NWR new zero tolerance covid thread

johnny Shek said:
I just don't see any strong arguments against the ANZ COVID strategy.

If you close your borders it doesn't matter where you are. How does population, density or absolute make such a difference? Australia and New Zealand is a very different in any case. If the argument is that the UK is more densely populated then look to Hong Kong and the like who have also been very successful in dealing with COVID.

Neither of these countries are self sufficient. They have little manufacturing and import huge amounts of products. Even Australia with its diverse climates still imports a large amount of packaged and frozen food. Most other goods are imported. Again, places like Hong Kong import almost everything and haven't seen the chaos we're dealing with, either.

What happens after borders are opened up is a completely different argument. Let's stick to the last 9 months or so. Although I can't see why having a minority of people who have had covid making a huge difference. And having a disciplined population (mask wearing, rule following) will only benefit them when they do open up. Piss ups and 2 fingers to anyone who disagree are what await us.

The ANZ approach may not have been as successful here if implemented properly, but it may have been just as or almost as successful.

It surely couldn't have been worse than the disastrous mess that we find ourselves in. This is much worse than Brexit. Certain people, like the Beijing government, must be jubilant at how totally useless this once proud nation was.

I dread to fear what depths we will sink to next. The mind boggles.
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I have said for a long time that I don’t think it’s possible to say which countries have handled the pandemic well & which have handled it badly until they are back functioning as a proper open country with all their original freedoms. Wait until the pandemic is over and we may be able to look back and learn things from every experience.

The vaccines seem to be good at preventing hospitalisations & deaths but less so at preventing infections. There are lots of double jabbed people getting pretty sick from Delta at the moment, and there will of course be more variants to come. Who knows what position Australia & New Zealand will be in when they do open up again? It’s far too early to say.
 
Bryan Collins said:
It would seem very surprising that we've reached the peak already, but the numbers do make it look at least possible. I'd wait and see what happens for another week before being sure, though.

Forgive the slightly self-indulgent attachment but I knocked together this chart, which shows rolling seven day averages of positive tests (blue), hospitalisations (orange) and deaths (grey). This is based on the gov.uk coronavirus data. I've put in a four day lag for hospitalisations and a 12 day lag for deaths as this makes the peaks line up quite nicely time-wise, and I've scaled the yellow and grey lines so they peak at the same point as the blue line. It really does demonstrate that the link between cases and deaths appears to be well and truly broken. Obviously deaths aren't the only possible "bad outcome", but even so - amidst all the doom and gloom, let's not ignore what does look like some genuinely good news.

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Further decline in todays figures. It does look like the peak has now been passed. So those who were all doom and gloom hopefully the next week or so might encourage us all to smile more and be a bit more hopeful that things are getting better. It seems the government might have made the right call after all re unlocking. It will be interesting to see if other countries now follow suit.
 
Gareth Powell said:
Further decline in todays figures. It does look like the peak has now been passed. So those who were all doom and gloom hopefully the next week or so might encourage us all to smile more and be a bit more hopeful that things are getting better. It seems the government might have made the right call after all re unlocking. It will be interesting to see if other countries now follow suit.
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You really are a very optimistic fellow, Gareth. They might indeed get lucky, but it doesn't seem very likely to me. People who are wrong about everything tend to remain wrong about everything; no-one will be more pleased than I should the narrative change.
 
Perhaps I am ignorant but does not jubilation at a slight fall in (still astonishingly high)infection figures seem a little premature given that 'freedom day' has not yet had time to work its way through to those figures-particularly paradoxical given that the policy does appear to be to infect as many people as possible before winter arrives?
It does seem as though there really is no one in charge. I wish I thought that that was a good thing because it is an appealing idea, but I can't get away from the pretty firm conviction that if it looks like madness then for want of any better explanation it probably is.
The 'pingdemic' story is very weird indeed. That's what happens when we 'let it rip'.
 
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Thom Blach said:
Perhaps I am ignorant but does not jubilation at a slight fall in (still astonishingly high)infection figures seem a little premature given that 'freedom day' has not yet had time to work its way through to those figures-particularly paradoxical given that the policy does appear to be to infect as many people as possible before winter arrives?
It does seem as though there really is no one in charge. I wish I thought that that was a good thing because it is an appealing idea, but I can't get away from the pretty firm conviction that if it looks like madness then for want of any better explanation it probably is.
The 'pingdemic' story is very weird indeed. That's what happens when we 'let it rip'.
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Not just COVID, but other viruses need to work through too, I think that is the intent.
 
Infections matter because of what they might become (illness, long covid, new variants) but our knowledge of them is subject to external variables.

For example there's been talk that due to the pingdemic people have been deleting the app. Perhaps people have also been avoiding getting tested.

So wouldn't hospitalisations and deaths be a better guide than cases? If so it'll be several weeks after 19th July before the cases we don't know about show up in hospital.

Or not.
 
