Covid - coming out of Lockdown 3 - no politics, less opinion and more facts and information.

[AY Mod]

4 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Has anyone yet found any stats showing how The Great British Summer Covid Experiment is panning-out in terms of age-banded severity of illness, and age-banded mortality, with a vaccinated/not split within each age band?

 

No; all PHE give is top-line figures and local geography incidence; and I think it's a poor show. Although it doesn't give exactly what's sought ZOE gives better information and analysis on some of those aspects.

[Reorte]

8 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Has anyone yet found any stats showing how The Great British Summer Covid Experiment is panning-out in terms of age-banded severity of illness, and age-banded mortality, with a vaccinated/not split within each age band?

 

We read statements, and harrowing stories, about a higher % of severely ill patient being younger, but that is a higher % of a smaller number, and what I still can’t find for myself is any breakdown below ‘hospitalisation and deaths’.

 

IMO, it’s really hard to draw conclusions, or form opinions now on the basis of the numbers that I can find. I’m sort of giving my uninformed not quite consent to participating in the experiment, and have no idea at all how worried or not I should be for children, partner and self as school restarts next week.

Mortality by age is available on the Covid dashboard site, although not for the UK as a whole (you'll get to see it if you just select England). The lower age group numbers are invisible on the heatmap picture but the raw data is available for download so you could pick out the numbers from that.

 

I've not found any breakdown of hospital admissions by age other than the cumulative total over the entire pandemic.

[Oldddudders]

No concrete data of the sort upon which this thread thrives, but anecdotal info from Torbay Hospital says a much higher % of Covid inpatients is under 30 than in previous waves, with a mixture of locals and visitors. 

 

Here in France the total number of inpatients is more or less stable, at about 50% more than gov.uk figures. Intensive care figures here are also more or less stable, and about 60% more than the gov.uk figs, which are themselves encouragingly less than 1k. In my Département (think county) the infection figures are actually on the wane in recent days, with positive tests at 79.8 per 100k population over the last 7 days. Hospital bed occupancy is massively lower than at its peak last year, and we have 3 people in ICU. 

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, Oldddudders said:

much higher % of Covid inpatients is under 30 than in previous 

Which is what one would expect if the vaccines do what they say on the phial, which they clearly do, because older age groups were vaccinated earlier, and exhibited higher take-up.

 

What would be more helpful to understanding what is going-on would be to understand:

 

- how the absolute numbers of people in each age band needing hospital treatment has changed;

 

- the degree to which, in each age band, having been vaccinated offers protection against severe illness (I think data on this are accessible by digging about);

 

- whether the amount of hospital treatment people need before being discharged has changed over time (which might reflect a change in hospitalisation criteria);

- whether vaccination has simply “pushed to the right” the age/risk curve, which is what I suspect, or whether it has also changed its shape.

 

I suspect that it works a bit like a trombone-slide on this graph.

 

It might seem like obsessing over numbers for numbers sake, but it’s necessary if we are to ‘get below the skin’ of what’s happening.

 

One thing I’d like to understand is, at a statistical level, much young people themselves stand to benefit in risk reduction terms by being vaccinated. Another is how risks from Covid now, a good way through the vaccination programme, now stack against risks of other kinds.

 

Overall, I suspect that the ‘mood music’ about this wave impacting young people much more severely than previous ones is a bit of a distortion, that being young is still the best individual protection, and that the ‘mood music’ is being played to encourage the young to get jabbed not mainly for their own protection, but to protect the old. 
 

From here on, HMG has either to do something, or nothing about Covid in the U.K.; either way they owe it to use to illustrate why what they are (not) doing is a good choice, using decent numbers.

 

 

Edited September 1, 2021 by Nearholmer

[hayfield]

The papers seem full of it today, some seem to think the over 50's will get a booster jab, other only the most vulnerable

 

Then like Singapore we are lending Australia vaccines, which seems sensible in one way but I thought our surplus vaccines were to go to the poorest countries ? 

 

Anyway it seems we will not beat covid just live with it and hopefully relegate it to an inconvenience rather than a killer virus

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, hayfield said:

The papers seem full of it today, some seem to think the over 50's will get a booster jab, other only the most vulnerable

I thought it was quite clear, there will be a “standard” booster jab for the general population but people in the vulnerable group will get an addition “third jab” to supplement the first two.

