Covid : Infection rates v death rates and a possible second wave

[jtuk]

What protection are you referring to?

Herd immunity, which London is believed to have already or be very close to having

 

[Bantamzen]

UKG has already ordered tens of millions of doses of several candidate vaccines. Unless none of them work but one that hasn’t been preordered does work prioritisation will be about the infrastructure and people to deliver and administer the vaccine, not the availability of it.

Ordered maybe, but I imagine lots of countries have. So you won't suddenly get 70 million doses dropped off. It will take many months, maybe years to fulfil all their orders. And the aviation industry has calculated that it will need 8,000 747 Cargos to be able to ship them, that's a lot of extra demand on already very busy cargo routes. So I wouldn't advise holding your breath!

 

[greyman42]

Herd immunity, which London is believed to have already or be very close to having

So your point is that Boris bottled it by introducing lockdown?

 

[Ian Cunningham]

There are plans afoot to use the network of polling stations to get any vaccine distributed to the population in short order. If the infrastructure is there, it makes sense to use it.

There isn't really an infrastructure though - Polling Stations are temporarily set up for a single day in school. libraries, community centres etc. This usually entails closing (or part closing) the building to it's normal use.
A program like this would need the venues available for weeks on end

 

[jtuk]

So your point is that Boris bottled it by introducing lockdown?

That's been one of my points, yes, all data indicates it wasn't necessary. Would have been fine with 2-3 weeks to be absolutely sure the NHS wouldn't have been overloaded, but that became apparent pretty quickly. We're clearly at the stage where the Cabinet is replicating that scene from the Simpsons where they're digging for non existent treasure, and just waiting for Boris to be Chief Wiggum and tell us to dig up

 

[adc82140]

There isn't really an infrastructure though - Polling Stations are temporarily set up for a single day in school. libraries, community centres etc. This usually entails closing (or part closing) the building to it's normal use.
A program like this would need the venues available for weeks on end

Not necessarily. We can all vote in one day, and sticking a needle in won't take any more time than checking in, putting your cross on the paper and sticking it in the ballot box. Even erring on the side of slowness it could be done in handful of days.

 

[Bantamzen]

Not necessarily. We can all vote in one day, and sticking a needle in won't take any more time than checking in, putting your cross on the paper and sticking it in the ballot box

Except you need trained staff to administer the vaccine, they are far less readily available than people working polling stations. And then there is the logistics of getting 65/70 million vaccines into the country at the same time.

 

[adc82140]

The vaccines are already in production and will be ready and waiting pending MHRA approval. I have already been asked as a trained healthcare professional if I would be available.

 

[initiation]

Except you need trained staff to administer the vaccine,

The government consultation on vaccine liability etc... posted a few days ago mentioned this. The plan was that the type of staff who could administer it would be drastically increased. So not just trained nurses or doctors would be used.

 

[Bantamzen]

The government consultation on vaccine liability etc... posted a few days ago mentioned this. The plan was that the type of staff who could administer it would be drastically increased. So not just trained nurses or doctors would be used.

It still won't be able to handle even a fraction of votes at a polling station. Plus there will be all the hygiene procedures to mitigate for.

 

[Domh245]

Ordered maybe, but I imagine lots of countries have. So you won't suddenly get 70 million doses dropped off. It will take many months, maybe years to fulfil all their orders. And the aviation industry has calculated that it will need 8,000 747 Cargos to be able to ship them, that's a lot of extra demand on already very busy cargo routes. So I wouldn't advise holding your breath!

You'd don't necessarily need the vaccines themselves, just the list of materials (or sample of biological material for you to cultivate), the quantities involved, and the right machinery. The government has poured almost £200mil into two vaccine production centres (one in Didcot, one in Braintree) both of which promise rather large sounding manufacturing capacities (in 2021 at the earliest :/) with a promise "to ensure that any successful COVID-19 vaccine can be produced at scale in the UK."

That's not to say that all of the doses produced will be 'govt backed' production, but the fact the leading candidate is british based does help - no 747s to wait for, only refrigerated HGVs

 

[Silverlinky]

SO, figures wise we reach almost 4000 new cases reported today......

