vaccinated, 4% had one dose and 69% had received their second vaccination more then 14 days after getting infected.

During weeks 33-36 there were 3429 deaths, of which 12% were not vaccinated, 3% had one dose and 84% had received their second vaccination more then 14 days after getting infected.

Hence all the earnest talk of waning immunity.
On page 16 of the week 37 report v2 covering weeks 33-36 I get 3456 total deaths, by the way. 24.6% not vaccinated, 4% one dose, 70% two doses.

Most of the deaths (>46%) are in the 80+ range, and almost all of the 80+ range are vaccinated, so of course most of the deaths are amongst the vaccinated (and most of the deaths in general in the population would be older people). But the rate is about three times lower in vaccinated versus unvaccinated in that age range.

The 50-59 age range gives death rates of 1.7/100,000 if 2-dosed, or 14.6/100,000 if unvaccinated. That's not even a factor of ten amongst the not-so-at-risk ages, let alone the factor of 100 you just made up. The best protection seems to be a factor of 9 in the 40-49 age range.

Of course this is the death rate within 60 days of a positive covid test, so you would also need to take into account the effect of the vaccine on being ill enough to feel the need to take a test in the first place, but as previously noted the detected infection rates are similar between vaccinated and unvaccinted except for England being a stupid country which doesn't know its own population.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Sep 20, 2021 3:04 pm

shpalman wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 2:54 pm
On page 16 of the week 37 report v2 covering weeks 33-36 I get 3456 total deaths, by the way. 24.6% not vaccinated, 4% one dose, 70% two doses.
You're correct. I'd typed the wrong numbers into my Excel sheet. Apologies.

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by lpm » Mon Sep 20, 2021 3:06 pm

A nice high number of cases today. Now you can say cases are going up. Which is excellent news, drives more protection points into the system ahead of the flu season.

See what I did there?
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by shpalman » Mon Sep 20, 2021 3:28 pm

And of course it will also lead to more deaths, which is excellent news, so that people will die now instead of during the flu season.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by PeteB » Mon Sep 20, 2021 3:58 pm

Under 20s really increasing growth now, will be interesting to see how far it is able to spread into the heavily vaccinated age groups - hopefully if the vaccinated catch it from the U20s, they won't be too infectious to others that are vaccinated (think this will be critical as to how bad this winter is)

there was a bit on twitter

https://twitter.com/andrew_croxford/sta ... 0088151043

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by lpm » Mon Sep 20, 2021 4:40 pm

shpalman wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 3:28 pm
And of course it will also lead to more deaths, which is excellent news, so that people will die now instead of during the flu season.
Good point. It will avoid over burdening the crematoriums.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by shpalman » Mon Sep 20, 2021 4:52 pm

I've got a great idea which will reduce England's all-causes death rate to zero in a few weeks.

Ok, the death rate for the next few weeks is going to be a little bit above average.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by Bird on a Fire » Mon Sep 20, 2021 5:00 pm

Just so I'm clear, dying is not really voluntary at all, and the UK is managing to kill more of its vaccinated population than other European countries?
We have the right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment.

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by shpalman » Mon Sep 20, 2021 5:06 pm

Being vaccinated reduces your chance of dying by a factor of 5-10 when the virus finds you, and the government's strategy is to make sure that it finds you sooner rather than later so that you get your dying out of the way before the Christmas rush when everyone goes shopping/travelling/dying.

Being unvaccinated reduces the probability that you actually live in England at all by a factor of 2 which is why vaccination both does, and doesn't, reduce your risk of getting infected.
Last edited by shpalman on Mon Sep 20, 2021 5:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by shpalman » Mon Sep 20, 2021 5:13 pm

I put some calculations from my bit of Italy in another thread:
shpalman wrote:
Thu Sep 09, 2021 6:36 pm
Our local health service reckons that the unvaccinated get infected six times more easily

This indicates how many people are in each age band in the provinces of Como and Varese, and the percentage of them who have both* vaccine doses (* or the one J&J dose, however tiny that number is).

Image

But the headline figure comes from an incidence, since the beginning of August, of 6.06 cases per 1000 unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated inhabitants (mostly mild/asymptomatic but 1.46% with a median age of 53 needed to go to hospital) versus 1.08 per 1000 of fully vaccinated inhabitants of which 1.19% (median age 83.5) needed to go to hospital.

At this point you can probably figure out what the table says ("lieve" means light symptoms which don't involve the respiratory system).

Image
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