UKH

Thread #42: Life, The Universe and Covid.

The rate constant plots for both Scotland and England are looking promising in terms of decay of symptomatic cases.

• The English plot has a couple of days of growth on the leading edge; these hopefully related to people getting tested on the Tuesday/Wednesday instead of the bank holiday Monday as with some previous bank holidays.  It’ll take a few more days of data to be certain.
• The Scottish plot continues to head for decay; I’ll dive in to the demographics of this in a later post but it’s basically the same as last week; a ma-hoo-sive spike in young adults following the last dropping of restrictions, then a more gradual rise everywhere else, with the school ages showing the most sign of maintaining that growth.  I've got a rant related to this demographic data in a later post.

The vaccine plot is noteworthy this week - the daily rate of second doses is much less than the daily rate of first doses "coming due".  (Compare the height of right-most edge of the upper green shaded region ~11 weeks ago and the lower blue region now).  A result of this is the notional delay between doses I estimate is rising quite rapidly.  One obvious cause would be some people not returning for their second doses; the Independent have dug through some MHRA data and suggest this is the case for at least half a million AZ doses [1].  I haven't seen a similar dive through the numbers for the other candidates.  

Link to previous thread: https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/friday_night_covid_plotting_41-...

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-astrazeneca-vaccine-second-... 3

The UK Plots

The most recent couple of data points on the plots for each nation look unusually noisy, I suggest treating the right side of these plots a bit more provisionally than normal.

• Looking at plot 9x, rising growth then sudden collapse is a motif shared across all 4 home nations around May to July.
• Scotland had rates plunge first, England went later at a very similar time to Wales but before NI.
• The plummet in each of England and Scotland corresponded to the sudden end of an anomalous male-bias in cases and the national teams loosing at the football.

It’s tempting to speculate a similar football related effect sent NI and Wales in to decay at the same time as England - the turning points in the rate constant all occur at the same time but I haven’t seen gender data to look for a corresponding signal in either nation.

• My best guess is that without the football, the rate constants would have been falling towards decay by August, and would then have been buoyed up by the August reopening,   The rise then collapse from the football cases masks some of this.  Now, everywhere is dealing with the repercussions of the latest reopenings in August, with obviously worst consequences in Scotland and least bad consequences in England.
• It’s very tempting to speculate that the main source of symmetry breaking between the nations is the football associated case - of which there were many, many more infections (proportionally speaking) in England than in Scotland given that exponential growth was sustained for a further 3 weeks in the former; these cases occurred in the same young adult ages as the big/leading spike in Scotland after the reopening of nightclubs.

So, perhaps the football related spread filled in the well evidenced gaps in immunity in young adults in England before the tranche of restrictions were dropped in August, where-as those gaps in immunity held out in Scotland until more recently.  Most of the recent young adult cases will have been landing in the unvaccinated I think.

Anyway, enough over-interpretation.  The main thing is case rates are falling or levelling off in all 4 of the home nations, and hospitalisations are starting to confirm this as reflecting a real fall in infections in England and Scotland, I hope the other nations  firm this up by next week.

Chumbawamba didn’t know it at the time, but Tub Thumping was really predicting the behaviour of Covid case counts.  Hopefully this time they get knocked down and stay down for a good long while, now the young adult spikes start to fade away, focus should clear up on what’s happening with detected cases in schools.   It may be that school age cases drive top level growth in a few weeks time, if that doesn't force growth elsewhere we should see hospitalisations separate further from cases.

Scotland - Part I

Cases in Scotland look to be turning to decay, and there’s a plateau emerging in the hospital admissions signal which confirms this as likely a real indication of infections turning to decay in adults at least.

I’ve put the rate constant for deaths back  in to plot 9 - it’s very noisy and best ignored over the summer (very low numbers, so lots of statistical noise) but it can be seen to be rising about 10 days after admissions at the leading edge of the plot, themselves rising a similar time after cases.  The rate constant for cases is now dropping again - mostly in the provisional zone to the right mind, and the one for admissions is levelling off, so we expect deaths to go in to clear decay over the next week or so.  This standard sequencing leaves no doubt that the rise in cases reflects real infections and not the “switch on” of asymptomatic testing associated with schools.

Hospital occupancy continues its  rise.   Hopefully this is it and it starts decreasing soon; but it’s not a great way to approach the winter season.

Scotland Part II

The Scottish version of D1.c is made using NHS Scotland data and their weirdly unhelpful age bins.   It’s clear that the initial rapid spike in ages 20-24 has now turned to decay, and that most other ages have their rate constants decreasing as if they want to turn to decay soon enough.   With a whimsical over-interpretation hat on, the line plot in particular looks like a coupled system to me, where ages 18-24 where hit with a massive hammer and spiked.  Take the hammer away and transmission couldn’t be sustained with R>1 so they went back to rapid decay, but the absolute large number of cases drove growth in older and younger age bins that otherwise wouldn’t have been able to sustain R>1.  As a brief event is “smeared out” in time by the mechanics of the virus (different incubation and transmission periods for example), the initial peak is broader than the hammer whack (opening night of clubs?), and then the subsequent peaks are both later and broader still (smeared out twice).

The timing of this young adult spike couldn’t really have been worse to raise the absolute number of cases in school aged children, and that age bin in showing the least decay in the rate constant - not surprising as there’s little vaccination in this age range.  Still, the rate constant is decreasing which is a promising sign it might be turning for decay. 

Rant Alert: I’ve been very disappointed to see the overly simple blame game going in some quarters over schools, tied with calls to vaccinate school aged children to reduce the spread.  This is not to my mind what evidence based policy looks like at all, and I think we can wait another 7-10 days to see if growth is even going to be sustained in this age range

Given that the vast majority of infections and the majority of people without vaccination lie in adults, I strongly feel that the decision over offering vaccinating to children should be based strongly in medical evidence first, and I am disappointed by the quality of the wider debate I see - whilst there are undeniably other factors, they need to be considered accurately and with reference to the details of the data, not just the top level.

England - Part I

The last couple of days of data look all messed up in England - likely an excessive low-then-high from people deferring tests falling on the bank holiday until the next day(s).  If that’s the case, the trendline is quite misleading and things are probably still falling in reality.  Best to park prodding the digital tea leaves until a few more days of data are through.  

Deaths look to have been rising more than cases as seen by the comparative doubling times to the right of plot 9e; the demographics in the next post might address this.

As with Scotland, hospital occupancy is not doing what we want to see as winter approaches. If the latest turn to decay of cases is real and sustained, it should start to drop.  If the latest turn to decay is not sustained and influenza re-appears, it's hard to see how healthcare is going to be preserved without some aspects of lockdown returning, or without a significant advance in the vaccination program.  So, lots of positive waves for continued decay everyone.  It can't hurt...

England - Part II

Demographics

The demographics in Plot D1.c build on what we saw last week - the young adult ages that surged during the football a couple of months ago continue to have the strongest decay.

•   To me, this feels compatible with the general idea that the latest wave of infection has been naturally concentrated to the gaps in immunity and is rapidly self-limiting, which in turn first with the recent Scottish rate constant plots.   

The decay in all other adult ages except 95+ is now much clearer than it was last week.  There’s growth in the childhood ages so if the rate constants were now to become fixed, we’d see top level cases decrease for a while as the number in adults drops then return to growth as the number in children exceeds the number in adults.  I’m not saying that’s what’s actually going to happen though…

A couple of sections through the probability distribution of cases (P1.e) show that a much larger proportion of cases is now in people over 35; this is down to cases turning to rapid decay in younger adults first.  If this accurate reflects the demographics of infections it gives an idea why time-lagged deaths have been rising faster than cases.  This disparity was also visible in last week's Lissajous plots as cases being stuck in a cluster but deaths walking up the plot.

Regions

Plot 18 showed that all the English regions turned to decay - less aggressively than the most provisional points suggested last week, but that’s why it’s the provisional edge of the plots.  Perhaps the South East and Yorkshire and the Humber are now turning to growth, but it’s a small signal in the provisional zone.

There's an updated UTLA plot which shows cases/100k for all English UTLAs.  The early rising regions that had more local intervention to blunt their initial peak rates continue to now show some of the lowest rates.  Again, this feels compatible with interpretations over infection being concentrated in those without immunity and forming a self-liming factor in the spread.  Or at least not incompatible with the idea.  Far, far from proof mind you.

Fourier Epidemiology 

I’ve put in the latest “LMH” plot; I made this a few weeks ago in some protracted discussions towards the end of a thread where I suspect most of you had given up reading for obvious reasons.  I'll try and condense the explanation and then get to the point of why I'm showing it.

The top plot is the same data as the “week-on-week” rate constants plot for England and is the cleanest, “rawest” analysis of rate constants I can think of.

This signal is split in to three components,

• a slowly changing or low frequency (L) component
• a rapidly changing or high frequency (H) component
• everything between the other two, the medium frequency (M) component

The top plot is equal to the sum L+M+H.

The plots are separated by “frequency passband” - something like the   range of speed of changes.  The passband for the M plot is tuned to give the most statistical significance between its content and a linear regression with the central England Temperature as seen through the same filtering.  The L and H plots are everything to either side of this passband.  My interpretation of what it all means:

• LL represents slowly changing things like policy, immunity levels, a shift in variants, seasonality and so on. 
• M is about 60% explained by the temperature; I suspect more is explained by other aspects of the weather and the rest is changes that occur with similar timescales (e.g. the football collapse). 
• L is mostly noise although parts of other effects will exist in it.

Hopefully that all made sense; the key point having explained it all is that the “L” band is not doing a convincing impression of wanting to go to much faster decay, rapidly increasing exponential decay is what we’d expect if we were moving to a herd immunity scenario or at least a point where symptomatic cases are plummeting with rising immunity. 

It’s really not clear to me what the mechanic in play will be now, and it’s not going to get much clearer for a while without dashboard data broken down by vaccination status.  It's good that cases are in decay, but the level that decay seems to be holding at in "L" is enough that weather effects and other short term events can cause returns to growth for correspondingly brief periods.  I think this is sort of what we saw with the re-opening of nightclubs etc in Scotland, and it's important to try and understand when a return to growth is transient and when it's looking to be sustained, and to keep that in mind when looking at policy; with the talk of vaccine passports for nightclubs in Scotland, or of vaccinating children to moderate spread in adults I'm not sure that analysis is getting through.  

Still, whatever seasonality there is in the L plot is working against us over the coming months, and the return of universities holds potential to give us another seismic event.

Salut, Rom.

Tu êtes de retour en forme - écrasez ce bouton d'aversion quelques minutes après la mise en ligne du fil. Tu n'as pas été aussi fiancée depuis des mois. Il est peut-être temps pour un passe-temps plus sain, non ?

If Carlsberg did Covid charts and analysis, they probably wouldn't be better than yours.

PS am I just tired or does the anti correlation look more like correlation?

I’d rather have a lager.  I’ve gone zero-ethanol as part of efforts to reduce “lockdown roundness”, and it’s been a long day.  We're not quite at Ice Cold in Alex levels, but it;'s getting there.

Sorry, I had a subtraction the wrong way round in the temperature passband calculation so it was flipped.  I've fixed that - but I've also inverted the temperature y-axis so the lines on the plot looks the same even though it's an anti-correlation.  (But it's correct now because the axis is flipped)

I like the inverted axis because it de-clutters the plot, and it makes it very simple to see that that the anti-correlation is far from perfect, as it's really clear where the overlap is better or worse.  I put a plot with non-inverted axes in too for comparison.  I don't like it much.

Edit: If you view this on a computer (not a mobile device) and flip-book between the images it looks a lot like the red curve is sliding sideways when really it's being inverted.  Trick of the human vision system that happens because the medium frequency passband of the weather is surprisingly cyclical...

