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Coronavirus - the new strain XX

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Anybody know why the reported infections have been falling substantially in the last few days? The preceding values plus the inevitable consequences of "freedom day" suggest it cannot possibly reflect the actual infection rate. I have seen comments on it happening but not on how it is being achieved? Anyone know or can make a reasonable guess?
 
I don’t understand this. If they wanted to “get as many people infected as possible, as quickly as possible” why are they advising so many people to isolate if pinged?
Because they are now infected. Job Done!
I see that the food industry is able to ignore 'pings'. That must come from the lessons learnt from Cholera, Typhoid etc FFS!!!
 
Anybody know why the reported infections have been falling substantially in the last few days? The preceding values plus the inevitable consequences of "freedom day" suggest it cannot possibly reflect the actual infection rate. I have seen comments on it happening but not on how it is being achieved? Anyone know or can make a reasonable guess?
My first thought is that there may be fewer tests being carried out. The most recent ons figures have the percentage of positive tests increasing.

Across England, the percentage of people testing positive continued to increase in all age groups in the week ending 17 July 2021, except for those in school Year 7 to school Year 11 where the trend is uncertain.

These figures are a week out of date but I couldn’t find any more recent nor any stats on how many tests a day are being done irrespective of outcome.
 
Anybody know why the reported infections have been falling substantially in the last few days? The preceding values plus the inevitable consequences of "freedom day" suggest it cannot possibly reflect the actual infection rate. I have seen comments on it happening but not on how it is being achieved? Anyone know or can make a reasonable guess?
I think that the only reasonable answer is that no one knows. The reported infections started to reduce a couple of weeks earlier in Scotland so I would not say that it cannot reflect changes in the actual infection rate. The following are possible reasons proposed by iSage (from memory!):

1. Schools have been gradually shutting down for the summer and as they are possibly the areas where the virus has had the greatest infection rates (the school children, but then the parents). The infection umbers broken down into age groups supported this and I think have been posted on here and are available on the iSage website.

2. The warmer weather has resulted in more people spending time outside, thereby limiting virus spread.

3. The increased number of people being vaccinated (and the ones who were vaccinated 3 weeks or so ago and so the vaccine will now provide some benefit). At >1 million per week out of a total population of 65 million possible hosts, this is small, but it does have an impact as the age range that is being vaccinated is the range that is more at risk of infection.

4. Number of school children not in school has increased t around a million (mainly due to self isolating) and so there are fewer hosts for the virus. I have just thought of this one and it may be insignificant.

Test positivity is going up (except for Scotland where positivity is reducing and number of hospital admissions is also reducing) and so the case numbers are missing more and more positive cases.

Freedom Day will not have had any noticeable effect on the figures yet, as it is too early, but if a lot of people were letting their guard down before Freedom Day, then any of these people who got infected will be adding to the daily number of cases.

The most likely scenario is that all the listed reasons are having some beneficial effect.

And if we are a couple of weeks behind Scotland (school summer holidays started earlier etc), then the effect is likely to be real and we are likely to see the number of cases continue to drop and hospital admissions start to slow down.

But overall there are a lot of unknowns and nobody really knows exactly what is happening and what is going to happen with any certainty.
 
My first thought is that there may be fewer tests being carried out. The most recent ons figures have the percentage of positive tests increasing.

That's a very good point - the ONS figures don't show the same decline in cases in Scotland. My inclination is to trust the ONS figures as they're not dependant on people volunteering to get tested.

I wonder if the official figures for Scotland are reflecting a trend for people to not get tested when they're pinged or have symptoms. Maybe because they can't afford to miss work?
 
Here's a paper from the Lancet

Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from COVID-19

People who had recovered from COVID-19, including those no longer reporting symptoms, exhibited significant cognitive deficits versus controls when controlling for age, gender, education level, income, racial-ethnic group, pre-existing medical disorders, tiredness, depression and anxiety. The deficits were of substantial effect size for people who had been hospitalised (N = 192), but also for non-hospitalised cases who had biological confirmation of COVID-19 infection (N = 326). Analysing markers of premorbid intelligence did not support these differences being present prior to infection. Finer grained analysis of performance across sub-tests supported the hypothesis that COVID-19 has a multi-domain impact on human cognition.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00324-2/fulltext
 
Anybody know why the reported infections have been falling substantially in the last few days? The preceding values plus the inevitable consequences of "freedom day" suggest it cannot possibly reflect the actual infection rate. I have seen comments on it happening but not on how it is being achieved? Anyone know or can make a reasonable guess?


