I know what you mean. I’ve recently been testing a GPS photo geotagging application that should enable me to tag photos in Lightroom with the relevant GPS location. My horizons have definitely shrunk!
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I’m impressed with the strength and suitability of France’s message about Covid and less impressed with the UKs persistence on 3 word slogans «hands - face - space».
Here’s France’s video - «don’t kill a granny» - outlining the consequences of poor respect for the Govt message…
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Nice work if you can get it…
Well, back to this thread.
27k cases today in the UK, doubling every 8.8 days approx - if unchecked that means 81k cases daily by Jul 19th. Higher than the previous peak.
Hospitalisations running around 1/10th the rate in Jan - thanks to vaccination mostly but also because we’re entering this new wave faster and there is a lag from positive test to hospitalisation, but were 358 on the last day for which we have data (Jun 29th) - doubling about every 22 days.
Even with the vaccinations this has to be reckless and I can’t see the EU allowing travel from the UK for much longer.
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Well that was a surprise.
Yes, caught that on BBC Breakfast - odd move in some ways though I expect that Merkel (and Macron ?) was just unable to persuade the EU that tighter sanctions were needed.
I wonder how long that will hold when we get to the predicted 80-120k daily cases in the UK by the 19th.
Is the evidence suggesting the incidence of transmission in fully vaccinated people is low enough to allow Brits in with a negative test result?
Depends where you want to set the bar.
Protection against infection for Delta ~ 65-70% (I think the Israelis are saying 64%).
Transmissibility of Delta compared with original 2.25-2.5x
Combined that means fully vaccinated against Delta is only 10% better than unvaccinated against the original virus (but with lower chance of serious illness needing hospitalisation).
50k cases daily (the lower end of predictions for Jul 19th) = 350k weekly = 522 cases per 100,000 per week - most countries would close their doors at that level. It means, for instance that a random ferry-load of 500 passengers will have 2-3 with Covid but even if everyone on the ferry is double vaccinated chances are 1 will be positive.
FWIW I think we have another U-turn on the cards.
Some thoughts on the current UK situation.
#JohnsonVariant is trending and said to be annoying Johnson.
Here’s what I think is the worst case extrapolation of the current UK positive test numbers out to Jul 19th.
Note that the daily UK data is “immature” - positive tests include positive lateral flow tests which then get a follow up PCR test. If the PCR test is negative the original lateral flow test is not counted.
Also when you download the data the previous day tends to be very low - I think some adjustment is done for the day the test was taken so a test reported today but done three days ago will be included in today’s “headline” figure but will go in the downloaded data on the correct day.
The upshot of all of this is you can’t really get a reliable picture out of the data until it is 5-7 days old.
The dark blue line is a 7-day weighted average (± 3 days), the orange line a rough fit (by eye rather than mathematical) exponential curve representing a 12-day doubling interval. It seems to be a reasonable fit to the data.
So, my guess is 80k cases by “freedom day” (
).
What does this mean in practice?
Well, hospitalisations remain low but are climbing - 456 on the last day we have data for (4 July), those cases probably tested positive around the 27th of Jan so cases then were about 21k.
That’s probably about right - we know that vaccination gives about 90% protection against hospital admission. If we assume that in unvaccinated individuals there is a 20% chance of severe (i.e needing hospitalisation) disease then that drops to 2% in vaccinated individuals. 2% of 21k is 420 so we’re in the right ballpark.
That suggests about 1000 admissions per day by the 19th (but a pretty-much guaranteed rise to 1600 a week later). This is much lower than the previous peak - cases peaked in early Jan about 60k per day and admissions a week later at about 4200 per day.
80k cases a day though is going to do the economy a lot of harm - assuming positive cases still have to isolate for 10 days that is 800k off work (or roughly 3% of the workforce). As not everybody has been vaccinated yet and the “contacts don’t have to isolate if fully vaccinated” rule doesn’t come in until late August you could have 5x that number off work.
I also can’t see what stops the doubling time from shrinking as we remove the last few barriers, there was a massive spike in Cornwall after the G7 and I bet there will be one in London after the footie.
Run things unchecked another 12 days and we could be looking at 160k cases per day, millions off work and peak hospital admissions just as bad as January. The government is insane and I can only conclude has learned absolutely nothing during this pandemic.
Further I can’t see the EU continuing to look at UK case numbers and their own vaccination rates and concluding that it is safe to allow UK visitors into the continent, though (as previously noted) I selfishly hope that it takes them another two weeks or so to act.
“The [UK] government is insane …and has learned absolutely nothing during this pandemic”.
I concur absolutely with your words @anon88169868.
If this wasn’t so deadly it would be embarrassing.
Thanks Paul, it would seem to match similar data from another source although by September they estimate 100, 000.
Karen, It may prove deadly to those not vaccinated but hopefully 2/3rds of the population will have been vaccinated by then so symtoms will be the summer colds/mild flu for a week.
Thankfully and hopefully deaths will be minimal, there are many deaths each day from various causes, if these numbers were put up on the media each day as Covid numbers are we might improve the general health of the nation.
My 86 year old, fully vaccinated father is in hospital with a Covid pneumonia.
It’s not always a “summer cold” even for those protected by the vaccine.
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Sorry to hear that Paul - on top of everything else you are coping with. Hope all goes well.
I hope your father recovers well. So sorry to hear he is in hospital. Sending lots of get well wishes.
Hope he gets better soon xx
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Thanks guys - apparently they are thinking of sending him home tomorrow - though he sounded pretty rubbish on the phone.
Sorry to hear that Paul.