An uptick too in the reported number of patients in ventilation beds...up from 65 just ten days ago to 115 now.

 

[jtuk]

SO, figures wise we reach almost 4000 new cases reported today......

Remains a completely irrelevant figure, and the term "cases" to describe this figure is hugely misleading. Someone who is asymptomatic is not a case.

 

[Bantamzen]

You'd don't necessarily need the vaccines themselves, just the list of materials (or sample of biological material for you to cultivate), the quantities involved, and the right machinery. The government has poured almost £200mil into two vaccine production centres (one in Didcot, one in Braintree) both of which promise rather large sounding manufacturing capacities (in 2021 at the earliest :/) with a promise "to ensure that any successful COVID-19 vaccine can be produced at scale in the UK."

That's not to say that all of the doses produced will be 'govt backed' production, but the fact the leading candidate is british based does help - no 747s to wait for, only refrigerated HGVs

Just because a vaccine is developed here doesn't necessarily mean they will be made here. And even if it were, demand would be high globally and pharmaceuticals will doubtless look after the best customers, not necessarily the closest.

 

[Yew]

There isn't really an infrastructure though - Polling Stations are temporarily set up for a single day in school. libraries, community centres etc. This usually entails closing (or part closing) the building to it's normal use.
A program like this would need the venues available for weeks on end

Night clubs are closed currently.

"Would you like a shot (of tequila) to go with your shot (of vaccine) sir?"

 

[Domh245]

Just because a vaccine is developed here doesn't necessarily mean they will be made here. And even if it were, demand would be high globally and pharmaceuticals will doubtless look after the best customers, not necessarily the closest.

Funding and manufacturing boost for UK vaccine programme

UK’s top researchers rapidly working to find a coronavirus vaccine will benefit from £84 million of new government funding.

www.gov.uk

UK’s top researchers rapidly working to find a coronavirus vaccine will benefit from £84 million of new government funding, Business Secretary Alok Sharma has announced today (Sunday 17 May).

The funding comes as Oxford University today agrees a global licensing agreement with AstraZeneca, the UK-based pharmaceutical company, for the commercialisation and manufacturing of their potential vaccine.

This means that, if the Oxford vaccine is successful, AstraZeneca will work to make up to 30 million doses available by September for people in the UK, as part of an agreement to deliver 100 million doses in total.

This will mean the UK will be the first country to get access to the vaccine, should it be successful.

We don't have priority access to the other vaccines that we've got agreements for (that I can tell) but they aren't the leading candidate

About Us

www.astrazeneca.co.uk

Macclesfield, Cheshire
Macclesfield, in the north-west of England is our second largest manufacturing site and our European centre for packing. Some 1,800 people are employed at our Macclesfield site, where we manufacture, pack, and distribute our medicines to 130 global markets. Effective manufacturing processes are vitally important to our work, so we've introduced new techniques at Macclesfield which have increased efficiency significantly

So if the Oxford vaccine does get approval, the UK is in a good place for it logistically

There is also UK manufacturing capacity planned with at least one of the other vaccines we've secured access to

• Government secures early access to 90 million doses of 2 promising vaccine candidates
• UK to support and provide infrastructure to Novavax in running a Phase 3 clinical trial in the UK, and plans to manufacture their vaccine in the UK with FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies
• UK will also co-fund a global clinical trial with the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson and Johnson to establish how effective their vaccine could be in providing long-term immunity against COVID-19
• UK has now secured access to 6 different vaccine candidates as part of the government’s strategy to build a portfolio of promising new vaccines should any be found to be safe and effective

snipped
Novavax also plans to manufacture some of the vaccine using FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies’s facilities in Billingham, Stockton-on-Tees. This will ensure that, once available, the vaccine can be supplied to the British public as soon as possible.

That's not to say that I think it'll all be fine and dandy in terms of distributing any vaccine, but from a manufacturing point of view we are in a relatively good place

 

[Crossover]

Rushed vaccine testing leads to unexpected mass infertility....

