Should we go back into lockdown at this point?

[Howardh]

If I've done my research correctly, very approximately there have been around 423,000 known cases and just under 42,000 deaths - with the assumption that some died with covid, not of it.
That means around 10% of covid patients die.
However, especially in the first few weeks, testing was low and anyone unsymptomatic may not/would not have been counted,so the cases number would be much higher, so the % dying lower.
It will be interesting to see through this current spike what % die every month compared with the number of cases. I suspect and hope that % is a lot lower now.
On August 31 there were 1406 cases, so three weeks or so later roughly 10% (140) should have died, in fact the highest daily deaths for the week beginning 22nd is 40.
Meaning....I dunno, is covid now more survivable (better equipment, drugs, knowledge?) or do we now have fewer weaker people left, or is it because we are testing much more especially of those unsymptomatic positives (and getting more false positives) so comparisons are futile?

 

[talldave]

Most people who had it weren't tested, so 10% is totally wrong.

 

[NorthOxonian]

If I've done my research correctly, very approximately there have been around 423,000 known cases and just under 42,000 deaths - with the assumption that some died with covid, not of it.
That means around 10% of covid patients die.
However, especially in the first few weeks, testing was low and anyone unsymptomatic may not/would not have been counted,so the cases number would be much higher, so the % dying lower.
It will be interesting to see through this current spike what % die every month compared with the number of cases. I suspect and hope that % is a lot lower now.
On August 31 there were 1406 cases, so three weeks or so later roughly 10% (140) should have died, in fact the highest daily deaths for the week beginning 22nd is 40.
Meaning....I dunno, is covid now more survivable (better equipment, drugs, knowledge?) or do we now have fewer weaker people left, or is it because we are testing much more especially of those unsymptomatic positives (and getting more false positives) so comparisons are futile?

I think a combination of all of those. The Infection Fatality Rate has dropped across all demographics, so it isn't as if it's just that younger people are getting the virus. We have certainly made huge strides in knowing how to treat the thing. And testing is now picking up a large chunk of cases, unlike in the first peak when there could well have been 100,000 cases per day rather than the tiny numbers our actual tests picked up.

I've seen some estimates which suggest the IFR could be as low as 0.31% - that seems a little lower than I'd expect, but would mean the current spike would translate to about 50 deaths per day in a couple of weeks (while tests are showing 6,000 cases per day, the symptom study app suggests 17,000). My gut feeling is the numbers we'll see will be higher, but still comfortably in two figures.

 

[Freightmaster]

If I've done my research correctly, very approximately there have been around 423,000 known cases and just under 42,000 deaths - with the assumption that some died with covid, not of it.
That means around 10% of covid patients die.

This is a common misconception, and it is presumably why the public are so irrationally scared of the virus,
and to be honest, if the IFR was anywhere near 10%, I would be hiding behind my sofa too!!

In reality, as NorthOxonian points out, the IFR is actually less than 0.4%, some 30 times lower than
the figures suggest, but even that is misleading, as that is the average IFR for the entire population,
which is massively distorted by the high death rates for over 75s - for under 75s it's more like 0.04%,
and for under 55s something like 0.01%!

I dunno, is covid now more survivable (better equipment, drugs, knowledge?) or do we now have fewer weaker people left, or is it because we are testing much more especially of those unsymptomatic positives (and getting more false positives) so comparisons are futile?

All of the above!!




MARK

 

[yorksrob]

I'm getting to the point where I feel like people in affected areas who take tests when they aren't feeling ill are the ones letting the side down. If they just declined to bother and self-isolated for a bit instead then their localities wouldn't be under such severe restrictions

According to the Government, one shouldn't be requesting a test unless experiencing one of the three Coronavirus symptoms, or instructed to do so, so yes they are.

 

[Scrotnig]

According to the Government, one shouldn't be requesting a test unless experiencing one of the three Coronavirus symptoms, or instructed to do so, so yes they are.

Except that in Leicester they were telling people to have a test even if they had no symptoms. At one point the council were knocking on doors trying to get people to take a test there and then. In some districts they posted home testing kits through everyone’s letterboxes.

Twitter

 

[Bantamzen]

Well I blame people going to the beach at Bournemouth.... No wait, I blame BLM protesters.... No I blame pubs opening and people being selfish enough to go into them.... Erm, no I now blame kids hanging out with each other.... Wait, I blame people eating out.... Or maybe it schools opening, yeah that has to be it, bloody kids expecting to have a functional education to give them a chance in their future lives.....

Some people say these forums don't reflect the country as a whole, but I disagree, these threads on covid reflect them perfectly. For the last few months this country has been engaged on a "whose to blame for covid" quest, pretty much everyone has been blamed at some point.