In the D1c chart with the colour bands.  If you look where the transitions between colours happen it looks to correlate with the school summer holidays (red band over summer).   

It would be interesting to see the cases plots scaled by population so they can be put on the same chart and compared.   It looks like all the nations may be levelling out and it would be interesting to see if the 'steady state' happens at different levels.  That would give an indication if keeping mask rules has a significant effect.

Pretty sure this doesn't work! The French often just say 'liker' (pronounced like-ay) for 'like'. Don't know what they say for 'dislike'.

But relax, it's UKC. Don't worry about the occasional dislike. Soyez-en fière !

That was the point.  The reverse translation is correct, and if someone didn’t actually speak French and didn’t think about it too much they’d not spot the word that is obviously the wrong meaning but reversibly correct translation.  It was a test.

Assuming you mean the Scottish plot….

That’s absolute case numbers.  These are not a good place to look for cause and effect.  Especially with the silly demographic bins in Scotland.  

The rate constant plot is where changes in transmission show with clarity and independently of historic differences in case levels and differences in bin populations.  

The dominant effect for all adult ages in the rate constants at the start of the time period you mention is the end of the football - visible from contract tracing reported at the time and the collapse of the anomalous gender signal in the data.  This suggests the adult cases were pretty unaffected by the end of school term.  Just as with all previous school terms, including the last one when delta had become dominant.  School age cases do much the same thing.

The only clear school correlated difference I see in the Scottish D1.c is that after the headline grabbing case spike in young adults, rate constants are dropping in most ages but more slowly built in children.

Did I pass?

Updated rate constant plots - Scotland shows its first day of week-on-week decay for a month, and the English rate constant is returning to decay after the bank holiday.  It's rise is way more than could be explained just by the displacement of testing forwards from the bank holiday low.  If I had to pull an over-interpreted explanation out of a hat I'd say it was a bank holiday bender, so hopefully that's a burst of growth dispatched and back in to decay.  Although provisional data spotters might be getting a bit twitchy.

Re: the HML plot - I forgot to say that the right edge of the "L" plot is very provisional, as its a very de-localised filter and the leading edge will update to reflect the next few weeks of data once it's in.

Finally - a few rate constant plots made from Our World In Data's daily download [1].  There's still a bit of work to do on the trendiness etc.  Some countries have massive day-of-week effects compared to the UK in this dataset (e.g. Spain and the United States) but it seems to drop out of the 7-day method rate constants pretty well.  Brief observations:

• Australia have had a pretty constant doubling time since the outbreak began.  There's some wobbles that look like the British short term weather impacts; with such a large continent I doubt it would yield to a single weather analysis however, would need to look at regional cases and temperatures.
• New Zealand look like they have a chance of boxing delta up before there's enough datapoint to get a trendline on the curve.  Go New Zealand.  Sounds like they're doing some innovative work over e.g. sewer sampling to detect "off the radar" cases. 
• Germany may have a low absolute number of cases but they've had a pretty consistent doubling time for the last two months - again what look like "weather wobbles" in the data.  

[1]  https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/tree/master/public/data

https://www.travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker/

"New Cases, Hospital Admissions, and Deaths
This Week by Vaccination Status" PHS data - is that sufficient for the breakdown you said was lacking?

Thanks for pointing this out; that's very summary level and seems similar in message to what Si dH has extracted from some of the PHE technical reports.  Travelling Tabbys source for their data is a PHS report that I've not previously read....   Link to their source:

https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/8946/21-09-01-covid19-publication_r...

What I really want is the demographic + vaccine status data on a daily basis and for England as well; this must exist as it's used to make the figures around pages 32 to 45.  

The figures on pages 36 and 42 are very telling - the largest group forming Scottish cases (normalised per population) and hospital admissions (absolute numbers) are unvaccinated under 40 year olds.  To me, this hammers home the same message as the demographics in D1.c -  that addressing relatively low vaccine uptake in younger adults is the step with most potential to take to reduce the load on hospitals now, as well as to reduce the number of cases in circulation.  

Bank holiday bender ( as predicted) and start of school testing (as predicted)? Certainly some schools were back last week judging by the doorstep photos. 

Seems believable, doesn’t it?  The testing resuming should be clear in the various different breakdowns by next week’s thread.  

I walked through my local city centre for the first time in 18 months last week.  The number of closures; it’ll be hard to go on a proper bender any longer.  Never seen so many empty shops either.   It’s hard to imagine what the future looks like for town centres; lots more fancy apartments where people used to shop?

A bit of a wry observation here... Just looked at the vaccination figures from my MSOA. Have now crept up to 50.3/41.6%.

Then I looked at Oxford

Headington 40.6/35.3%

Oxford Central 48.5/37.7%

It just struck me as ironic that the source of one of the primary vaccines in use has reached such a low proportion of the population in the 'place of origin'. Yes, I understand that it's the student population (and very likely significantly over-estimated student population at that) skewing the figures, just as it is likely to be in my MSOA...

Zoom in on southampton, then in another browser tab search halls of residence on Google maps. Then flick between first and second doses.

Reading isn't as striking but the effect is there too. 

Stockton is turning its centre into a park! We were lamenting the decline of our local high street before the pandemic, but every empty unit has something new and a whole bunch of weekend street markets have popped up. Maybe just some creative planning needed? 
 

Anyway, i think most of the schools are back today so ….. 

We drove through Nottingham centre on Saturday night. A city which used to be rammed on a good weather summer evening seemed to have the foot traffic typical of a wet winter day.

On a different topic, isolation rules for international travel are apparently more important than football in Brazil:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/sep/05/brazil-v-argentina-abandon...

My MSOA is largely made up of Reading campus...

I've looked at many of the university towns/cities, and observed the obvious effect.

I noticed this a while ago. In fact every city centre seemed to have <50%.

I think Oxford was the first place I noticed it, and I wondered if it was an issue with students being on the electoral role for Oxford but living at home and being vaccinate at home. The centre of Oxford is mostly colleges and shops. But then I noticed it for other cities and large towns - even those without universities. In fact any urban centre seems lower than the surrounding rural areas, it only seems very noticeable where the resolution of the mapping is enough to distinguish town centre from town edges. For example Derby has low in the centre, Burton has one low segement, Uttoxeter is just lower on average.

It's phases of life - younger (& students) in shared/couple/single accommodation in central/cheaper areas possibly moving out to the suburbs when older as you can afford a house, want a bit more space, raise a family or just don't go out to gigs/pubs/cinemas/etc so much. Many people's lives work out that way.

Likewise. I noticed it when trying to figure out why my LSOA had such a low uptake. When the MSOA figures were published, it became fairly obvious. Once you've spotted it in one university area, it's easy to spot the others...

It was the irony of the situation that struck me yesterday...

I've been trying to guesstimate how much of this is city centre and how much is driven by student population for the last couple of weeks. Since most in unis are mixed into a big city it's not easy, but they're fairly well concentrated outside the centre in Southampton and Brighton, and then I noticed Warwick, which absolutely nails it shut.

Where do you find figures for msoa’s ?  

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map/vaccinations

Oops. Meant LTLA...

York & Lancaster are interesting. Geographically large msoa but little in them other than a university.

Ta.

Wigan’s town centre has 81 and 72% jab rate. No students, but the town centre caters for an area the size of a small city. 

At the other end of the scale, in Na h-Eileanan Siar 72% of 16-17 have had first jab and 81% of 18-29 have had both jabs.

We could do with an opinion poll to know why outer Hebrideans want to be jabbed.

A culture/history of having to look after each other and a greater sense of community?  

It's such an important thing that we really should ask them properly!

Didn't they have a bit of a spike at one point? At least relatively speaking...

Well, some local authorities are going to rise to that challenge better than others.  I saw the big old shopping centre in Stockton is set to be demolished, I'm not sure if the big old pedestrian bridge will go with it or not.  

It'll certainly be interesting to see how that pans out.  

In reply to captain paranoia and others:

I really don't understand how the population is handled at the MSOA level where university related flux (up to 6 times a year) dominates some reporting units. So I'm wary of reading too much in to MSOA level stuff in university towns - although I recognise that some of the effects exist in central MSOAs away from universities too.

This is mostly the point I'm trying to make. Huge pinch of salt required on city centres and especially ones with a university.

Today's week-on-week rate constant plots.

Looks like some more-lagged-than-usual data has bumped the final data point from yesterday's plots up a bit; the trend is still downwards in both England and Scotland, and the latest day in Scotland is still showing week-on-week decay; perhaps the leading edge is a bit more provisional than normal though; it feel's like a Zeno's paradox approach to decay...  We know we're likely to see school age cases to take over driving growth in Scotland soon, and perhaps in England a bit further down the line...

But I don't see any media reports about hospitals being overloaded at the moment. So, after 18 months of short-term fixes, maybe it's time to start thinking longer-term. The places which are currently most resilient to future waves of Covid variants are those with the highest level of natural immunity. Now that the old and vulnerable are protected by the vaccine, the best strategy for the young, low-risk sector of the population might be through natural immunity. Of course these people should have the option of being vaccinated, but should we be pushing them to...?

There is a strict control of bad news from department of health comms. Its disgusting and although Roy Lilley was campaigning on it for weeks the abuse of freedoms isnt getting much traction.. Talk to people working in the NHS and you soon discover there are plenty of problems. They are not overloaded, but staff illness, isolation, a mountain of vacancies and covid working complications are a really serious combination.

Agree. It affects MSOA level cases too (regardless of whether there is an outbreak going on). There are quite a few city centre MSOAs with significantly lower cases per 100k than the surroundings at the moment.

For vaccination I think even LA-level figures are implausibly low for many cities 

I flat out disagree with your stance and the reasons you’ve eventually come out with to support it over the last month or so.

I’m clearly not going to change your mind, and nor is all the data in the world.  I think the data is perfectly clear.

You appear to be close to a lone voice in pushing “infection first” for the young as a better long term strategy.  

When you bring evidence to your view it seems to be cherry picked (small studies with conclusions incompatible with the consensus) and when you discuss efficacy you almost go out of your way to be obtuse about *which* efficacy.  My options for interpreting this lie on a spectrum, and none of them are complimentary.

As Offwidth notes, things are far from relaxed in healthcare at the moment. Winter is coming, and with it big unknowns, none of them likely to improve the situation.

Initial school testing output seems positive to me, by which I mean that the number of LFTs done has increased a lot already in the last week, but so far a quick eyeballing doesn't suggest it has translated into an increased proportion of positive cases found by LFT. (Edit - I'm talking about England only.)

The evidence I bring comes from Israeli studies. Israel was the first country to commit to a mass vaccination programme and so has the longest data period available.

That said, the Israeli government has decided not to deviate from its current strategy and is giving booster jabs to almost the entire population. Indeed, health officials are now anticipating a 4th round of jabs with a vaccine tweaked for current variants. Is this a model to aspire to?

The UK's strategy is quite opaque at the moment. It seems to be to accept the circulation of the virus within a vaccinated poplulation, but waning immunity and variant escape may make this situation unsustainable.

Natural immunity seems - unsurprisingly - to be much more robust than vaccine-induced immunity and the risk of serious disease from infection in under-40s is very low. The UK's vulnerable are getting their protection boosted and hospitals seem to be coping.

Given all this, I am really not convinced of the merits of pressuring children and young adults to get vaccinated.

Bollocks

Bollocks

Also bollocks

I disagree.

In my opinion, when you can’t cherry pick you misunderstand or misrepresent.

And Wintertree was questioning my evidence!! Can you substantiate any of the following:

• Vaccines provide better immunity than infection
• Under-40s are at a high risk from Covid
• Hospitals are currently overloaded

• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/
• https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...
• https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58413764

In reply to Longsufferingropeholder:

This report from 2021 Jun 30 states: "To investigate how human antibody responses to vaccines are influenced by viral mutations, we used deep mutational scanning to compare the specificity of polyclonal antibodies elicited by either two doses of the mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccine or natural infection with SARS-CoV-2. "

Real world data collected this summer, however, suggests that natural infection provides much greater immunity than vaccines against the Delta variant

https://www.science.org/news/2021/08/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-gr...