Bryan Collins said:
It may be that cases are being under-reported for the reasons you give Jeremy, yes - but if that’s the case it would actually be very good news, as it would mean that the mismatch between cases and hospitalisations/deaths is even more significant than it appears in the current data.
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Yes indeed-but surely the very serious question is whether or not it will remain so. Only 54% of the population is vaccinated.
 
Bryan Collins said:
It may be that cases are being under-reported for the reasons you give Jeremy, yes - but if that’s the case it would actually be very good news, as it would mean that the mismatch between cases and hospitalisations/deaths is even more significant than it appears in the current data.
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If hospitalisations decline consistently through to the second half of August I will deffo break out the fizz.
 
Bryan Collins said:
It may be that cases are being under-reported for the reasons you give Jeremy, yes - but if that’s the case it would actually be very good news, as it would mean that the mismatch between cases and hospitalisations/deaths is even more significant than it appears in the current data.
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Wouldn't there be a delay before we can know that? If cases are rising but people deleted the app just recently due to pingdemic we'd have to wait until the unreported cases fed through to hospitalisations to know about them. I guess the ONS data based on testing everyone in a fixed sample would reveal it sooner.
 
Jeremy Caan said:
If cases are rising but people deleted the app just recently due to pingdemic we'd have to wait until the unreported cases fed through to hospitalisations to know about them.
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Another thing we don't know is how many people who were pinged reported it and got tested. I can think of a number of reasons why people might not.

And especially with the fine weather last week, I also wonder how many people told their employer they had been pinged but actually weren't.

One has to be so careful with data.
 
I read that the ONS household survey shows that infections are up( from about 1-90 to 1-75). If it’s truly random, it would take out those who don’t get tested in the self presentation tests.
It’s too early to tell on infection rates especially with the opening up taking place. Hell! my family are all at Latitude!
 
Russ Sainty said:
I read that the ONS household survey shows that infections are up( from about 1-90 to 1-75). If it’s truly random, it would take out those who don’t get tested in the self presentation tests.
It’s too early to tell on infection rates especially with the opening up taking place. Hell! my family are all at Latitude!
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Wow they're, um, brave! Although anyone who's recently been in school will have very likely had it anyway I guess.
 
Steve Slatcher said:
Another thing we don't know is how many people who were pinged reported it and got tested. I can think of a number of reasons why people might not.

And especially with the fine weather last week, I also wonder how many people told their employer they had been pinged but actually weren't.

One has to be so careful with data.
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But gaming pings wouldn’t alter the declining relationship between positive tests and hospitalisations and deaths. And do you have any evidence that the app is being gamed ir is that just a world weary hunch?
 
Thom Blach said:
Perhaps I am ignorant but does not jubilation at a slight fall in (still astonishingly high)infection figures seem a little premature given that 'freedom day' has not yet had time to work its way through to those figures-particularly paradoxical given that the policy does appear to be to infect as many people as possible before winter arrives?
It does seem as though there really is no one in charge. I wish I thought that that was a good thing because it is an appealing idea, but I can't get away from the pretty firm conviction that if it looks like madness then for want of any better explanation it probably is.
The 'pingdemic' story is very weird indeed. That's what happens when we 'let it rip'.
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I don’t think the figures are astonishingly high at all. If anything I’d expect them to be much much higher. One thing we haven’t talked about is the number of tests being carried out now compared to the second peak. The average testing in the days before the 2nd wave peak was about 400k. The average testing now is just over 1 million. So it looks as though far far fewer people are being infected this time round which is good.

Tom I think as people (including myself) have posted there is no celebration yet but it does seem a twinkle of good news.

But let’s see where the figures go in a week and then let’s see if hospital figures also begin to drop in the next few weeks following that.

I think the opening up was just the best decision of a wide range of very bad options. I’m just mildly happy that at this point the evidence does suggest that it could be the right one. By luck or skill is a different question. But if the former here’s to more luck coming our way!
 
Thom Blach said:
Perhaps it is, though I don't understand how one can conclude that after five days!
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Tom I think you’re confusing conclusions with early evidence right now. As I’ve said multiple times we have to wait and see but at the moment the indications are good (I.e. they are not bad - exponential increases in cases. Nor neutral - cases increasing. Good - cases decreasing). Surely we can agree on that?
 
Maybe do a Voltaire and "look to Scotland"?

We had our third wave peak around beginning July - July 1st was 4.234 cases. Yesterday, July 23rd, 1,505.

Our very modest relaxation was only July 19th and cases were in fact falling before that yet have continued to fall (early days I appreciate).

The July peak was influenced upwards by the Euros and a very firce Delta wave here, especially in certain communities.. The reason for the fall is less clear except for a slow increase in vaccinations (rates of 1st doses have in fact fallen continuously) plus an increase in post virus immunity. However the other significant factor perhaps is that our school holidays started at the end of June.

As an aside, this fall has not been trumpeted by our Scottish Government nor publicized by our supine media. Whether because they do not have a good explanation or because they can't claim any credit for it I know not.
 
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