Well I have some terrible, terrible news for those members of these forums and the wider community. This is what viruses do, they spread. And they are quite good at it, having had at least hundreds of millions of years of practice, maybe even more. I risk sounding like a broken record now, but you cannot solve a biological problem with political solutions, which is what distancing, masks, lockdowns, plastic visors, sanitisers, hazard tape, track and trace, blaming everyone else but yourself, et al are. Some of these might help slow or delay the spread, but none of them will stop them, period. This is the reality that we are faced with. Just because politicians draw mythical lines in the sand as targets, doesn't mean that they are achievable, far from it. We have to come to the realisation that we are not going to eliminate the virus, not even with a vaccine, so we must learn to live our lives with it. For some this will mean increased risk, but risk is literally all around us. Hell even oxygen poses a risk to us, and it is one of the fundamental elements that keep us alive. But that doesn't mean we have to stop our lives and hide until someone else comes up with a mitigation.

Humans are a fragile machine, we break down, and eventually we all die. Its time to start using the years between birth and death to live again, not be afraid to do so.

 

[The Ham]

Don't think it's anything to do with weather, was mentioned in an article I read before it started to increase again. Just putting it out there as an explanation. May be coincidence that schools have gone back?

As others have pointed out the rise was well underway before schools went back, so it's unlikely that was the root cause.

More likely to have been people going abroad for holiday and/or eat out to help out and/or staff being told to go back to the office (or maybe none of those, it's just that they are more likely than the schools).

IF schools where a factor is now likely to be sure to parents interacting with others whilst their children are at school. If you are a family of 4 chances are you're only going to meet grandparents to make your rule of six. However once the kids are at school you can then meet with your friends who also have children (especially if those children are also at school), which then increases the numbers of contacts you have which increases the risk of getting the virus. (However again that's not to say that is a major cause, just that it's a more likely route to infection rather than through small children).

But realistically how many cases are there compared to how many people were eating out and how many go to school every day? Even 10,000 a day and we'll be like this for about 20 years until majority have had it. Still a lot of fussing especially as deaths are so low compared to where we were in April and currently accounting for 2% of daily deaths. How many of those were likely to be in last few months of life anyway? We need to be realistic and we just aren't. We see a few thousand new cases a day as a big deal and it isn't. If they keep rising then we'll have herd immunity sooner and can get on with life. With no proven vaccine yet we have nothing else to rely on unless we want to live like this for years to come?

The length of time which we need to live with restrictions is down to how many are happening a week 200/10,000/week and you'll be looking at a year.

Conversely at 20/10,000/week and you're looking at 10 years and 10/100,000/week and it's 20 years. However then the risk of transmission is low and so you could live with fairly few restrictions as the likelihood of people meeting those with it would be low.

Where I live (which just happens to have a population of 100,000, or near enough to not change the numbers by much) the current rates by week are 6, 6, 7 and 11. Whilst that's an upward trend it's still not quite at the doubling every 3 weeks stage (+83%). However it's still at a low base and the numbers could fluctuate week by week to show odd growth patterns, in that next week it could fall back to 9 just because this last week a family of 4 all tested positive (which wouldn't be such a statistical anomaly if we were looking at 50 cases or more).

 

[yorksrob]

Except that in Leicester they were telling people to have a test even if they had no symptoms. At one point the council were knocking on doors trying to get people to take a test there and then. In some districts they posted home testing kits through everyone’s letterboxes.

Twitter

In that case they were instructed to do so.

 

[Domh245]

Except that in Leicester they were telling people to have a test even if they had no symptoms. At one point the council were knocking on doors trying to get people to take a test there and then. In some districts they posted home testing kits through everyone’s letterboxes.

Twitter

Bear in mind that mid August (when they were doing this) there was still plenty of capacity available in the testing system, meaning this 'invasive' community testing was possible, and indeed desirable. Without the

 

[Scrotnig]

In that case they were instructed to do so

Bear in mind that mid August (when they were doing this) there was still plenty of capacity available in the testing system, meaning this 'invasive' community testing was possible, and indeed desirable.

Indeed, but within weeks we were all being told off for using up tests when we had no symptoms. The government told us to!

Similarly, we are now being told off for going to pubs and restaurants too much. The government told us to! And even paid us to!

 

[greyman42]

Good question. As that's not in the pub that would surely require a ban on street drinking?

I was in London yesterday and a landlord informed me that street drinking has been banned unless you are sat at a table.

 

[Bikeman78]

The increase started when the schools reopened. It's glaringly obvious that that's what it is.

Both my children already have a cold, having not had one for months. I'd imagine that Covid will spread equally well. On the plus side, they'll all have had it within a few weeks.

