26 ms·

The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

243 points by donohoe 5y ago

Wolfenstein98k 5y ago
Important and underexamined question. What happened in the UK?
- JetSetWilly 5y ago
  Probably schools and universities being closed. I'd support this by noting that the numbers in Scotland surged earlier then started declining earlier (where universities and schools go on summer holidays weeks before England). When English schools later broke up for summer, numbers there started declining too. So no doubt numbers will start going up again when school returns, and will do so first in Scotland - as the virus burns through the young, unvaccinated population.
  - gsnedders 5y ago
    Not sure it's quite this simple; look at the overall case by specimen and age demographics graphs on https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=nation&areaName=England https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=natio... (England only, because the data for rUK isn't available). Note the peak is around a week _prior_ the end of the school term in England (23 July), and this is true across basically all age groups.
    - shawabawa3 5y ago
      The Euro finals were on 11th July and for a lot of schools the holidays started on the 15th July
    - drcongo 5y ago
      Most of England's private schools broke up one week prior to the state schools.
      - de_keyboard 5y ago
        Most children don't go to private schools.
      - richardwhiuk 5y ago
        Only 6% of the population attend private school.
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    But if it rose earlier and fell earlier, the simplest explanation is simply that the course of the disease was... earlier there, isn't it?
    - JetSetWilly 5y ago
      It is possible, but there's still large cohorts of the population (ie under 18s) who have not had the virus and are not vaccinated, you would expect that when they go back to large scale mixing in schools together that transmission will increase among them and case numbers will go up. And this isn't really an issue so long as the overwhelming majority of the old and vulnerable are vaccinated. But there still the potential for scary looking case numbers but not so much death numbers.
  - 3dbrows 5y ago
    The staggered school return times you mention could be one factor (as could better weather resulting in outdoor socialising instead of indoor). The effect when schools return (~2 weeks from now in Scotland) might be muted however as hundreds of thousands more vaccinations will have been done in the parent-age population. In Scotland, for example, over 90% of adults have received the first dose, and 72% the second (implying that ~18% are in the waiting period for the 2nd). Perhaps we should expect to see a spike in cases in children, but not so much among their parents.
    - bigbizisverywyz 5y ago
      Did we not see the same effect last year (probably for the reasons you mentioned)? Numbers declined in summer, but then massively rose again in Oct-Nov. I think this Autumn will reveal whether the vaccinations are giving us the protection needed to gradually open up society again. For my part I really hope it does, as it will also encourage other countries to do the same and give the vaccination campaign a worldwide boost.
      - 3dbrows 5y ago
        Let’s hope the peak just gone is the last big spike. In the final analysis I imagine the British public’s _willingness_ to get the jab will be seen as an enormous success factor, on top of the vaccine itself’s efficacy. This willingness merits study. High social trust of the NHS, historic common understanding of vaccines and everyone knowing someone affected by the virus all play their part. As an aside, I believe this to have been the NHS’ finest hour, and in future “the pandemic” will replace “the war” as the lynchpin reference point in time, as it were.
        makomk 5y ago
        The UK government definitely seems to consider the British public's willingness to get vaccinated to be one of the key parts of the success story, from what I've seen. I will also say that their handling of issues like the AstraZeneca blood clotting issue has been really good compared to the shitshows elsewhere - careful, measured, with really clear communication about what they know and why it justifies the decisions about whether to vaccinate people with it.
- jjgreen 5y ago
  The collapse (unexpected by almost everyone) happened after "freedom day", when masks were no longer mandatory and it became legal to stand at the bar in a pub. Probably co-incidence.
  - lumost 5y ago
    There are many coincidences and spurious correlations in the world. It's informative to propose a falsifiable mechanism behind a correlation which can be tested independently. I could reframe your hypothesis in a falsifiable way such as "perhaps ending lockdowns in the UK caused individuals to spend more time outdoors or in open air restaurants rather than smaller closed doors activities such as dinner parties", or "perhaps ending lockdowns in the UK caused people to spend more time in other locations rather than large shared ventilation apartment complexes".
    - jjgreen 5y ago
      I make no hypothesis, simply note the order in which things happened (in England at least) as requested by the parent.
  - shawabawa3 5y ago
    The drop actually started before freedom day. There's usually about a 2 week period between "cause" and "effect" in terms of cases anyway. It's much more likely to have peaked because of Euro finals on 11th July and school holidays starting on 15th July
  - GuB-42 5y ago
    It has to be a coincidence. It happened almost the exact day, maybe even a little earlier. It should take about a week to start seeing the effect of a change in policy. From incubation time to testing to results. Usually, we count two weeks to be sure.
    - thinkingemote 5y ago
      The day restrictions were lifted was itself postponed from the previous month. Modelling was used to predict the day. It could be coincidence but this date was planned and intentional.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Lots of people either being vaccinated or infected seems like it would play a big role.
  - squarefoot 5y ago
    Probably both. We should remember what was the 1st approach to the Covid problem by Johnson (that is, well over one year ago): he wanted to achieve herd immunity without having enough vaccines or not having them at all, and initially there were no imposed lockdowns or infection prevention rules. The point is that along the extremely high death toll caused by that approach, a huge percentage of people over there might have caught the virus without symptoms, therefore becoming immune to a 2nd infection or at least immune to nasty symptoms. So it's entirely possible that the herd immunity was eventually achieved, although many, including me, would agree the price to pay has been not fair.
    - Imnimo 5y ago
      I don't really see how the level of immunity could be low enough in June to allow rapid growth, and then suddenly be high enough in mid-July to cause rapid decline. Wouldn't we expect a population close to herd immunity to see slow growth, and a population just over herd immunity to see a slow decline?
      - tsywke44 5y ago
        If 70% of your population is vaccinated, it doesnt mean the virus spreads 70% slower. It instead means that there are 20 million potential virus hosts in the UK instead of 67m. Way more than the population of lots of EU countries.
        Imnimo 5y ago
        I think it does mean that the virus spreads slower (although the exact amount will also depend on factors like how vaccinated people are distributed among the population). Whereas in an unvaccinated population, each infected person might spread the virus to (say) five others, in a 70% vaccinated population, on average 3.5 of those others would be vaccinated, so the virus would only spread to 1.5 others. This gives a slower rate of growth. Once that rate of growth falls below 1, herd immunity is achieved. When you are close to herd immunity, that rate should be just a little above 1, leading to slow but positive growth.
- zarzavat 5y ago
  Choose your own adventure, coronavirus edition. You have coronavirus symptoms. During the middle of a surge in cases, the government has announced that all coronavirus restrictions have ended and everybody can go back to normal. The vast majority of older and vulnerable people have been fully vaccinated. Do you: A: get a test and risk having to isolate B: not get a test and live your life like normal as the government said you should
  - sprkwd 5y ago
    Anecdotally, everybody I know has deleted the app from their phone so they can’t get pinged and live their life reasonably normally.
    - karol 5y ago
      Anecdotally, I never installed it for the same reason.
      - BoxOfRain 5y ago
        I wonder how much is post-Snowden distrust of government software and how much is simply not wanting to be pinged?
        jokethrowaway 5y ago
        Definitely both. I would install it if it meant free paid holiday from work but I'm not employed and if I were I could probably work from home.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- joelschw 5y ago
  The national football team also did really well in the Euro competition - this forced a lot of drunk people indoors and onto public transport.
  - M2Ys4U 5y ago
    And also in to pubs...
- ddek 5y ago
  Tentative signs the virus has burned out, either through infections or vaccinations. The wave has been entirely confined to the younger age brackets who are far less vaccinated.[1] Being in central London right now, through anecdotal evidence I don't think we've suddenly become less sociable. - [1] UK infections grouped by age. School years 6, 7, 11, and 12 are ages 11, 12, 17, and 18 respectively. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19latestinsights/infections#infections-by-age https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
  - wrboyce 5y ago
    I don’t think those ages are right (the maths do not follow, so I’m almost certain they are not). In y11 you turn 16, not 17. https://www.gov.uk/national-curriculum https://www.gov.uk/national-curriculum
    - ddek 5y ago
      Your right, I forgot about y13 being the last year. Y11 is GCSE year which ends at 16. I’m not sure why the the age brackets don’t go up to Y13, when school ends.
  - smorgusofborg 5y ago
    The Massachusetts study is rather confusing about delta and vaccination, but I think it emphasizes that demographics of who is socializing is skewed. So it might have burned out among those in the nightlife and still be highly dangerous among pensioners.
    - perardi 5y ago