"The study, conducted in one of the most highly COVID-19–vaccinated countries in the world, examined medical records of tens of thousands of Israelis, charting their infections, symptoms, and hospitalizations between 1 June and 14 August, when the Delta variant predominated in Israel. It’s the largest real-world observational study so far to compare natural and vaccine-induced immunity to SARS-CoV-2"

This article states:

"Fatigue is the most frequently reported persistent symptom."

"When considering only debilitating symptoms, estimates at 12 weeks post infection ranged from 1.2% of 20 year old cases to 4.8% of 60 year old cases"

"Consistent demographic risk factor findings across studies include increasing age..."

"In Zurich, a low prevalence of symptoms compatible with long COVID is reported in a randomly selected cohort of children assessed 6 months after serologic testing"

The graphs in this document show that hospital and critical care admissions are currently far lower than spring 2020 or winter 2021.

So all in all I'm still not convinced that mass vaccination is the best strategy for young people.

• You keep circling back to this one study in one place that you hold above all others, in the face of every contradiction we throw at you. It's not a stone tablet on a mountain. Your one paper is about one variant in one place. Call of bollocks: upheld
• That's not very low. Call of bollocks: upheld
• Try comparing to summer 2019, genius. If you're saying anything less than the peak of a pandemic is fine, then final call of bollocks: upheld.

It's the most recent study and it's real world. When Israeli researchers started talking about waning immunity last June the UKC experts also cried 'bollocks'

1.2% of 20 year olds with symptoms (mainly fatigue) 3 months after infection seems pretty low to me. 

Levels are currently about 4-5 times lower than the peak!

Just to check by natural immunity you mean catching covid 19 once and then being more likely to fight it off the second/whatever time? So "natural immunity" people have a 100% infection rate vs vaccines rate of ?%

That's because you're a fool in my opinion.

The risk to the health an adult of any age from vaccination is orders of magnitude lower than the risk of infection without prior immunity.  Repeatedly proven fact.

You are calling for adults to accept orders of magnitude higher risk to their health based on some theory you haven't really thought through and rely on one cherrypicked study that isn't well aligned to many others.

The primary purpose of vaccination is giving every adult the opportunity to face exposure to the virus with prior immunity, so that their health is more protected than if they got infected without any prior immunity.   This is with the express intent of protecting universal healthcare by protecting mass individual health.  

You have this very poorly supported theory that immunity from a "virgin" infection is "better" than immunity from vaccination.  

• It's not better for protecting an adults health at any age, because live viral infection without immunity is way more damaging to health at all adults ages than infection post vaccination.
• You argue "virgin infection" is better at conferring protection from repeat infection, but that's never been the primary purpose of vaccination, and it's also far from clear that this is the case.

It seems to me that you haven't thought out the matrix of possible sequences of events at all. Let's consider a case for younger, less at risk adults.

• Vaccination > breakthrough infection > re-infection > re-infection > re-infection &c.
• Virgin infection > re-infection > re-infection > re-infection > re-infection &c.

Assuming we don't go for elimination, the origin of the initial infection is going to become an increasingly small part of the developing picture; even without considering lots of specifics about immune responses it seems clear the long term doesn't hinge on how people get their first compliment of immune responses in the way you suggest.  How much their health is clobbered - at all adult ages - absolutely depends on that choice.

So your point boils down to "not as bad as the worst disaster since the end of World War II"  then?  What a f*cking stupid comparison to make, if you'll excuse my French.

Did they?

I only recall crying "bollocks" when you repeatedly and falsely stated that there were rapid falls in immunity when the data you presented showed gradual falls in anti-body levels.  I cried "bollocks" because:

• Immune responses are non-linear
• There are other forms of immunity than antibodies 
• Memory B cells are a thing

Speaking of last June, who were you back then?  Not "oureed" as that's only been here since July 2021...

In reply to Longsufferingropeholder:

I'm all in on your "triple-Bollocks" score.   

This is the second time you say this but you've completely fabricated it.

When discussing people who have had both infection + vaccine, I've said it will be interesting to find out whether there is a difference in immunity depending on which comes first.

I have no idea if there will be a difference or which way it would go. But you must admit that it would be interesting to know.

On this thread, you previously said:

• You suggest here that live viral infection is the "best strategy" compared to vaccination. That can only be the case if it works better...

> Real world data collected this summer, however, suggests that natural infection provides much greater immunity than vaccines against the Delta variant

• You're not specifically referring to the sequence of events here, but you're using it to support your earlier comment that the best strategy is for young adults to get their first compliment of immune responses through live viral infection instead of vaccination, because it's the "best strategy". 

To be frank, your position is always rather opaque so we are all left grasping at straws to figure it out, but no I don't think I've fabricated anything given what you've said.  Perhaps you're just meaning one thing and saying something totally different due to some issues expressing yourself.  That would explain a lot...

With reference to the part in bold, perhaps you should stop advocating for adults to get their first immune compliment through live infection (e.g. your quote marked [*], but that's by no means the only time) when (a) you don't have a clue and (b) the evidence is clear that adults of all ages are way more vulnerable to a virgin infection than to vaccination and than to post-vaccination exposure to the virus.

Irrelevant, because:

• The health protection conferred by vaccination first is clear, robustly evidenced and makes a material difference to individuals of all adult ages and to excessive healthcare admissions even from adults under 40 years of age.  
• Unless we go for elimination, periodic re-infection is rapidly going to scramble any initial difference in how immunity got started. 

The whole situation is riddled with unknowns, always has been and will be for a long time.  But there are also lots of knows, and lots of evidence distilled from lots of data. 

You brought up the subject of June 2020, a year before your account appeared.  Are you going to tell us who you were? 

The data I saw there was a clear difference between countries that used Pfizer with 4 week separation between doses and countries that spread them out further.   Antibody levels were falling faster with the short gap between jags which would mean a booster would be required sooner.

Thanks. Great to see the rate constants as ‘by eye’ it’s not clear that we’re into decay. Going to take off now due to schools of course.

It’s a shame that these threads get taken up by arguments against oureed’s anti-vax stance or TIE’s anti-OAZ stance…

It's frankly a shame that we've lost the ability to discuss anything without being divided into 2 camps and labelled.

I've always argued that vulnerable people should be protected by the vaccine and that they should be made available to everyone. I just don't think that young, healthy people should be pressured into getting jabbed or maligned if they don't. Does that make me an anti-vaxxer? I've also been called a Covid-denier despite spending time on here discussing the best strategy to cope with the disease.

When did it become so difficult to present a nuanced or complex view? You're either with us or against us. Enthusiastic supporter of mass-vaccination or anti-vaxxer. Liked or disliked.

Personally I think this nuturing of division represents one of the biggest challenges to society today. 

It's the misrepresentation of flaky and/or scant evidence, and then defence of your strategy, that gets you the label

There's nothing wrong with anything in this paragraph per se, but all your posts tend to back up a general message against vaccination, a bit like all of TiE's posts are backing up a general message against anything remotely English. Both of you employ 'broken record' with your usual messages and themes repetitively on almost every week's post too. It feels like everything is part of a strategy and can't be understood without this context. Because of this, all your posts are interpreted in a negative light. If you want to be taken more seriously you need to reflect on your general approach rather than arguing about the words in individual posts.

I'm not sure what you meant by nuturing. I agree that societal division formed then reinforced through social media echo chambers represents one of the biggest challenges to society today. I have said on these threads in the past (I think before you came along) that I felt they were sometimes a bit one-sided and didn't give people enough airtime. But like I said above, you need to change your general attitude and approach.

Would that you could clearly present a nuanced view instead of a lot of hinting against vaccination based on repetitive misunderstanding or misrepresenting of a limited evidence base.

Whilst denying that adults of all ages are far more vulnerable to infection first than to vaccination then exposure to the virus (including infection, should it then happen).

I think a bigger challenge is people pushing misinformed views under the pretence of balance.

Remind me which other poster(s) you’ve been?  Multiple comments over multiple weeks make it clear you’re not as new here as your account.  You reminded me massively of a couple of other posters I’ve linked to before who eventually turned out to be flat out covid deniers basically.  You have for example shared views over “basic evolutionary biology” and a side hobby of labelling attempts at nuanced discussion (which you claim to favour) over some of the issues in the UK as racist despite your view that such labelling is a barrier to nuanced discussion.

Why such an interest in past identities?  I have a strong suspicion the views you put across may have changed with the situation over the last year so as never to be too outlandish, but always been in a certain direction.  But you’ve clearly dissociated yourself from past identities or been dissociated from them.  Very handy if you’re trying to maintain credibility and need to change your views.  Care to share your past identities?  It’s hard to have a nuanced discussion when one side isn’t playing fair…  

Given your inability to communicate a clear point, your repetitive misunderstanding/misrepresentation of  scant evidence in support of your infecting young people “strategy”, and your multiple and overt similarities to clear “bad actor” accounts of the last 6 months it’s not really surprising that some of us are forming opinions here.
 

I'm afraid I agree. 🙁

Equally, since we usually know when oureed and TiE are clearly wrong why don't some of us just say so and not be excessively rude about it.  I personally think arguing against TiE's cynicism about contracts for Indian billionaires looks like potential political quicksand that some are striding out onto, despite some of his assertions being clearly wrong. One of the most insidious responses to this pandemic is short cutting appointment processes with nepotistic or otherwise dishonest outcomes. Even oureed's suspicious looking Israeli preprint (not yet peer reviewed) might turn out to be true...

...just to be clear I support wintertree in pushing oureed to be honest about past accounts.  I'm amazed the profile hasn't been banned by the moderators already but several of 'Rom like' accounts here seem to have lived a charmed life.

Round about the time you were outed as running 30 plus sock puppet accounts, subverting and manipulating threads, maligning and misrepresenting other posters and all the while pursuing a weird vendetta against all things UK.

What it is Rom, is that you can't suddenly cry "who? Little old me?" when your entire UKC history consists of weaponised opinions based on misrepresented data posted from an endless series of fake profiles.

Most regulars on here simply regard you as a serial liar spouting yet more lies. As several posters have said, you could come clean with the mods, start over without all the lies and subterfuge and try and rebuild some credibility. As it is people don't see nuance, they just see bullshit.

York is heaving. Domestic tourists rather than overseas this year but it looks busier than ever. It's going to be a mixed bag of winners and losers from this. Still, lots of whitewashed big empty units, nowhere is immune to the scourge of out-of-town and online.

jk

Tom's posts are, in my view, at least as bad as oureed's if not worse. Largely fantastical but with the occasional more thought-through one thrown in. I think they are both just best given a single cogent response and then ignored if they keep responding to it by spouting rubbish after that. I agree people shouldn't be rude or offensive about it. Getting too antagonistic paints a bad picture of everyone.

This is a public forum with well defined rules: I'm just not fussed how bad posts are or in making 'top trump' comparisons when posts are within those rules. Straight and simple responses are best on science related discussions when dealing with non experts and personal insults are completely inappropriate. By definition someone who gets basic scientific points wrong, time and time again, isn't an expert. If we know we are correct  when dealing with such well known regulars why would we ever need emotive ad hominem attacks, which are picking fights and in breach of site rules?

We have to be careful with 'antagonism' as one person's antagonism is another persons debate and that is fine by me as long as it's dealing with 'the ball and not the man'. 

Frustration at the continuous 'bad actor' behaviour?

It's one thing to say simple scientific rebuttals are enough to effectively dismiss the comments from scientifically ill-informed or mis-informed posters, but Offwidth is making that observations as one who is also well versed in science.