 

 

[Reorte]

Is the booster tailored for Delta? They were saying a while back it would be possible to tweak them for new variants.

[AY Mod]

On 01/09/2021 at 11:21, Nearholmer said:

Has anyone yet found any stats showing how The Great British Summer Covid Experiment is panning-out in terms of age-banded severity of illness, and age-banded mortality, with a vaccinated/not split within each age band?

 

Some headline figures have been quoted on the BBC this morning.

 

Quote

A total of 1,798 deaths occurred in England up to 29 August of people who were either confirmed or likely to have had the Delta variant of Covid-19 and who died within 28 days of a positive test, according to new figures from Public Health England.

 

Of this number, 154 have been under the age of 50 and 1,644 aged 50 or over.

 

Of the 154 deaths of people under 50, 64% were unvaccinated, 9% had received one dose of vaccine and 24% had received both doses.

 

Of the 1,644 deaths of people aged 50 or over, 27% were unvaccinated, 8% had received one dose of vaccine and 1,054 64% had received both doses.

A small number of virus samples could not be matched with vaccination records.

 

[Reorte]

Also worth putting in to context are the total numbers vaccinated in those groups, otherwise you get the usual suspects saying "Look, 64% were vaccinated and still died!" rather than concentrating on the fact that in a group where probably over 90% were vaccinated (not sure of the exact number, would need to work it out over the entire 50+ group and over the entire period in question) the much smaller unvaccinated proportion still contributed 27% of the deaths (or 35% if you include one dose, since both are needed to be reasonably effective), a number of deaths significantly out of proportion to their proportion of the population.

[AY Mod]

10 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Also worth putting in to context are the total numbers vaccinated in those groups, otherwise you get the usual suspects saying "Look, 64% were vaccinated and still died!" rather than concentrating on the fact that in a group where probably over 90% were vaccinated (not sure of the exact number, would need to work it out over the entire 50+ group and over the entire period in question) the much smaller unvaccinated proportion still contributed 27% of the deaths (or 35% if you include one dose, since both are needed to be reasonably effective), a number of deaths significantly out of proportion to their proportion of the population.

 

But you can say that over half of the deaths in the figures were in over-50s who were double-vaccinated so caution and precaution is still sensible (they wouldn't be able to tell us how many of those deaths were of cautious people or those who didn't give a monkeys).

 

 

[Nearholmer]

49 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

 

Of this number, 154 have been under the age of 50 and 1,644 aged 50 or over.

All of which bears put my hunch that an injection of youth would be the ideal protection  …….. even with vaccination, the discomforting age-mortality curve clearly still applies. The <50yo mortality rate must still be very low indeed when you think of the number who must have contracted the bug.

 

I’m having two days of not feeling very comfy, having been persuaded to come to Legoland to round-off the school holiday, and thinking it would be quiet, because many schools went back yesterday.

 

The place is thronging, with barely any meaningful anti-Covid measures in place, and about 1:500 (mostly people who are clearly East Asian by descent( wearing masks. Because it’s 99% outside, that must help quite a bit, but some of the ride queues, on in particular, make me feel deeply uncomfortable.

 

Im sitting-out a ride at the moment, because I declined to join everyone else in a queue that looks really problematic from a Covid viewpoint.

 

TBH, I recommend this to nobody!

[woodenhead]

What these figures don't mention is how many of those double vaccinated people also had other health concerns that may have weakened their resistance to Covid.

 

Over fifties is a massive grouping because at one end of the scale you have fit 50 year olds and at the other, frail individuals aged 80 years old and upwards.

 

The vaccine doesn't stop you catching it, just that it reduces the impact, many of these over fifties may have been ill with other conditions making Covid a factor in their death but not necessarily the main factor, they could also have simply been very old and any illness might have pushed them over.

[Metr0Land]

Some German research into why children seem less at risk:

 

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3146129/german-researchers-uncover-secret-childrens-protection?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

[RJS1977]

Or indeed, C19 might have had nothing to do with some of the deaths at all. i.e. someone has covid, gets over it in a couple of weeks, then dies of something unrelated. Somewhat coincidental, I know, but given the numbers it must happen from time to time.