      I know the demographics of who were socializing. It’s very skewed. Friends and acquaintances of mine. I have some doubts about how generalizable the results are. A circuit party is not a produce aisle.
- tsywke44 5y ago
  Night clubs opened and were PACKED, a lot of young people were unvaccinated, causing hundreds of superspreader events every night for a few weeks. The % of total population who actually visits nightclubs is pretty low, so it took like a monh for this segment to hit herd immunity basically
  - tsywke44 5y ago
    Also lots of previously vaccinated people were exposed, but didn’t get infected. Doesn’t mean their immune system did nothing though. I’d wager a lot of UK population basically got an ”organic 3rd vaccine dose”. My prediction is they have probably the highest immunity rates in the world atm
    - bostik 5y ago
      > a lot of UK population basically got an ”organic 3rd vaccine dose”. Isn't that how the vaccination regime is supposed to work, actually? With two jabs in, contracting Covid still comes with something like 4%..20% hit rate.[ß] However, with two jabs the risk of hospitalisation is mercifully low, and roughly half of the cases are asymptomatic. So instead of vaccinated people overloading the NHS, when they do get unlucky, they are much more likely to get through with only mild symptoms. For majority that "organic 3rd dose" works as a booster shot. They can still infect others, though... NB. As far as I know, there are no good studies on how Long Covid manifests in a vaccinated population. I think the working assumption is that very mild symptomatic Covid also ends up with less severe Long Covid, but have heard of no data to back that up. ß: Depending on the study, the vaccine in question and the variant. IIRC 2xPfizer provides ~88% protection against Delta, 95%+ against earlier non-Beta variants; 2xAstraZeneca provides 60%+ protection against Delta, 90%+ against non-Betas. Disclosure: UK resident, with two jabs.
      - mattlondon 5y ago
        As far as I know, long covid is directly related to how sick you get. you hear all these stories of people being bed bound for a week or more, high fever, struggling to breathe, etc etc. I'd think it sounds quite a lot like those people were really rather ill. I don't think people should expect to go back to running marathons or whatever a week after fighting to survive It's the same for flu and other major viral infections. It can take a while to get back to full health - I don't think covid is anything new here? Just the usual "you almost died"?
- IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
  People reading the news and individually deciding to be slightly more careful again.
- danenania 5y ago
  Oh fun: the game where everyone puts their pet biases forward in an attempt to explain the behavior of a poorly understood complex system. It reminds me of the financial news. "Commodities markets are spooked as backlash to latest Justin Bieber video mounts!" In all seriousness, apart from the vaccination rate and strictly enforced lockdowns, I have yet to see an explanation for cases going up or down in a particular region that isn't contradicted by the results in some other region. I think we should just admit that except for vaccines and physically forcing 90% of the population into isolation, we don't have a clue what works and what doesn't.
  - neves 5y ago
    There's a lot of evidence about what worked what didn't work. Dozens of countries and well organized societies responded well to the pandemic.
    - mariodiana 5y ago
      I remember reading that the deaths in countries corresponded pretty tightly with obesity levels in the population. If that's true, that throws lots of "evidence" right out the window. Edit: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-obesity/obesity-a-driving-factor-in-covid-19-deaths-global-report-finds-idUSKBN2AW1X0 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-obesit...
      - sharken 5y ago
        This BBC story speculates that Delta became the main variant in part due to the cold weather. But I'm not sure any one factor can be singled out. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57489740 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57489740
        mariodiana 5y ago
        I saw a doctor on YouTube (just a private guy with his own channel) apply this same reasoning to Florida. Right now is Florida's "winter": meaning, people tend to stay indoors with the windows closed (to avoid the oppressive heat of the July and August).
- mattlondon 5y ago
  IMO it was most likely the Euros football/soccer championship leading to a lot of mixing in crowded spaces among younger men who maybe didn't yet have the vaccine or we're from backrounds that are the sort that typically ignore this sort of thing.
  - gpt5 5y ago
    Would you also blame the Euro football for the rising Delta cases everywhere in the western world?
    - mattlondon 5y ago
      yes because the matches were all-over europe so same people who were in a packed pub a few days earlier were now on a plane to some other european country to watch the next match. further, the borders remained open so people mixed at home and then went on holiday/visited family etc. UK is a major international transport hub and also has a large population of Indian descent so we likely "imported" delta from India relatively early as a result and then likely helped seed it in other western nations. They should have put India on the red list several weeks earlier than they did when it was obvious for anyone to see what was going on, but they delayed for unknown reasons
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    Yep, I know someone who went to one of the Euro matches. They got covid, and they also said that the facebook groups for supporters were absolutely full of people who had also gotten covid.
- jl6 5y ago
  The UK had a perfect storm of factors contributing to the severity of the Covid pandemic in that country: highly internationally mobile population, highly internally mobile population, a global travel hub, high population density, culture of close social mixing, no culture of mask wearing, colder climate leading to more indoor living, higher than average levels of elderly people, obese people, and of the ethnic groups most impacted by the virus, low appetite for strict enforcement of lockdowns, and low levels of government control over everyday living. Other countries had some of these factors. Few if any had all of these factors. What happened next? The vaccines turned out to be really effective.
  - phatfish 5y ago
    "Few if any had all of these factors." The UK certainly doesn't have all of them for a start. The lock-downs had high levels of compliance, just a lot of people moaning from their sofa (or whatever soapbox they have available, reach varies greatly, inversely with intelligence in many cases). Population density, travel hub, obesity levels, delayed first lock-down would be my list.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  Underexamined? Every major public health official and commentator has been discussing it on a near daily basis for weeks.
deleted 5y ago
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monooso 5y ago
The ONS regularly tests a random selection of people. Their results typically trail the daily infection numbers by two weeks. Notably, the most recent ONS samples demonstrated a sharp rise in cases. The suggestion is that cases are actually surging, but most are now either asymptomatic or at least very mild, and thus not reported. I guess we'll find out shortly whether that's the case.
- ddek 5y ago
  Which ONS data are you referring to? The currently published data indicates the wave has at least plateaued, as I read it, in all but the youngest age groups.
  - a_humean 5y ago
    They are talking about the survey data, which doesn't rely upon the normal testing regime. They randomly contact and test individuals irrespective of their symptoms status, which is different from the normal testing regime that gets reported daily. I believe its a 20k sample size. The survey takes a lot longer time compile Most recent summary: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/latest https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... Most recent data: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/datasets/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveydata https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... Methods: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/methodologies/covid19infectionsurveypilotmethodsandfurtherinformation https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
    - monooso 5y ago
      Thanks for adding the relevant links.
    - tomatocracy 5y ago
      In particular, it's worth noting that the ONS survey tries to estimate an answer to the question "in the given time period, what proportion of the population would have tested positive?" Because people tend to continue to test positive for a reasonable period of time after they are first infected, this should be a lagging indicator of any peak in new infections having occurred.
mixedmath 5y ago
I read this and think it's well written. I see it's published in The Intelligencer, which is apparently an offshoot of NYMagazine. I'm not particularly familiar with either, but I hadn't realized that news-type things would be discussed in them. Does anyone here have anything to say about their quality or their relevance to people who don't live in NY?
- filmgirlcw 5y ago
  New York Magazine is certainly centered on New York City, but like many other New York-named publications (including the unrelated New York Times newspaper and the New Yorker magazine), it is actually national in scope. And many of the stories can even be international, insofar as culture and a not insignificant American export. It has always been well-regarded, think of it as a more puckish New Yorker (although in recent years, The New Yorker has certainly taken on more personality, especially online), and I would argue, was one of the first “prestige” magazines to really embrace online and digital expansion. It took until well into the 2010s for a lot of the Condé Nast and Hearst publications to even integrate their digital and print newsrooms, with digital often being treated as an afterthought. New York Mag really embraced online early and as a result, didn’t have the same identity issues once the bottom dropped out of print’s profitability. It used to be a weekly magazine but swapped to biweekly seven or eight years ago. I’ve been a subscriber since I was in college (which was before I moved to New York City), which coincided with the online push and the reign of editor-in-chief Adam Moss (who was EIC from 2004-2019), and since 2004, I believe NYMag has won more National Magazine Awards (which are sort of the magazine world’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prizes, albeit with less prestige) than any other publication. There are several “verticals” for New York Mag, which include Vulture (culture), The Cut (lifestyle and more of a focus on women), Grub Street (restaurants and bars), Intelligencer (tech, politics, ideas). Vox bought the magazine a few years ago, but it operates relatively independently from the other Vox media sites (Vox, The Verge, etc.), at least as far as editorial content goes. (I’m sure they share resources like HR and some ad sales stuff, same as Conde and Hearst and Meredith.) *I don’t and have never worked at New York Mag, but as a former New York City-based journalist, I have friends who do or have worked there and I’ve met Pam Wasserstein, the former CEO (current president of Vox Media), socially a few times.
