[SA Chris]

Just because all the pubs with beer gardens in your part of rural Northumberland are very organised, it doesn't mean every club, bar, pub and restaurant in every city centre in the country are?

[gme]

I am not saying they are Chris I spend three days a week in Sheffield and have been out in a few city centre ones as well with no issue but that’s not my point.

I am offering an alternative option to what most on this forum are that I feel could work.

As I suggested earlier bars etc that don’t comply should be closed, those that do should be allowed to trade and save there businesses. I am personally happier going to a pub than round to peoples houses but get invited to more of the later. 

[mrjonathanr]

My opinion is very different. Keep all the pubs etc open ... and stop people meeting in houses.

That would certainly have cut transmission over Eid!

[galpinos]

Sure I'm thumping a familiar tub, but pubs should never have opened. When in contact with others everyone needs to be cautious and sensible about exposure, and in a pub with loads of alcohol it's never going to happen, when after 6 pints you have your "youremybestmatemate" in a headlock hug. Yet gyms and swimming pools remained closed.

This should probably be in the "balls to" thread, but pretty damning of the behavior of Aberdeen footballers, whose formal apology reads like it was written by Domininc C.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/53701572

My opinion is very different. Keep all the pubs etc open, open the gyms, send all the kids back to school and stop people meeting in houses.

Eliminates something there appears to be an issue with that has no positive effect on the economy and allows everything that helps the economy to get on with it. Reduces the r number by the .3 someone suggests we need to open the schools.

Sorry Gav but that sounds like madness to me.

In Manchester, the increase in numbers has been in under 40s, hence infections are on the up but not deaths or hospital admissions. The worry causing the restrictions that were recently imposed is that it'll become so prevalent that it will spill over from the "healthy" sub 40s in to the more vulnerable categories and we'll get another spike, overwhelm the NHS etc. The subs 40s infection rate is thought to be due to a return to normal socialising (Manchester pubs seems to take a somewhat varied attitude to the regulations and Manchester residents have headed back to pubs with gusto) and that sector of society having the highest percentage of jobs that involve a lot of people interactions and a lack of PPE. GMP have basically said they can't police people meeting in houses, what are they going to do, knock on doors and ask who's in there? It's hard enough policing the raves etc......

Add to the above, to quote the MEN, "how the f**k can I play a football match but not see my sister in her garden?,f**k 'em, the rules don't make sense" people aren't abiding buy the rules currently because they are inconsistent. Not meeting in houses isn't thought to be the main transmission vector.

Manchester actually did pretty well bearing in mind the levels of poverty/health issues we have, probably due the centralised PPE system and the local policy of NOT releasing covid positive patients back into care homes etc. but is terrified of a second, worse spike.

[galpinos]

My opinion is very different. Keep all the pubs etc open ... and stop people meeting in houses.

That would certainly have cut transmission over Eid!

I've heard that from quite a few people round here, despite the fact they are all blatantly flouting the guidelines themselves. It's always someone else's fault.

People don't seem to understand the difference between Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.

 

[gme]

I have no stats or articles to link to but going off my own personal opinion and experience.
The gatherings in houses is an issue and anyone with a 16-20 year old will agree. Our friends in Manchester openly blame there 19 year old son as being part of the issue as he was at parties every week. They are now locked down and he’s gone back to Liverpool to avoid it and also go to a big party in north wales.

[tomtom]

I ventured into Northernden on Sat night to pick up a takeaway and had to wait/wander around for ten min. The “local” (they are VERY local) bars were packed - no distancing between anyone. The restaurant I picked the grub up from was small - had halved its eating space - spreading tables with perplex inbetween. But it was hot, airless lots of people coming and going behind the counter - drivers - customers coming and going.

No way on earth I’d go and eat in there At the moment and I’ll get delivery next time - bonkers. No wonder it’s been on the up around Manchester.

The Aberdeen Bar outbreak is now up past 200 cases O read earlier - and there seem To be several Similar cases in the news - eg a pub in Stone.

As Chris said - when people are pissed inhibitions and rule obeying tend to disappear..

I suspect if the social distancing measures were enforced by the licensing authorities (that pubs are shit scared of in general) rather than the police(?) then it might have been a different outcome.