[spikey]

Talking to a friend ten minutes ago about how the sheeple hereabouts seem to be acting as if it's all over and to hell with masks, social distancing and whatnot, at the very time when we're convinced that things are going to go pear-shaped before much longer.

 

He then tells me that his neighbours, an apparently-healthy couple in their 60s who have been very conscientious about minimising their risks since day one, and who have both had both vaccinations, are currently in Covid ITU in a bad way ...

[hayfield]

2 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

I thought it was quite clear, there will be a “standard” booster jab for the general population but people in the vulnerable group will get an addition “third jab” to supplement the first two.

 

 

 

Again I badly explained myself. For sometime papers were stating only those who are in the highest at risk groups will be getting the booster jab. Now it seems all the over 50's. They have ordered the vaccines anyway so it is/will be available.

[hayfield]

57 minutes ago, RJS1977 said:

Or indeed, C19 might have had nothing to do with some of the deaths at all. i.e. someone has covid, gets over it in a couple of weeks, then dies of something unrelated. Somewhat coincidental, I know, but given the numbers it must happen from time to time.

 

This is the problem the anti vaxers are playing on. Figures are of people who had tested positive in the past 28 days irrespective of whether they died because of it. 

 

I understand that this is a very difficult matter to differentiate and many cases may be missed where tested positive over 28 days ago but still died because of covid 

[Reorte]

1 hour ago, RJS1977 said:

Or indeed, C19 might have had nothing to do with some of the deaths at all. i.e. someone has covid, gets over it in a couple of weeks, then dies of something unrelated. Somewhat coincidental, I know, but given the numbers it must happen from time to time.

Could be but AFAICT the "within 28 days" approach is pretty reliable. The odds of even someone in poor health coincidentally dying from something else within 28 days of a positive test can't be very high. It's not a rigidly unquestionable way of measuring Covid deaths but is a very good proxy for them.

[Dunsignalling]

59 minutes ago, hayfield said:

 

This is the problem the anti vaxers are playing on. Figures are of people who had tested positive in the past 28 days irrespective of whether they died because of it. 

 

I understand that this is a very difficult matter to differentiate and many cases may be missed where tested positive over 28 days ago but still died because of covid 

Logically, if anybody is poorly enough with "anything else" to be in immediate/short term danger of dying from it, adding Covid to the mix might well be sufficient to finish them off, so the virus will be at least a contributory cause. 

 

John

Edited September 3, 2021 by Dunsignalling

[MJI]

Even RTAs are included!!!!

[Dunsignalling]

1 minute ago, MJI said:

Even RTAs are included!!!!

Though anybody who tested positive 29+ days ago isn't unless Covid is directly identified as the cause.

 

It probably balances out reasonably well.

 

John

[Nearholmer]

We’ve been round this track multiple times before: the positive feature of the current method is that it is utterly unambiguous; the oft-cited downside is that it might sweep-in a tiny number of totally Covid-unrelated deaths. 
 

 

[Nearholmer]

21 minutes ago, MJI said:

Even RTAs are included!!!!

Even if every single one of the c1850 people per annum who die in RTAs in the U.K. was counted as dying with Covid, it wouldn’t alter the overall picture of the effect of the pandemic.

 

Its one of those things that sounds really good, and really relevant, but it only needs a few seconds thought to realise that it isn’t.

 

Long-run excess deaths will probably be the best indicator, but since they take time to accumulate, the sensible thing to do is accept that the headline figures need to be regarded as ‘plus or minus a bit’, 10% tolerance is probably adequate, rather than hoping that counting by a slightly different method will make things greatly happier.

[woodenhead]

The reasoning behind this approach is found here, I feel quite happy with it, especially if we want to see quick robust sets of results and understand whether death rates are going up, down or remaining static - it's an indicator not an exact number which that is counted separately and takes longer as it needs the death certification to occur.

 

https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2020/08/12/behind-the-headlines-counting-covid-19-deaths/

 

[boxbrownie]

3 hours ago, hayfield said:

 

Again I badly explained myself. For sometime papers were stating only those who are in the highest at risk groups will be getting the booster jab. Now it seems all the over 50's. They have ordered the vaccines anyway so it is/will be available.

Crossed wires…..sorry I meant the papers didn’t seem to understand (or choose not to) as I found it quite clear from announcements made by U.K.Gov at the televised briefings, I assume the misreporting is due to the tribal leanings.