Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.
Bazzer
Setting the controls for the heart of the sun.
- Location
- On the edge of reality
Well, at least the next door neighbour who had 5 cars of people round on Christmas Day and has regularly had different visitors since then moved out yesterday. The new residents are a known quantity as they lived in the house the other side of us. Yet to meet the people who bought their house.
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
Be suspicious of "European" graphs omitting Spain and Italy.
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
Germany's ministers (state minister-presidents? Not sure. Was on French TV) to meet tomorrow to decide if measures change.
deptfordmarmoset
Full time tea drinker
- Location
- Armonmy Way
The Guardian reports that Germany looks set to strengthen lockdown restrictions as they've passed the 100 cases per 100,000. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...sed-to-tighten-lockdowns-as-covid-cases-surge
Joey Shabadoo
My pronouns are "He", "Him" and "buggerlugs"
Spain
Feb 25 9327 new cases = 198 per million
Mar 3 6037 new cases = 128 per million
Mar 10 7118 new cases = 151 per million
Mar 18 6216 new cases = 132 per million
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/
Ajax Bay
Guru
- Location
- East Devon
I have looked at an important paper: a University of Warwick study dated 18 Mar modelling NPI effect and vaccine (effectiveness, uptake and timings) to predict the possible long-term dynamics of COVID-19 in UK from Jan 2021 to end 2023.
Vaccination and non-pharmaceutical interventions for COVID-19: a mathematical modelling study
I've put more on the 'vaccine' thread.
"Under plausible assumptions for efficacy and uptake, the UK is unlikely to reach the herd immunity threshold through vaccination. We predict that only gradual release of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) coupled with high uptake of a high-efficacy vaccine can prevent subsequent waves of infection."
Predicted daily deaths from COVID-19 in the UK after the start of an immunisation programme and relaxation or removal of NPIs
Shading indicates the level of NPIs implemented. (A, B) The effect of relaxing current NPI measures down to those implemented in early Sep 20. The dashed line indicates the point of partial NPI relaxation—Feb 21, in panel A and Apr 21, in panel B.
Protection against infection [and hence onward transmission] was varied from 0% to 85% in model input.
Though efficacy against disease is of specific individual benefit (protecting against severe symptoms), it is the vaccine protection against infection [and hence onward transmission] that leads to a reduction in the intrinsic growth rate and R.
But vaccination alone is insufficient to contain the outbreak.
Maintaining low levels of infection is likely to be key to the success of test, trace, and isolate strategies and in reducing the risk of vaccine escape.
Vaccination and non-pharmaceutical interventions for COVID-19: a mathematical modelling study
I've put more on the 'vaccine' thread.
"Under plausible assumptions for efficacy and uptake, the UK is unlikely to reach the herd immunity threshold through vaccination. We predict that only gradual release of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) coupled with high uptake of a high-efficacy vaccine can prevent subsequent waves of infection."
Predicted daily deaths from COVID-19 in the UK after the start of an immunisation programme and relaxation or removal of NPIs
Shading indicates the level of NPIs implemented. (A, B) The effect of relaxing current NPI measures down to those implemented in early Sep 20. The dashed line indicates the point of partial NPI relaxation—Feb 21, in panel A and Apr 21, in panel B.
Protection against infection [and hence onward transmission] was varied from 0% to 85% in model input.
Though efficacy against disease is of specific individual benefit (protecting against severe symptoms), it is the vaccine protection against infection [and hence onward transmission] that leads to a reduction in the intrinsic growth rate and R.
But vaccination alone is insufficient to contain the outbreak.
Maintaining low levels of infection is likely to be key to the success of test, trace, and isolate strategies and in reducing the risk of vaccine escape.
Last edited:
I'm still waiting for the press conference to announce the new measures. The central govt and states met today and suspended the meeting early evening, and a small group with Merkel are still fighting it out. It's never gone on this long before. There is a real dilemma between harder measures to break the third wave and pressure to open up much of the economy, in particular where this ought not to be that much of a risk. Considerable public disenchantment at lockdowns only ever being extended.
There is speculation that even supermarkets might close from 1st to 6th April, something that has not happened before.
Kajjal
Guru
- Location
- Wheely World
Unfortunately they seem to be going through the same difficulties with the more virulent British variant that the UK did. The Czech Republic are getting hammered by it with hospitals beyond capacity and tight controls on movement controlled in places by the armed forces. Very tough decisions to make and that’s considering how well managed the German response has been.
Ajax Bay
Guru
- Location
- East Devon
I think people (internationally) did not appreciate the challenge that the then 'new' variant of concern posed in UK from October onwards. The B1.1.7 variant increasingly became the dominant variant (we know this because of the UK's genomic analysis capability). Its 50% greater transmissibility meant that restrictions increasingly applied (or not for the 2 days around Christmas) did not get the 'R' number under control hence the surge in October turned into the ghastly second wave, peaking in January. Externally this was seen as UK just not getting its controls and community discipline right.