Right from the start of this pandemic, wildly optimistic posts urging against caution, and containing authentic sounding but wrong science have been very well received going off likes and responses.  A couple came from "zombie" accounts some time after the data breech, most come from pop-up accounts.  One approach is for one or two posters to try and pin the bad actor down to an actual point that can be tested against the evidence, another is for a large number of people to weight in with a summary dismissal.  The former approach tends to go round in circles when one sided is not playing fair or honest…

I reserve absolut no curtesy for pop-up posters pushing one sided views rooted in bad science, and I have no problem making my view of their actions clear in plain language.  If other people want to criticise me for that, that's no skin off my nose.  Time after time, the scientific establishment has failed by trying to mount an evidence based debate against people who are using every trick in the book to win opinion other than engaging on equal terms with scientific approaches.  

I was particularly happy to see such a broad range of posters weighing in to call out a recent pseudo-scientific "analysis” of vaccine side effects, for example.   Having a board set of posters from broad, not all English/British backgrounds all independently weigh in in favour of a methodological examination of evidence vs pseudo-science sends a very clear message to all IMO.

Look through my posts and you'll find they are generally polite and on subject. When I use sources they are from trusted media outlets and scientific publications. Despite personal attacks on my character and intelligence, I don't recall ever insulting anyone. 

My views do not align with the majority of posters on UKC but surely that is still allowed. They are always backed up by reputable scientific sources. Indeed, my long-standing views on vaccine resistant variants have turned out to be very relevant as has my more recent warning of waning immunity. Both of these were initially rubbished on this forum.

I have also said that, given the present context, it is in everyone's personal interest to get vaccinated, so when you say I "need to change my general attitude and approach", do you mean that "the time has come for me to take the last step. I must love Friday Night Covid Threads. It is not enough to obey them: I must love them."

I have travelled widely during the pandemic for professional purposes, and as such have a much less UK-centric view than a lot of people on here. Most would probably be surprised at how inconsequential Covid has been in some countries. The media follows and amplifies bad news and ignores the banal normality of life in most places. 

As for my identity, I have a single account on UKC and the mods know who I am. I have had previous accounts on UKC and have been banned for expressing some inconvenient opinions (not just on Covid). I find it quite disturbing that the mob calls for someone to be banished and then demands the right to know their previous identity when they reappear. Maybe you should all just stop trying to silence opinions you don't like!

I am also pleasantly surprised that this account is still active. I guess there has recently been a realisation of the limitations of a mass vaccination strategy and an acceptance that Covid is not going to be eliminated in this way. Perhaps I am no longer considered a heretic for suggesting so.

Was one of them that you hope those who disagree with you die of untreated cancer?  Because you sure as heck align very closely to that banned poster.

Let me quote two more parts of your post:

1) There is no mob calling for the banishment of "oureed".

2) I haven't claimed a "right to know" your previous identities, but if you're going to play the same game as Rom and make claims about what you have or have not said to try and play a moral high card, unless you share all your banned identities - and ideally their deleted posts - your word on what you have and have not said is worth jack shit to anyone who thinks it through....

3) Whilst you believe the site owners know who "oureed" is, they may not know that the banned identities were the same person, and nor would it be proper for them to share such information - but as coming back from a ban through a new account is against site rules, it is I think safe to say they may not know all the links...  

This is delusional IMO.  The Kent variant quashed any last hopes of elimination long before the vaccines were deployed, and I very much doubt anyone was ever banned for suggesting that we were going to have to live with the virus.  You seem to think this is some messianic prophecy but I think it's been rather obvious.  You tend to pretend the purpose of vaccination was elimination when it has always been statistical protection of individual health to reduce pressures on healthcare from mass illness. 

The identities I think you had in the past were considered by me to be deeply misguided or deliberately misrepresenting data because they engaged in egregious misrepresentation of the data with the apparent intent of downplaying the personal risk of Covid, and the risk of mass individual infection to wider public health and universal healthcare, at a time when the stakes were far higher than they are now.  

I don't believe one of these accounts was banned for taking a minority opinion, but perhaps for some absolutely staggeringly obvious lies based in misrepresented data or their tendency to wish cancer on others.

Those accounts reaped what they sowed.  

I've been through discussion this with (what I suspect are) some of your past accounts.  The differences are largely because of the massive differences in demographics between countries, and the exponential relationship between age and hospitalisation.   The lessons you think you've learnt on your travels are not relevant, for reasons you seem either unable or deliberately unwilling to understand.

For anyone whose bothering to follow this, here're my thoughts on the posters previous identities.  Separate to "Rom" although you two do seem to naturally tag team very well.

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/friday_night_covid_plotting_38-...

It's close....

The data seems a bit more provisional / lagged than normal, another day's update has now pushed yesterday's marker very close to growth, and today's new marker is in slight growth.

It's not doing a convincing impression of wanting to stay in decay...  I suspect that the cases in children are rising to the point they're overwhelming decay in adults, but I haven't had a chance to rattle off updated demographic plots to confirm/disprove this.

Government say no plans for October lockdown.

October lockdown it is then. More lies from the tories.

Yep, In this incarnation. Absolutely not the case previously.

Diversity of opinion is to be welcomed on here as long as we're talking about honestly held opinion.

I think you know what he means, I certainly do. Surely you're not having some difficulty with, how did you put it? "a nuanced or complex view" 

The family and me spent the last week in August wandering all over Cornwall. We found some wonderfully deserted beaches, avoided the popular spots (sands packed like the decks of slave ships), had some nice meals, climbed over various castles and generally had a lovely time. You'd never have guessed covid was through the roof (1:100 Newquay residents covid positive) and the hospitals and ambulance service in meltdown. 

https://inews.co.uk/news/covid-spike-forces-devon-cornwall-call-british-arm...

Just because you didn't notice it, doesn't mean covid had an inconsequential impact on the many countries you just had to travel through during a Global Pandemic.

I see you're still dissembling then.

Or perhaps the mods are morbidly curious as to what your next stunt will be. Me too, as it goes.

I look at these beach photos people post and try and imagine living somewhere where the nearest coast isn't still topped with a 2' slab layer of industrial waste and strewn with orange boulders and dotted with bright orange pools.  Must be nice...

In reply to mark s:

To respond in the form of a movie quote: Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change? 

Now, by December, if things aren't going towards the better end of what seems reasonably possible and they start denying lockdown plans I'll be all out of positive waves...

Radon looks much prettier

Someone has been making art from it.

Top marks for sorting the waste stained rocks for a gradient fill, and for collecting all the coal dust to flood fill parts.

This line jumped out at me.  I've had a quick look through the posting guidelines regarding banning and I can't find anything about 'inconvenient opinions' being a reason for being banned.  Are you sure that this isn't simply something that you tell yourself to soften the real reason(s)?

Thanks Wintertree. I'll look forward, if that's the right expression, to next weekend's analysis...

Keep up the good work

Tales of a virologist who's TV interview was manipulated for anti_vax propaganda.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/07/virologist-work-anti-...

Congratulations, you've checkmated me. I obviously can't list all the opinions I've been banned for!

Inconvenient opinions seem to get classified under 'inappropriate content' these days. Last time it was something about mob dynamics being one of the more terrifying aspects of the human condition. But as mob dynamics is such an important part of the UKC experience, it's inappropriate to criticise it. 

And really, I don't feel the need to soften the experience of being banned on UKC. Worse things happen!

Radio 4, 09:00-09:30, 8th Sept - More or Less

Interesting discussion of vaccination (09:00-09:10), various aspects, one of which is first hints from Israeli data that triple jabbed slightly more protected.

It's good it's back.

I can't help but think Israel might be better off working a bit more on vaccine hesitancy and helping vaccination of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza strip (another group who reject AZ). A handy summary of where Israel are at right now:

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628471/highly-vacc...

:In reply to Offwidth:

Interesting read, thanks.   A few observations/comments

One quote jumped out given the recent detailed numbers elsewhere linked earlier showing the majority of hospitalisations in Scotland are young, unvaccinated adults:

• The seriously ill patients who are unvaccinated are mostly young, healthy people whose condition deteriorated quickly.

Young, health people - take note.  I've read enough cases of people stating they don't need a vaccine as they never get ill - with the implication they've got a strong immune system.  The problem is that sometimes this virus subverts the immune system and turns it on the host...     

They suggest the vaccine is reducing serious illness in over 60s by about 9x; this tallies with my noddy "lethality vs all cause mortality" plot which has seen a decrease in mortality of ~10x vs a "died with harmless Covid" null hypothesis.  So, an order of magnitude improvement; the problem is that there's another order of magnitude to go before reaching the baseline.

• The rate of serious cases among unvaccinated people over age 60 (178.7 per 100,000) was nine times more than the rate among fully vaccinated people of the same age category

It sounds like the problem in the occupied territories is hesitancy, not supplies/logistics?  I think efforts to tackle that need to be community led to succeed.

• As for the low rate of vaccination in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, "we don't have a shortage of vaccine. It is the hesitancy," said Randa Abu Rabe, a local World Health Organization official working in the Palestinian territories.

It's both hestinancy and supply. They have plenty of AZ but don't want it. They don't have enough Pfizer.

Some interesting reading [1] for a perspective against rushing a wide booster roll out - and perhaps some insight in to the recent resignations at the US FDA in response to a political decision to roll out universal boosters in advance of medical evidence. [2]

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58486526

[2] https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/anger-frustration-at-fda-over-biden...

Also some updated Lissajous plots.  I've faded the data points, so that they can pile up and make a more intense colour in regions where the measures "stagnate" and remain in the same place for a long period.   A reminder that these time series are highly filtered to get a legible plot. 

A loop has formed for Scotland where cases went in to decay for long enough for all other measures to turn to decay, and then returned to rise for a similarly long time.  

England is just sort of sitting there at a point, biding its time and waiting....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58486526

Waiting for evidence of immunity fading to decide booster policy means waiting for cases. Cases are inevitably accompanied by hospitalisations & deaths. There's pressure to go early with a booster that will almost certainly work rather than wait for better data.

I've no idea how the ethics of waiting or how long to wait are resolved but it can't be a new problem for medical ethics and heath policy.

I'm not sure I agree with that pressure however.  It's a complex picture and I'm nowhere near informed enough to know the answer, and nor are almost any of the places this pressure is coming from IMO.

There's also negative consequences associated with going all-in on boosters in advance of the evidence - both at home and in the countries that could otherwise use our booster doses as first doses.  [1]

It looks like unvaccinated adults under 40 are the primary driver of cases and hospitalisations at the moment.  Tackling vaccine hesitancy would therefore do more to reduce the number of cases and hospitalisations than boosters.  It seems pretty clear we'd have R < 1 or R << 1 if we didn't have a large amount of circulation in unvaccinated adults.  Boosters might protect the most vulnerable from exposure to cases driven by the unvaccinated sustaining R>1.

It looks like a small minority of older vaccinated individuals are a significant fraction of the current deaths.  The longitudinal data isn't public to understand much more than that, but I'm assuming that JCVIs interim advice on boosters [2] is informed by that data, with this interim recommendation including offering boosters to the most clinically vulnerable from September (i.e. now)

There's a lot of trials coming through the pipeline at the moment including Valneva as a 3rd dose "booster".  For people who aren't the most vulnerable it may make a lot of sense to wait and see what the various studios suggest is the better approach.  For the most vulnerable, the current JCVI guidance is already for a booster effective immediately.

One thing I'm not clear on is if the relevant people are actually able to get the boosters JCVI have recommended 

On the medical ethics front, a dose wasted as an un-needed booster here is a person elsewhere in the world facing the virus with no protection; if nothing else its in our own enlightened self interest to reduce the number of people developing severe Covid globally, as this seems to directly relate to the risk of variant generation.