 

[talldave]

I was in London yesterday and a landlord informed me that street drinking has been banned unless you are sat at a table.

Note to self, pack picnic table and chairs. In fact, to make things look official, take a couple of wooden troughs covered in red covid signs and block off a whole road; set up picnic table & chairs and away we go.

 

[C J Snarzell]

I think it's easy to blame the behaviour of the protesters, beach goers and night time revellers for putting us in semi lockdown but I honestly think the issue is simply normal interaction and a change in the virus, which seems to be far easier to catch than it was in March.

My main concern is that the government cannot keep us under restrictions indefinitely and the restlessness I am now getting is that there seems to be no end in sight. I am hoping for a holiday abroad in 2021, but I cannot make plans yet nor can I arrange anything for Christmas.

Also, I am getting a little confused about the measures themselves - Boris explained what they were last Tuesday and my borough is now subject to further local restrictions going off articles in the press. Is there now additional ones to add to the National ones depending where you live???

CJ

 

[kristiang85]

Re. lockdown in general, this is something I wondered to myself not very seriously, but certainly the disease we are experiencing is nothing like the reports coming out of China in January. Could this actually have some legs? It's a pretty hefty conspiracy theory, but not something I would put past China.

Did China trick the world into coronavirus lockdown?

Did China trick the world into committing economic suicide?

www.news.com.au

As the global community continues to grapple with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic – and the economic catastrophe caused by the associated “lockdowns” imposed by governments around the world – a chilling new theory has emerged.

It goes like this – China, in an enormous disinformation campaign spread via social media and through compromised voices in Western politics, science and medicine, aggressively pushed for other nations to follow its lead, with the goal of intentionally destroying their economies.

That’s according to Michael Senger, a lawyer and researcher based in Atlanta, Georgia. In an article for Tablet Magazine, Senger has laid out a disturbing timeline of evidence that, if true, hints at what could be the most effective and devastating psy-op ever carried out by a world government.

“By promoting fraudulent data, aggressively deploying disinformation, and flexing its institutional clout, Beijing transformed the snake oil of lockdowns into ‘science’, crippling rival economies, expanding its influence and sowing authoritarian values,” Senger writes on Twitter.


The science of lockdowns is far from settled.

Sweden, which infamously rejected calls to shut down schools, bars and restaurants through the pandemic, has, according to some experts, largely been “vindicated”. Despite recording more than 5800 fatalities, one of the worst near the start of the crisis, the country’s daily rolling death toll is now negligible.

Other experts, however, including Professor Peter Collignon from the Australian National University, caution against the Swedish model.

When the CCP first moved to place Wuhan – the city of 11 million people in the eastern Hubei province where COVID-19 first emerged – under mass house arrest in late January, the World Health Organisation (WHO) described it as “unprecedented in public health history” and “new to science”.

A month later, WHO enthusiastically endorsed China’s lockdown strategy as a framework for governments around the world to follow. “Copy China’s response to COVID-19,” Canadian WHO official Bruce Aylward said on February 26.

In the meantime, social media had been flooded with terrifying “leaked” videos appearing to show apocalyptic scenes from the virus epicentre – bodies stacked in hospital hallways, people collapsing in the street.

The New York Times first revealed in June that Twitter had removed tens of thousands of fake accounts that were being used in a co-ordinated effort to spread the CCP’s message, with a particular focus on Italy – the European nation with the closest ties to China.

 

[Yew]

Re. lockdown in general, this is something I wondered to myself not very seriously, but certainly the disease we are experiencing is nothing like the reports coming out of China in January. Could this actually have some legs? It's a pretty hefty conspiracy theory, but not something I would put past China.

Did China trick the world into coronavirus lockdown?

Did China trick the world into committing economic suicide?

www.news.com.au

Occams Razor would suggest that the simpler solution of "they were only seeing the people with severe consequences, as mild infections are no different to cold/flu, and there was no surveillance testing in place" seems more likely.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Why would China want to destroy the economy in the rest of the world when their own economy depends very heavily on exporting goods to the whole of the rest of the world?

 

[Bantamzen]

Why would China want to destroy the economy in the rest of the world when their own economy depends very heavily on exporting goods to the whole of the rest of the world?

Because China can produce goods & services far cheaper than most other countries? To be clear, I am not saying that this theory is necessarily correct though thinking about it there may well be some in the halls of Chinese power that might recognise the potential. But in the likely event of a global recession, China is very well placed to offer cheaper goods & services than companies in other developed nations.

