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> My gut feel is that everyone has stopped doing lateral flow tests and reporting those tests: noone wants to be isolating Okay that's easy to check: data shou
by lucb1e 5y ago
> My gut feel is that everyone has stopped doing lateral flow tests and reporting those tests: noone wants to be isolating
Okay that's easy to check: data should show a reduction in positive tests roughly on par with the reduction in number of tests.
Recent peak value of tests per day was 16.42 per 1000 citizens on Jul 17th. At that time there were 630.57 positive test results per million citizens.
On July 28th (latest data) tests declined to 13.46 and positive cases to 443.45. That's 18% fewer tests and 30% fewer positive cases, ballpark twice as much.
I don't think your gut is telling you the full story.
All values are 7-day rolling averages to avoid weekday spikes or anything. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2021-04-04..latest®ion=Europe&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=total_cases_per_million&hideControls=true&Metric=Confirmed+cases&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=GBR https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... (use the selector to switch between tests, positive cases, or other metrics)
- qeternity 5y agoUK resident here: I don't know of anyone who has gotten covid in many months, and nearly everyone I know is vaxxed. I believe this Delta collapse. It's exactly what you'd expect given our pace of vaccinations.
- lucb1e 5y agoIf we're going by anecdotal evidence, I know many more people that get the flu every year than that got covid-19. But I don't think my (on average) responsible acquaintances with (on average) workable-from-home jobs tell the whole story. You're right though that the numbers somewhat suggest that we're managing to beat the Delta variant. Is it due to vaccinations? The vaccination rate has been slowing for months now, yet the UK still had that spike. The difference in people that decided to get vaccinated between early June (start of positive cases spike) and July 21st (when the decrease set in) is 9%. (from 59% to 68%). It doesn't seem to me that a few percent more vaccinations explains everything. A percentage in the upper 60s, for first vaccinations no less (not even a full vaccination), should not be enough to beat Delta from what I heard about the R0. (Data source is the same OWID link, you can configure it to show vaccination data.)
- qeternity 5y agoI'm not saying it's due to vaccinations, I'm saying it's what you would expect given our pace of vaccinations. All we have are correlations. The reason I say this is that we have a relatively small population of unvaccinated people, and so with the high R0 of Delta, you'd expect it to rip through these unvaccinated pockets quickly and burn out, which is what we're seeing. I'd expect a few more Delta mini-waves similar to this in the coming months.
- starfallg 5y agoThe lateral flow tests results can be self-reported according to the NHS website, so you can't definitely draw conclusions from that data.