I think it is important to remember that the .gov.uk figures are for positive test results. They are not an accurate indication of the incidence of infections because the tests themselves have false positives and because not everyone with covid gets tested. The OMS and ZOE data suggests that the incidence was growing, not falling or plateauing.
 
I think it is important to remember that the .gov.uk figures are for positive test results, because the tests themselves have false positives and because not everyone with covid gets tested. They are not an accurate indication of the incidence of infections. The OMS and ZOE data suggests that the incidence is growing, not falling or plateauing.

but it is behind in time.
 
I think it is important to remember that the .gov.uk figures are for positive test results. They are not an accurate indication of the incidence of infections because the tests themselves have false positives and because not everyone with covid gets tested. The OMS and ZOE data suggests that the incidence was growing, not falling or plateauing.
A long as the test conditions remain broadly the same then the figures are in some sense comparable (not at the same level as the ONS figures, but as Gav has explained and has been mentioned many times on here, the ONS figures are from same time ago). There will be a considerable tolerance, but a series of reducing numbers does suggest , just like in Scotland a couple of weeks ago, that the number of instances of Covid are probably dropping.
 
Just been to my local Costa for a takeaway coffee. Stood in the queue, all were wearing masks, me included.

Woman behind me starts muttering about it - no mask for her. Based on her appearance I’d guess early 60’s. She catches my gaze and asked why I was still wearing my mask. “Because I am a sessional worker and have been in several primary schools recently.” “So why do you need a mask?”

:rolleyes:I explained about so I don’t pass anything on etc - it’s not about masks preventing you from getting it etc. She said she thought I was wrong… at which point I ordered my coffee.

Spookily enough an ex-colleague was in front of me. We exchanged hello’s etc and he said to the effect of ‘at least you tried, Andy’.
 
popped to Waitrose for some grub. Mask wearing for most, and people behaving cautiously wrt distancing

I’ve been in Henley for a few weeks. This is absolutely my experience there in both Waitrose and Tesco (there isn’t an Aldi…). Went to Reading to get some stuff and called in to the big Tesco, which was a stark contrast to say the least. I’d say most were not wearing masks and virtually no distancing. Best avoided.
 
The poor are choosing the Darwin Award

It is the thing I am finding the most depressing about the whole thing. There is unquestionably a class/education/location aspect to how people respond to medical and government advice, and I assume separate out the two.

It is crazy here based on my very quick visit to Asda yesterday. It is the staff too, not just customers. Everyone in the pharmacy was masked, but they obviously get it. Hardly anyone on the tills, shelf stacking etc were. I’m disappointed the management haven’t taken a more responsible attitude to the care of their staff. As a contrast the museum I volunteer at has, all staff must wear masks (punters are advised to) and they are running a pre-booking system to keep numbers to safe levels.
 
I’ve been in Henley for a few weeks. This is absolutely my experience there in both Waitrose and Tesco (there isn’t an Aldi…). Went to Reading to get some stuff and called in to the big Tesco, which was a stark contrast to say the least. I’d say most were not wearing masks and virtually no distancing. Best avoided.

Yet When I went into the Tesco nearest to my place last night all staff and customers I saw were masked up.
 
It is the thing I am finding the most depressing about the whole thing. There is unquestionably a class/education/location aspect to how people respond to medical and government advice, and I assume separate the two. It is crazy here based on my very quick visit to Asda yesterday. It is the staff too. Everyone in the pharmacy was masked, but they obviously get it. Hardly anyone on the tills, shelf stacking etc were. I’m disappointed the management haven’t taken a more responsible attitude to the care of their staff. As a contrast the museum I volunteer at has, all staff must wear masks (punters are advised to) and they are running a pre-booking system to keep numbers to safe levels.

I may be wrong, but I don't think that there's been any government advice to wear a mask in a supermarket unless it's crowded.
 
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