0xTJ 5y ago
This gives me hope for Canada, where I am, won't face too many issues even as we slowly start to tick up from the bottom since major reopening happened, allowing indoor dining etc. In the last week, we've passed the UK in number of fully vaccinated people, but that's going to be slowing down as we start running of people who got their first dose during the big surge in shots here. Unfortunately, at 64% of the total population getting a first dose, the steep straight line in first doses suddenly curved to a much shallower straight line, to a rate similar to the current UK and US ones. I find the Our World In Data Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) data (https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus) very interesting. It doesn't help that Alberta, our country's Texas, has decided to fully open everything and get rid of their requirements. Starting 2 weeks from now, you won't even have to self-isolate if you test positive for COVID-19.
- goalieca 5y ago
  > Starting 2 weeks from now, you won't even have to self-isolate if you test positive for COVID-19. This is a loaded question, but since covid is and will be endemic, when do we get on with our lives and start facing the mountains of other public health issues? It seems like our vaccination effort was extremely successful and had an amazing effect and there isn’t likely to be any radical new intervention for years to come.
  - mint2 5y ago
    Isn’t it standard practice to set isolate if one has any highly contagious disease? Like the actual flu? Maybe it’s not a law but it sure is a sensical cultural norm and is just the polite thing to do as well.
    - ls612 5y ago
      Not for 10-14 days!! To the extent most people care they either stay home until they feel better or they try to power through it.
      - 5y ago
coding123 5y ago
The future is N95 masks. Even if you decide not to, for the rest of your life you will see people wearing them at everyday places.
- vernie 5y ago
  It's incredibly rare to see anybody wearing a real N95 mask even today.
runawaybottle 5y ago
Do we have conclusive numbers on how long these vaccines last? I’m reading that Pfizer lasts about 6 months? There’s no way there won’t be a surge again next summer if that’s the case.
- newsyyswen 5y ago
  There are no conclusive numbers on how long they last, because there has not been a significant drop-off in efficacy yet. There is some evidence that booster shots after 6 months can provide better even better protection than the second shot after 3-4 weeks, but it's not clear whether they will be necessary yet, especially when so much of the world is still desperate to get the first two shots in peoples' arms.
  - dtech 5y ago
    There has been shown a little bit of drop-off, but that is in the range of 95% to 80-90%, so still strong. Hard to say because the mutation in circulation have changed.
  - AndrewBissell 5y ago
    There's been enough drop-off in the Pfizer vaccine that Israel is starting boosters for people 60+. Their estimate is that protection against mild disease has dropped to 40% and protection against hospitalization to 88%. https://swprs.org/covid-vaccines-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/ https://swprs.org/covid-vaccines-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/
- tguvot 5y ago
  slide 19: https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/8a726408-07bd-46bd-a945-3af0ae2f3c37/note/57c98604-3b54-44f0-8b44-b148d8f75165.#page=1 https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/do... slide 4+: https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/reports/vaccine-efficacy-safety-follow-up-committee/he/files_publications_corona_two-dose-vaccination-data.pdf https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/reports/vaccine-efficacy-safet... and in general https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2109072 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2109072
christkv 5y ago
Same pattern in northern Spain that have very high vaccination rates.
- xrayarx 5y ago
  Source please?
  - christkv 5y ago
    Local Spanish newspaper https://www.elcomercio.es/asturias/asturias-acerca-inmunidad-colectiva-concejos-vacunados-coronavirus-20210802000940-ntvo.html?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.elcomercio.es%2F https://www.elcomercio.es/asturias/asturias-acerca-inmunidad... 76% with one dose,66.7% with two doses. Number of cases are going down from about 400 a day a week ago to about 200+ this week per day.
  - euskera 5y ago
    https://www.diariovasco.com/sociedad/salud/euskadi-vacunados-coronavirus-20210802224238-nt.html https://www.diariovasco.com/sociedad/salud/euskadi-vacunados...
hr4lkjerh 5y ago
All maskers must die! All vaxxers must die! FUCKING KILL YOURSELVES!
hr4lkjerh 5y ago
You can't even test for the fucking "delta" "variant". Fuck these assholes.
jkhdigital 5y ago
> thanks to widespread vaccination of the elderly, however fast this disease spreads it will ultimately inflict a much, much smaller death toll than earlier waves, because vaccination has probably eliminated 90 percent or more of the country’s total COVID-19 mortality risk. This claim does not appear to be grounded in any factual basis: A double-blind randomized trial for an mRNA vaccine with 44k participants showed nearly identical all-cause mortality in vaccinated vs. placebo groups after six months [1]. The delta wave will almost certainly be less fatal, but there is no evidence to indicate that widespread vaccination is the primary causal factor, or even a contributing factor, for the reduced mortality. [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v1.full-text https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v...
- glorppe 5y ago
  While this is a literal interpretation of all-cause mortality from the paper, I’m not sure this is the right take away. There was such a dramatic reduction in overall cases in the vaccination group that deaths are probably more statistical noise in both groups than being tied to covid one way or another. Currently deaths and cases have diverged dramatically in the population and this might be more indicative of the real world vaccine performance as it pertains to reducing death.
  - jkhdigital 5y ago
    In this study the vaccine reduced Covid-19 infection rates by like 90%, and essentially eliminated severe cases. This is great! But the same number of people died in each group. So vaccines do not reduce Covid-19 mortality, period. Does this mean vaccines are a waste of time? No, of course not! It just means we should be precise and correct in the claims we make based on statistics, and not fudge them to say things that sound good but are not true. EDIT: Fair enough, I'm making the same sloppy mistakes... this study doesn't say anything, positive or negative, about vaccine effects on mortality. But it certainly doesn't support the journalist's claim. It does support the claim that vaccines dramatically reduce infection rates and severity, which is great and reason enough to get vaccinated.
arbuge 5y ago
Most news articles I see focus solely on the number of vaccinated people when estimating how far away countries are from herd immunity, which seems odd to me. Left out in the discussion seem to be the unvaccinated but already infected. As far as I know, prior infection confers at least some degree of immunity. It may also be the case that those inclined to be skeptical of vaccines were also the ones who exposed themselves to infection most during the pandemic, through disdain for social distancing, mask-wearing, etc. In other words those still unvaccinated in Western countries with easy access to vaccines have a pretty good chance of having been infected by now. Adding those two populations together would seem to indicate that most Western populations are already at herd immunity by this point, which would mean that these surges can be reasonably expected to become smaller and smaller. Unless of course some totally new variant capable of evading all existing vaccines and immunity from prior infection emerges.
- billiam 5y ago
  I don't know what the point of such conjecture is. Of course we don't know how much immunity comes from infection, and it is quite clear from the spread of delta that we are nowhere near herd immunity in the developed world, even in places like Israel. I had a coronavirus called a cold last year; does that mean I'm immune this year? Unlikely in the long term with COVID. The entire concept of herd immunity may be a mirage: if the (rare) breakthrough infections in vaccinated people like me spread just as much virus as unvaccinated, then there may be a huge potential for incubating new strains among the mRNA-ed that may elude all our current vaccines. And unlike a lot of viruses, the latest variants may be just as lethal as the earlier ones. Usually viruses become more transmissible and less lethal in response to rational behavior in their hosts--but humans are proving we're not rational.
  - infamouscow 5y ago
    You're missing the point because the media (and their pharmaceutical advertisers) have framed everything in terms of vaccination, as if the human immune system is incapable of surviving COVID and it's variants. All viruses get less lethal as time goes on, not stronger, despite all the fear porn that has been indoctrinated into the public over the last year and a half.
sharken 5y ago
I have lost count of statements from epidemiologists who have grossly overestimated infection rates. Predicting the future is hard and if you're obviously not good at it, you should stop doing it. The bit about vaccinated being eight times less likely to get infected, should make those who are still unsure think again. And on the other hand it should give pause to those thinking about enforcing vaccine mandates.
mellosouls 5y ago
Full Title: The U.K.’s Delta Surge Is Collapsing. Will Ours?
dmje 5y ago
