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John Burn-Murdoch Profile picture
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24 Jan, 8 tweets, 3 min read
I'm dismayed we're still seeing this kind of evidence-free shaming a year into the pandemic.

Individuals and small household groups walking around in parks, fully distanced is ... not how it spreads.

There's absolutely no evidence for it, but the myth has somehow stuck around.
We have detailed contact tracing research showing that transmission is almost 20x lower outdoors than in medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
We have mobility data showing that individual behaviour and adherence to guidance remain very good on the whole, while it's workplaces where activity looks on the high side
We even have a huge outbreak of 500 cases in a government agency's offices.

But I've not come across any clusters from Highbury Fields 🧐
"London's pandemic is out control" also suggests a lack of interest in data or evidence.

Due to people's adherence to advice (e.g mixing in parks instead of indoors), positivity rates in London have been falling for several weeks and are at their lowest points in a month or more
There's nothing pointing to mask-free walks in the park keeping the virus circulating.

It's a Covid-safe activity that also boosts physical and mental health. Go out and enjoy the snow, folks. It's perfectly safe!

It genuinely baffles me. There's just zero concern for science and evidence. It's become a kind of piety contest.

"I went to get vaccinated today, but the nurse had a stray hair sticking out under their protective cap so I walked straight out. It was like they wanted me to die."
And for those wondering how the calculus changes for more transmissible variants, @mugecevik has yet another magnificent thread here collating and summarising the research

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More from @jburnmurdoch

John Burn-Murdoch Profile picture
15 Jan
NEW video from me & @tomhannen addressing more myths that have been used to play down Covid this winter.

Featuring:
• Why delays in death registration (& bad charts) wrongly led people to think there was minimal excess mortality
• "Excess winter deaths" are not "excess deaths"
For several weeks, some lockdown-sceptics have been sharing the EuroMOMO excess mortality charts which they say show we’re not seeing many more deaths than usual for the time of year.

A few days ago, EuroMOMO indeed showed deaths essentially back to normal in England. But...
Despite EuroMOMO stating that figures in recent weeks shaded in yellow have been "corrected for delays in [death] registration", this is clearly not the case.

Week after week, the line appears to be falling back to normal, but without fail it’s then revised upwards every time.
Read 11 tweets
John Burn-Murdoch Profile picture
7 Jan
NEW: a common response to reports of hospitals struggling this winter is "it’s no different to a bad flu season!"

I’ve tracked down historical data on flu ICU admissions, including winter 2017-18, a record high.

Here’s how England’s Covid winter compares to a bad flu season 📹
We can also address claims like "hospitals are always full in winter", or "it’s just people who were already in hospital for other reasons catching Covid on the ward"

Here are numbers of people in ICU beds (for any reason) in London hospitals, each winter

Spot the odd one out
Unless there has been a coincidental 50% rise in ICU admissions for other reasons (narrator: there hasn’t ), the only explanation for an unprecedented surge in ICU occupancy this winter is people who are there *because they caught Covid*. Image
Read 8 tweets
John Burn-Murdoch Profile picture
2 Jan
Now, some will inevitably say "but that’s just showing Covid spreading among people who were already in hospital for other reasons", but that is wrong.

Of the 17,900 new Covid cases in English hospitals since Christmas day, 15,072 were new admissions from the community, i.e 84%.
Here are hospital admissions for all UK regions (excl Wales where this data is not readily available).

Far from being only a London problem, new Covid admissions are now doubling in less than 2 weeks across 5 English regions.
And here’s what that means for Covid hospital occupancy:

Now increasing in every English region + Wales, and no longer falling in Scotland or Northern Ireland.
Read 6 tweets
John Burn-Murdoch Profile picture
2 Jan
NEW: Saturday update of latest UK Covid data

The trend in test positivity since Christmas is genuinely scary, with lines climbing almost vertically in all English regions.

On Christmas eve 17% of tests in London came back positive. Four days later that was 24% and accelerating Image
There are now 5,861 Covid patients in London’s hospitals, almost 700 more than at the worst point in April.

There has also been a clear inflection point in deaths, which have climbed to almost 100 per day (last seen in April). Image
We can also look at data not only on how many Covid patients are in hospital, but what share they make up of *all* available beds.

This makes for grim reading: Covid patients now occupy more than half of all beds in many areas (and rising fast), including 63% in North Middlesex. Image
Read 7 tweets
John Burn-Murdoch Profile picture
31 Dec 20
NEW chart thread:

The latest UK Covid data paints a dire picture, with London and much of the south now in a worse position than they were at the spring peak, and hospitals struggling to cope

18% of tests in London now come back positive, and rates are climbing everywhere.
The surge in infections is putting hospitals under immense pressure. London now has 5,524 Covid patients in hospital beds, surpassing its April peak.

There were 739 new Covid admissions or diagnoses on Monday, up 50% on the previous week. The steepness of these climbs is scary.
London’s numbers are the most grim, but the same pattern is visible across most of England, with new hospital admissions and diagnoses now doubling every ~2 weeks in several regions.
Read 7 tweets
John Burn-Murdoch Profile picture
24 Dec 20
NEW: Christmas eve update on key Covid metrics in the UK and beyond

Cases and positivity rates are still rocketing in London and surrounding areas, the regions where the new B.1.1.7 variant is known to be most prevalent.

15% of tests in London now positive.
If we group by restriction tier instead of region, we can see the justification for the additions to Tier 4 on Saturday.

Case rates and positivity in these areas were the lowest in the country a couple of weeks ago, but have since shot up, growing faster than any other areas.
Here’s the same thing in map form:

Every London borough now has case rates above 400 per 100k, and almost the whole of the south/east is a deep shade of red.

Growth rates are very high right across to the south west and down to the Isle of Wight.
Read 9 tweets

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