Oh fun: the game where everyone puts their pet biases forward in an attempt to explain the behavior of a poorly understood complex system.
It reminds me of the financial news. "Commodities markets are spooked as backlash to latest Justin Bieber video mounts!"
In all seriousness, apart from the vaccination rate and strictly enforced lockdowns, I have yet to see an explanation for cases going up or down in a particular region that isn't contradicted by the results in some other region. I think we should just admit that except for vaccines and physically forcing 90% of the population into isolation, we don't have a clue what works and what doesn't.
As a tangent, one way to get much more accurate data in a much quicker way is to accept human challenge trials.
We don’t even know the answer to whether delta is vaccine resistant. With challenge trials it would be dead simple. Take 10,000 vaccinated volunteers, randomize into a delta and alpha groups. Spray them in the face with Covid. Compare rates one week later. Question answered immediately with statistical certainty.
Right now, we’re trying to answer questions like this using nothing other than extremely messy observational data that’s subject to all sorts of uncontrollable confounding variables.
The lockdown thing doesn't work as well as you'd think either.
We have nearly the world's toughest lockdown in Sydney, and weeks later the cases are higher than ever.
Same thing happened here in Melbourne last year, with "officially" the toughest lockdown in the world, for 120 days. It was absolutely miserable.
It eventually works - but the UK eventually saw a similar precipitous decline, along the same timeframe, while only relinquishing restrictions.
The only common thread is that in 5-8 weeks, the spike reverses and plummets, regardless of policy.
(Lockdowns may keep the spike much lower, along with the general spread. But I'm more interested in why they seem to have no effect on arresting or reversing the spread once it takes hold.)
Perspective: Aussie, plugged in, watching the West and India closely.
The lockdown works pretty well in other countries. It's just people in Sydney being ignorant. There are still house parties and carefree people. The anti-lockdown protest didn't help, but it wasn't totally unexpected considering the incompetence of the NSW gov. A lot of Aussies don't want to get vaccinated too, which is an important part to reduce infections. I got my Pfizer shot months ago, because people either didn't turn up or cancelled.
> There's a lot of evidence about what worked what didn't work
If that was true why can I take the population adjusted graphs for any interesting statistic, overlay several countries or states, and see the shape of them all is basically the same?
I would assert that for any of these non-pharmaceutical interventions to have been worthwhile the effect on such charts should be absolutely noticeable to any layman on the street. If you need PhD level math to tell a country who "did it right" apart from a country who "did it wrong"... it probably means that it wasn't worth "doing right".
Adjust for population and the nature of the country (ie values freedom highly), and then testing rates, and you'll see it's not as unique as you think.
Many other countries had huge death rates but didn't test much before and don't test the dead, unlike the States.
Then control for age and obesity, the two factors that make a population most vulnerable.
Please show me a chart where competent governments like NZ, Japan, Australia, China and Indonesia are somewhat similar to incompetent ones like Brazil, USA or South Africa.
I remember reading that the deaths in countries corresponded pretty tightly with obesity levels in the population. If that's true, that throws lots of "evidence" right out the window.
I saw a doctor on YouTube (just a private guy with his own channel) apply this same reasoning to Florida. Right now is Florida's "winter": meaning, people tend to stay indoors with the windows closed (to avoid the oppressive heat of the July and August).
It's not clear that even lockdowns work long term. With a single exception, all the countries that initially did well by having lockdowns early had worse later spikes because they had no herd immunity at all. And the last country is probably lying.
I'd support this by noting that the numbers in Scotland surged earlier then started declining earlier (where universities and schools go on summer holidays weeks before England). When English schools later broke up for summer, numbers there started declining too.
So no doubt numbers will start going up again when school returns, and will do so first in Scotland - as the virus burns through the young, unvaccinated population.
The staggered school return times you mention could be one factor (as could better weather resulting in outdoor socialising instead of indoor). The effect when schools return (~2 weeks from now in Scotland) might be muted however as hundreds of thousands more vaccinations will have been done in the parent-age population. In Scotland, for example, over 90% of adults have received the first dose, and 72% the second (implying that ~18% are in the waiting period for the 2nd). Perhaps we should expect to see a spike in cases in children, but not so much among their parents.
Did we not see the same effect last year (probably for the reasons you mentioned)? Numbers declined in summer, but then massively rose again in Oct-Nov.
I think this Autumn will reveal whether the vaccinations are giving us the protection needed to gradually open up society again.
For my part I really hope it does, as it will also encourage other countries to do the same and give the vaccination campaign a worldwide boost.
