Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

Don't forget that deaths lag behind cases by a few weeks usually. What were cases doing two weeks ago?

Rising pretty darn rapidly.

The lag is more like a month. Cases were still flat a month ago.

Hospitalisations are an earlier indicator and have doubled since a month ago. But still hard to tell what the relationship is and how this will unfold.

The usual delays are:-

Cases -> 2 weeks -> hospitalisations -> 2 weeks -> deaths

This is the other way to look at deaths in a broader sense:

Wow that's a confusing graph... actually I think it's just the key, if the 2021 Covid deaths was last on the list it would be easier to understand.
That's quite a jump from end of Dec 2020 to start of Jan 2021. I feel like a 2 year long x-axis (with the red line simply repeated) would also be easier to look at.

Think the dip at the end of 2020 & peak at the start of 2021 is due to the office closure mention there though. You can see it starts to peak pre-xmas and would likely continue to do so into the new year. I guess the reason for it being 1 year on the x-axis is that we can see that 2021 is roughly in line with pre-covid years in terms of death rate.

Edit: Misread your comment about repeating the red line, ignore that last point.

Surely we can't still be using linear y scales after all this time

It feels like years ago. Even thinking back to those sensations of uncertainty and chaos, the cases rising out of control, mortuaries overwhelmed, the PM hospitalised, disagreement over symptoms and mode of transmission, pasta and eggs gone from every shelf… It’s crazy to think about what could have feasibly happened if a handful of policy decisions had been made differently or hadn’t been made.

If the graph is aiming to show that deaths are back to pre-covid levels (which I'm assuming, granted), would a logarithmic axis be beneficial? I can see the reasoning for monitoring & making predictions in the case of deaths increasing at an increasing rate. But the graph looks to show that it's relatively stable (though those troughs make it tricky to be accurate on that). I have no idea on the actual validity of the underlying data btw, but from looking at the graph I don't see the issue with a linear axis.

Given the noise levels inherent in the 'died 28 days after a Covid diagnosis' metric, and the relatively small numbers involved, I can't see it'd make much difference either way. At the moment the case numbers are rocketing, the hospitalisation numbers are increasingly very slightly, and the deaths numbers are effectively flat. HMG is gambling that this will remain the case. Hopefully they're correct. Whether they are or not, I don't think anyone really knows.

Well that's my point really, the deaths aren't flat on a log scale. A linear scale hides all the detail.

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?yScale=log&zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=new_deaths_per_million&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=~GBR

I won't guess what the effect of vaccinations will be. Seems too early to draw any conclusions. Probably want to look at the case fatality rate and hope it drops off significantly.

Older people are more likely to die and more likely to be fully vaccinated. So deaths may stay quite flat

The under 30s though...have some long covid / hospital potentially :(

Daughter's year group off school from today (year 3 so age 7-8 year olds) following a positive test in her "bubble". Year 6 are already off.

Many plans cancelled. No sports day for two years running, her cricket match tonight will be off, my parents were supposed to be coming at the weekend to go to my cousin's post wedding garden drinks - no idea what we'll do there now.

The bubble includes my daughter because they share the lunch hall, but the class with the positive test sits a few benches away. Legally, she cannot now leave the house for 10 days, even with a negative test.

Going on last week's figures (nearly 400,000 off school), and seeing how cases are only rising, I reckon around a million kids will have been off school this week, all should legally be staying at home regardless of no symptoms/negative tests. To me, this is crazy.

My issue is not so much with the risk averse nature of kids bubbling / off school, but that idea that opening up so much is just leaving them in the firing line, both of a) catching covid, but also b) have their lives disrupted by relatively removed "contacts" testing positive. Seeing Wembley / Centre Court packed, pubs heaving means this was always going to happen. One of her friends went to Wembley for the Germany game, and bunch of others were at the pub with their dads. It only takes one out of a hundred to catch it and they are all off!

If any minister comes out and says they are prioritising our children's wellbeing they can get in the sea!

Yup, it's bullshit. If we treated adults the same way as school children then everyone at Wembley for the England/Scotland march should be self isolating today.

The rules only make sense if the goal is to stop the spread at all costs, which we’ve pretty much given up on already.

Also, we'd decided to take both kids out a week early at the end of term. We wanted to be in the clear for our planned trip back to the other set of grandparents at the start of the holidays. While they're double vaxxed, they are much more vulnerable in general (70's heart condition and mid 80's). We've not seen them enough the last 18 months, and we're well into the "not sure how many more years we have with both of them" phase - so we're trying to safely spend as much time as possible with them now.

Told school our reasoning, based on the increasing cases and high chance of being told to isolate in the last week of term for at least one of the girls, and got a snotty letter back that they couldn't authorise the absence! This was yesterday and today they've told 100 kids not to come to school!

they couldn't authorise the absence

I'm on the side of the school on this one. There will be loads of families in a similar situation and they can't shut the school a week later. The summer holidays are 6 weeks which gives plenty of time to spend a fortnight at home and then go visit relatives after that.

Yeah, you're probably right. It's largely logistics, with other grandkids coming on different weeks, and our wider summer plans (lots of camping) meaning that first week and the last week of the holidays being our main window.
When we arranged it all, we hadn't foreseen the full petri dish scenario for this last half term!

I still think they should be leaving off the patronising and aggressive language in the letter, given we're living through a fucking pandemic!

patronising and aggressive language in the letter

Too much of that standard stuff I agree.

We take our kids out of school once or twice a year for Rosh Hashanah and/or Yom Kippur (they move about so one is often on a weekend). Each year we write to the school telling them the kids will not be in and each year we get a letter back giving us permission. I'm yet to write back saying "we aren't asking for permission, we are telling - if you want to have a court case about religious discrimination I'm happy to waste loads of cash on legal fees".

Meanwhile #1 was off sick a load at the start of one year. In and out the GPs trying to work out if there is any underlying condition (still haven't got to the bottom of that, still have outstanding blood tests from 18 months ago, nothing happening on that front and can't even get the GP to engage at the moment). She dropped below some percentage threshold for attendance so we got a letter from the council attendance officer telling us off and threatening legal action. Really not helpful.

Aaaand daughter had a temperature overnight, so we're self-isolating until her test comes back. Fingers crossed it's just one of the other children's bugs that have been going around...

all should legally be staying at home regardless of no symptoms/negative tests. To me, this is crazy.

I've been home from work all week and taking the toddler to the park. Judging by the amount of big (adolescent /young teens) kids bombing around pre-kickout they're definitely not all staying home.

I recall last year, some of the science community, or one of the SAGE advisors suggesting you couldn’t have pubs and schools open at the same time. Looks like we’ve decided the pubs win.

I nipped to Asda twice on lunch breaks this week. 20% of trolley pushers had school age kids with them so

they're definitely not all staying home

for sure. but if single parent & need to get weekly shop done this might be why.

In Boris' world the schools all kick out at the end of this week, forgetting that the majority of the state schools are still in until July 23rd or thereabouts.