Sitting in a country beer garden Getting drinks by nipping through a pub one way system to get a drink from a spaced que and Perspex screened bar is alright. But going into a far more compact city venue or somewhere packed - forget about it for me. Nuts.

[petejh]

People don't seem to understand the difference between Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.

Yeah how stupid are they hey...

I'd bet that most people barely understand the origins and meaning of Lent and Easter!

[gme]

I ventured into Northernden on Sat night to pick up a takeaway and had to wait/wander around for ten min. The “local” (they are VERY local) bars were packed - no distancing between anyone. The restaurant I picked the grub up from was small - had halved its eating space - spreading tables with perplex inbetween. But it was hot, airless lots of people coming and going behind the counter - drivers - customers coming and going.

No way on earth I’d go and eat in there At the moment and I’ll get delivery next time - bonkers. No wonder it’s been on the up around Manchester.

The Aberdeen Bar outbreak is now up past 200 cases O read earlier - and there seem To be several Similar cases in the news - eg a pub in Stone.

As Chris said - when people are pissed inhibitions and rule obeying tend to disappear..

I suspect if the social distancing measures were enforced by the licensing authorities (that pubs are shit scared of in general) rather than the police(?) then it might have been a different outcome.

Sitting in a country beer garden Getting drinks by nipping through a pub one way system to get a drink from a spaced que and Perspex screened bar is alright. But going into a far more compact city venue or somewhere packed - forget about it for me. Nuts.

Hence why there needs to be a better approach than just a total closure of pubs.

 What happens if a fitness first style gym becomes the focus, will we all shout for all the others to close including the climbing walls.

Off now anyway to drop my 16 year old off to a beach party with 150 other kids. They have promised to socially distance and as it’s not a pub it must be fine.

They don’t give a flying fuck if the pubs are shut, will just go elsewhere.

[chris j]

TBH I don't care what they have to close to be sure they can get kids back in school full time...

[mrjonathanr]

My opinion is very different. Keep all the pubs etc open ... and stop people meeting in houses.

That would certainly have cut transmission over Eid!

I've heard that from quite a few people round here, despite the fact they are all blatantly flouting the guidelines themselves. It's always someone else's fault.

People don't seem to understand the difference between Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.

Eh? Socialising in pubs is somewhat alien to Muslims, whichever end of Ramadan you are looking at.

[mrjonathanr]

TBH I don't care what they have to close to be sure they can get kids back in school full time...

You might if it meant you could no longer provide for your kids because your business or employer had just gone to the wall.

[Oldmanmatt]

“ NOTES from the UK Government:

"England data were revised on 10 August 2020 to remove 69 deaths from the time series which were found not to have been confirmed positive cases. This also resulted in the cases being removed from the UK data. 21 new cases were reported for England and the UK, but the cumulative total reduced from to 46,574 (which was reported on 9 August) to 46,526.

The definitions used for deaths are currently under review. It is likely that revised data, which more accurately reflect the current and overall burden of COVID-19 will be published shortly.

The actual cause of death may not be COVID-19 in all cases. People who died from COVID-19 but had not tested positive are not included."

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

[Stu Littlefair]

Gav - I think your point that people may be more poorly behaved behind closed doors than in pubs has merit. Unfortunately it focusses on the wrong question - "how likely am I to get covid here" and not "can this environment cause a large spreading event"...

The vast majority of spread occurs within a household. Two households mixing indoors can only introduce covid to one household. Many households mixing in a pub can introduce covid to many new households, inside which a large amount of transmission can take place. This is why pubs/bars/nightclubs can be sources of an outbreak in a way that households cannot. Similar danger from big family get togethers (Eid, Bar mitzvah, Wedding etc).

[chris j]

TBH I don't care what they have to close to be sure they can get kids back in school full time...

You might if it meant you could no longer provide for your kids because your business or employer had just gone to the wall.

I should have added 'though the govt should provide appropriate financial support for closed sectors as needed' but I thought that could be assumed... Silly me 

I know in terms of numbers it's tiny but I was surprised/slightly shocked today to read (in amidst the fuss over exam boards downgrading the teachers predicted grades as they are so far above the usual scores!)that home-schooled children won't get any grades for A levels etc this year and have no choice except to sit exams in the winter (at earliest), presumably therefore having to defer university entry.