Wel quite - not inconceivable (if you'll pardon the pun...). Just look back to Thalidomide...

 

[Ian Cunningham]

Night clubs are closed currently.

"Would you like a shot (of tequila) to go with your shot (of vaccine) sir?"

Might encourage uptake of the vaccine!

 

[adc82140]

SO, figures wise we reach almost 4000 new cases reported today......

An uptick too in the reported number of patients in ventilation beds...up from 65 just ten days ago to 115 now.

Which would be the same for any respiratory virus as we head into the autumn. We are nowhere near the rapid exponential increase in ventilated patients we had in April.

There were 5900 critical care beds pre Covid in the UK. That number is much higher if you include the Nightingales. We are nowhere near capacity.

 

[jumble]

But doesn't the state already interfere in that way when you have a child (in terms of both vaccines and the general health and care of the child), or when someone is deemed incapable of looking after themselves for a variety of medical reasons?
I am not saying it would be the same at all - but there is already precedent for the state making decisions that go against a persons wishes if those decisions are deemed to be in the best interests of the person or wider society. To suggest that there exists this line that would be crossed doesn't reflect reality because the state crosses that line all of the time in specific situations.
As for organ donation - sorry but I can't disagree more. You would be dead. There would be no individual anymore so the organs are no longer yours at that point.

I do not think there is much interference in antivaxers declining to vaccinate their offspring
I think that governments forcing medical treatment on sane healthy people is just the start of behaving like the Chinese with their forced sterilisations, which no doubt the Chinese government justify to themselves as being for the greater good

 

[jtuk]

Oh wow

https://twitter.com/Brixton_Ben26/status/1306258618304651265

They are quite, quite behind on testing

 

[Class 33]

Nearly 4,000 cases today. What a darn nuisance. So much for me thinking we had reached the top of a nasty spike, and the cases are now continuing to fall. But I'm still not concerned this is a "Terrifying second wave". As posted on here by another user, the article by Ed Conway of Sky News says despite the huge recent rise in cases that we should not be panicking. The numbers of new cases could well rise up to a peak of around 10,000 per day, and the deaths will start rising. BUT the daily deaths are going to reach nowhere near the terrifying levels back in April and May, and the deaths will then start decreasing again.

What I am concerned about though is the actions the government may take. Worst case scenario, a second full national lockdown. But I don't think surely the government will take that destructive action, it would be economical suicide on a MASSIVE scale. But whilst these new cases continues to rise, I think they could well bring in yet more restrictions/laws. And unlikely we'll see these very restrictive social distancing and face mask laws scrapped before the end of the year at the rate this is going.

 

[trebor79]

Those 4,000 cases go back about 10 days, the highest number by sample date is just over 3,500 on 7th September.
Presumably more to come through the backlog, but the headline number doesn't necessarily give the true picture.

 

[DB]

But whilst these new cases continues to rise, I think they could well bring in yet more restrictions/laws. And unlikely we'll see these very restrictive social distancing and face mask laws scrapped before the end of the year at the rate this is going.

I think you could well be right - and such laws are likely to be irritating and pointless token gestures to be seen to be doing something - they've run out of ideas for things which might actually make a difference!

 

[Domh245]

Oh wow

https://twitter.com/Brixton_Ben26/status/1306258618304651265

They are quite, quite behind on testing

I'm not convinced they are, at least not as much as those numbers would imply. As a percentage of announced, it's pretty consistent since I've started tracking it (7/9) which was before the "limited lab capacity" story really started to break through. Not the neatest graph, but you can see that all the days are still roughly the same shape, with most cases always being announced 3 days on from the sample date and all tailing off in roughly the same way. For comparison I've also included the data for 3/8 (black dash) which was the last day that I had the data for (before the change to the new dashboard) when there was no such concern about a test backlog in the labs, but roughly ~2/3 the number of tests processed

(english data only)

 

[AdamWW]

I'm not convinced they are, at least not as much as those numbers would imply. As a percentage of announced, it's pretty consistent since I've started tracking it (7/9) which was before the "limited lab capacity" story really started to break through. Not the neatest graph, but you can see that all the days are still roughly the same shape, with most cases always being announced 3 days on from the sample date and all tailing off in roughly the same way. For comparison I've also included the data for 3/8 (black dash) which was the last day that I had the data for (before the change to the new dashboard) when there was no such concern about a test backlog in the labs, but roughly ~2/3 the number of tests processed

(english data only)

Most interesting.
Thanks for that.

