I was just told "my son went to the Latitude festival, and he and all the people he went with have Covid".

This begs so many questions!
Transmission is predominantly airborne, and mainly occurs when aerosolised respiratory droplets can accumulate, and you spend enough time in the space to breathe in an infectious dose.

That's what most of us believe.
An anecdote like this suggests so many hypotheses that could be tested by investigating transmission patterns at events like Latitude.

Who are the people the son went with? What did they do together? Can you identify clusters or chains of transmission?
(Detailed genomic analysis of the viruses would help.)

What are the most likely exposure routes; and do they support or undermine our views on how transmission happens (and therefore how best to control it)?
Did they all travel together, spending a long time in the confined space of a vehicle?

Did they all sleep in the confined space of a tent or small caravan/cabin?
Were people who got infected more likely to have spent time in the confined and crowded space of a bar or nightclub?

Or does it seem likely that people were infected outdoors? Was this associated with loud singing, for example?
Is there evidence that spread might have been (contrary to expectations) via other routes eg fomites? What about toilets, are they associated with transmission?

The Latitude event was presumably one of the supposed research events.
If only the resources required to study these sorts of questions had been made available, it could really firm up our understanding of how the virus spreads, and how to stop it.

Or maybe they were? Perhaps this is being analysed right now? (Sadly, I doubt it.)
As an aside, one of the reasons I retired from @PHE_uk recently was disillusionment that we were being used as petty bureaucrats, rather than as the communicable disease epidemiologists we've spent decades becoming, and generating and finding ways to test hypotheses like these.

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More from @petermbenglish

27 Jul
1/ There's been a lot of talk about Covid-19 becoming "endemic".

Which means it circulates normally.

It doesn't mean "trivial" or unimportant.

(Long thread.)
2/ (A version of this thread is available at my blog: peterenglish.blogspot.com/2021/07/will-c… .)
3/ Polio was endemic in many countries in the mid-twentieth century. Smallpox ditto, for a much longer period. Both caused death and disability.

Populations which had been exposed to them had lower mortality rates; but that didn't mean the disease was trivial.
Read 51 tweets
27 Jul
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Read 4 tweets
21 Jul
They dismiss PIMS-TS/MIS-C as uncommon and not proven to be caused by Covid-19. (I am comfortable with this.)
7/
They then, similarly, dismiss "Long Covid" in children. Given (the clue's in the name) that it will take time for sequelae, and their duration, to become apparent; and the increasing evidence base on this, this seems an extremely brave decision (as Sir Humphrey would say).
8/
They then briefly mention "indirect health benefits" (not infecting your parents and becoming an orphan etc) and dismiss them as not significant.

Another very brave decision. Where is the modelling?
9/
Read 19 tweets
21 Jul
That JCVI statement in more detail.

gov.uk/government/pub…

It's clear that their top priority was "reductions in hospitalisations and deaths in the population".
1/ Image
They move on to considering vaccine safety - but say, in effect, there's not enough data.

But many other countries have been vaccinated children without significant safety signals. Image
They explain why they recommend vaccination of 12-17yos with certain conditions increasing their risk (and suggest there will be more detail to follow).

And recommend vaccinating those who are household contacts of immunosuppressed.
3/ ImageImage
Read 6 tweets
18 Jul
It has been announced that JCVI has recommended, or likely to recommend, that only at-risk adolescents be offered the vaccine. I suspect that they considered in their modelling only the direct costs to the health service of acute disease.
1/3
I would be particularly interested to see their workings on:

* The benefits to children of ending the pandemic and inevitable restrictions sooner;

* The harms from the secondary cases from the children, especially if teachers, parents or carers are infected;
2/3
* The effect of Covid-19 (directly or through self-isolation etc) on loss of school;

* And , crucially, given the growing evidence, the long term consequences on the children and adolescents of “Long Covid”.
3/3
Read 4 tweets
7 Jul
Doing trace and isolate properly is hugely resource intensive. Ideally you work out where they caught it and identify others potentially infected by the same source, and identify all the contacts that could become secondary cases and try to persuade them to isolate…
1/6
It took all of our resources in Surrey and Sussex for over a week to cope with one case in Feb 2020 There are few shortcuts, despite all we've learned (although there are a few more people to do the work).
2/6
It might be manageable if the number of new cases per day (in England) were in the very low hundreds - ideally less than 100.
3/6
Read 7 tweets

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