Both deaths and cases up on last Saturday. The Covid-19 picture in the UK is looking pretty crap right now. I'll try and explain whats happening. Here's the overall picture (1)
Even on the overall picture you can see that cases are rising. But here's a look at the recent trends on log plots, its very clear death and cases are now rising (2)
Cases started rising in early May. Around the 4th... (3)
Deaths started rising later. It takes an average of 23 days for Covid to kill. It takes 5 days for symptoms to show. Between 18 and 23 days after a reported rise in cases, deaths rise. Every time. This is the same (4)
21 days after cases were recorded to be rising, deaths are recorded to be rising. (5)
Deathhs are rising at 5.6% per day, 7 day rolling average, thats the highest since the 14th of January (as deaths were slowing in the final approach to the second peak) (6)
We can work out a proxy for R looking at deaths, but at a delay. We're up to the 6th of this month for that from current deaths data. It was rising rapidly, above 1.4. Thats the highest since the 24th of September last year (7)
Deaths have risen, over the previous week, for 5 successive days. That hasn't happened since January. (8)
Cases are rising at over 3% per day now. (9)
Comparing R as calculated from deaths and cases, you can see that for the most part during the pandemic they track (10)
...but with fewer people dying right now the fluctuations in this figure for deaths is more variable. The trend is unmistakably upwards, and however you measure it R is above 1 and rising (11)
I don't know how else to put it - but it looks to me like things are going slowly pearshaped. How bad they'll get, I don't know. But what kind of fool would be urging us on to open up more, and faster, with this going on? (12)
Its time to hit the brakes on reopening. It may be time to reign things back a bit too. (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)