UK citizen here. I just don't think this "collapse" is the case. My gut feel is that everyone has stopped doing lateral flow tests and reporting those tests: noone wants to be isolating now the summer holidays have started, and many people are now ignoring track and trace because they're scared of the possible "pingdemic". I know many people who have stopped scanning in to venues. I reckon many suspect they may have Delta but because the holidays have started and they've been cut loose from gov mandates of mask wearing etc, that the "crowd responsibility" factor has almost totally dissipated. There may be evidence otherwise but I suspect actual figures are far higher than is being reported.
- biztos 5y ago
  A UK person I know said they won’t install the “pingdemic” app because they would have to isolate every five minutes; instead they just use the camera app and pretend. And that’s a vaccinated person who’s pretty cautious. I would assume it’s a widespread sentiment,
- quenix 5y ago
  Shouldn’t we see this reflected in hospital admissions?
  - lucb1e 5y ago
    Hospital admissions usually are a bit delayed, but yes, presumably people won't be holding off on being admitted to the hospital the way they would hold off on getting tested if GP is right. (Personally I'm not sure how many more people will now, as compared to a few weeks ago, decide that testing is more of a nuisance than helpful for protecting your loved ones, but then I'm not from the UK so what do I know.)
  - celsoazevedo 5y ago
    Looking at the official data[0], the number of daily hospital admissions is still increasing: https://i.imgur.com/XkbImVg.png https://i.imgur.com/XkbImVg.png But hospital admissions usually lag behind the number of infections. If in a week or two admissions are still going up while the number of new infections drops, then this theory may be correct. [0] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
Causality1 5y ago
I wonder how well the models account for the "oh shit" factor of people being exposed to enough news about a development like Delta that they change their behavior. All around me people are quietly going back to their early-pandemic habits of distancing and mask wearing despite shedding those habits well before the CDC said they should.
nostromo 5y ago
I don't see why we should care about number of cases in countries with freely available vaccines. Disease (as reflected by hospital admissions) and death are what we care about. And those numbers are continuing to trend in the right direction. The US media is just addicted to fear at this point. With a more boring/traditional president in the office and the covid panic waning, there is a news vacuum. And the media is trying to fill that vacuum with the delta variant. But you can calm your nerves just looking at the data yourself and not reading anything the media has to say.
- qeternity 5y ago
  Deaths have absolutely plummeted, and correlations have very clearly broken from previous "waves". But in order to extract compliance from the population, there needs to be a call to action, so the goalposts were moved to infections, as opposed to hospitalizations/deaths.
  - yellowfish 5y ago
    > Deaths have absolutely plummeted From my experience it can take a month or two until the plug is pulled, a lot of people who are discharged to LTACs also don't make it but it takes a bit
  - avs733 5y ago
    This and similar arguments begin from an assumption of bad faith by scientists. It’s unbecoming. You should care about the number of cases because each case is a potential for a new mutation that could be the one that bypasses vaccines or becomes more deadly or …use your imagination. Nobody cares about controlling you, and if they did they wouldn’t use facts covid they would just use tanks.
    - qeternity 5y ago
      > Nobody cares about controlling you, and if they did they wouldn’t use facts covid they would just use tanks. This is a really great way to cause revolt. Why do you think China retains such an iron grip over information? It’s how you control a large population.
Havoc 5y ago
>all the more conspicuous for happening just two days after the country’s pandemic restrictions were [...] lifted Lateral flow tests just happened to run out on the day restrictions were lifted. [0] And tada numbers plummet right when gov is taking massive heat for dropping restrictions in the middle of a surge. Yes really - that is how the current UK gov rolls. The fact that the author is trying to extrapolate other countries future trajectory based on that is rather amusing. [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/lateral-flow-test-run-out-b1886589.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/lateral-flow...
- BellLabradors 5y ago
  If this were true, then the proportion of tests which are positive should remain the same or go up but it isn't, it's going down: https://twitter.com/ThatRyanChap/status/1420407991937949699 https://twitter.com/ThatRyanChap/status/1420407991937949699
- idlemind 5y ago
  There are plenty of tests available since then, we picked some up recently. This was a temporary blip, if anything. You can see the testing rate on the gov dashboard [0] and it hasn’t really changed enough to account for the fall in cases. [0] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/testing https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/testing
Angostura 5y ago
I suppose irts worth mentioning that while the reported number of daily infections is dropping in the UK, so is the numer of tests taken. Meanwhile hospital admissions and deaths continue to rise, albeit slowly. https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk
andy_ppp 5y ago
People in the summer in the UK spend plenty of time outside, I would think the winter is when things get interesting again. Let’s hope we’re out of the woods but the luck of the uk government isn’t something I’d bank on!
fm34t 5y ago
Maskers should be shot dead.
fm34t 5y ago
You are a toe-jobbing choad.
fm34t 5y ago
This entire "pandemic" is fake as fuck. I hope all of you wearing a mask and getting a vax chooke on your own vomit you commies - that is if we don't throw you out of a helicopter over the pacific first.
calmd 5y ago
https://www.barrons.com/articles/covid-cases-uk-us-today-51627390120 https://www.barrons.com/articles/covid-cases-uk-us-today-516... Delta surged lasted 50 days in India and 45 days in the UK. We may see something similar That would be nice
dan-robertson 5y ago
I see lots of guesses about the decline in the U.K. usually one of: 1. Schools closing (~2 weeks earlier in Scotland than England) 2. Euros [football tournament] ending (Scotland fell out ~2 weeks earlier than England) 3. Hot weather (leading to events outdoors or more ventilation or less going out or something else bad for the virus) 4. The “pingdemic” where the contact-tracing app tells many people to self-isolate 5. The end of a big burst of weddings scheduled when restrictions were due to ease 6. Herd immunity 7. Maybe lots of people went on holiday and mostly kept to themselves. 8. Some statistical anomaly hiding case numbers that are not falling (eg fewer tests->fewer total positive cases) I don’t really believe 7 or 8 and everything else feels too unsupported. Perhaps time will tell what the cause is but I think I am weakly optimistic about current trends. We shall have to see.
cm2187 5y ago
One would never know by reading the headline of major UK newspapers that cases are going down. When cases are up, you get alarming headlines. When cases are down, the same newspapers will find something else to be alarmed about. Thanks god there is internet, and I can follow the underlying numbers directly.
londons_explore 5y ago
The shape of the curve in the UK[1] is very unlike most viral transmission models. Most models predict initially exponential growth of rate of infection per day, before a flattening off to a steady number of cases per day,and eventually a declining number of cases per day. Yet in the case of the UK. there is exponential growth, followed by very sudden exponential decay, with no gradual flattening off phase. It appears that the sudden "switch" is likely caused by a large unmodelled effect. Possible causes I see: * Schools stopped on that day, and >half the transmission was occurring in school age children mixing with their peers. That would cause the graph we see. * Schools stopped that day, and lots of people were only testing themselves as a requirement for attending school. Now that school is over, they have stopped testing. That would also cause the graph we see, but real infection rates would now be higher than suggested by test results. this hypothesis is backed up by the daily number of tests done seeing a big shift (previously few tests were done on friday and saturday, now it's more even). * The weather changed and now people are spending more time outdoors, reducing transmission. * It's summertime and a lot of people are taking summer breaks rather than working. * Another variant, or maybe a totally different virus, is spreading which isn't picked up by current tests (and displacing the current one by causing cross-immunity). [1]: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases
difosfor 5y ago
I thought it was pretty obvious that the reason why our last wave here in the Netherlands has dropped as quickly as it rose is that we first let go of too many restrictions too fast and then immediately reinstated the biggest ones. Basically all the kids were going to festivals for a week or two before the government finally realized that was a bad idea until we've vaccinated them as well and we should still apply some restrictions.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  Yeah, I find the inclusion of the Netherlands in this article pretty weird, as they did re-introduce restrictions. In contrast, the UK thing is much stranger (at least for now).
4hwsrtdfb 5y ago
I hope you all suffocate to death in your fucking masks. Fucking bitches.
malwarebytess 5y ago
Neil Ferguson was a hack at the beginning of this pandemic, and he's a hack now. Absolutely bunk science. Glad that the media can now at least tell the truth. Just want to point out so much of what we are doing now is essentially because of his suggestions.
spfzero 5y ago
The idea that a “nasal vaccine” would help stop nasal infections is so laughable. However you deliver the vaccine, it’s an antibody generator. That’s part of the adaptive immune system, not the innate system that the nasal mucus membrane is part of. The antibody response kicks in long after nasal exposure, when the virus has proceeded on past the mucus membrane and begun multiplying in cells all over the body.
alvah 5y ago
"Ferguson looks foolish now" Ferguson has looked foolish for over 20 years, every public pronouncement he has made has been pessimistic by orders of magnitude. Why the government and the public still listen to this charlatan is a mystery.

