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The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

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Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#251

Post by tialaramex »

quenix wrote: post #229
dmje wrote: post #223

UK citizen here. I just don't think this "collapse" is the case. My gut feel is that everyone has stopped doing lateral flow tests and reporting those tests: noone wants to be isolating now the summer holidays have started, and many people are now ignoring track and trace because they're scared of the possible "pingdemic". I know many people who have stopped scanning in to venues. I reckon many suspect they may have…

Shouldn’t we see this reflected in hospital admissions?

They're a lagging indicator, as are deaths. So, eventually.

If you stare at the government's site https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ hospital admissions seem to have levelled off, and maybe deaths are levelling off but it's too early to be sure.

People get infected (and begin testing positive) first, then some of them get sick (a few more will seek a test and be positive) and then some of those seek hospital admission or call for advice and the advice for their symptoms is "get to hospital" and almost all of the people who eventually die get admitted to hospital first, in some cases dying after weeks of attempted care.

I think there's room for some pessimism without going so far as your parent poster, cases may be down but not as much as it seems. Lots of people seem to have gone off around the country on holiday which seems crazy to me, but clearly didn't make things much worse. People can choose not to seek a test while they're alive, but corpses have no say in what the post mortem data says.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#252

Post by tguvot »

runawaybottle wrote: post #50

Do we have conclusive numbers on how long these vaccines last? I’m reading that Pfizer lasts about 6 months? There’s no way there won’t be a surge again next summer if that’s the case.

slide 19: https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/do...

slide 4+: https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/reports/vaccine-efficacy-safet...

and in general https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2109072

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#253

Post by nradov »

adventured wrote: post #219
sokoloff wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the forever-COVID reality for 95+% of the population is "you really, really ought to get that annual booster shot" (instead of "get the flu shot iff it's convenient"), that's not actually so terrible. If it becomes century-long endemic in the population, kids are exposed to it, likely creating a productive exposure-related immune reaction until they're old enough to get an mRNA vaccine.

Definitely. I don't think it's terrible at all given the alternative is tens or hundreds of thousands of additional people dying from Covid per year in the US. I guess we'll soon see the extent to which the public can be convinced to get booster shots every year. The governments of the world will have their jobs cut out for them, there will be a lot of resistance to forever Covid vaccinations as time goes on (and ver…

Vaccination is great but in addition to that we could also cut the ongoing death toll through public health campaigns to eliminate hypovitaminosis D. This could be done relatively cheaply.

https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#254

Post by lucb1e »

qeternity wrote: post #246
lucb1e wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My gut feel is that everyone has stopped doing lateral flow tests and reporting those tests: noone wants to be isolating Okay that's easy to check: data should show a reduction in positive tests roughly on par with the reduction in number of tests. Recent peak value of tests per day was 16.42 per 1000 citizens on Jul 17th. At that time there were 630.57 positive test results per million citizens. On July 28th (late…

UK resident here: I don't know of anyone who has gotten covid in many months, and nearly everyone I know is vaxxed. I believe this Delta collapse. It's exactly what you'd expect given our pace of vaccinations.

If we're going by anecdotal evidence, I know many more people that get the flu every year than that got covid-19. But I don't think my (on average) responsible acquaintances with (on average) workable-from-home jobs tell the whole story.

You're right though that the numbers somewhat suggest that we're managing to beat the Delta variant. Is it due to vaccinations? The vaccination rate has been slowing for months now, yet the UK still had that spike. The difference in people that decided to get vaccinated between early June (start of positive cases spike) and July 21st (when the decrease set in) is 9%. (from 59% to 68%). It doesn't seem to me that a few percent more vaccinations explains everything. A percentage in the upper 60s, for first vaccinations no less (not even a full vaccination), should not be enough to beat Delta from what I heard about the R0.

(Data source is the same OWID link, you can configure it to show vaccination data.)

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#255

Post by infamouscow »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #221
infamouscow wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an assumption, it's obvious to anyone that looks at data rather than of blindly listening to sensationalized media bullshit.

No, it comes from this model: Highly-deadly diseases will kill their hosts quickly, limiting their spread. Therefore, one of two things will happen: • A less-deadly variant will emerge, spread faster, and outcompete its more deadly cousin. • The deadly disease will kill enough of the population that its R number drops below 1, and thus the deadly disease will die out. Therefore, observed diseases will tend to get les…

I'm not sure I agree with you (yet), but thanks for providing info rather than downvoting!