I don't know the answers over boosters or immunising adolescents, but I do know that my spider sense is tingling a lot that misunderstanding/misrepresentation of the data (e.g. over Scottish cases and schools) and politics are featuring heavily in what I want to see as medical expert led decisions. 

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/who-director-scolds-rich-countries-...

[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jcvi-issues-interim-advice-on-covid-19-b...

I'd have thought you'd be all in favour of mob dynamics on UKC, after all, the 30 plus sock puppet accounts you'd created and orchestrated would surely be enough to count as a mob?

Ethics - I hadn't considered the dose going elsewhere, I was thinking placebo  Vs booster may be ethically unacceptable (I think it is for study first/second doses, now those are double blind new vaccine Vs established vaccine). 

I don't see R<1 is possible, maybe even if implausible 100% vaccine uptake. What's the number for efficacy against transmission?

Valneva - no phase 3 trial result yet.

Side-stepping that efficacy question as it's no longer just about vaccine efficacy but efficacy of the combined antibodies people have...

Going straight to the data (the stuff behind the travelling tabby page you linked earlier), have a look at figure 8 on page 35 in [1] - detected cases/100k are 4x higher in 0- and 1-dose dose adults than in the 2-dose adults.  The 0- and 1- dose groups form about 20% of adults.  By my maths, if they were all fully vaccinated we'd be seeing about a 40% reduction in the number of people getting symptomatically infected in a day's transmissive links; given how close we are to R<1 already, this is way more than enough for enduring decay.

I also have a nagging suspicion that those not engaging with vaccination and those not engaging with testing probably have a reasonable degree of overlap - so the impact of the unvaccinated on spreading cases could be more than this suggests. 

It's not exactly surprising that with estimates at R, having 10% of adults holding out on vaccination is causing notable problems.  The silver lining is that about 8% of adults are 1-dose and hopefully most will convert to 2-dose soon enough, and that makes a measurable difference going off the linked report.

There are also studies ongoing measuring immune responses as well as directly A/B testing with regards possible infection outcomes.  I get your point though, thanks for clarifying - I didn't twig from your last post.  It's a good point, although for boosters these ethics are likely amenable to a placebo as long as they're not on the very vulnerable

Indeed, but they've fired up some interesting parallel phase 3 trials to the initial one.  I'm keeping my wishful thinking hat on.

[1] https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/8946/21-09-01-covid19-publication_r...

Thanks for an excellent reply again. Something to ponder tomorrow.

I see 4x more cases in un or single vaccinated as 4x fewer in double vaxed or 75% efficacy against infection. Although single jab and different behaviour of vaccine averse and vaccine accepting will skew that.

75% higher than I expected but not enough if R0 is 6 (R0 corresponds to pre-covid behaviour?).

Of course you’re anti-vax. You just don’t have the honesty to admit it. Why do I say this? Because you’re against vaccinating ‘younger’ (whatever that means) people, when the overwhelming evidence is that vaccination reduces deaths, hospitalisations and serious illness across all age groups. You oppose it for no good reason. Instead you propose natural infection, ignoring the fact that natural infection of millions of people (even younger ones) would cause a lot of deaths and hospitalisations (whereas vaccination clearly would not).

There is no debate to be had here. Your position makes no sense. You seem to be concerned about lasting immunity and protection against variants. So what you’re saying is in order to get protected against future infection you should get infected now and run the risk of serious illness now, whereas with vaccination you get some level of protection at minimal risk. May be the protection isn’t as good as natural infection (who knows) but you haven’t risked serious illness to get it. It might get topped up through natural infection anyway, in the same way that reinfection after natural infection would be a top up. Either way, that second infection should in principle be relatively mild in general.  

The ‘it’s fine in other countries’ line is certainly straight out of Big Bruva’s playbook. (Reality check: it’s not necessarily fine any longer due to Delta.)

This says a lot about you, not so much about me. Can you really not accept there is some space between 'vaccinate everyone' and 'anti-vax'?!

You can't have looked at a news source for the past couple of months. Debate is raging!

- Should we vaccinate 12-18 year olds? (If this debate is medically possible then it can also be extended to higher age groups)

- Should we give boosters and to whom?

- Shouldn't we be prioritising vulnerable people in other countries?

And this narrow focus of debate is just in the UK between JCVI, SAGE, government, AZ... to determine national vaccination policy. Elsewhere expert opinion is more widely divided.

I suspect that the numbers are partly skewed by the demographics of cases ie greater number of cases are in younger people and relatively fewer of those age groups are fully vaccinated yet, this makes the numbers of unvaccinated cases higher than they would be if the same number of vaccinations were spread evenly across the age range, so you shouldn't use it to estimate efficacy.

Worth remembering that r0 is a theoretical construct representing (as you say) a set of circumstances pre pandemic, that will never actually be repeated. It is estimated using whatever real data is available. Estimates seem to range from 6 to 8. I think they should all be taken with a pinch of salt really, generally it's definitely better to infer behaviour from hard data than from what an r0 value might imply.

Stick a pin in that. Looks like the UK has possibly just tilted a small country's supply of AZ down the sink as it hit its expiry date. Wales wastage figures jumped massively. Expect it to be what the guardian tells you to be upset about tomorrow. But before you do get upset, have a think about what the numbers are when scaled to the whole UK (where wastage isn't explicitly reported), and only then feel free to fume appropriately.

How do you separate the chicken and the egg though?  Figure 9 on page 36 is demographic and shows unvaccinated vs vaccinated is still a 4x difference in young adults, but it’s not quite demographic enough (<40s).  In theory older age bins are informative but I think they’re low numbers and very noisy; for some 1 dose has higher rates than 0 doses for example…  Please please England put out the numbers for a plot like this in 5-year age bins.

I think I was being overly optimistic in assuming lowering cases in young adults would translate directly to R; we see strongly different rate constants in different ages which means R is similarly stratified suggesting transmission within an age band is stronger than between age bands; so reducing cases in one doesn’t help proportionally in older bands.  Although the recent young adult spike in Scotland sure looks like it then sloughed out in to older ages to some degree.  Again can’t really tell from the data.

In reply to misha:

That, the tendency to Orwell references and explaining the role of the media to other posters. They’re also mcdif and Tru Dat I think.  They have previously argued we could learn from other countries how to have less restrictions but IMO the lessons boil down to a mix of “have fewer really old people” which is not a useful lesson as we are where we are (and don’t want to be somewhere with 10x less OAPs…) and “under report deaths by 6x to 10x and pretend it’s not soo bad” given their bizarre attempts to insist the reported numbers of deaths in India meant it was worse in the UK than India back in May 2021 despite near universal consensus there was dramatic under reporting, and corroborating evidence from oxygen demand figures to hundreds of bodies washing up on river banks.  The different incarnations change their message with the seasons but the intent is always the same - to downplay the risks as apply within the UK.  They all tend to beat about the bush a bit like slippery weasels, clearly inferring a point but then denying it when pinned to it.  They have misunderstood or misrepresented the reasons for their repeat bans and present it as some sort of Orwellian narrative control.  Given how much absolute guff they’ve spewed over the last 12 months it’s not working very well if that’s the intent… Rather I think their bans are down to conduct like wishing untreated cancer on others or telling everyone to “go f**k themselves”.   Very ironic given their Orwell fetish that they’re constructing a false narrative where they believe their bans are part of an attempt to control the narrative, when that patently couldn’t be further from the truth. They won’t disclose their former accounts; I rather think this would show that their message changes with our situation, always pushing against any aspect of controlling the virus.  They’ve deliberately solicited at least one ban as part of this dissociation.  They’re having something of a broken clock moment now in some aspects but I think that’s more coincidence than anything - as our situation gets less and less desperate, the distance between it and a “meh, do nothing, it’s all cool” kind of a view decreases and decreases.  We’re not there yet, and when we do get there it won’t mean this person was right all along.

I want to treat all posters as genuine and their contributions as genuine but I simply don’t believe that to be the case here.  We have someone arguing an ever changing tune to suit the situation but with a constant pressure towards more damage to public health and more economic harm

I’m all for just ignoring them or responding to all their future posts with a link to this post; it only really works if nobody engages them…  

That said, it's still buttons compared to the current stockholding that we haven't decided what to do with yet.

It takes a special kind of skill to not be able to give away stuff that somebody else has a $600 million a month business selling.

People need to think about sh*t like this when the Tories say they have to collect more tax to fund social care.  If they'd done a decent job of managing the economy and they'd not p*ssed money away they'd have no need to collect more tax.

Ireland's exports actually grew significantly over the Covid period.  Britain's dropped off a cliff because of Brexit.

https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/ireland/uk?sector=Merchandise+...

It's not even Friday yet.

Re booster shots: scientific considerations aside, Austria and Croatia have already slapped a 9-month validity on vaccine certificates. If more countries follow, then there’s going to be social pressure for a top up  by next summer.  Or maybe it becomes an additional travel cost along with your pcr test? 

Interesting, thanks.  I guess we'll see where vaccination falls on the spectrum of control measures by next summer.  I get the feeling things could go in one of two very different directions over the next year...

Maybe I'm just wrong to look for something significant, it may just be R drifts about as it has despite social/economic/educational/other activity returning towards normal. 

As ever, it would be extremely nice for me to be wrong and it is heartening to see more positive interpretations based on data rather than delusion or bad faith.

I'm just in a pessimistic mood because it's pouring down as forecast, glad I went out for a bike ride in glorious evening sun yesterday!

Looking at the last line of the table 15 on page 34...

21k cases rather than 37k if all populations 0.42% covid positive like double jabbed which does look significant as you suggest.

You're cheering me up!   

I think Si dH and I could probably spend all day batting back and forwards reasons to interpret that data in different ways.  Plenty of scope for optimism or pessimism so perhaps it's just an issue to amplify ones mindset for the day and so best avoided.

I think the next critical thing to understand is going to be efficacy against symptomatic infection and onwards transmission of people who've been double jabbed or infected and then get a delta (re)infection; that seems the obvious rate limiting step going forwards.   It's very unlikely to be lower than the efficacy of the vaccine alone, so some reasons for optimism there.

At some point soon I think trying to understand the population wide immune situation in terms of past vaccination and infection is going to become unboundedly complex and focus has to shift primarily to hospitalisation understood in terms of recent medical history - much like any other illness.  

Yesterday was about as close as we get to a perfect day weather wise for me.  Fantastic night skies and a lot of shooting stars as well.  It's mad watching the night skies now - even with worse light pollution and worse eye sight compared to my childhood, the number of visible satellites has exploded since I was a kid.  

I'd agree realism and focus on data is the best approach. That does however include the NHS capacity likely being less than it was earlier in the pandemic. The government stopping any bad news being released from local NHS trust comms departments doesn't mean that we can ignore that pressures are still extraordinarily high on average and quite a few trusts are at OPEL 4 for way beyond normal time limits (and that's ignoring the national scandal that press freedoms are impacted in an area vital to public information). For those not familiar with the NHS  Operational Pressures Escalation Levels (OPEL) framework this is how level 4 is defined:

"Four-hour performance is not being delivered and patients are being cared for in overcrowded and congested department(s). Pressure in the local health and social care system continues and there is increased potential for patient care and safety to be compromised. Decisive action must be taken by the Local A&E Delivery Board to recover capacity and ensure patient safety. If pressure continues for more than 3 days an extraordinary AEDB meeting should be considered. All available local escalation actions taken, external extensive support and intervention required. Regional teams in NHS E and NHS I will be aware of rising system pressure, providing additional support as deemed appropriate and agreed locally, and will be actively involved in conversations with the system. The Regional UEC Operations Leads will have an ongoing dialogue with the 
National UEC Ops Room providing assurance of whole system action and progress towards recovery. The key question to be answered is how the safety of the patients in corridors is being addressed, and actions are being taken to enable flow to reduce overcrowding. The expectation is that the situation within the hospital will be being managed by the hospital CEO or appropriate Board Director, and they will be on site. Where multiple systems in different parts of the country are declaring OPEL 4 for sustained periods of time and there is an impact across local and regional boundaries, national action may be considered."