243 points by donohoe 5y ago

Wolfenstein98k 5y ago

Important and underexamined question. What happened in the UK?

JetSetWilly 5y ago
Probably schools and universities being closed. I'd support this by noting that the numbers in Scotland surged earlier then started declining earlier (where universities and schools go on summer holidays weeks before England). When English schools later broke up for summer, numbers there started declining too. So no doubt numbers will start going up again when school returns, and will do so first in Scotland - as the virus burns through the young, unvaccinated population.
- gsnedders 5y ago
  Not sure it's quite this simple; look at the overall case by specimen and age demographics graphs on https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=nation&areaName=England https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=natio... (England only, because the data for rUK isn't available). Note the peak is around a week _prior_ the end of the school term in England (23 July), and this is true across basically all age groups.
  - shawabawa3 5y ago
    The Euro finals were on 11th July and for a lot of schools the holidays started on the 15th July
  - drcongo 5y ago
    Most of England's private schools broke up one week prior to the state schools.
    - de_keyboard 5y ago
      Most children don't go to private schools.
    - richardwhiuk 5y ago
      Only 6% of the population attend private school.
- jtbayly 5y ago
  But if it rose earlier and fell earlier, the simplest explanation is simply that the course of the disease was... earlier there, isn't it?
  - JetSetWilly 5y ago
    It is possible, but there's still large cohorts of the population (ie under 18s) who have not had the virus and are not vaccinated, you would expect that when they go back to large scale mixing in schools together that transmission will increase among them and case numbers will go up. And this isn't really an issue so long as the overwhelming majority of the old and vulnerable are vaccinated. But there still the potential for scary looking case numbers but not so much death numbers.
- 3dbrows 5y ago
  The staggered school return times you mention could be one factor (as could better weather resulting in outdoor socialising instead of indoor). The effect when schools return (~2 weeks from now in Scotland) might be muted however as hundreds of thousands more vaccinations will have been done in the parent-age population. In Scotland, for example, over 90% of adults have received the first dose, and 72% the second (implying that ~18% are in the waiting period for the 2nd). Perhaps we should expect to see a spike in cases in children, but not so much among their parents.
  - bigbizisverywyz 5y ago
    Did we not see the same effect last year (probably for the reasons you mentioned)? Numbers declined in summer, but then massively rose again in Oct-Nov. I think this Autumn will reveal whether the vaccinations are giving us the protection needed to gradually open up society again. For my part I really hope it does, as it will also encourage other countries to do the same and give the vaccination campaign a worldwide boost.
    - 3dbrows 5y ago
      Let’s hope the peak just gone is the last big spike. In the final analysis I imagine the British public’s _willingness_ to get the jab will be seen as an enormous success factor, on top of the vaccine itself’s efficacy. This willingness merits study. High social trust of the NHS, historic common understanding of vaccines and everyone knowing someone affected by the virus all play their part. As an aside, I believe this to have been the NHS’ finest hour, and in future “the pandemic” will replace “the war” as the lynchpin reference point in time, as it were.
      - makomk 5y ago
        The UK government definitely seems to consider the British public's willingness to get vaccinated to be one of the key parts of the success story, from what I've seen. I will also say that their handling of issues like the AstraZeneca blood clotting issue has been really good compared to the shitshows elsewhere - careful, measured, with really clear communication about what they know and why it justifies the decisions about whether to vaccinate people with it.
jjgreen 5y ago
The collapse (unexpected by almost everyone) happened after "freedom day", when masks were no longer mandatory and it became legal to stand at the bar in a pub. Probably co-incidence.
- lumost 5y ago
  There are many coincidences and spurious correlations in the world. It's informative to propose a falsifiable mechanism behind a correlation which can be tested independently. I could reframe your hypothesis in a falsifiable way such as "perhaps ending lockdowns in the UK caused individuals to spend more time outdoors or in open air restaurants rather than smaller closed doors activities such as dinner parties", or "perhaps ending lockdowns in the UK caused people to spend more time in other locations rather than large shared ventilation apartment complexes".
  - jjgreen 5y ago
    I make no hypothesis, simply note the order in which things happened (in England at least) as requested by the parent.
- shawabawa3 5y ago
  The drop actually started before freedom day. There's usually about a 2 week period between "cause" and "effect" in terms of cases anyway. It's much more likely to have peaked because of Euro finals on 11th July and school holidays starting on 15th July
- GuB-42 5y ago
  It has to be a coincidence. It happened almost the exact day, maybe even a little earlier. It should take about a week to start seeing the effect of a change in policy. From incubation time to testing to results. Usually, we count two weeks to be sure.
  - thinkingemote 5y ago
    The day restrictions were lifted was itself postponed from the previous month. Modelling was used to predict the day. It could be coincidence but this date was planned and intentional.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Lots of people either being vaccinated or infected seems like it would play a big role.
- squarefoot 5y ago
  Probably both. We should remember what was the 1st approach to the Covid problem by Johnson (that is, well over one year ago): he wanted to achieve herd immunity without having enough vaccines or not having them at all, and initially there were no imposed lockdowns or infection prevention rules. The point is that along the extremely high death toll caused by that approach, a huge percentage of people over there might have caught the virus without symptoms, therefore becoming immune to a 2nd infection or at least immune to nasty symptoms. So it's entirely possible that the herd immunity was eventually achieved, although many, including me, would agree the price to pay has been not fair.
  - Imnimo 5y ago
    I don't really see how the level of immunity could be low enough in June to allow rapid growth, and then suddenly be high enough in mid-July to cause rapid decline. Wouldn't we expect a population close to herd immunity to see slow growth, and a population just over herd immunity to see a slow decline?
    - tsywke44 5y ago
      If 70% of your population is vaccinated, it doesnt mean the virus spreads 70% slower. It instead means that there are 20 million potential virus hosts in the UK instead of 67m. Way more than the population of lots of EU countries.
      - Imnimo 5y ago
        I think it does mean that the virus spreads slower (although the exact amount will also depend on factors like how vaccinated people are distributed among the population). Whereas in an unvaccinated population, each infected person might spread the virus to (say) five others, in a 70% vaccinated population, on average 3.5 of those others would be vaccinated, so the virus would only spread to 1.5 others. This gives a slower rate of growth. Once that rate of growth falls below 1, herd immunity is achieved. When you are close to herd immunity, that rate should be just a little above 1, leading to slow but positive growth.
zarzavat 5y ago
Choose your own adventure, coronavirus edition. You have coronavirus symptoms. During the middle of a surge in cases, the government has announced that all coronavirus restrictions have ended and everybody can go back to normal. The vast majority of older and vulnerable people have been fully vaccinated. Do you: A: get a test and risk having to isolate B: not get a test and live your life like normal as the government said you should
- sprkwd 5y ago
  Anecdotally, everybody I know has deleted the app from their phone so they can’t get pinged and live their life reasonably normally.
  - karol 5y ago
    Anecdotally, I never installed it for the same reason.
    - BoxOfRain 5y ago
      I wonder how much is post-Snowden distrust of government software and how much is simply not wanting to be pinged?
      - jokethrowaway 5y ago
        Definitely both. I would install it if it meant free paid holiday from work but I'm not employed and if I were I could probably work from home.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
joelschw 5y ago
The national football team also did really well in the Euro competition - this forced a lot of drunk people indoors and onto public transport.
- M2Ys4U 5y ago
  And also in to pubs...
ddek 5y ago
Tentative signs the virus has burned out, either through infections or vaccinations. The wave has been entirely confined to the younger age brackets who are far less vaccinated.[1] Being in central London right now, through anecdotal evidence I don't think we've suddenly become less sociable. - [1] UK infections grouped by age. School years 6, 7, 11, and 12 are ages 11, 12, 17, and 18 respectively. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19latestinsights/infections#infections-by-age https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
- wrboyce 5y ago
  I don’t think those ages are right (the maths do not follow, so I’m almost certain they are not). In y11 you turn 16, not 17. https://www.gov.uk/national-curriculum https://www.gov.uk/national-curriculum
  - ddek 5y ago
    Your right, I forgot about y13 being the last year. Y11 is GCSE year which ends at 16. I’m not sure why the the age brackets don’t go up to Y13, when school ends.
- smorgusofborg 5y ago
  The Massachusetts study is rather confusing about delta and vaccination, but I think it emphasizes that demographics of who is socializing is skewed. So it might have burned out among those in the nightlife and still be highly dangerous among pensioners.
  - perardi 5y ago
    I know the demographics of who were socializing. It’s very skewed. Friends and acquaintances of mine. I have some doubts about how generalizable the results are. A circuit party is not a produce aisle.
tsywke44 5y ago
Night clubs opened and were PACKED, a lot of young people were unvaccinated, causing hundreds of superspreader events every night for a few weeks. The % of total population who actually visits nightclubs is pretty low, so it took like a monh for this segment to hit herd immunity basically
- tsywke44 5y ago
  Also lots of previously vaccinated people were exposed, but didn’t get infected. Doesn’t mean their immune system did nothing though. I’d wager a lot of UK population basically got an ”organic 3rd vaccine dose”. My prediction is they have probably the highest immunity rates in the world atm
  - bostik 5y ago
    > a lot of UK population basically got an ”organic 3rd vaccine dose”. Isn't that how the vaccination regime is supposed to work, actually? With two jabs in, contracting Covid still comes with something like 4%..20% hit rate.[ß] However, with two jabs the risk of hospitalisation is mercifully low, and roughly half of the cases are asymptomatic. So instead of vaccinated people overloading the NHS, when they do get unlucky, they are much more likely to get through with only mild symptoms. For majority that "organic 3rd dose" works as a booster shot. They can still infect others, though... NB. As far as I know, there are no good studies on how Long Covid manifests in a vaccinated population. I think the working assumption is that very mild symptomatic Covid also ends up with less severe Long Covid, but have heard of no data to back that up. ß: Depending on the study, the vaccine in question and the variant. IIRC 2xPfizer provides ~88% protection against Delta, 95%+ against earlier non-Beta variants; 2xAstraZeneca provides 60%+ protection against Delta, 90%+ against non-Betas. Disclosure: UK resident, with two jabs.
    - mattlondon 5y ago
      As far as I know, long covid is directly related to how sick you get. you hear all these stories of people being bed bound for a week or more, high fever, struggling to breathe, etc etc. I'd think it sounds quite a lot like those people were really rather ill. I don't think people should expect to go back to running marathons or whatever a week after fighting to survive It's the same for flu and other major viral infections. It can take a while to get back to full health - I don't think covid is anything new here? Just the usual "you almost died"?
IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
People reading the news and individually deciding to be slightly more careful again.
danenania 5y ago
Oh fun: the game where everyone puts their pet biases forward in an attempt to explain the behavior of a poorly understood complex system. It reminds me of the financial news. "Commodities markets are spooked as backlash to latest Justin Bieber video mounts!" In all seriousness, apart from the vaccination rate and strictly enforced lockdowns, I have yet to see an explanation for cases going up or down in a particular region that isn't contradicted by the results in some other region. I think we should just admit that except for vaccines and physically forcing 90% of the population into isolation, we don't have a clue what works and what doesn't.
- neves 5y ago
  There's a lot of evidence about what worked what didn't work. Dozens of countries and well organized societies responded well to the pandemic.
  - mariodiana 5y ago
    I remember reading that the deaths in countries corresponded pretty tightly with obesity levels in the population. If that's true, that throws lots of "evidence" right out the window. Edit: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-obesity/obesity-a-driving-factor-in-covid-19-deaths-global-report-finds-idUSKBN2AW1X0 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-obesit...
    - sharken 5y ago
      This BBC story speculates that Delta became the main variant in part due to the cold weather. But I'm not sure any one factor can be singled out. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57489740 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57489740
      - mariodiana 5y ago
        I saw a doctor on YouTube (just a private guy with his own channel) apply this same reasoning to Florida. Right now is Florida's "winter": meaning, people tend to stay indoors with the windows closed (to avoid the oppressive heat of the July and August).
mattlondon 5y ago
IMO it was most likely the Euros football/soccer championship leading to a lot of mixing in crowded spaces among younger men who maybe didn't yet have the vaccine or we're from backrounds that are the sort that typically ignore this sort of thing.
- gpt5 5y ago
  Would you also blame the Euro football for the rising Delta cases everywhere in the western world?
  - mattlondon 5y ago
    yes because the matches were all-over europe so same people who were in a packed pub a few days earlier were now on a plane to some other european country to watch the next match. further, the borders remained open so people mixed at home and then went on holiday/visited family etc. UK is a major international transport hub and also has a large population of Indian descent so we likely "imported" delta from India relatively early as a result and then likely helped seed it in other western nations. They should have put India on the red list several weeks earlier than they did when it was obvious for anyone to see what was going on, but they delayed for unknown reasons
- nicoburns 5y ago
  Yep, I know someone who went to one of the Euro matches. They got covid, and they also said that the facebook groups for supporters were absolutely full of people who had also gotten covid.
jl6 5y ago
The UK had a perfect storm of factors contributing to the severity of the Covid pandemic in that country: highly internationally mobile population, highly internally mobile population, a global travel hub, high population density, culture of close social mixing, no culture of mask wearing, colder climate leading to more indoor living, higher than average levels of elderly people, obese people, and of the ethnic groups most impacted by the virus, low appetite for strict enforcement of lockdowns, and low levels of government control over everyday living. Other countries had some of these factors. Few if any had all of these factors. What happened next? The vaccines turned out to be really effective.
- phatfish 5y ago
  "Few if any had all of these factors." The UK certainly doesn't have all of them for a start. The lock-downs had high levels of compliance, just a lot of people moaning from their sofa (or whatever soapbox they have available, reach varies greatly, inversely with intelligence in many cases). Population density, travel hub, obesity levels, delayed first lock-down would be my list.
anigbrowl 5y ago
Underexamined? Every major public health official and commentator has been discussing it on a near daily basis for weeks.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

