At today’s press briefing, Chris #Whitty asserted that rates of #COVID19 are not increasing in school-age children, based on a graph showing the rate of test positivity has not increased in the 5-10 or 11-14 year old age groups. 1/n
However, the test positivity rate isn’t very illuminating. We know there are other viruses in circulation that have symptoms that overlap with COVID. The test positivity rate conflates the increase in COVID cases with the increase in these other viruses. 2/n
It would be of interest to look at the rate of increase of positive cases across age groups (I’ve not seen these data). However, these data would also be problematic to interpret, because:
a) Maybe 40% of infected children are asymptomatic, and won’t be tested; and ... 3/n
b) Many of those with symptoms won’t be tested because of the lack of availability, the disincentives to getting tested, or the very restricted set of symptoms that are required to allow a test to be conducted. 4/n
So what would be a relevant dataset for assessing whether the incidence of COVID is increasing among school age children? The gold standard is random sampling. We need more of this, but some is happening, most notably the ONS survey. 5/n
Here’re data from the most recent ONS survey (up to 19th September). As can be seen, the COVID rate among the youngest age groups has gone up from essentially zero in early August to about 2 per 1000 by mid-September. ons.gov.uk/visualisations… 6/n
That might not sound like much, but it equates to about 20,000 children across the UK, and - given the error bars - could be 4 or 5 per 1000, i.e., around 50,000 children. 7/n
Another way to think about it is that at the time of the survey the average secondary school had about 2 infected pupils, and two out of five primaries had an infected pupil. 8/n
Of course, there are big variations across areas. A school in Liverpool conducted its own mass testing of its 1100 pupils and found 40 positive cases (all apparently asymptomatic), i.e., around 20 times higher than the rate suggested by the ONS survey.
Another relevant dataset is the number of schools that have reported cases. There’s a map here. boycottunsafeschools.co.uk/reported-covid… This isn't all of them, for reasons mentioned above, but also not all schools report (and it’s hard for @parentsunited to keep up with those that do!). 10/n
This graph of these reports over time was made by @ToryFibs. (It's gone up by a few hundred since then). Looks like there's an extra hundred schools affected every day since they re-opened. But I wouldn't rule out exponential growth here. 11/n
It’s hard to reconcile these data with Whitty’s claim that rates of COVID are not increasing in school-age children. Yes, the school data include teachers as well as children, but do we *really* think this is all teachers, and that they’re all being infected outside school? 12/n
We know that classrooms are ideal for spreading airborne disease (and the government refuse to mandate masks in classrooms as in other countries).
14/n
The default hypothesis should be that COVID is spreading among children in schools, and the data presented today are not sufficient to reject that hypothesis. We need more data! (ideally, more random sampling) 15/15
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This poll is one part of a larger research project that @berglund_oscar, @SamuelFinnerty and I are working on about the impact of disruptive protest on public attitudes and policy. bristol.ac.uk/news/2023/july…
The project involves polling, interviews, focus groups & experimental surveys. We’ll have more to report later in the year, but one aspect of the results of the poll that's particularly noteworthy concerns people’s opinion about the punishment of nonviolent disruptive protesters.
The poll was conducted by @YouGov on 19/20 July. Respondents were asked which punishment they thought most appropriate for someone who participated in a nonviolent but disruptive protest such as blocking a road. Options ranged from no punishment to more than 1 year in prison.
The arrest of charity volunteers raises serious questions about the role (& perhaps collusion) of rightwing media, police & politicians in the demonisation of protesters. This thread will report my attempts to piece together what happened & what it means. dailymail.co.uk/news/royals/ar…
The story starts with the Mail on Sunday, which ran a front page story on 23 April warning its readers about a a "vile plot" by "extremists" to use rape alarms to scare horses on Coronation Day. "Senior security sources" worried it could cause "serious injuries or even deaths".
The article initially attributes the plot to "Militant protesters". It then mentions organisers' fear of disruption by Just Stop Oil & reminds readers of other disruptive JSO actions. It also mentions Republic. dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1…
But although you didn't hear about the tens of thousands of people protesting in London, chances are that you did hear about that one guy who jumped on a #snooker table in Sheffield.
None of this remotely surprising. It's yet another example of the #ActivistsDilemma in action.
When non-activists criticise groups like JSO for engaging in disruptive protest it's common for them to say they don't mind protest if it's done in a way that doesn't affect people going about their business. That's what activists have been doing this weekend. It doesn't work.
I don't want to write a long thread on this, but I do feel compelled to point out a pretty fundamental problem with this survey. Michael Mann is a great climate scientist, but psychology is clearly not his field of expertise.
In this survey he asked participants whether disruptive actions decrease or increase their support for efforts to address climate change (or have no effect).
Questions like this are asking people to introspect - to examine the inner workings of their own minds. That's a problem, because we don't have access to those inner workings. You might as well ask people to introspect on how they recognise faces or how their lungs work.
I was one of the XR scientists arrested yesterday. I'll say more about that in due course but more urgently, one of us - Emma, who was on the front page of the @Guardian today - has not been released. The UK govt is making scientists into political prisoners. @damiengayle
I'm told that Emma is now protesting her continued imprisonment by refusing to eat or drink.
By way of context, IPCC scientists say "it's now or never" to turn the emissions curve downward. When will this government start taking climate science seriously?
Thanks so much to all those asking how they can help Emma. There will be a vigil outside Charing Cross police station tomorrow morning. I'm not exactly sure what time but will post it when I find out. Sadly I won't be able to attend as I'm now banned from London (yes, really).