The language here is calm but the situation isn't:

https://www.nhsconfed.org/publications/system-approach-demand-crunch

There are some news stories coming out today on the risks of hitting severe NHS overload well before Christmas.

If only there were simple, effective measures we could take like mandatory masks on public transport, rendering all ventilation windows on busses non-closable (I'm still seeing lots of busses with no open ventilator windows FFS), enforcing ventilation standards on classrooms at school and FE/HE levels and so on.   

With the flu season being a massive unknown, and with limited and ever decreasing headroom in the system, and now knowing that these sorts of measures are even more effective against flu as well...

It seems madness that we're risking the kind of overload that leaves no option but the panic button rather than sticking with the lowest level of control measures now.

So we are back to my posts earlier in the year. Boris and the cabinet are in charge and proven incompetent too often on covid decision making. At what point do the rest of the government call out this continued reckless behaviour? What happened to democratic checks and balances? Why isn't direct control of NHS trust comms to prevent local bad news about really serious local NHS pressures a major public scandal?

We have shifted from a position where a controlled exit with no further lockdowns looked very possible to one where it seems much more in doubt, on the data, without the need for crystal balls. The clear benefits of low cost restrictions.... of ventilation, masks, working from home, meeting outdoors etc..... are all in the SAGE output but political messaging leaves us to pretty much fend for ourselves (as citizens or organisations).

Yup.  

A cynic might think these lessons still haven't been learnt because acting on them by taking obvious "minimally invasive steps now might call in to question why they'd not been used more in the past to try and stave off or slow down use of the panic button; some very inconvenient questions you don't want to raise when you've got the inevitable inquiring coming down the line.

Of all the times the low hanging fruit has been left on the tree, this is by far the least risky with the most chance of working out.  If they didn't blink in November 2020, why would they blink now? 

Never?

Certainly some universities seem to be leaning heavily on government messaging rather than SAGE outputs when it comes to preparing for in person, face to face teaching in a few weeks.  

I think it's statements like...

'Some people would be much happier paying £1000/year in testing than have a piece of genetically-modified chimpanzee virus injected into their bodies.'

...that make you sound like an anti-vaxxer

I think it's statements like 

 "Aggressive coronaviruses tend to fizzle out over time regardless, much like aggressive influenza viruses."

and 

"The natural tendency for coronaviruses is to become more transmissible but less virulent"

... that makes them sound like a Covid denial type.  Presenting the idea that this is all just going to go away if we give it time.

They were challenged by another poster [1] to back up this statement - and it's one they've made before in previous guises as well.  Rumour has it the poster challenging them knows their beans on the subject.

[1] https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/friday_night_covid_plotting_38-...

I feel we're in to the Covid version of "I'm not racist, but..." territory here.

Not quite changing the subject but ... what happened to people being pinged? In June/July we had the "pingdemic" and pretty much everything I was involved in was being heavily disrupted by people suddenly having to isolate, and I now haven't heard of anyone being pinged for weeks. Is this because everyone has deleted the app? Or because the app has been tweaked? Or because it dawned on people that the legislation specifically says you don't have to isolate if your phone app tells you to?

Ironically I was doing jury service in July and the trial was halted twice because key people were pinged ... almost as if no-one had read the legislation (which even includes an exemption if you have to attend legal proceedings)...

Not important (or is it?) but I was just wondering.

If you're fully vaccinated you no longer have to isolate as a close contact only if you test positive, so huge reduction in isolation i'd imagine, whether this is a good idea or not is highly debatable  

Admittedly this was meant to be provocative and I was pretty sure it would end this account. But it is also the most unequivocally factual piece of information ever to be posted on a Friday Night Covid Thread. People should think about that and wonder why it made them so upset. Emotions are running high; people need to become more rational.

Less than a year ago an anti-vaxxer was someone who was against any kind of vaccination and a Covid denier was someone who didn't believe the disease existed. Now they're being thrown around in order to simplify and polarise any Covid-related debate, and undermine the credibility of anyone who deviates from the current dogma.

As for Wintertree's 1984 parallels, it's looking increasingly like The Crucible on here. It's all quite concerning.

Why on earth does one fact become the most equivocal? You might also have provided a link when making that claim. The thing that was wrong (so far) was the fizzling out bit not the chimp bit: delta is the most recent and the most dangerous major variant.

https://fullfact.org/online/AstraZeneca-vaccine-foetal-cells-chimpanzee-vir...

"As for Wintertree's 1984 parallels, it's looking increasingly like The Crucible on here. It's all quite concerning."

Twaddle: this is a privately owned internet forum open to public use under site rules, not a totalitarian state. Wintertree is right that Orwell would be turning in his grave if he read some of the libertarian crap spouted with his name attached. My view is just that on a science thread scientists should behave better than critics who get the science wrong (which includes a lot of what you have written).

My response is a couple of posts beneath the challenge. Don't you agree that Covid has evolved to become more transmissible?

Thank you, that link does indeed confirm my statement. Doesn't mean there's anything to worry about...

No, they're your parallels.  I haven noted the. You make them in the posts from your various accounts.

No, it isn't.  

• People are talking on here with a high degree of freedom
• The Crucible is about people being executed

You seem to have some very basic and very serious comprehension issues here.  I actually struggle to believe that you're capable of things like tying your own shoe laces, using a toilet without supervision or using a computer, yet you are this confused about the difference between free speech and executing people because one thinks they're witches.

This is what I find concerning:

• Your inability to scientifically defend any of your misrepresented or misinterpreted arguments with the free speech that you have.
• You endlessly trying to divert attention from yours failures by
  1. Deliberately dissociating yourself from past accounts 
  2. Banging on about Orwellian suppression and societal polarisation and - as you now admit - even trying to get some of your accounts banned
  3. That this whole thing over getting banned is being used to present a lie that you are being persecuted for your views, as if that somehow lends weight to your views.  Which, by the way, it doesn't.
• When this attempt to divert attention from your inability to scientifically defend your misrepresented or misinterpreted views, you move on to wishing untreated cancer on others or telling everyone to go f**k themselves.

It smacks to me of either dishonest or delusional behaviour.  

Which isn't surprising given your hiding behind multiple difference accounts and refusal to disclose the identities of the former ones.

Your response did not address the challenge from the other poster.  The said: You state this as if it is a fact; can you point to *any* scientific evidence to support this? with reference to your repeated claims that the virus will become "less aggressive", "less virulent", "fizzle out".

You coped out of answering them, just as you're coping out now.

Your whole conduct is right out of the tobacco denial / climate denial / anti-vax / Covid-denial manual.  Claim yourself as the other side of the debate - you're not IMO - claim persecution - misrepresentation of evidence - make unsubstantiated claims.  

Edit: This is one of your former accounts, isn't it?

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/covid_good_news+data_thread-734...

Telling an outright lie - that the IFR is proven to be 0.23 (presumably %).  Then we have you in effect denying that lockdown works and calming it's just that cases rise and fall as they wish, and also that Covid does not spread exponentially.  

Then you started a thread from a new account to complain about being banned, to call everyone "pathetic", to state with certainty (something that irks you when you perceive it from others) that you were banned for posting an opinion others disagreed with when you had been posting numbers clearly demonstrable to be provably false (lying, in other words) and to repeat your delusional claims about how well it was going in India without a lockdown, thus proving we didn't need one.  That thread got nuked from orbit for reasons that were abundantly clear to anyone reading it, and it now seems that's what you wanted.

You've tried to up your game and limit your agitation to stay out of the bounds of total fantasy, and you've avoided wishing death on others for a while, but your'e the same person, with the same views.  The back story is mostly still there in the archives and totally undermines the game you are now playing.  Your motivations and wider comments are there in the archives.

I almost missed this.  Here you are trying to claim some moral and scientific high ground, and using the word "unequivocally" and - ironic really - you're unequivocally wrong.

It wasn't a "Friday Night Covid Thread".  It's was TiE's vendetta/shitshow thread, Part 2.

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/vaccine_side_effects_ctd-737935

I don't think it "upset" anyone.  That's more of your delusional mis-inference at work.

That thread epitomises the shit-show going on with these forums at the moment.  The misrepresentation of factual data to the point of outright lies over the yellow card scheme serving as a springboard for multiple Covid deniers (one had their posts outright deleted, another is trying and gradually failing to play a smarter game), and yet another  sock-puppet.  What an absolute shit show.  

Still, it game me a good laugh when someone forgot to sign back in to their sock puppet account.  The other pair of those sock puppets is still live - perhaps that's the account behind the obvious sock puppet voting on this thread... 

You haven’t engaged with my point about the health consequences of not vaccinating younger people vs the health consequences of vaccinating them. I suspect even you can’t bend the stats sufficiently to demonstrate that natural infection is a safer approach than vaccination, in terms of the number of deaths, hospitalisations and serious illness.

Yes there is debate about children and the JCVI have considered the narrow question of what’s best for their physical health and essentially said it’s marginal for healthy children. That’s a sensible debate but you aren’t talking about children, are you? You’re talking about a much larger category of people (20s, 30s 40s, not sure you ever specified your cut off?). Has the JCVI or overseas equivalents ever recommended not vaccinating adults?

Boosters are a separate debate. It’s outside my area of expertise but I can see the argument that boosters are not essential / required for certain groups. That assumes they’ve had the initial two doses though.

Is there peace between vaccinating the vulnerable and vaccinating all adults? Not really. Not least because (1) it’s not clear how you would determine the vulnerable and (2) you need to reduce case numbers to protect the vulnerable.

Same as other posters, I think you’re acting in bad faith. At least be honest, please, so we know where you really stand. 

This - as well as the reply you got about isolation (or not) for vaccinated people.

Some updated and new week-on-week method rate constant plots.

The slope towards decay in England is gone, instead holding at a very slow doubling time of ~40 days. Looks like a bit more lag than normal in some of the data.  The latest marker is for a faster doubling time, but it's likely artificially elevated by the depressed bank holiday count 7 days ago, as indicated by the blue line annotation linking low/high points.

Scotland continues it Zeno's paradox approach to dacay.

Wales looks to be having a rebound.  I've not been following the news there; if anyone wants to suggest key unlocking dates for the annotations I can add those.  It looks to be a very similar bank holiday low then prolonged rebound to that seen in England, but with more leaning to growth.

Problem here is there's no virology or epidemiology exam, or shred of scientific understanding if we're honest, required to take up a seat as an MP, regardless of colour of tie worn.
If we could swap every PPE degree in the house for an MSc..........

Yes - I'd forgotten that rule change. Goodbye pingly pings.

I'm talking about the scientific leadership in the civil service much more than the MPs.

Thanks for the update. I guess the big question for England is the wider impact of schools reopening. The Scottish data suggests this may be relatively limited. I guess we will find out around this time next week given the infection to PCR test by reporting date delay. The recent great weather may have helped to mask some of the rise, so I’d be wary of calling it based on next week’s data. At any rate, this week’s data is going to be just a holding pattern. 

It's been obvious that there's some kind of imposed blackout on NHS comms for a few weeks. Local newspapers were reporting regular updates from the directors of the trusts in my area, but they stopped completely three weeks ago (during which time admissions and CV beds have only gone up according to the NHS C19 hospital activity stats). Offwidth: have you seen anything in print about this blackout? I've missed it if it's been mentioned before.

Wintertree: the only news story I've seen today on NHS pressure was this one: https://inews.co.uk/news/uk-covid-nhs-overwhelmed-masks-social-distancing-1... Is that what you were referring to, or is there something else on the way?