Perhaps other nations who weathered their second wave well (with the less virulent original variant) can now see with their third wave how a virus variant which is much more transmissible seems to require sustained lockdowns (UK 4 Jan to 28 Mar). I hope they can individually get the balance right, but it will be a test for each nation. UK maybe an island, but we are part of Europe and the increased prevalence on the continent will likely create constant reseeding which will be an additional burden on the track/trace/isolate mechanism. It looks like control on travel abroad from UK is being tightened up with revised legislation and the threat of fines, but what controls exist on people from abroad deciding that travel to UK is a 'must'? Do we test the reason for entry to UK at the border (Kent or airports) and send people back?
By Easter the UK will have vaccinated all its most vulnerable element (JCVI Gps 1-9, over 50s plus plus): about 32M so a wave [of] serious illness and deaths will not result from rising cases. But the other 25M over 11s will still be unvaccinated and even if some of those 25M have antibodies from previous infection (maybe 4M), the population susceptible to infection is still 20M+. It will be difficult to keep R below 1 after the May planned relaxations. But we'll know from the data what the score is by early May: I hope that properly informs decisions.
Edit: I do think that, given the relatively uncontrolled travel within the British Isles and anyway, we ought to sell/send a wedge of vaccines to Ireland to help them out in their EU vaccine lacuna.
Perhaps other nations who weathered their second wave well (with the less virulent original variant) can now see with their third wave how a virus variant which is much more transmissible seems to require sustained lockdowns (UK 4 Jan to 28 Mar). I hope they can individually get the balance right, but it will be a test for each nation. UK maybe an island, but we are part of Europe and the increased prevalence on the continent will likely create constant reseeding which will be an additional burden on the track/trace/isolate mechanism. It looks like control on travel abroad from UK is being tightened up with revised legislation and the threat of fines, but what controls exist on people from abroad deciding that travel to UK is a 'must'? Do we test the reason for entry to UK at the border (Kent or airports) and send people back?
By Easter the UK will have vaccinated all its most vulnerable element (JCVI Gps 1-9, over 50s plus plus): about 32M so a wave [of] serious illness and deaths will not result from rising cases. But the other 25M over 11s will still be unvaccinated and even if some of those 25M have antibodies from previous infection (maybe 4M), the population susceptible to infection is still 20M+. It will be difficult to keep R below 1 after the May planned relaxations. But we'll know from the data what the score is by early May: I hope that properly informs decisions.
Edit: I do think that, given the relatively uncontrolled travel within the British Isles and anyway, we ought to sell/send a wedge of vaccines to Ireland to help them out in their EU vaccine lacuna.
Last edited:
I saw Merkel's press conference in the early hours - mug!
The lockdown is being extended to 18th April. Over Easter from Maundy Thursday to Easter Monday there is going to be the severest lockdown yet. Bank holidays here really are holidays - virtually everything shuts down, so the govt is using this as an opportunity to completely shutdown the economy when it would be largely inactive anyway, with a day added on either side. Even supermarkets are going to close, except on Saturday.
Merkel made the interesting comment that we are now in effect dealing with a new pandemic, a new virus, as the British variant, which started spreading in Europe with a vengeance at the beginning of March has in the last few days reached over 70% of infections.
As for well managed, overall yes but with serious lapses and failures in both testing and vaccination from December. The former in particular still hasn't yet been completely sorted. This is due to bureaucracy, and split responsibility with the country's federal structure now sometimes working against getting things done.
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
That seems rather surprising when many of England's serious lapses and failures in both testing and tracing have been blamed on centralisation and handing it off to a chumocracy appointee (a leading privatise-the-NHS MP's wife), with the country's multilayer subsidiaritised structure sometimes working against getting things done. Norfolk and Suffolk have recently been rejoicing at resuming tracing at local government level.
Maybe the grass is always greener in the other government structure?
Ajax Bay
Guru
- Location
- East Devon
Thought I'd go and look, three weeks after @rockyroller pointed out the Texas and Mississippi relaxations, on how these two states had done.
Texas cases (population 29M):
Mississipi:
Anyone see the impact of "lifting mandates & allowing businesses to operate at full capacity" on 4 March?
roubaixtuesday
self serving virtue signaller
This is a widely held belief that is almost certainly false.
All modeling suggests that the number of those either unvaccinated, partially vaccinated (one dose) or unprotected by vaccination (vaccines are not 100% effective) is easily large enough for a further surge to cause a spike of similar magnitude to that in January.
Eric Olthwaite
Guest
A spike of what?