Let’s hope the peak just gone is the last big spike. In the final analysis I imagine the British public’s _willingness_ to get the jab will be seen as an enormous success factor, on top of the vaccine itself’s efficacy. This willingness merits study. High social trust of the NHS, historic common understanding of vaccines and everyone knowing someone affected by the virus all play their part. As an aside, I believe this to have been the NHS’ finest hour, and in future “the pandemic” will replace “the war” as the lynchpin reference point in time, as it were.
The UK government definitely seems to consider the British public's willingness to get vaccinated to be one of the key parts of the success story, from what I've seen. I will also say that their handling of issues like the AstraZeneca blood clotting issue has been really good compared to the shitshows elsewhere - careful, measured, with really clear communication about what they know and why it justifies the decisions about whether to vaccinate people with it.
It is possible, but there's still large cohorts of the population (ie under 18s) who have not had the virus and are not vaccinated, you would expect that when they go back to large scale mixing in schools together that transmission will increase among them and case numbers will go up.
And this isn't really an issue so long as the overwhelming majority of the old and vulnerable are vaccinated. But there still the potential for scary looking case numbers but not so much death numbers.
You have coronavirus symptoms. During the middle of a surge in cases, the government has announced that all coronavirus restrictions have ended and everybody can go back to normal. The vast majority of older and vulnerable people have been fully vaccinated.
Do you:
A: get a test and risk having to isolate
B: not get a test and live your life like normal as the government said you should
IMO it was most likely the Euros football/soccer championship leading to a lot of mixing in crowded spaces among younger men who maybe didn't yet have the vaccine or we're from backrounds that are the sort that typically ignore this sort of thing.
Yep, I know someone who went to one of the Euro matches. They got covid, and they also said that the facebook groups for supporters were absolutely full of people who had also gotten covid.
yes because the matches were all-over europe so same people who were in a packed pub a few days earlier were now on a plane to some other european country to watch the next match.
further, the borders remained open so people mixed at home and then went on holiday/visited family etc. UK is a major international transport hub and also has a large population of Indian descent so we likely "imported" delta from India relatively early as a result and then likely helped seed it in other western nations.
They should have put India on the red list several weeks earlier than they did when it was obvious for anyone to see what was going on, but they delayed for unknown reasons
Tentative signs the virus has burned out, either through infections or vaccinations. The wave has been entirely confined to the younger age brackets who are far less vaccinated.[1]
Being in central London right now, through anecdotal evidence I don't think we've suddenly become less sociable.
The Massachusetts study is rather confusing about delta and vaccination, but I think it emphasizes that demographics of who is socializing is skewed. So it might have burned out among those in the nightlife and still be highly dangerous among pensioners.
Your right, I forgot about y13 being the last year. Y11 is GCSE year which ends at 16. I’m not sure why the the age brackets don’t go up to Y13, when school ends.
Also lots of previously vaccinated people were exposed, but didn’t get infected.
Doesn’t mean their immune system did nothing though. I’d wager a lot of UK population basically got an ”organic 3rd vaccine dose”. My prediction is they have probably the highest immunity rates in the world atm
> a lot of UK population basically got an ”organic 3rd vaccine dose”.
Isn't that how the vaccination regime is supposed to work, actually? With two jabs in, contracting Covid still comes with something like 4%..20% hit rate.[ß] However, with two jabs the risk of hospitalisation is mercifully low, and roughly half of the cases are asymptomatic.
So instead of vaccinated people overloading the NHS, when they do get unlucky, they are much more likely to get through with only mild symptoms. For majority that "organic 3rd dose" works as a booster shot. They can still infect others, though...
NB. As far as I know, there are no good studies on how Long Covid manifests in a vaccinated population. I think the working assumption is that very mild symptomatic Covid also ends up with less severe Long Covid, but have heard of no data to back that up.
ß: Depending on the study, the vaccine in question and the variant. IIRC 2xPfizer provides ~88% protection against Delta, 95%+ against earlier non-Beta variants; 2xAstraZeneca provides 60%+ protection against Delta, 90%+ against non-Betas.
As far as I know, long covid is directly related to how sick you get. you hear all these stories of people being bed bound for a week or more, high fever, struggling to breathe, etc etc.
I'd think it sounds quite a lot like those people were really rather ill. I don't think people should expect to go back to running marathons or whatever a week after fighting to survive
It's the same for flu and other major viral infections. It can take a while to get back to full health - I don't think covid is anything new here? Just the usual "you almost died"?
Right many types of viral infections can cause post viral fatigue syndrome. This is nothing really new, it's just getting more attention now because of the sudden surge of cases.
