The start of the endgame?

[Workingman]

Parts of the media are reporting about it.

Sky had a short post about some plan B restrictions being lifted when the Covid review is done next week and that from the 26th only the wearing of masks in some settings will remain.

It probably will happen. The death stats, though they have risen, did not go through the roof and have gone flat. Also, Johnson needs some good vibes and polls show that about 62% of us think that all or most of plan B should be scrapped.

Covid now looks to be going to be monitored and managed rather than us all being hit with with restrictions going on for unknown periods of time.

[cromwell]

Let's hope so.
Although the Cheerful Charlie Chesters at SAGE are already predicting "10,000 hospital admissions a day" in the summer. Carry on waving those shrouds boys, but no one is listening any more.
Get the anti-virals developed and let's get on with our lives.

[Suff]

Well the fear mongers for gain may be trying to force Aus type action but they are getting nowhere.

There is a significant and growing, groundswell in the press talking about Omicron running ahead of the booster campaign and "vaccinating" the people even faster.

There is also a thread, growing in intensity, talking about how boosted people are still getting Omicron but the infection just makes them even more impervious.

There is also a rather nasty undercurrent against the anti vaccers who are the vast majority of those dying right now. Nobody who is vaccinated and boosted and of "normal" health is dying of Omicron, as far as I can find. In fact they believe most who get it, that don't actively test, are not even noticing it.

Now I also see a growing question as to why we are even testing at all. After all the UK has done nearly 5 times as many tests as Germany and their population is a third larger. One can only wonder how many cases Germany would report if they actually tested for them.

Then, of course, there is, as you say WM, the political angle. That will usher in "good news" on Covid all the faster.

Now that Macron has had his nasty little half hour over Christmas and new year, the restrictions on travel to France are also lifted freeing the unlocking even more.

[Workingman]

I do not know what an "Aus type thing" is but when Delta broke there was targeted testing, or was it surge testing, just up the road from where I live when a potential spike was identified. It also happened in other places around the country. However, we were in full lockdown at the time so not much else could be done.

I also get the feeling that mass testing is coming to an end. PCR test are no longer required after a positive LFT and they are being done away with for vaccinated travellers.

[Suff]

Aus type thing is the constant calls for continual lock downs.

Australia did that more than most. Diving back when unlocking caused more cases and making vaccinations mandatory.

All action the spurts in the UK have been pushing for.

We are now further from those kinds of action than we have been since last summer and I don't see that changing except to become more normal and less restrictive.

[Suff]

Masks off a week tomorrow. Isolation will go in March if the numbers continue they way they are going.

Looks like the end game is in play.

[Workingman]

Isolation will go in March if the numbers continue they way they are going.

Or maybe not. Deaths over the past three weeks.

3 weeks ago: 1254 week, 179 day

2 weeks ago: 1325 week, 189 day

This week: 1865 week, 267 day

Week before Christmas week : 773 week, 110 day. Plan B start week.

Week before that: 867 week, 123 day.

The current rise rate needs to stop pretty sharpish and then fall off a cliff.

[Suff]

We know that the number of deaths map to the number of cases because the deaths do not correlate to people who died "OF" Covid but to people who died "Infected With" Covid. These are two entirely different things. To make the stats easier to generate and to make them more (not completely), real, they put a 28 day bracket around it. I.e. if you died within 28 days of being diagnosed with Covid, you are a covid death, if you died OF covid after 29 days you are not a covid death.

I assume there is some strong statistics behind this for those who had a more lingering death.

However as we know that hospitals are rife with Omicron, due to its extreme transmissibility, there are going to be a lot of people terminal with other things that become Covid stats and that absolutely means that a spike in cases is going to drive a spike in covid death stats.

There is one really important stat that is rarely mentioned. That is the serious case stat. Back in November it was over 1,000. That means more than 1,000 people with covid, actually on respirators. Yesterday it stood at 703 and that number has been falling rapidly.

As the vast number of cases falls and 28 days pass (so think end of Feb), the number of deaths is going to fall off a cliff and it will stay there. We've been infected, vaccinated, infected, vaccinated, infected. Those who survived it are virtually immune. The more that get Omicron without any impact, the more they are immune. Even to the point where they cease to become carriers because the virus simply can't get a hold on their body, the immune system deals with it and moves on.

At which point all these precautions become of limited use for a very large impact to the country and the lives of others. For instance, our neighbour across the road has a daughter who was diagnosed (after going to the doctor with a cough), with cancer. It is a secondary from the breast cancer which she got the all clear a couple of years ago. The focus on Covid has taken away the focus on others who are at high risk. The prognosis came in yesterday. 2 months. She has 3 kids, two of whom are in junior school.

As you can see, Omicron is not a killer in the way previous variants were. Not to a vaccinated population. The deaths are a statistical anomaly, not a danger.

[Workingman]

Ah yes, the 'of' or 'with' nit-pick.

Since day one there have been the 'ofs' and 'withs' banded together so if we are going to separate them out to make an argument we have to always separate them out going right back. They would then reduce the headline figure over the whole time and that would still make the last few week's figures look not so good. They still died so their death would have to be recorded some where else - excess deaths, maybe.

...if you died within 28 days of being diagnosed with Covid, you are a covid death, if you died OF covid after 29 days you are not a covid death.

Wrong. All deaths where Covid is on the death certificate get recorded. Government dashboard:

Deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate
Weekly 640. Total 174,233

Take the 'withs' out of the 28 day reporting system and that's where they go. One goes down whilst the other goes up. They are still dead.

I keep seeing this 'run over by a bus' mantra when having Covid so it's a RTA death not a Covid one. How many in total? The other side is that if you had a heart attack or other ailment and had Covid it gets more nuanced. If the Covid screws up your system with other complications and you die then it played a part. The 'of' or 'with' is not black and white.

[Suff]

So the "reported" figures are: Deaths within 28 days of positive test
The non "reported" but tracked figures are: Deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate

The first one, you have the test, you get covid, you die. Of Anything. You are a covid "death".
The second one. "Total number of people whose death certificate mentioned COVID-19 as one of the causes"

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to get a conspiracy theory here, but as one of the causes does not fall into the category of "DIED OF" for me. It just doesn't work. Someone is terminal cancer and they get covid then they die. They didn't die of Covid, they died of cancer.

Both stats are virtually meaningless. We need to know how many people died of Covid as a primary cause. Then and only then, can we determine the number of deaths caused by a specific number of cases.

Those stats are not available and not reported.

Therefore any rise in cases will result in a rise in deaths reported "with" covid.

The only real stat to take note of is the number of critical people on ventilators. That will tell you how deadly the virus is and how hard we are going to have to work to stop it.

After all, walking into a hospital, infectious with flu and spreading it, but asymptomatic, is going to cause deaths. We have absolutely no stats on that. Perhaps we should test everyone coming into hospital and refuse them entry if they are not "clean" from a virus perspective that is?

The measures are going down because the stats we have chosen to use will reduce as the number of omicron cases fall. The number of serious cases is already falling.