 

[The Ham]

Because China can produce goods & services far cheaper than most other countries? To be clear, I am not saying that this theory is necessarily correct though thinking about it there may well be some in the halls of Chinese power that might recognise the potential. But in the likely event of a global recession, China is very well placed to offer cheaper goods & services than companies in other developed nations.

I suspect that if there's a drop in the economy of the test of the world the rest of the world would see their wages stagnate/fall (for insistence if housing costs fall then people can live on less and so they don't need to earn so much so wage stagnation/falls aren't so much of a problem).

Whilst China could still undercut the out of the factory price, you've still got to factor in the cost of transporting the products. Which could get the price point much closer to each other.

Given how many ships have been say idle around the world due to reduced demand during the full lockdown then it's likely that some shipping companies may well have gone to the wall. If that's the case then there's less capacity and so prices would be higher.

That's likely to increase costs further for long distance transport.

That's not too say that China would do well out of a downturn, but it's probably not going to be that which they are betting on.

What they are probably more interested in is countries defaulting on the loans that they've provided to them over the last decade or two. It then depends on what happens when those loans are defaulted on, for instance what assets could be taken or what land/airports/harbours might need to be leased to repay those loans.

 

[birchesgreen]

Why would China want to destroy the economy in the rest of the world when their own economy depends very heavily on exporting goods to the whole of the rest of the world?

Oh don't ruin a conspiracy theory by bringing facts into it!

 

[Bantamzen]

Oh don't ruin a conspiracy theory by bringing facts into it!

What facts? Conspiracy or not, China is well positioned to gain advantage in the case of a global recession.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Because China can produce goods & services far cheaper than most other countries?

Which those countries can't buy if they have no money!

I think this is "tin foil hat" ridiculous, to be honest.

 

[Bantamzen]

Which those countries can't buy if they have no money!

I think this is "tin foil hat" ridiculous, to be honest.

I'm not saying its true, but there is no denying that China is better placed globally now. And when countries fall into recession, it is not unusual for them to cut costs by seeking cheaper goods and services. I know you're trying hard to swerve this point, but there it is nonetheless.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm not saying its true, but there is no denying that China is better placed globally now. And when countries fall into recession, it is not unusual for them to cut costs by seeking cheaper goods and services. I know you're trying hard to swerve this point, but there it is nonetheless.

They may benefit from it, but the conspiracy theory is utterly nonsensical.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

I'm not saying its true, but there is no denying that China is better placed globally now. And when countries fall into recession, it is not unusual for them to cut costs by seeking cheaper goods and services. I know you're trying hard to swerve this point, but there it is nonetheless.

That's not what you said.

Because China can produce goods & services far cheaper than most other countries? To be clear, I am not saying that this theory is necessarily correct though thinking about it there may well be some in the halls of Chinese power that might recognise the potential. But in the likely event of a global recession, China is very well placed to offer cheaper goods & services than companies in other developed nations.

You say it's not "necessarily correct" but then qualify it by saying "though thinking about it".

Suggest you try thinking a bit harder that start to provide any sort of legitimacy to that sort of conspiracy rubbish.

 

[Cowley]

Time to climb out of the conspiracy theory rabbit hole please guys.
It’s off topic, and pretty off the wall too...

 

[yorkie]

If I've done my research correctly, very approximately there have been around 423,000 known cases and just under 42,000 deaths - with the assumption that some died with covid, not of it.
That means around 10% of covid patients die.

Around March/April, for the most part only seriously ill hospitalised patients could get tested. Most people infected with Sars-Cov-2 are asymptomatic. Of those that do develop Covid19 symptoms, the majority of cases are mild.

The case fatality rate is therefore vastly overinflated compared to the actual infection fatality rate, though the gap is narrowing as more testing is carried out. But even now, with massive increases in testing, it is almost certain that most Sars-Cov-2 infections are not detected.

Meaning....I dunno, is covid now more survivable (better equipment, drugs, knowledge?) or do we now have fewer weaker people left, or is it because we are testing much more especially of those unsymptomatic positives (and getting more false positives) so comparisons are futile?

Have you seen this thread?

Covid : Infection rates v death rates and a possible second wave

One study I would like done is a follow on a survey of all those who who have had a positive covid test, probably after 28 days How many have had 1/ No symptoms (Asymptomatic) 2/ Very mild symptoms that probably normally would be ignored 3/ Ill but not seriously enough to go to hospital 4/...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[Horizon22]

At this rate we'll be in a national lockdown by default, after every local authority introduces a local lockdown. Currently at around 25/30%, and a lot of uni students.

 

[Bletchleyite]

At this rate we'll be in a national lockdown by default, after every local authority introduces a local lockdown. Currently at around 25/30%, and a lot of uni students.

I think that's what Bozza may be trying to achieve - get another national lockdown without being blamed for it.