The UK had a perfect storm of factors contributing to the severity of the Covid pandemic in that country: highly internationally mobile population, highly internally mobile population, a global travel hub, high population density, culture of close social mixing, no culture of mask wearing, colder climate leading to more indoor living, higher than average levels of elderly people, obese people, and of the ethnic groups most impacted by the virus, low appetite for strict enforcement of lockdowns, and low levels of government control over everyday living.
Other countries had some of these factors. Few if any had all of these factors.
What happened next? The vaccines turned out to be really effective.
The UK certainly doesn't have all of them for a start.
The lock-downs had high levels of compliance, just a lot of people moaning from their sofa (or whatever soapbox they have available, reach varies greatly, inversely with intelligence in many cases).
Population density, travel hub, obesity levels, delayed first lock-down would be my list.
Probably both. We should remember what was the 1st approach to the Covid problem by Johnson (that is, well over one year ago): he wanted to achieve herd immunity without having enough vaccines or not having them at all, and initially there were no imposed lockdowns or infection prevention rules. The point is that along the extremely high death toll caused by that approach, a huge percentage of people over there might have caught the virus without symptoms, therefore becoming immune to a 2nd infection or at least immune to nasty symptoms. So it's entirely possible that the herd immunity was eventually achieved, although many, including me, would agree the price to pay has been not fair.
>he wanted to achieve herd immunity without having enough vaccines or not having them at all
Instead he managed to brew an exciting new variant, which is what every health official was warning against.
And I'm guessing that unless the majority of the population are rapidly inoculated then exciting new strains could constantly evolve until we have something truly nasty.
I don't really see how the level of immunity could be low enough in June to allow rapid growth, and then suddenly be high enough in mid-July to cause rapid decline. Wouldn't we expect a population close to herd immunity to see slow growth, and a population just over herd immunity to see a slow decline?
I think it does mean that the virus spreads slower (although the exact amount will also depend on factors like how vaccinated people are distributed among the population). Whereas in an unvaccinated population, each infected person might spread the virus to (say) five others, in a 70% vaccinated population, on average 3.5 of those others would be vaccinated, so the virus would only spread to 1.5 others. This gives a slower rate of growth. Once that rate of growth falls below 1, herd immunity is achieved. When you are close to herd immunity, that rate should be just a little above 1, leading to slow but positive growth.
I think that the question isn't slow or fast, it's exponential or not exponential. If you are getting 9 infections for every infection then that's a bit exponent. But, 2 for every infection is also an exponent - just a smaller one. Once you get below 2 for every infection then you are in the territory of slow growth - but not for long and not everywhere. The UK had a patchy delta wave, my guess is that when the non herd immune demographics and areas started to get herd immunity (drop below 2) then the breaks really slammed on.
The collapse (unexpected by almost everyone) happened after "freedom day", when masks were no longer mandatory and it became legal to stand at the bar in a pub. Probably co-incidence.
It has to be a coincidence. It happened almost the exact day, maybe even a little earlier.
It should take about a week to start seeing the effect of a change in policy. From incubation time to testing to results. Usually, we count two weeks to be sure.
Also people ditch the mask when they are "close enough" to the day. I saw the masks drop as early as a month before that date. I really don't think 100% of the shoppers in my grocery stores were vaccinated.
There are many coincidences and spurious correlations in the world. It's informative to propose a falsifiable mechanism behind a correlation which can be tested independently.
I could reframe your hypothesis in a falsifiable way such as "perhaps ending lockdowns in the UK caused individuals to spend more time outdoors or in open air restaurants rather than smaller closed doors activities such as dinner parties", or "perhaps ending lockdowns in the UK caused people to spend more time in other locations rather than large shared ventilation apartment complexes".
More likely the causality goes the other way: if the models hadn't predicted (as they did) that cases would peak around that time, "freedom day" would have been scheduled for later.
> “Something strange is happening in Britain,” the Washington Post declared this week. “COVID cases are plummeting instead of soaring.” A few weeks ago, when the country’s new daily-case total was around 60,000, the prominent British epidemiologist and government adviser Neil Ferguson declared that a rise to 100,000 a day was inevitable, and that 200,000 a day was possible. The country is now at 27,000 and falling.
That's showing hospitalisations rather than cases, and most scenarios show the peak in early August. Hospitalisations lag cases, and it looks like early August will be right: we haven't seen the peak yet.
It's bit early to be sure yet (the UK fall in cases has slowed greatly in the last week), but if that turns out to be true "the models predicted that cases would peak around that time" would still be OK for the purposes of this thread: the point is that it's unsurprising that cases began to fall within a week or two of "freedom day".