monooso 5y ago

The ONS regularly tests a random selection of people. Their results typically trail the daily infection numbers by two weeks. Notably, the most recent ONS samples demonstrated a sharp rise in cases. The suggestion is that cases are actually surging, but most are now either asymptomatic or at least very mild, and thus not reported. I guess we'll find out shortly whether that's the case.

ddek 5y ago
Which ONS data are you referring to? The currently published data indicates the wave has at least plateaued, as I read it, in all but the youngest age groups.
- a_humean 5y ago
  They are talking about the survey data, which doesn't rely upon the normal testing regime. They randomly contact and test individuals irrespective of their symptoms status, which is different from the normal testing regime that gets reported daily. I believe its a 20k sample size. The survey takes a lot longer time compile Most recent summary: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/latest https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... Most recent data: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/datasets/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveydata https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... Methods: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/methodologies/covid19infectionsurveypilotmethodsandfurtherinformation https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
  - monooso 5y ago
    Thanks for adding the relevant links.
  - tomatocracy 5y ago
    In particular, it's worth noting that the ONS survey tries to estimate an answer to the question "in the given time period, what proportion of the population would have tested positive?" Because people tend to continue to test positive for a reasonable period of time after they are first infected, this should be a lagging indicator of any peak in new infections having occurred.

mixedmath 5y ago

I read this and think it's well written. I see it's published in The Intelligencer, which is apparently an offshoot of NYMagazine. I'm not particularly familiar with either, but I hadn't realized that news-type things would be discussed in them. Does anyone here have anything to say about their quality or their relevance to people who don't live in NY?

filmgirlcw 5y ago
New York Magazine is certainly centered on New York City, but like many other New York-named publications (including the unrelated New York Times newspaper and the New Yorker magazine), it is actually national in scope. And many of the stories can even be international, insofar as culture and a not insignificant American export. It has always been well-regarded, think of it as a more puckish New Yorker (although in recent years, The New Yorker has certainly taken on more personality, especially online), and I would argue, was one of the first “prestige” magazines to really embrace online and digital expansion. It took until well into the 2010s for a lot of the Condé Nast and Hearst publications to even integrate their digital and print newsrooms, with digital often being treated as an afterthought. New York Mag really embraced online early and as a result, didn’t have the same identity issues once the bottom dropped out of print’s profitability. It used to be a weekly magazine but swapped to biweekly seven or eight years ago. I’ve been a subscriber since I was in college (which was before I moved to New York City), which coincided with the online push and the reign of editor-in-chief Adam Moss (who was EIC from 2004-2019), and since 2004, I believe NYMag has won more National Magazine Awards (which are sort of the magazine world’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prizes, albeit with less prestige) than any other publication. There are several “verticals” for New York Mag, which include Vulture (culture), The Cut (lifestyle and more of a focus on women), Grub Street (restaurants and bars), Intelligencer (tech, politics, ideas). Vox bought the magazine a few years ago, but it operates relatively independently from the other Vox media sites (Vox, The Verge, etc.), at least as far as editorial content goes. (I’m sure they share resources like HR and some ad sales stuff, same as Conde and Hearst and Meredith.) *I don’t and have never worked at New York Mag, but as a former New York City-based journalist, I have friends who do or have worked there and I’ve met Pam Wasserstein, the former CEO (current president of Vox Media), socially a few times.