[Offwidth]

One of the UKC regulars, Wintertree, did some analysis on my numbers:

"In reply to Offwidth:
>  I think the UK has a problem and the sooner testing is devolved to local areas the better.

I got the impression from several news stories - and confirmed in one instance by a poster here (Mick Ward re: Wigan I think), that there is test/trace running locally out of what ever remains of local public health teams in parallel to the national system, which is also in parallel to the paper based phone number lists maintained by restaurants etc. 

One other way of looking at it is to look at the estimate of the number of people currently infected from the ongoing ONS pilot infectivity survey.

This is based on random population testing, and is independent of the PHE/NHS work. 
Their most recent estimate of infection rate based on this is During the most recent week (27 July to 2 August 2020), we estimate there were around 0.68 (95% credible interval: 0.38 to 1.17) new COVID-19 infections for every 10,000 people in the community population in England, equating to around 3,700 new cases per day.. [1]. 
The 95% CI is - by my maths - (2100 to 6400) [cases /day]
Taking the 7-day moving average in detected cases through Pillar 1 / Pillar 2 from Worldometer for the middle of that period gives ~750 cases detected per day.   So the hospital admissions and test/trace are catching an estimated 20% of cases with a 95% credible interval of between 11% and 28% of cases.
The lower bound of the CI tallies with your observation on fatality rates inferred from the NHS/PHE data
Even the higher bound of the CI is way to low to make a difference, for example SAGE estimate test and trace needs to be running at 80%.
So, test and trace is currently failing to make a significant difference.
In the last week or so there's been a gradual rise in the number of detected cases; let's hope that that's test and trace improving - the ONS survey has weak support for the actual number of cases remaining level.  Still, it's not improving anywhere near fast enough.
Why isn't this the focus of investigative journalism?  What coverage there is, is about the dodgy nature of various contracts and not the likely possibility that its not working well enough.
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/england7august2020  "

[Stu Littlefair]

It would be very interesting to be a fly on the wall at a meeting of SPI-M right now because I’m not sure what’s going on with UK numbers.

It looks like cases have been steadily rising since the start of July. And yet there’s been no sign of an uptick in hospitalisation or deaths. Even in the US, where initial spread was amongst the youth, deaths started to rise ~3 weeks after cases did.

It’s odd. I think it’s entirely possible cases are roughly static in the Uk right now. Two pieces of evidence support this:

1) the ONS survey which thinks cases are steady or rising slowly.

2) the false positive rate of PCR tests, which is generally held to be about .4%. With 160,000 tests being done, this would explain about 650 of our ~850 cases a day. The number of new cases a day is also rising in proportion with the number of tests - this could suggest that much of the “rise” is explained by false positives.

That could all be wrong - depending on how large the false positive rate really is, but it would be interesting to know if this is being considered at govt level...

[galpinos]

It’s odd. I think it’s entirely possible cases are roughly static in the Uk right now. Two pieces of evidence support this:

1) the ONS survey which thinks cases are steady or rising slowly.

2) the false positive rate of PCR tests, which is generally held to be about .4%. With 160,000 tests being done, this would explain about 650 of our ~850 cases a day. The number of new cases a day is also rising in proportion with the number of tests - this could suggest that much of the “rise” is explained by false positives.

That could all be wrong - depending on how large the false positive rate really is, but it would be interesting to know if this is being considered at govt level...

Stu, you mention the false positive but not false negative rate? My wife pointed me to an article in the bmj ages ago as it had backed up her testing experiences in her hospital that they had a 30% false negative. Has this changed? Surely this would wipe out the effect of the false positive discrepancy?

https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/369/bmj.m1808.full.pdf

[Stu Littlefair]

The false negative rate is important when there are lots of cases around and you’re missing them.

Number of cases missed = actual cases x false negative rate.

The false positive rate becomes important when there are very few cases. In that situation,

Number of false positives ~ number of people tested x false positive rate.

[Oldmanmatt]

It would be very interesting to be a fly on the wall at a meeting of SPI-M right now because I’m not sure what’s going on with UK numbers.

