Yay! Let's reopen music venues!
https://elpais.com/cultura/2020-09-2...ia-social.html
Yay! Let's reopen music venues!
https://elpais.com/cultura/2020-09-2...ia-social.html
So we've all been really naughty, causing infection numbers to rise, and now further restrictions are coming because of our bad, irresponsible behavior.
Sorry, if this is such a naive set of questions, but what is a 'good' rate of increase regarding daily infections? Because, for sure, they were going to go up when lockdown restrictions were eased ,or am I missing some important piece of information/understanding here? By 'good' I really mean, what rate of daily increase in infections is the NHS able to cope with.
Also, what rate of daily infections, that is acceptable to the NHS, allows businesses not to go completely (or more) tits-up?
Finally, do these two rates of daily infections concur?
Last edited by Mossdog; 21-09-2020 at 08:55 PM.
Am Yisrael Chai
....it's all downhill from here.
Richard Taylor
"William Tell could take an apple off your head. Taylor could take out a processed pea."
Sid Waddell
which just goes to show you don't read anything.....
apart from arrant nonsense, of course.
Just in case you can't be bothered reading the study from the ONS, the most recent survey said:
The estimate shows the number of infections has increased in recent weeks.
In recent weeks, there has been clear evidence of an increase in the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 aged 2 to 11 years, 17 to 24 years and 25 to 34 years.
There is evidence of higher infection rates in the North West and London.
During the most recent week (4 to 10 September 2020), we estimate there were around 1.10 (95% credible interval: 0.77 to 1.51) new COVID-19 infections for every 10,000 people per day in the community population in England, equating to around 6,000 new cases per day (95% credible interval: 4,200 to 8,300).
The estimates show that the incidence rate for England has increased in recent weeks.
....it's all downhill from here.
Point taken - I'm easily confused!
So, in my list of naive questions above, if we were to replace my use of the word(s) 'infection(s)' with case(s), what would the numbers be?
Also, just to be clear, when someone is infected do they only become a case when they've been tested as positive for CV?
Am Yisrael Chai
Oh, WP! If only you could have resisted the temptation to add the "Peru probably" bit, you would have been wholly right about something. But, since you couldn't, I'm afraid you only managed a 'partially correct' score. Your first two darts hit the treble-twenty, but your final one bounced off the wire, I'm afraid. So close!
I don't think you are that easily confused
Variation in testing behaviour and case ascertainment over time means that any trends in cases do not necessarily reflect trends in infections.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/estima...io-in-england/
I've added the link just to show the differentiation between cases and infections.
The folks that wrote the letter to Govt yesterday which I linked to, have been discussing this for 1-2 months.
If you get a positive PCR test, that is a case. But you could be asymptomatic and carrying a live virus, you might have been carrying the live virus several months ago at the height of the pandemic and the test might have picked up on a fragment - let's call it a dead piece of virus - there could be other factors.
They have pushed the Govt to do further work, suggesting viral culturing. If a test has picked up live virus then it will be able to be grown in the lab, if it's dead virus it won't. Then a better indicatin of how many of the positive cases are actually infections will be available and better strategy can be worked out.
In the letter yesterday, they were brief and to the point, probably because they wanted to focus minds. But note they said "we are therefore concerned about the sole reliance on the case numbers and the "R" to inform national and local policies"
To your question, I don't think there is a good rate of increase for daily cases. But the problem is, there doesn't seem to have been enough work done on detecting active cases, which are infections.
It's easy to understand that in a pandemic, with every week, more of the population are exposed to the virus even if they show no symptoms.
If you have a test that picks up viral fragments and shows them as a positive, the longer you are in to the pandemic, the more likely you are to pick up positive cases that are inactive, especially if you ramp up testing and then send in hit squads to urban areas that are suspsected to have been or are viral hotspots.
So at the moment I don't see what you can read in to cases.
But you can read something in to hospital admissions and fatalities. Even then there are some caveats, some which we have discussed extensively.
Last edited by Witton Park; 22-09-2020 at 07:31 AM.
Richard Taylor
"William Tell could take an apple off your head. Taylor could take out a processed pea."
Sid Waddell
Another day, another open letter from scientists to the government.
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/09/21...ical-officers/