0xTJ 5y ago

This gives me hope for Canada, where I am, won't face too many issues even as we slowly start to tick up from the bottom since major reopening happened, allowing indoor dining etc. In the last week, we've passed the UK in number of fully vaccinated people, but that's going to be slowing down as we start running of people who got their first dose during the big surge in shots here. Unfortunately, at 64% of the total population getting a first dose, the steep straight line in first doses suddenly curved to a much shallower straight line, to a rate similar to the current UK and US ones. I find the Our World In Data Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) data (https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus) very interesting. It doesn't help that Alberta, our country's Texas, has decided to fully open everything and get rid of their requirements. Starting 2 weeks from now, you won't even have to self-isolate if you test positive for COVID-19.

goalieca 5y ago
> Starting 2 weeks from now, you won't even have to self-isolate if you test positive for COVID-19. This is a loaded question, but since covid is and will be endemic, when do we get on with our lives and start facing the mountains of other public health issues? It seems like our vaccination effort was extremely successful and had an amazing effect and there isn’t likely to be any radical new intervention for years to come.
- mint2 5y ago
  Isn’t it standard practice to set isolate if one has any highly contagious disease? Like the actual flu? Maybe it’s not a law but it sure is a sensical cultural norm and is just the polite thing to do as well.
  - ls612 5y ago
    Not for 10-14 days!! To the extent most people care they either stay home until they feel better or they try to power through it.
    - 5y ago

coding123 5y ago

The future is N95 masks. Even if you decide not to, for the rest of your life you will see people wearing them at everyday places.

vernie 5y ago
It's incredibly rare to see anybody wearing a real N95 mask even today.

runawaybottle 5y ago

Do we have conclusive numbers on how long these vaccines last? I’m reading that Pfizer lasts about 6 months? There’s no way there won’t be a surge again next summer if that’s the case.

newsyyswen 5y ago
There are no conclusive numbers on how long they last, because there has not been a significant drop-off in efficacy yet. There is some evidence that booster shots after 6 months can provide better even better protection than the second shot after 3-4 weeks, but it's not clear whether they will be necessary yet, especially when so much of the world is still desperate to get the first two shots in peoples' arms.
- dtech 5y ago
  There has been shown a little bit of drop-off, but that is in the range of 95% to 80-90%, so still strong. Hard to say because the mutation in circulation have changed.
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  There's been enough drop-off in the Pfizer vaccine that Israel is starting boosters for people 60+. Their estimate is that protection against mild disease has dropped to 40% and protection against hospitalization to 88%. https://swprs.org/covid-vaccines-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/ https://swprs.org/covid-vaccines-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/
tguvot 5y ago
slide 19: https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/8a726408-07bd-46bd-a945-3af0ae2f3c37/note/57c98604-3b54-44f0-8b44-b148d8f75165.#page=1 https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/do... slide 4+: https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/reports/vaccine-efficacy-safety-follow-up-committee/he/files_publications_corona_two-dose-vaccination-data.pdf https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/reports/vaccine-efficacy-safet... and in general https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2109072 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2109072

christkv 5y ago

Same pattern in northern Spain that have very high vaccination rates.

xrayarx 5y ago
Source please?
- christkv 5y ago
  Local Spanish newspaper https://www.elcomercio.es/asturias/asturias-acerca-inmunidad-colectiva-concejos-vacunados-coronavirus-20210802000940-ntvo.html?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.elcomercio.es%2F https://www.elcomercio.es/asturias/asturias-acerca-inmunidad... 76% with one dose,66.7% with two doses. Number of cases are going down from about 400 a day a week ago to about 200+ this week per day.
- euskera 5y ago
  https://www.diariovasco.com/sociedad/salud/euskadi-vacunados-coronavirus-20210802224238-nt.html https://www.diariovasco.com/sociedad/salud/euskadi-vacunados...

hr4lkjerh 5y ago

All maskers must die! All vaxxers must die! FUCKING KILL YOURSELVES!

hr4lkjerh 5y ago

You can't even test for the fucking "delta" "variant". Fuck these assholes.

jkhdigital 5y ago

> thanks to widespread vaccination of the elderly, however fast this disease spreads it will ultimately inflict a much, much smaller death toll than earlier waves, because vaccination has probably eliminated 90 percent or more of the country’s total COVID-19 mortality risk. This claim does not appear to be grounded in any factual basis: A double-blind randomized trial for an mRNA vaccine with 44k participants showed nearly identical all-cause mortality in vaccinated vs. placebo groups after six months [1]. The delta wave will almost certainly be less fatal, but there is no evidence to indicate that widespread vaccination is the primary causal factor, or even a contributing factor, for the reduced mortality. [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v1.full-text https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v...

glorppe 5y ago
While this is a literal interpretation of all-cause mortality from the paper, I’m not sure this is the right take away. There was such a dramatic reduction in overall cases in the vaccination group that deaths are probably more statistical noise in both groups than being tied to covid one way or another. Currently deaths and cases have diverged dramatically in the population and this might be more indicative of the real world vaccine performance as it pertains to reducing death.
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  In this study the vaccine reduced Covid-19 infection rates by like 90%, and essentially eliminated severe cases. This is great! But the same number of people died in each group. So vaccines do not reduce Covid-19 mortality, period. Does this mean vaccines are a waste of time? No, of course not! It just means we should be precise and correct in the claims we make based on statistics, and not fudge them to say things that sound good but are not true. EDIT: Fair enough, I'm making the same sloppy mistakes... this study doesn't say anything, positive or negative, about vaccine effects on mortality. But it certainly doesn't support the journalist's claim. It does support the claim that vaccines dramatically reduce infection rates and severity, which is great and reason enough to get vaccinated.

arbuge 5y ago

Most news articles I see focus solely on the number of vaccinated people when estimating how far away countries are from herd immunity, which seems odd to me. Left out in the discussion seem to be the unvaccinated but already infected. As far as I know, prior infection confers at least some degree of immunity. It may also be the case that those inclined to be skeptical of vaccines were also the ones who exposed themselves to infection most during the pandemic, through disdain for social distancing, mask-wearing, etc. In other words those still unvaccinated in Western countries with easy access to vaccines have a pretty good chance of having been infected by now. Adding those two populations together would seem to indicate that most Western populations are already at herd immunity by this point, which would mean that these surges can be reasonably expected to become smaller and smaller. Unless of course some totally new variant capable of evading all existing vaccines and immunity from prior infection emerges.

billiam 5y ago
I don't know what the point of such conjecture is. Of course we don't know how much immunity comes from infection, and it is quite clear from the spread of delta that we are nowhere near herd immunity in the developed world, even in places like Israel. I had a coronavirus called a cold last year; does that mean I'm immune this year? Unlikely in the long term with COVID. The entire concept of herd immunity may be a mirage: if the (rare) breakthrough infections in vaccinated people like me spread just as much virus as unvaccinated, then there may be a huge potential for incubating new strains among the mRNA-ed that may elude all our current vaccines. And unlike a lot of viruses, the latest variants may be just as lethal as the earlier ones. Usually viruses become more transmissible and less lethal in response to rational behavior in their hosts--but humans are proving we're not rational.
- infamouscow 5y ago
  You're missing the point because the media (and their pharmaceutical advertisers) have framed everything in terms of vaccination, as if the human immune system is incapable of surviving COVID and it's variants. All viruses get less lethal as time goes on, not stronger, despite all the fear porn that has been indoctrinated into the public over the last year and a half.

sharken 5y ago

I have lost count of statements from epidemiologists who have grossly overestimated infection rates. Predicting the future is hard and if you're obviously not good at it, you should stop doing it. The bit about vaccinated being eight times less likely to get infected, should make those who are still unsure think again. And on the other hand it should give pause to those thinking about enforcing vaccine mandates.

mellosouls 5y ago

Full Title: The U.K.’s Delta Surge Is Collapsing. Will Ours?

dmje 5y ago

UK citizen here. I just don't think this "collapse" is the case. My gut feel is that everyone has stopped doing lateral flow tests and reporting those tests: noone wants to be isolating now the summer holidays have started, and many people are now ignoring track and trace because they're scared of the possible "pingdemic". I know many people who have stopped scanning in to venues. I reckon many suspect they may have Delta but because the holidays have started and they've been cut loose from gov mandates of mask wearing etc, that the "crowd responsibility" factor has almost totally dissipated. There may be evidence otherwise but I suspect actual figures are far higher than is being reported.

