Things are suddenly going wrong. Here's the overall Covid picture in the UK now - cases and deaths are rising (1)
Have a look at the recent trends on log plots. Its early days to be certain deaths are going up - 3 days in a row is concerning but not conclusive. Cases are rising faster though, today was over-trend (2)
In fact, deaths have risen for 4 of the last 7. (3)
We're up to 8.41 per day from a low of 5.71. From yesterday to today translates to a deaths doubling time of just under 13 days (4)
Deaths are rising at 2.4% per day, on average over 7 days. If this turns into a new trend its a serious problem (5)
Positive tests ,on the other hand, are obviously now rising ever faster. 2.7% per day on average. Obviously any rise in deaths lags behind a rise in recorded cases (6)
The data is a little turbulent as yet, but cases at present are doubling every 20 days, more or less. And thats getting faster (7)
R as back calculated from deaths (to the 4th of this months, the average day those who died today caught it) was at the highest point since December 20th. But with the number of deaths being low thats a less reliable measure. (8)
For infections we're seeing R settling out to a little over 1.1 (9)
Cases are rising. Death are rising. At this stage recovering from the first wave we were trundling along at the bottom, approaching but still a way shy of the start of wave 2 (10)
With vaccinations as they are now, we ought to be doing far better - but the Indian variant is more infectious. (11)
Why aren't vaccinations stopping it yet? Because (a) mass infection was allowed here, creating the Kent variant, and (b) we opened up our borders to the even worse Indian strain. Thats explained here (12)
How bad will this rise get? We don't know. We haven't really got enough data on how the vaccines interact with the Indian strain. But we shouldn't be in this position. We would, with the original strain, be at a herd immunity from vaccination by now. (13)
We didn't defeat this because we opened up from lockdown 1 too fast, saw mass infection, created the Kent strain and then allowed the Indian one in. We had this disease on the ropes and we let it back at us. EVERY death now is needless. (14)
We have made the same mistakes repeatedly. Whats the chances we won't this time? Be angry. Stay angry. Never forget - this is Johnsons catastrophe. (fin)
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PSA (so please RT): After the death of Awaab Ishak, a few words on black mold. Do you have a couple of spots of mold in your shower? Like, maybe top corners on the grouting? That. Well, it might be. It might be a different mold. The really nasty one is Stachbotrytis chartarum.(1)
Well... Aspergillus niger is a badass mofo of a fungus. It's a fighter, it competes in all sorts of environments and it's a generalist. Black spot on an onion? Might be that. Black mark on the grouting? Might definitely be that. (3)
Nobody cares, but here's the solution to the energy price crisis in the UK, at least this Winter. (1)
Start with a windfall tax on producers. The excess profits they're making here, based on our relative political stability, are worth extra because £ is so low. That's just a start (2)
Next thing to do? Scrap standing charges, immediately. You pay for energy, the notion of a 'standing charge' that you pay to have the honour of then spending more, it's just nonsense. Put the cost on use, not having access (3)
Pet hate. Company puts a card through your door "We will be in your area on these days doing (X)". You phone them. They offer you an appointment date a month or months later. So your card was basically a lie, wasn't it @OVOEnergy? Straight up, flay out a lie.
"well the appointments went really fast..." No. If the card comes through my door, posted yesterday to the whole area, all 5 days did not fill up in that time, you did not book out for a whole extra month in that time. I don't believe you @OVOEnergy
You put immediate, early dates on your literature and post it out, bait people to sign up to something and switch to a later date. It's an old and really rubbish trick @OVOEnergy - I expected better from you. Really expected better.
Let me stop you there, David. Peak infection can be calculated from peak fatalities, we know average time it takes Covid to kill. Peak infection was just prior to lockdown, if you cast your mind back you'll recall lockdown was a reaction to public behaviour, not a leader thereof.
In other words we have mathematical proof that lockdown 1 was both needed and way, way too late to save as many lives as we could. Lockdown was soft, without masking, and infection continued to spread in supermarkets etc....
...which meant our rate of recovery from peak 1 was gunbarrel straight for many, many weeks - and too slow. We then opened too fast and sprinted into another catastrophe, and more late lockdowns...
There were things wrong with the first episodes. This wasn't one of them. There are times when a producer concentrates on inclusivity while failing on content (most recent BBC version of Dracula, Doctor Who spinoff Class) but it ain't casting that's the problem, it's content...
...the problem is that whoever you cast, the show can
still be crap. Rings of Power was just OK rather than great, Lenny Henry as a hobbit and a brown guy cast as an Elf weren't the reasons why it didn't meet higher expectations...
...but I do wonder, if you didn't enjoy it and you're rationalising it "well Tolkien didn't make his harfoots brown" then y'all haven't done your reading and you might well rectify that. Google harfoots and nut brown, there's a starting point for you...
So, Polio in London? I'm going to meander on a bit. Sorry. A thread by a microbiologist (but not that kind of microbiologist) detailing what you need to know (1)
Unusually, for me, I'm going to start with a tl;dr point. Should you be worried? Only a little bit, so far. Get your kids vaccinated if you have not. Call your doctor - now-. NOTHING is gained by this risk (2)
Ok. Polio is short for poliomyelitis, from the greek for grey (polio) marrow (myelon). Grey matter myelitis, which sounds (and is) horrible (3)