I was having a look in to the R number today. There's more than one R number, but it seems the R0 number is what they are referring to.
One of the sites I came across was https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52473523
There is an interesting graph under "How 1,000 cases would increase under different infection rates".
R 1.1 shows 1,000 cases will increase to 24,000 over 60 days. But there are other elements such as incubation time, and how long the infected person takes to pass on the infection to others.
I've done the maths and the graph seems to be based on around 5 days transmission time, which is fair enough.
I've done a spreadsheet so you can see the comparable effect in numbers side by side.
R Table.jpg
I find it interesting because when you hear the discussion about the R rate and the differing effect of a 0.9 and a 1.1 it can come across as just numbers bull-shit.
However one thing Vallance said the other week was that the R rate is an average and we shouldn't be too bound to it as it can be distorted. Small pockets of high R such as care homes can drag the average up significantly.
If interested you should read in conjunction with this.
https://unherd.com/2020/05/what-the-...dont-tell-you/
Here is a key part to show how R can be misleading.
Let’s imagine that we had two epidemics, of equal size, one in the community and one in care homes. Say 1,000 people are infected in each, and in the community each person on average infects two people, while in the care homes on average each person infects three. The total R is 2.5[1].
But now imagine you lock down and reduce both the R and the number of people infected, but by more in the community than in the care homes. Say that now there are 100 people infected in the community, and they each pass it on to an average of one person; and there are 900 people infected in the care homes, and they pass it on to an average of 2.8 people.
Now your average R is 2.62[2]; it’s gone up!
So if I could ask questions of No10 I would start with:
We have up to 2000 new cases a day showing positive. Can you provide a breakdown of these new cases. Where in terms of geography and where in type of environment eg. general population, care home, hospital....?
I suspect, based on reporting of the new cases in East Lancs that they are largely care home based so assuming that my next question would be:
Has the Government considered a policy of speeding up lockdown, where cases seem to be negligible, but at the same time having a 14 day strict quarantine on all care homes where the R Rate seems to be highest?
That's the sort of info I would like information on.
Unfortunately the Journos have wasted around 4 days obsessing over Cummings.