biztos 5y ago
A UK person I know said they won’t install the “pingdemic” app because they would have to isolate every five minutes; instead they just use the camera app and pretend. And that’s a vaccinated person who’s pretty cautious. I would assume it’s a widespread sentiment,
quenix 5y ago
Shouldn’t we see this reflected in hospital admissions?
- lucb1e 5y ago
  Hospital admissions usually are a bit delayed, but yes, presumably people won't be holding off on being admitted to the hospital the way they would hold off on getting tested if GP is right. (Personally I'm not sure how many more people will now, as compared to a few weeks ago, decide that testing is more of a nuisance than helpful for protecting your loved ones, but then I'm not from the UK so what do I know.)
- celsoazevedo 5y ago
  Looking at the official data[0], the number of daily hospital admissions is still increasing: https://i.imgur.com/XkbImVg.png https://i.imgur.com/XkbImVg.png But hospital admissions usually lag behind the number of infections. If in a week or two admissions are still going up while the number of new infections drops, then this theory may be correct. [0] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

Causality1 5y ago

I wonder how well the models account for the "oh shit" factor of people being exposed to enough news about a development like Delta that they change their behavior. All around me people are quietly going back to their early-pandemic habits of distancing and mask wearing despite shedding those habits well before the CDC said they should.

nostromo 5y ago

I don't see why we should care about number of cases in countries with freely available vaccines. Disease (as reflected by hospital admissions) and death are what we care about. And those numbers are continuing to trend in the right direction. The US media is just addicted to fear at this point. With a more boring/traditional president in the office and the covid panic waning, there is a news vacuum. And the media is trying to fill that vacuum with the delta variant. But you can calm your nerves just looking at the data yourself and not reading anything the media has to say.

qeternity 5y ago
Deaths have absolutely plummeted, and correlations have very clearly broken from previous "waves". But in order to extract compliance from the population, there needs to be a call to action, so the goalposts were moved to infections, as opposed to hospitalizations/deaths.
- yellowfish 5y ago
  > Deaths have absolutely plummeted From my experience it can take a month or two until the plug is pulled, a lot of people who are discharged to LTACs also don't make it but it takes a bit
- avs733 5y ago
  This and similar arguments begin from an assumption of bad faith by scientists. It’s unbecoming. You should care about the number of cases because each case is a potential for a new mutation that could be the one that bypasses vaccines or becomes more deadly or …use your imagination. Nobody cares about controlling you, and if they did they wouldn’t use facts covid they would just use tanks.
  - qeternity 5y ago
    > Nobody cares about controlling you, and if they did they wouldn’t use facts covid they would just use tanks. This is a really great way to cause revolt. Why do you think China retains such an iron grip over information? It’s how you control a large population.

Havoc 5y ago

>all the more conspicuous for happening just two days after the country’s pandemic restrictions were [...] lifted Lateral flow tests just happened to run out on the day restrictions were lifted. [0] And tada numbers plummet right when gov is taking massive heat for dropping restrictions in the middle of a surge. Yes really - that is how the current UK gov rolls. The fact that the author is trying to extrapolate other countries future trajectory based on that is rather amusing. [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/lateral-flow-test-run-out-b1886589.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/lateral-flow...

BellLabradors 5y ago
If this were true, then the proportion of tests which are positive should remain the same or go up but it isn't, it's going down: https://twitter.com/ThatRyanChap/status/1420407991937949699 https://twitter.com/ThatRyanChap/status/1420407991937949699
idlemind 5y ago
There are plenty of tests available since then, we picked some up recently. This was a temporary blip, if anything. You can see the testing rate on the gov dashboard [0] and it hasn’t really changed enough to account for the fall in cases. [0] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/testing https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/testing

Angostura 5y ago

I suppose irts worth mentioning that while the reported number of daily infections is dropping in the UK, so is the numer of tests taken. Meanwhile hospital admissions and deaths continue to rise, albeit slowly. https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk

andy_ppp 5y ago

People in the summer in the UK spend plenty of time outside, I would think the winter is when things get interesting again. Let’s hope we’re out of the woods but the luck of the uk government isn’t something I’d bank on!

fm34t 5y ago

Maskers should be shot dead.

fm34t 5y ago

You are a toe-jobbing choad.

fm34t 5y ago

This entire "pandemic" is fake as fuck. I hope all of you wearing a mask and getting a vax chooke on your own vomit you commies - that is if we don't throw you out of a helicopter over the pacific first.

calmd 5y ago

https://www.barrons.com/articles/covid-cases-uk-us-today-51627390120 https://www.barrons.com/articles/covid-cases-uk-us-today-516... Delta surged lasted 50 days in India and 45 days in the UK. We may see something similar That would be nice

dan-robertson 5y ago

I see lots of guesses about the decline in the U.K. usually one of: 1. Schools closing (~2 weeks earlier in Scotland than England) 2. Euros [football tournament] ending (Scotland fell out ~2 weeks earlier than England) 3. Hot weather (leading to events outdoors or more ventilation or less going out or something else bad for the virus) 4. The “pingdemic” where the contact-tracing app tells many people to self-isolate 5. The end of a big burst of weddings scheduled when restrictions were due to ease 6. Herd immunity 7. Maybe lots of people went on holiday and mostly kept to themselves. 8. Some statistical anomaly hiding case numbers that are not falling (eg fewer tests->fewer total positive cases) I don’t really believe 7 or 8 and everything else feels too unsupported. Perhaps time will tell what the cause is but I think I am weakly optimistic about current trends. We shall have to see.

cm2187 5y ago

One would never know by reading the headline of major UK newspapers that cases are going down. When cases are up, you get alarming headlines. When cases are down, the same newspapers will find something else to be alarmed about. Thanks god there is internet, and I can follow the underlying numbers directly.

londons_explore 5y ago

The shape of the curve in the UK[1] is very unlike most viral transmission models. Most models predict initially exponential growth of rate of infection per day, before a flattening off to a steady number of cases per day,and eventually a declining number of cases per day. Yet in the case of the UK. there is exponential growth, followed by very sudden exponential decay, with no gradual flattening off phase. It appears that the sudden "switch" is likely caused by a large unmodelled effect. Possible causes I see: * Schools stopped on that day, and >half the transmission was occurring in school age children mixing with their peers. That would cause the graph we see. * Schools stopped that day, and lots of people were only testing themselves as a requirement for attending school. Now that school is over, they have stopped testing. That would also cause the graph we see, but real infection rates would now be higher than suggested by test results. this hypothesis is backed up by the daily number of tests done seeing a big shift (previously few tests were done on friday and saturday, now it's more even). * The weather changed and now people are spending more time outdoors, reducing transmission. * It's summertime and a lot of people are taking summer breaks rather than working. * Another variant, or maybe a totally different virus, is spreading which isn't picked up by current tests (and displacing the current one by causing cross-immunity). [1]: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases

difosfor 5y ago

I thought it was pretty obvious that the reason why our last wave here in the Netherlands has dropped as quickly as it rose is that we first let go of too many restrictions too fast and then immediately reinstated the biggest ones. Basically all the kids were going to festivals for a week or two before the government finally realized that was a bad idea until we've vaccinated them as well and we should still apply some restrictions.

disgruntledphd2 5y ago
Yeah, I find the inclusion of the Netherlands in this article pretty weird, as they did re-introduce restrictions. In contrast, the UK thing is much stranger (at least for now).

4hwsrtdfb 5y ago

I hope you all suffocate to death in your fucking masks. Fucking bitches.

malwarebytess 5y ago

Neil Ferguson was a hack at the beginning of this pandemic, and he's a hack now. Absolutely bunk science. Glad that the media can now at least tell the truth. Just want to point out so much of what we are doing now is essentially because of his suggestions.

spfzero 5y ago

The idea that a “nasal vaccine” would help stop nasal infections is so laughable. However you deliver the vaccine, it’s an antibody generator. That’s part of the adaptive immune system, not the innate system that the nasal mucus membrane is part of. The antibody response kicks in long after nasal exposure, when the virus has proceeded on past the mucus membrane and begun multiplying in cells all over the body.

alvah 5y ago

"Ferguson looks foolish now" Ferguson has looked foolish for over 20 years, every public pronouncement he has made has been pessimistic by orders of magnitude. Why the government and the public still listen to this charlatan is a mystery.