The REACT study showed a dip then a jump in cases in the days before lockdown, something the researchers put down to the influence of rumours about lockdown
But it's very hard to be sure. In all honesty we may never know
The question that preoccupies me is whether this marks a change in public response to restrictions on movement
After the last lockdown ended, mobility took a long time to recover. Is there any chance it does the same thing on December [insert date here]?
If future restrictions are preceded by surges in movement, will they have any benefit? Will lockdowns become impossible to introduce?
Professor Paul Hunter believes they might
Needless to say I have no idea what's going to happen, but I think this trend bears careful watching
The holidays are coming. How that pans out will define the next few months
One last thought then I'm getting back to the weekend: if you're curious about the communication side and the reasons why people in Scotland might be following the spirit rather than the letter of the law, this thread and report are interesting reading
Yesterday SAGE released a one-page document called "potential trajectories for covid-19 in the next six months"
It's not going to brighten your day, but it's one of the best summaries of where we are and where we're heading
Some notes 🧵
1. The “first” and “second” waves are very different
The second is growing much slower because of the impact of social distancing. Before this lockdown, contact rates were about half of pre-lockdown levels
But that's still not low enough.
2. Social distancing needs to be very extensive
SAGE: “With a basic reproduction number of 3, controls need to reduce infectious contacts by two thirds”
For a rough sense of what they means in practice, here's a chart of movement in London. It's been above 33% since June
Incredible story in The Times, which I'm told is definitely true. For most of its existence, the contact tracing app for England and Wales has been using the wrong risk threshold, so it's hardly been sending out any alerts telling people to self-isolate thetimes.co.uk/article/softwa…
One of the biggest complaints about the app has been ghost messages saying "you've been near someone with covid-19". If the risk threshold hadn't been artificially high, many of those alerts would have been instructions to isolate
As it was, people were told to ignore them
The Times has described this as a software bungle. I understand the issue was incredibly human. There was meant to be a change to the risk threshold on the app, but no-one went in and made the update
Today, every media outlet carries shots of young people partying in Nottingham before Tier 3 came into force
In reality, confirmed cases in the city have been falling since early October, including among the young
This may well be because testing isn't picking up infections - and it seems as if cases in Nottinghamshire are rising among older people, which is a real concern
But the picture from pillars 1 and 2 doesn't seem to bear out the idea that young people are flouting restrictions
A graph to illustrate that point, using a fantastic app from @VictimOfMaths (ht @Telstar22995931). A huge spike among 15-to-24-year-olds (okay, students) which flattened off several weeks ago
Test and Trace is a strange, ephemeral organisation. The staff are largely consultants. The bosses are execs on secondment
If you're working there - or indeed any part of government - I'd love to know what you make of it. What's the rationale? How did it come to be that way?
The response to our story from DHSC emphasises the immense scale of T&T, which should never be underestimated. But the most common complain I hear about it is the lack of coordination. Wouldn't a permanent leadership team help with that? I'd genuinely like to know