Covid in Scotland - the bad news and the good

[andrewducker]

The bad news:
992 cases today in Scotland. 7-day average of 654 cases, which has doubled in the last 15 days.
Daily hospital admissions have also doubled - from 8 to 16. This took 10 days.

Both of these numbers are still low compared to the peaks we've had in October and January, but doubling that fast is worrying, to put it mildly.

The good news:
The vast majority of those cases are in the under 65s - 97.6% are under that age. 45-64 year olds are also not being that heavily hit, compared to people in their 20s. And we know that the danger is largely age-related.

So we might still be able to solely vaccinate our way out of this - but we might be in for another tightening of restrictions, to slow things until we can work our way through things. The data here to look for is the hospitalisation rate - because that will tell us whether we're going to overwhelm NHS capacity or not. As you can see from the second graph, those admissions are currently a tiny blip compared to how they were a few months ago. It's just that doubling speed that's worrying.

Comments

[alithea]

I'd be less worried if further opening up was being delayed. I certainly don't feel safe enough to sit inside at a restaurant all evening. And the schools haven't even broken up yet - once folks with kids start holidaying and moving about more, it's going to get worse.

[rmc28]

The thing about exponential curves is taking action now is always better than waiting, but I feel like all the people in charge don't understand how fast they go, even after multiple examples in the past year eighteen months.

(We have one starting in England, and we still have our sodding prime minister saying there's "no reason yet" to delay lifting all restrictions on 21 June. We should definitely not be doing that, and we should almost certainly not have lifted all the restrictions we did on 17 May.)

Well!

[lsanderson]

I ain't a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but the CW is that you cannot vaccinate your way out of the exponential curve. Shutting down and vaccinating, OTOH, is the way to beat it. The claim, and it involves math and math is hard, is that the two weeks required for vaccines to fully provide increased resistance/immunity (plus the number of days between jabs if more than one is required) can't decrease the exponential curve fast enough.

--OR--

That's just what everybody was saying to defend not sending vaccine to India.

Re: Well!

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I think you're probably right. 200 was the admission peak before, and if we continue doubling every 10 days then we're back there in 40 days.
We need to get R to 1 and keep it there while we vaccinate.

Re: Well!

[autopope]

The math is relatively simple:

Time for a single-dose vaccine to achieve full effect = 14-21 days.

Time for a double-dose vaccine to achieve full effect = 14 weeks (3.5 months).

Doubling time for the epidemic = about 10 days right now.

Time from infection to crisis in an individual = 9 days, +/- a day.

So:

• If you are exposed/infected and vaccinated the same day, the infection will max out before the vaccine takes full effect

• The doubling time of the pandemic is much faster than the doubling time for immunity in the community

Upshot: I expect us to have to raise the lockdown level in another few weeks in Scotland. If we don't, there's going to be another big wave, mostly affecting younger folks: higher survival rate, but much more long COVID and it's still going to hammer the NHS and stall life-saving treatments for other conditions by occupying lots of beds.

On the other hand with the Pfizer vaccine now approved for over-12s and the school summer holiday approaching, a sane government would say "right, school's out a week early and you're not coming back until you've had at least your first vaccination* for all secondary school age kids and university students. Those are the big disease mixing pools, and the summer recess provides an amazing opportunity to get ahead of the curve and prevent a fifth wave from getting started.

Re: Well!

[hairyears]

So the rational thing to do, right now, is to book that dental appointment and that eye test *now*, or ten days after your second jab, because it'll be months - if ever - before it'll be as safe as it is today.

Or book that holiday, that hairdresser appointment, that wedding party...

That sort of self-interest among individuals is rational, for individuals, while accelerating the risk for all.

Which is to say: acting collectively, with government action to restrict the spread, is the only rational course.

Trouble is, commercial properly developers and publicans are the key constituency for policy formulation.

...And the gripping hand is that we've tolerated three to five thousand deaths from flu, every year in the UK, for the last thirty years.

And we tolerate the occasional 'bad year' - including the one five or six years ago when the body count was over thirty thousand - with no fuss whatsoever.

No fuss, and no political repercussions.

So the policy calculation is property developers, publicans, and campaign donations on the one side; and on the other, Covid, and an annual booster vaccination like the flu jab, settling down to an annual death toll in the five to fifty thousand range, and no-one who matters giving a toss.

The morbidity - the annual toll of acute illness and long-term ill health - counts for nothing among the wealthy; but it is going to be extremely difficult in a workforce in precarious employment, with no health insurance and no sickness benefits to pay the rent; and a bit harsh among the middle classes, who will face the risk of becoming unemployable and uninsurable in a country with no publicly-funded healthcare.

This public health model is attractive to our current regime, and the propaganda organs of the state can probably make it publicly acceptable and electorally neutral: but the infection risk and the need for testing is going to make Britain an extremely unattractive place for citizens of more advanced societies to visit and study and work in.

As this is already Ministry and Ministerial policy in the Home office, in Fleet Street, and elsewhere in much of Westminster, it is by far the most likely future for Covid in the UK.