The current wave of the Coronavirus crisis is in many ways *worse* than the original spring surge. Quick thread:
The proportion of people tested who test positive has gone screaming up everywhere. Data up to 29th December:
The number of positive tests is going up everywhere - and is sky high in the greater south east...
Though this is absolutely NOT a south-east problem. Zoom in on the other regions of England and the rate of positive tests is zooming up. The reduction from lockdown 2 is being unwound v quick.
You could think of the size of the problem being the number of positive tests multiplied by the proportion testing positive.
On this graph you are 'winning' if you're moving down and left.
We are screaming up and to the right.
And hospitalisations reflect where cases were a while back. In the greater south east (London, South East and East) we now see admissions of those hospitalised by Covid running 16% above the peak rate we saw in the spring crisis...
But in spring we were starting from scratch. This time we have not just a larger inflow, but also hospitals that already have many more Covid patients.
There are now just under 50% more Covid patients in hospitals in the greater south east than there were in the spring peak.
...Though numbers hospitalised by it are going up in all parts of England
Feels difficult to escape the conclusion that:
>as well as going as fast as we can with mass vaccination, we need to do something big to slow the explosive growth and stop hospitals being further overwhelmed.
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...The Telegraph publishing this piece by Toby Young in June, which claimed: "there will be no “second spike” – not now, and not in the autumn either. The virus has melted into thin air. It’s time to get back to normal."
The below is wrong at several levels. In England and Wales, 65,000 aged 65+ have died with it, plus over 7,400 working age people. Many had prior medical conditions, but we don't hold their lives to be valueless because Britain isn't a fascist state.
About one in ten had no prior conditions. But having a prior condition doesn't mean you are about to die! EG about 10,000 had diabetes. Theresa May has it and was Prime Minister! A study by Glasgow Uni suggested the average victim would have had another ten years - that's a lot.
Also: all that is *with* social distancing. Without it many more would have died as health services were overwhelmed.
To see what happens if you do nothing, look at Manaus, Brazil, where excavators dug huge trenches for bodies dumped in mass graves.
There are good reasons to be much more concerned about the new wave 3, than about wave 2 - a quick thread.
Here's the relationship between the number of cases in England among those aged 60+ and the number of people hospitalised by Covid - the one follows the other with a lag.
...And here is the relationship between Covid hospitalisations and deaths - again, the one follows the other with a lag
My piece below looks at Sweden. Recent days have seen Sweden’s Nordic neighbours Finland and Norway offer emergency medical assistance as Stockholm’s hospitals overflow & the King make an unprecedented criticism of the failed strategy. What went wrong?
Sweden started with massive advantages: more people living alone than anywhere else and a sparse population. But it ended up with death rates 9 and 10 times that of neighbours Finland and Norway
Nor has there been an economic upside for Sweden: in fact they had a bigger hit to their economy than their neighbours, as well as much worse health outcomes.
ONE BOGUS CLAIM IN THE TELEGRAPH AND WHY IT MATTERS – A thread
The Sunday Telegraph reports that “Boris Johnson's decision to impose tougher tiers of restrictions on much of the country this week will cost the economy £900 million a day, according to a leading economic forecaster.”
The forecaster in question is Doug McWIlliams at @Cebr_uk . The Sunday Telegraph reports that: “New analysis estimates the new tiers will result in England's GDP being 13pc smaller, or £900 million a day, compared with Dec last year”.