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#256

Post by Kluny »

throwaway4good wrote: post #245
dmje wrote: post #223

UK citizen here. I just don't think this "collapse" is the case. My gut feel is that everyone has stopped doing lateral flow tests and reporting those tests: noone wants to be isolating now the summer holidays have started, and many people are now ignoring track and trace because they're scared of the possible "pingdemic". I know many people who have stopped scanning in to venues. I reckon many suspect they may have…

It really makes me wonder why the authorities don’t do proper randomized surveys? It is obvious that the testing numbers will go up and down as the population goes scared and then goes don’t care.

Cause they’re already at maximum capacity with higher priority projects, I would imagine.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#257

Post by qeternity »

lucb1e wrote: post #254
qeternity wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK resident here: I don't know of anyone who has gotten covid in many months, and nearly everyone I know is vaxxed. I believe this Delta collapse. It's exactly what you'd expect given our pace of vaccinations.

If we're going by anecdotal evidence, I know many more people that get the flu every year than that got covid-19. But I don't think my (on average) responsible acquaintances with (on average) workable-from-home jobs tell the whole story. You're right though that the numbers somewhat suggest that we're managing to beat the Delta variant. Is it due to vaccinations? The vaccination rate has been slowing for months now,…

I'm not saying it's due to vaccinations, I'm saying it's what you would expect given our pace of vaccinations. All we have are correlations.

The reason I say this is that we have a relatively small population of unvaccinated people, and so with the high R0 of Delta, you'd expect it to rip through these unvaccinated pockets quickly and burn out, which is what we're seeing.

I'd expect a few more Delta mini-waves similar to this in the coming months.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#258

Post by smileypete »

saddlerustle wrote: post #164
microtherion wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Children are at exceptionally low risk from Covid. Low risk of death, yes. But still a substantial risk of long lasting severe effects: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... A complete loss of sense of taste, or chronic fatigue are both entirely possible outcomes with children, and at this time, it's not clear at all how long these effects last. Conversely, the effects of myocarditis, whil…

The highest quality study on this to date [1] found no difference in the prevalence of long term symptoms between kids that had covid and kids that didn't. [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.16.21257255v...

See how this guy misrepresents the study on TWiV episode 783.

https://youtu.be/73KWHPsw-ag?t=525

He states that '4% seropositive having symptoms after 12 weeks', but omits to mention that 2% of seronegative have symptoms after 12 weeks too...

Also he doesn't mention the 9%/10% rate split at 4 weeks, or the symptoms:

Tiredness, Headache, Congested or runny nose, Stomachach, Sleep disturbances, Cough

So he's making the case for child vaccination on the basis of 2 extra seropositive children having one or more of the above symptoms.

And, BTW, the study authors themselves note the limitations as follows:

'Limitations include the relatively small number of seropositive children, possible misclassification of some false seropositive children, potential recall bias, parental report of child’s symptoms, and lack of information on symptom severity.'

The study authors concluded that:

'Seropositive children, all with a history of pauci-symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection, did not report long COVID more frequently than seronegative children. This study suggests a very low prevalence of long COVID in a randomly selected population-based cohort of children followed over 6 months after serological testing.'

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#259

Post by IshKebab »

monooso wrote: post #13

The ONS regularly tests a random selection of people. Their results typically trail the daily infection numbers by two weeks. Notably, the most recent ONS samples demonstrated a sharp rise in cases. The suggestion is that cases are actually surging, but most are now either asymptomatic or at least very mild, and thus not reported. I guess we'll find out shortly whether that's the case.

The ONS data doesn't show a sharp rise. If anything it is levelling off. I think tomatocracy is right - because the ONS survey measures current infections rather than newly discovered infections it is likely to lag a bit and will probably start to drop soon.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#260

Post by aquadrop »

0xTJ wrote: post #20

This gives me hope for Canada, where I am, won't face too many issues even as we slowly start to tick up from the bottom since major reopening happened, allowing indoor dining etc. In the last week, we've passed the UK in number of fully vaccinated people, but that's going to be slowing down as we start running of people who got their first dose during the big surge in shots here. Unfortunately, at 64% of the total p…

When Texas removed mask mandate in March there were such claims as well ("it will be so bad, Texas is doomed"), but nothing happened and cases continued to go down as in rest of the country.
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