It looks like cases have been steadily rising since the start of July. And yet there’s been no sign of an uptick in hospitalisation or deaths. Even in the US, where initial spread was amongst the youth, deaths started to rise ~3 weeks after cases did.

It’s odd. I think it’s entirely possible cases are roughly static in the Uk right now. Two pieces of evidence support this:

1) the ONS survey which thinks cases are steady or rising slowly.

2) the false positive rate of PCR tests, which is generally held to be about .4%. With 160,000 tests being done, this would explain about 650 of our ~850 cases a day. The number of new cases a day is also rising in proportion with the number of tests - this could suggest that much of the “rise” is explained by false positives.

That could all be wrong - depending on how large the false positive rate really is, but it would be interesting to know if this is being considered at govt level...

Looking at the 7 day averages for daily infections and daily deaths on Worldometer, surely the (very slight) rise in daily infections only really began around the 26th of July and daily deaths are essentially level throughout the last two months? So, a bit early to make that call? Also, there’s a reported drop in age/vulnerability amongst the most recent new cases, isn’t there? So we’d not expect as many hospitalisations or deaths? I mean, don’t you think that saying that 2/3’s of all new cases are “false positives” seems a bit unlikely? If that were the case, then death rates should be below 10/day now after two months of sub-250/day new cases?

[Stu Littlefair]

Not according to the governments own data

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/cases

According to this data cases have been rising steadily since around the 6th July. You can also see numbers in hospital, which are flat.

Usually you’d expect a 2–3 week lag between cases and hospitalisations at most. One explanation is that the case rise starts amongst the young and later spreads to the more vulnerable. That’s plausible, but like I said, in America that argument was also used and the rise in cases showed up as deaths 3 weeks later, like clockwork.

The false positive rate is unknown, and incredibly hard to measure. the fraction testing positive can never drop below this value, so it must be less than a percent or so.

However it’s suspicious when no matter how many tests you run, the same fraction comes back positive. That’s more or less what’s happening now.

We’ll see in another couple of weeks for sure, but I’d give the two explanations about 50/50 chances right now.

[mrjonathanr]

I should have added 'though the govt should provide appropriate financial support for closed sectors as needed' but I thought that could be assumed... Silly me 

My partner works in that sector, as rep for a major brewery. A lot of people are going to lose their livelihoods. That in some cases will include their homes.  Those businesses just aren’t going to survive. The gov won’t save them; only turnover.

[tomtom]

So a couple of points to question your false positives suggestion Stu.

I believe (still) each test reported as a test being done is an single sample test (e.g. a nose swab or a throat swab) whereas a person being tested will have both done. So 160 000 tests = <80 000 people. If (this is a big if given the outsourcing of many components of our testing) there is any half decent QC on the data - I would have thought (hoped? dared to hope?) that if one person has a positive test and a negative test then this would be flagged and they would be tested again. If this is the case the chances of a person having two false positives is c. 0.002%??

The same gently rising totals are happening in Italy, Germany, and with greater acceleration in Spain and France.

[Stu Littlefair]

It’s the same swab that you stick up your nose and to the back of your throat (not in that order!).

So if 160,000 tests is indeed 80,000 people tested the number of false positives would be FPR x 80,000.

There’s no opportunity to check the nose result against the throat one.

I haven’t checked the case vs test numbers in France or Germany in any detail. I’m worried it will disrupt my optimism.

[IanP]

It’s the same swab that you stick up your nose and to the back of your throat (not in that order!).

So if 160,000 tests is indeed 80,000 people tested the number of false positives would be FPR x 80,000.

There’s no opportunity to check the nose result against the throat one.

I haven’t checked the case vs test numbers in France or Germany in any detail. I’m worried it will disrupt my optimism.

Link below shows test positivity rate around the world:

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing

Shows UK at 0.6% among the lowest in Europe (with Germany 0.7%, Denmark 0.4% etc).  France and Italy higher at 1.7% and 1.3%, Spain much higher at 7.4%, US is 7.6%.   

All the normal caveats on my lack of expertise but if there was a significant real increase in Coronovirus prevelance in the UK wouldn't we expect the postivity rate to be increasing significantly at the same time?