I think perhaps today I'll slant my regular look at Covid stats in the UK towards whats happened over the last 7 days, to give us a fuller view where we're going as we foolishly throw all caution to the wind. Here's the overall picture before a deep dive (1)
We've had 283 deaths over the last 7 days, up from 203. Thats a 40% rise in 7 days. (2)
The rate of rise has been more or less constant all week. Yes, its a lower base we're rising from, butwe continue to see deathsrising exponentially (3)
Yes, its an exponential rise. You can see it on a log plot. It ain't going up 1, 2, 3, 4. Its going up 1, 2, 4, 8. This is incredibly dangerous (4)
Sundays and Mondays are always lower reporting days, and we know from the first and second phases of the pandemic here when they report especially lowly that tends to the next days being very bad. Thats happening right now (5)
We're over 316,000 cases over the last 7 days now. 7 days ago it was 222,000 or thereabouts. Thats a 42.6% rise in 7 days. (6)
Cases are also rising exponentially. (7)
And they're rising ever faster right now (8)
We have hospitalisation data to the 13th of July. That was a total of 740, the daily average up by, surprise surpsrise, about 40% (39.6% to be precise). We can't keep filling hospitals exponentially faster for long (9)
Using appropriate delays for each, we can see that R has continued trending more or less upwards. Infection rate is getting worse, not better. (10)
Curiously a higher proportion of the number recorded as infected are being admitted to hospital. That rose from 1.79% to 1.95% over 7 days (11)
The only good marker is that the percentage who are killed continues to trend slowly down. It reached 0.17%, the lowest it has been. (12)
So after another weeks data what can we conclude? Coming in to the farcically dubbed 'freedom day' we've got about 40% more infected, 40% more hospitalised and 40% more killed than the week before (13)
The rate vaccines are making things better has slowed right down, and the rate cases and deaths are increasing is currently MASSIVELY outstripping it. (14)
To the point where those improvements do not show up AT ALL in a broader look at the data. Things are getting worse, at an exponential rate (15)
Schools will be breaking up for summer. That will reduce the number of cases or at least slow the rise, but watch the proportion hospitalsied going forward. If we replace those kids with aduts, that'll rise faster (16)
And as sure as eggs is eggs when the proportion being hospitalised rises the proportion dying will rise (or stop falling) 12 days later. (17)
The disaster isn't coming. The disaster is here. Whatever happens tomorrow we've got another 23 days of deaths rising baked in now. It is inevitable. How bad will it get? Thats a discussion for another day. (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)