In a way, this reliance on Gov messaging can be played to advantage if staff are organized. We've all experienced institutions the management of which ignored any scientific advice, insisting they couldn't act of their own accord but were obliged to follow UK Gov guidance (I'm thinking of March, April last year, back when the guidance was laughably inadequate and singing Happy Birthday whilst washing your hands was the ne plus ultra of mitigation measures).

Post-August 16, I've had some success in making managements do more than they evidently want to by dint of the fact that Gov guidance hasn't really altered, except to change most mitigation measures from legal requirement to 'expected and recommended' status. Getting managements to follow the advisory docs that they previously insisted they were completely bound by has meant that, though I'm sure they don't want to, a number of places I'm working in are following all the advisory-only mitigation measures to the letter (e.g. UK Gov is still 'expecting and recommending' masks in indoor spaces). Reminding managements of their previously stated obligation to follow Gov guidance is effective not, I believe, because they'd be embarrassed about being inconsistent but because it gives them a path of least resistance to follow in terms of precedent.

That's the only really explicit story I've seen, but there's quite a few around the subject of a half-term firebreak where it's tempting to read between the lines on what's being hinted at, and on the quotes from various SAGE/NERVTAG members, e.g:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/07/no-10-not-ruling-out-firebrea... has a notable quote:

• Ravi Gupta, a professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge and a member of the Nervtag advisory body, but speaking in a personal capacity, suggested the plans might not go far enough.  “I guess my view is that this situation was entirely predictable and to some extent preventable and many scientists have been ignored,” he said.  “A firebreaker of a two-week half-term may help but is unlikely to be long enough to do the job, without additional measures including masking indoors and large gathering limitations,” he said. “Vaccinating 12- to 15-year-olds should help curb transmission but we have left it pretty late.”

Pulling bits from different articles on this together, it seems they're expecting cases to  start rising appreciably soon enough, and that the implications for hospital occupancy are very clear.  I haven't seen any indication of what is considered the maximum safe ceiling for Covid occupancy this winter; if there's a bad flu season coming; even 20k is probably excessive and is less than two doubling times away.

Then again, their predictions are based in the modelling which seems to be wide of the mark; we never did hit those 200,000 cases/day that Ferguson was softening people up for in the press.  (Thank the gods we didn't).

Going off the Scottish document up thread, the single biggest component of cases and hospital admissions look to be unvaccinated adults under 40 years of age.   This is sort of good news / bad news.  Bad news in that we're facing potential school disruption because of this cohort, good news in that it's a self limiting problem because with the rate infections are spreading in unvaccinated young adults, it can't be much longer before they're all converted in to young adults with some natural immunity, hopefully significantly lowering their re-infection rate vs the current infection rate, and hopefully significantly lowering their hospitalisation rate when re-infected compared to when they're infected now. 

In late July I said this all felt like a game of "Policy Chicken"; seems like the vibes are emerging that cabinet might swerve first...?

Thanks for your detailed thoughts there.  I hope to put some of that to good use.  I'm certainly encouraging a couple of people to request access to the detailed risk assessments that have apparently been conducted...  

Not wanting to further derail a thread that's already having a bit of a Never Mind Covid, Let's Talk About Me sockpuppet derailment, but... for anyone who's interested this is a good (three-part) delve into where the UK-based antivax/antimask crowd are coming from.

I think this is the rabbit-hole down which one of our older posters recently fell, given the frequency of their posts about the the same nexus of interests, and their posted links to the particular and unusual social media platform favoured by the group described herein.

https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2021/07/inside-the-white-rose-the-covid-conspira...

A series of Roy Lilley e-news postings a couple of weeks back. These are examples on covid:

https://myemail.constantcontact.com/See-what-she-does.html?soid=11026658991...

https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Too-scared-to-succeed.html?soid=1102665...

This one on the 40 new hospitals

https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Trashing-their-careers.html?soid=110266...

Still seem to be getting them in Cumbria, but they have changed in tone over the last month. Locally at least, there seems to be some indication that secondary school transmission could be an issue, if increased testing during the first week back isn't the reason for the increase.

Cases of coronavirus have been on the rise sharply this week.

There were 1903 cases recorded which is an increase of 20% from the previous week.

Allerdale has been has had the greatest number of cases for the fifth week in a row.

Colin Cox, Cumbria’s Director of Public Health, said: "Unfortunately, case rates continue to rise at a steady pace across Cumbria and as we’ve seen previously, this inevitably results in serious consequences including hospitalisations.

"Case rates are rising in almost all age groups but particularly so amongst those aged 12-18.

"As many will know by now, although the chances of someone in this age group falling ill or being hospitalised is low, it’s not impossible and the virus may then spread to more vulnerable family members."

New cases increased from the previous week in all Cumbrian districts except Copeland.

Those aged between 12-18 accounted for the greatest number and rate of new cases in Cumbria.

With 396 new cases recorded within this age group.

The number of new people admitted to hospital with a positive case increased by two.

The most recent data shows 87% of Cumbrians aged 15 and over have received their first dose.

Mr Cox added: "It’s clear the vaccine is having an impact however and keeping deaths and hospitalisations down.

"Therefore, I urge those who haven’t already to get vaccinated as soon as possible. If you’re over the age of 16, visit the NHS website to find out to book your vaccine or find your nearest walk-in vaccination centre."

Thanks.  Good summary in your link, but I fear I’m measurably dumber for it.  I’d not heard of that platform until said user linked it.  Madness how much investment they’ve raised when their business plan seems to consist of offering worse groups a worse user interface than Twitter.

Such a concentrated collection of superficially alluring memes that all fail at the critical thinking stage; some say it came together naturally but it looks like it escaped from a psychology lab to me, clearly designed to target and convert vulnerable people who then go on to convert more, and it’s fine tuned enough to keep R>1.  New social media has a lot to answer for.

Yes... I've seen a few of those over the last few weeks. I though the most notable was this in terms of what UK Gov might consider acceptable; and I thought it also notable that the story was denied immediately rather than after a few days. I'm reading that as a sign of a set-in-stone threshold re which Gov doesn't feel needs the input of focus groups, but that could well be a misreading:

https://inews.co.uk/news/boris-johnson-privately-accepts-up-to-50000-annual...

Hm. I'm not a fan of detailed RAs that are then kept under wraps...

Thank you!

Thanks for that link.

A simple numeric threshold doesn't feel anywhere near appropriate for our situation, being still some distance from a (still unproven) steady state endgame.  

Then again, 50,000 deaths from Covid a year doesn't feel anywhere near sustainable for the NHS, at least until (unless?) we reach the point Covid patients can be treated without requiring enhanced transmission control measures.  That point feels very distant. 

Well, it's possible there was an oversight in not attaching it to the all staff email about how a Robust Risk Assessment means all teaching can go ahead with no social distancing.  I'm sure it will be made public soon enough...  I never really got to the bottom of how well a CO2 monitor proxies for viral load risk, given the dramatic difference in the size of the particles involved.  Various studies, all seem to come down to things being critically dependant on local factors; makes me wary of a universal risk assessment as applied to an estate consisting of what one might euphemistically call "a diverse range of teaching facilities".  When it comes to ventilation I'm personally wary of "dead air" - spaces well sheltered from airflow and with restricted diffusive access.  

Indeed. RAs should be done to drive preventive and mitigating measures, not as a paper exercise.

I warn DofE groups that doing a RA, but not implementing the measures identified might actually make them more liable in the event of something going wrong, than if they never did the RA in the first place...

I was presuming CO2 monitoring was only ever a vague way to say your ventilation is shitty, and little more than that. I'm still waiting to see papers on how it relates to virus concentration. It was sounding like studies are in the pipeline but still probably best seen as a time to open a window alarm.

Good news story of the day:

From today, PHE will publish vaccination status of COVID-19 cases, deaths and hospitalisations over the past 4 weeks in the weekly Vaccination Surveillance Report

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...

Some good visualising already out there by Meaghan Kall on the most obnoxious of websites to try to view it.

Wow. So, the simple interpretation of the data is that vaccination is definitely making a big difference to hospitalisations and deaths, but once past middle age it does basically nothing to help reduce the chances of symptomatic infection with Delta.

Maybe there is a confounding factor but nothing very obvious?

The hospitalisation rate data really needs to be tracked closely as a function of time so we can see trends and therefore spot any waning of protection.

Be extremely careful; the pervasive and persistent NIMS/ONS denominator spectre is a game changer here. I'm sure there are other reasons why it only looks ~40% but don't know what they are. There's been a huge burst of analysis from Mainwood, Angus, Ward, Kall that I'm still working through and want to read all of before I conclude anything, but it's all on tw*tter which means it takes forever to do so because I don't know how to work it and/or it's objectively a complete cock to read.

Ok, I'm struggling to understand how/why the denominator from NIMS makes any difference because I thought it was used to determine both case rates and vaccination rates, and both sets of results (cases / 100k for vaccinated and unvaccinated people) are presented in similar terms. I also thought NIMS was supposed to be most unreliable in younger groups? Let us know the conclusions of your Twitter research

I'm glad you asked. I keep checking occasionally for direct links (other than  twitter) and it's the first time I spotted this new type.

To be clear to Rob this seems to be about covering bad news from local trusts (like seriously negative covid impacts on staff levels) not hiding local covid stats.

I couldn't put my finger on it, but that is the change style over the last month or so. Previous releases would have had comments on staff levels/concerns etc. 

This is the plot using ONS numbers. I'd say that's different....

https://twitter.com/JamesWard73/status/1436017485262823424

It really is a bit of a pisser that we don't know how many people there are. When we know quite well how many you've vaccinated, and it gets near to most, the error on the total number suddenly becomes really quite an impediment to knowing how many unvaccinated people exist. Probably best to limit conclusions drawn from these data to ...per case.

Some information about Pfizer contracts and how they function in some countries.... a good bit below heroic.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/sep/10/pfizer-accused-o...

Ok so working through this - I think what James Ward is basing his calcs on (because he hasn't explained it) is:

1) raw data on vaccination status of cases - fine (unless there is a bias in the unlinked group)

2) total number of vaccinated people - fine

3) total population estimate (used to calculate total number of unvaccinated people) - not fine

His results using ONS data are more than a factor of two different for unvaccinated case rates in age groups from 40 upwards. I guess this is an artefact of the relatively small proportion of the population in those age groups who are unvaccinated, being similar in total number to the uncertainty on the national population in those groups. His results imply the ONS population estimate in these groups is significantly below the NIMS estimate, hence giving higher unvaccinated case rates.

Is this also your understanding?

I'm surprised the population uncertainty is that big at national level. Perhaps it's best not to read anything in case rates in this way, but rather just look for any trends (eg if proportion vaccinated increases over time.)

The other bit of info I get from this is that there are currently slightly more hospitalisations of double vaccinated people than unvaccinated people (in absolute numbers across the whole population) but it's close, so there is still lots of potential to reduce hospitalisation figures by vaccinating the remaining unsure population.

Yes, that's what I was alluding to above.

There will be a bias in the unlinked cases, undoubtedly. But mostly yep, the error bar doesn't get smaller, but if unvaccinated=Wild ass guess - vaccinated, then the huge error bars get slapped onto a much smaller number. Further clarification for the sake of the thread, let's take an example: If you have 1m +/- 5% people, and you vaccinate 900,000 of them, how many are unvaccinated? Could be 50k, could be 150k.

Tl; dr DO NOT try to estimate vaccine effectiveness from these data. It even says that in the text. So don't. Before you start, just don't. 

Edit: not easy to determine what they mean by unlinked. Could make all that irrelevant and wrong if I've misinterpreted. But that would only raise my eyebrows even further.

