The number of daily virus cases

[TheOstrich]

Is it me, or do I sense that this current refrain that Covid cases are falling day by day is failing to hide the fact that the rate of fall is actually lessening and the downwards trend is beginning to flatten out - possibly heading for stability at around 10,000 or so?
In which case, the number of daily infections is never going to reach the 1,000 per day bandied about by the Government as a criteria for releasing lockdown measures.
I'm just wondering where we are going with this over the next couple of months or so, and if it is wise to ease restrictions, send schools back, re-open hospitality and so on in the short / medium term ...... or am I being too gloomy?

[JoM]

In our immediate area, as in when you put your postcode into the government site, cases have risen. We’d gone from falling to 7 in the previous seven days, where it had stayed steady, to 10 and now 14.
It’ll be interesting (worrying?) to see just what the government propose on the 22nd.

[Suff]

At the same time as the numbers are slowing, the number of tests are increasing dramatically. About 6 weeks ago, the gap between the UK and the US, for tests per million people, was around 60,000. The gap today is over 200,000.

Simply put, we are looking much harder and finding less.

I have been fairly consistent, from the beginning, in the fact that we have had no real clue as to just how many cases have been going on every day. In order to do that we would need to test everybody, every day. Clearly we can't do that.

Right now actions are being driven by perception and the press. The most high profile figures are the number of new cases and the daily death toll. Once the daily death toll hits double digits, or even single, other metrics will come into play. They have been mentioned before but our hyperactive child press won't focus on them.

The metrics which will come into play will be admissions to hospital, serious cases and deaths, on a daily basis.

Once we work the current serious cases out of the system, it will be possible to start focusing on these metrics and the entire lifetime of the virus is around 6 weeks. It is not yet 6 weeks since the end of the last surge so it is not possible to change the metrics.

Look for the news that a positive test, in a vaccinated person, should be treated differently to a positive test in an unvaccinated person. Once you hear that, you will know that the focus purely on daily infections is changing.

Just remember that everything coming out of the government right now is designed to give a path which the press cannot challenge. The press is focusing on cases, instead of educating themselves as to the possible routes out of the pandemic and judging the government on their choice of path.

Cases are fear and in this pandemic the press has been selling fear, not hope.

[cromwell]

As Suff says, test more and you find more.

Imo we are being too cautious now. Lats April if we had been told that in less than a year we would have at least two vaccines that protected you very well against the virus we would have been ecstatic. With the Astra Zeneca one even if you get Covid the symptoms are much reduced.

The goalposts are just constantly being moved. If you get a mild dose of Covid and recover at home there is no need to "protect the NHS", you haven't troubled the NHS.

Deaths are down, hospital cases are down. It is my suspicion that noodle necked scientists like Neil Ferguson and lots of politicians too quite like locking the public down and are looking for excuses to prolong lockdown.

I think we are on the up.
Zero covid isn't going to happen, 1,000 cases a day might not happen. If you get it but don't die and have no long lasting side effects then there's no excuse for not opening the country up.

[Kaz]

Our area of Gloucester, Longlevens, is Covid-free at the moment according to the local news site. Different parts of the city show a huge variance

[Workingman]

The thing is that we, the general public, fed by the media, are the problem. We squealed like pre-school children to be set free from lockdown in 2020. "Please mummy, open the pubs, open the restaurants, let us have Bonfire night, Halloween, Christmas". So the politicians did, and it all went pear shaped.

We are now going into the same mode again. "Mummy, I have sucked my thumb so hard it hurts. Please can I eat my Easter egg in the park and have fish and chips on the beach and smoke weed at Glasto, please?"

The danger, and it looks increasingly likely, is that rather than saying "No, you will stay in your room till you have learned your lesson" we will open up much too early again. If it then goes pear shaped once more, and that is likely, and we are locked away in August it will all be "their" fault and we will all go "Woe is me" - rinse and repeat.

It's a pandemic. We either get on top of it no matter what it takes, and suffer for that short while, or we play silly buggers at the edges and have cycles of lockdowns (which are nothing like in reality) and continue to feed our depression, or we can open up and if hospitalisations and deaths rise we can consider them a price worth paying. We have choices...

There is now no such thing as 'zero Covid'. It's with us forever.

[Kaz]

It's mainly the schools opening in a couple of weeks that worries me

[Workingman]

Well it looks as though the Johnson's latest three word slogan "data not dates" has gone out of the window if the noises coming from No 10 are anything to go by.

The other day, just after he said it, it was countered with schools reopening, students back at Uni and venues opening. Care home visits are back on and today it is social mixing as a "priority" in the coming weeks.

If that's the case we might as well go with the "open up" brigade, bin the 'not quite a lockdown' and any others in the future, and just go with the flow and sod the consequences.

We have to get back to normal, yesterday, don't we?

[cromwell]

I realise that I am in a minority of one, but here goes anyhow.

What has happened is what has happened repeatedly during the pandemic; Boris Johnson makes optimistic noises about lifting lockdown and just before the next announcement on the government's roadblock - sorry, roadmap - the SAGE lot jump in with a dire prediction that he can't possibly do that as something awful might happen. And Boris duly bottles it.

The latest episode of shroud waving by SAGE came with their prediction of 91,000 extra deaths if lockdown is lifted at Easter. I knew they'd do something like this at the last minute, and they did. And I knew Boris Johnson would fold, and he has.

When all the dust has settled there may be some comparisons on how effective lockdown has actually been; if it is an honest enquiry or comparison the results may be a bit of a shock.

Anyway, one last parting thought.
Boris is a bottler; do you think he will have the bottle to go against the scientists if they start predicting mass deaths next autumn? I don't.
I have every expectation that SAGE will be advocating lockdown again for next winter. That will be a test for Boris. I wonder if he's up to it?

[Workingman]

The 91k figure did not come from SAGE, it was an independent study from Warwick University commissioned by the government and it was based on ALL Covid restrictions being lifted by April 26th = total end of lockdown. The university, along with ICL, looked at six scenarios and the top figure was 146k deaths (dismissed) and the lowest, based on current trends, came in at 30k deaths by summer - the June 21 date..

There are many problems here. The results were leaked to the press over the weekend when the government was finalising what it had already said would be a cautious approach. The ranges for each of the median figures were huge but the press only headlined the top figure for the worst one. The median for the 91k model was 55k with the lower figure at 36k. Given the situation with the press Whitty and Boris had to make statements about what was being reported - or did they?

This all looks to have been stage managed.

The CRG, anti maskers, anti vaxxers and the various "end it NOW!" brigades had to be challenged and what better way than a scare scenario of what could happen if we did? It also paved the way for all the positive and happy-clappy stories to follow the cautious announcement, and boy did the press not let them down (see the headlines in the other thread)!

We are all being played here. There are good reasons to ease or end some of the restrictions of lockdown, just as there are good reasons for modifying or keeping some in place. The problem for government is that it placed all its eggs in one national lockdown basket and they got scrambled. They cannot now be unscrambled one by one hence the big plan - the roadcrash.