 

[DannyMich2018]

Nearly 4,000 cases today. What a darn nuisance. So much for me thinking we had reached the top of a nasty spike, and the cases are now continuing to fall. But I'm still not concerned this is a "Terrifying second wave". As posted on here by another user, the article by Ed Conway of Sky News says despite the huge recent rise in cases that we should not be panicking. The numbers of new cases could well rise up to a peak of around 10,000 per day, and the deaths will start rising. BUT the daily deaths are going to reach nowhere near the terrifying levels back in April and May, and the deaths will then start decreasing again.

What I am concerned about though is the actions the government may take. Worst case scenario, a second full national lockdown. But I don't think surely the government will take that destructive action, it would be economical suicide on a MASSIVE scale. But whilst these new cases continues to rise, I think they could well bring in yet more restrictions/laws. And unlikely we'll see these very restrictive social distancing and face mask laws scrapped before the end of the year at the rate this is going.

It's a difficult situation-as known a full Lockdown is unlikely although some more severe restrictions could be imposed where necessary particularly in emerging hotspots (such as Leicester/Bolton/Caerphilly have been locked down) There have been a steady increase in daily cases since mid-July now but thankfully hospital Covid Inpatients have still fell so the increase we've had recently maybe a little blip. The number of Covid patients in intensive care has also rose recently, also today's death figure of 20 is the highest midweek one for a little while, however I don't think it's a massive worry unless these figures go up very quickly and accelerate rapidly thereafter in which cases hard decisions need to be made. Whether the "rule of six" makes any difference won't be show in any figures for a little while yet.

 

[AdamWW]

Whether the "rule of six" makes any difference won't be show in any figures for a little while yet.

And I don't suppose it will be very easy to distinguish the effect of that from other things (e.g. people possibly starting to be more careful because infections are rising).

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Sep 2020 ==

Which would be the same for any respiratory virus as we head into the autumn. We are nowhere near the rapid exponential increase in ventilated patients we had in April.

There were 5900 critical care beds pre Covid in the UK. That number is much higher if you include the Nightingales. We are nowhere near capacity.

This exerpt from a paper prepared for the government by the Academy of Medical Sciences:

The Nightingale hospitals, which were opened rapidly in the early phase of the pandemic to deal with an anticipated need for increased capacity, were under-used and required diverting staff from other areas, impacting on service and capacity elsewhere.326 Given the significant vacancies in NHS posts, trying to staff additional hospitals to the levels experienced during the initial pandemic is likely to be unsuccessful. Instead, a strategic approach to the use of the Nightingale units and other facilities should be considered. For example, they could act as ‘step down’ or ‘isolation’ facilities for vulnerable populations, such as elderly care patients being transferred to social care settings or those in high occupancy settings (e.g. hostels).

seems to be suggesting that the Nightingale hospitals shouldn't be relied upon for hospital treatment.

Presumably if staff can be usefully transferred to them, that then takes effort away from the NHS trying to deal with the backlog of the non-Covid treatments.

 

[Pete_uk]

It all makes one feel quite down about it all ☹️

 

[DelayRepay]

It is interesting that the local restrictions vary by area, e.g. in Bolton hospitality has to close at 10pm, and it's reported this will apply in the North East too. It's reported that the North East restrictions will include public transport being for essential travel only (unclear if this will be a rule or a guideline). I do wonder if there is an element of experimentation going on here to test different combinations of restrictions in different areas, and therefore whichever is most successful becoming a new national restriction.

Whilst I would not like to be part of such an experiment, I can see the sense in it, and it seems a more sensible approach than just adding more places to the list where face coverings must be worn.