Yep. Mainwood does a nice plot of effective vaccine impact by taking coverage by age group and stirring in their vulnerability. Worth seeking out. Then he repeatedly has to point out that it's 100-% vaccinated that you need to worry about, so the argument that 97% is twice as good as 94% gets highlighted regularly.

Wow.  A gold mine there.  If someone hasn't worked up a plot of actual hospital admissions (vs 100k rates) vs vaccine status I'll do that later.  The per 100k rates make it unambiguous that being unvaccinated is worse for health for all adults ages.

Seconded.  I was reflecting on the YCS misrepresentation thread yesterday.  What a disgrace.

In reply to Si dH:

That is a binary threshold applied to quantify an analogue value though; how infected/infectious is presumably more nuanced. 

In reply to Offwidth:

That seems relevant to the discussion on the previous thread.  I have no interest in reviving it since it was made explicit that I was being judged on discriminatory grounds rather than on what I was actually saying...  

It's a case for which they don't have the NHS number, so can't link it to a vaccination record.

Not clear to me why it should be biased really. When I have booked tests in the past, I have always put in my own NHS number but never my son's or wife's because I don't know them without a faff.

Re: not using the data to estimate vaccine effectiveness - absolute numbers agreed.  However the trends in vaccination effectiveness will be the most useful point of it once we have seen a few releases.

In reply to Wintertree:

Yes, totally agree.

If you keep using language like that, and acting like you are some kind of authority figure, I'm going to respond in kind.    Right now I am biting my tongue.  

The article includes the text "Indemnity from compensation claims has been common in contracts between many countries and big pharma companies since the late 1980s".

An indemnity shield applies in the UK and probably many countries.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-britain-vaccines-idUS...

"Britain has agreed to spend 3.7 billion pounds on COVID-19 vaccines and in most cases will bear the liability if claims are made against the pharmaceutical firms involved, the National Audit Office (NAO) said on Wednesday." Dec 2020

https://www.europeanpharmaceuticalreview.com/news/125517/astrazeneca-receiv... 

“This is a unique situation where we as a company simply cannot take the risk if in… four years the vaccine is showing side effects,” said Ruud Dobber, a member of AstraZeneca’s senior executive team, as quoted by Reuters. “In the contracts we have in place, we are asking for indemnification. For most countries it is acceptable to take that risk on their shoulders because it is in their national interest.” Aug 2020

Pfizer may not be heroic but it looks more like a bog standard contract (eg use of Pfizer logos) or bog standard contract (indemnity shield) for a pandemic.

Brazil got a really good price of $10 per dose compared to $23 in EU or $21 in UK. That may just be richer countries were prepared to pay more to be the first supplied.

The old engagement with testing/engagement with vaccination/engagement with gp registration Venn diagram?

Even discounting that, everyone who got the vaccine where I did left with a little wallet-friendly card with their NHS number written on it in biro. At the very least they've a better chance of having looked it up recently and knowing where to find it. That alone surely skews the likelihood of not recording it correctly towards the unvaccinated?

Sorry, what an absolute f***ing disgrace that thread was.  

I'm no authority figure, that is clear.

43 dislikes on your OP Tom.

You kept inferring it was English nationalism informing people's views, but you had a Scottish person and others people identifying as not English making the same points.  Something like a dozen posters called you out on it.

You have since resorted to overt anti-English racism against myself and Longsufferingropeholder instead of engaging with our actual points on the issues.

Probably wise.  

It was a perfectly reasonable discussion until a bunch of tw*ts who want to believe UK government propaganda jumped on it.

And how many of them put any thought in before piling on?

English nationalism, being naturally predisposed to believe good things about England and getting their information from the English media.

The simple fact is there 2x as many reports per dose for AZ as Pfizer and for some specific symptoms it goes up to 10x.   You don't get around that unless you can show some other factor, demographic or otherwise, that it is reasonable to think is large enough to explain it.  You got nowhere trying to find a demographic explanation, the central problem being that Pfizer was also the first available vaccine so the sickest and oldest, to a large extent, got Pfizer.

Pretty much all the rich countries have phased out AZ vaccine because they think it is less effective and has more side effects than the mRNA alternatives.  Sorry if that hurts your sensibilities.

The UK is pretty much the only country in the world where you'd get a lot of people trying to say AZ is as good as Pfizer.  Obvious explanation is partisanship.  

English isn't a race.  English is a nationality.   There's way too much intermarriage between English/Irish and Scots for there to be any kind of racial component.

Yes.  It is wise.  But if you keep up with 'disgrace' and words like that I will respond in kind.

I don't think this makes any difference. Obviously all the positive cases have engaged with testing, and whether or not they engaged with vaccination has doubtful bearing on whether they can be bothered to fill in their NHS number. I don't think there is any GP involvement?

Feels a bit like straw clutching tbh. Not convinced.

I don't think it really matters to our overall interpretation of the dataset anyway

No, it wasn't.  Right from the start you were grossly mis-representing the YCS data in contravention to it's own clear description and also the bloody obvious.

I'm not sure how it has escaped your notice, but nobody here seems very trusting of what the government says - indeed people have been spending a lot of time testing many of their statements agains a factual evidence base.  The same mentality was brought to your posts.  

People were very clear at the time that they were objecting to your mis-representation of the YCS data.  I was not trying to say which vaccines was "as good", but objecting to you misusing the YCS data in exactly the same way a hardcore anti-waxer would.

A classic defence against racism that.  Call it what you like, you resorted to discrimination based on identity , worse still your perception of identity.  

I don't know, you're doing a good job of making my point patently clear.

Coming from you Tom, this is far beyond pot calling kettle black. This is more like pot sat in the living room calling the sofa a kettle 😂

I think having registered with a GP is what gets you on NIMS isn't it?

I don't know... If youd asked me 6 months ago I'd have said "sorry, dunno". Now, having booked jabs, I can search my inbox for either vac or NHS and it's in the first email that comes up. Might be just me but if looking for bias it's where I'd start.

It doesn't change much at all. Still far more about the denominators and ways of avoiding conclusions that rest on them.

Thanks. Effectiveness is mentioned in the rest of the report. Quite large CIs but on the whole pretty good after two doses, especially against death. However not so good against symptomatic disease in particular as to justify dropping all safeguards (hence I’m not in any rush to get back to the office).

As you say, there’s some level of uncertainty in the new data due to population numbers being imprecise but on the whole it’s clear from the per 100k numbers that being vaccinated reduces the risks significantly.

If you look at the report linked above, it discusses effectiveness of AZ vs Pfizer and there isn’t that much difference.

I think side effects are a bit of a red herring. In very rare cases there are serious side effects / death but there would be a lot more serious illness / death without those vaccines. I don’t disagree that Pfizer / Moderna may be somewhat better but at the end of the day what was important was getting doses administered asap and without AZ we’d be in a much worse situation. That’s the key point. Whether this or that vaccine is ‘better’ is academic when there’s a shortage of vaccines.

Yep, stick with the numbers reported from the trials.

They're the sketchy ones! It's not per 100k, it's per [random number]. In the unvaccinated column at least.

Doesn't change this conclusion though

Re ONS/NIMS and student towns, a really good deep dive in a university town, saying what we all know in a very clear set of figures

https://philrodgers.wordpress.com/2021/05/28/why-is-cambridges-vaccination-...

Ropesufferer has obliged with the data. 

For unvaccinated people death rates from Covid seem to be 0% in under 18s, 0.0004% for 18-29 year olds and 0.0013% for 30-39 year olds.

Overnight hospital admission rates are 0.0034% for under 18s, 0,0111% for 18-29 year olds and 0.0174% for 30-39 year olds.

For people who don't smoke, aren't overweight, exercise regularly and have no underlying health conditions these percentages can be divided by w, x, y and z.

They must also be balanced against the probability of death or illness from an adverse reaction to the vaccine. As we all know, AZ use has already been restricted in young people because of this.

1.2% of 20 year olds complained of continuing symptoms that affected daily life 3 months after infection (most common symptom is fatigue).

Let's check this number using data over a 3-week period from detection to death (*)

Deaths:

• 0.3/100,000 (35 to 39, 4nd Sep 2021)
• 0.05/100,000 (30 to 34, **)
• https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths?areaType=nation&areaName...

Cases:

• 345.1/100,000 (35 to 39, 14th Aug 2021)
• 451.1/100.000 (30 to 34, 14th Aug 2021)

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=nation&areaName=...

(0.05 + 0.3) / (451.1+345.5) = 0.03% or 23 times higher than the number you give, and I suspect deaths are almost entirely in unvaccinated but cases are from both, so the denominator is probably biassing the unvaccinated CFR to be too low.  I could do a proper, finessed measurement but it's going to come out ballpark similar. 

• The death rate in 35 to 39 is almost 70 times higher than the value you give - because, as you seem to forget, mortality from this increases exponentially with age

The death rate is still low, but it's significant in the context of a pre-Covid all cause mortality rates at those ages, and I remind you that you were addressing Misha's point on health damage, which is clearly more widespread than death.

I think you are here in bad faith.  

Under your current account you had toned down the outright lies and severe misrepresentations from 3-4 previous accounts you have posted under, but those accounts make your intent clear.  You have previously been an outright Covid denier.  You have consistently sought to downplay every risk by a combination of lies and highly one sided misrepresentation.  You are now trying to push the most one-sided view you can whilst remaining within factual bounds, but you're failing at even that.  Here for example you are lowballing death rates by a factor of 23 times. 

Method notes:

• (*) lag almost doesn't matter now as rates have been pretty constant for a while
• (**) averaged over the last two weeks as it flits between 0.0 and 0.1 with the insufficient rounding on the heatmap readout.

Not sure what your point is here. The data I posted refers to deaths "within 60 days of first positive COVID-19 test or where COVID-19 is mentioned on the death certificate".

Your speculation about my previously accounts is deeply flawed!

It's exactly what I said it was.

My point was that:

1. you give a case fatality rate (CFR) for unvaccinated adults aged 30-39 that is 23x lower than the CFR for all all adults aged 30-39 as measured by the method I gave from the sources I gave
2. That I think the CFR  for vaccinated adults probably even higher, as deaths are more concentrated in the unvaccinated than cases.

The CFR I give, by the method I give, from the sources I give are 23 times higher than the CFR you give from the method you do not give, from the source(s) you do not give.

If I try and guess your method, find no instance of the value you gave in the document, so I would assume you took the case and death rates in the document LSRH linked and divided them to get a percentage.   Normally this method would be highly suspect as is does not take in to account the lag from case to infection, but given the recent relative stagnation of measures, it's not soo bad.

To try and re-create the method you did not give...

Using this document:

• https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...

I take case rates per 100,000 from

• Table 4: COVID-19 cases by vaccination status between week 32 and week 35 2021
• Column: Rates among persons not vaccinated (per 100,000) 
• Row: 30-39 
• Value: 1143.9

I take death rates per 100,000 from:

• Table 5: COVID-19 deaths (a) within 28 days and (b) within 60 days of positive specimen or with COVID-19 reported on death certificate, by vaccination status between week 32 and week 35 2021
• Column: Rates among persons not vaccinated (per 100,000)
• Row: 30-39
• Value: 1.3 (edit, I copied a low value from (a) not (b) by mistake, fixed).

Calculate a percentage:

• 1.3 / 1143.9 = 0.11%

Compare to the value you gave with no method and no source:

• 0.11% /  0.0013% = 84x

> Your speculation about my previously accounts is deeply flawed!

Well, it's clear you don't consider yourself an outright Covid denier, so you would say that.

Or do you mean my speculation about your previous identities?  You steadfastly refuse to reveal all your previous identities, so forgive me if I draw my own conclusions.

Please don't lie about fatality rates by a factor of 23x to 84x in favour of downplaying the risks.

It occurs to me now that perhaps you mean you meant death rate" as a fraction of the population, not of cases...?   As you gave neither your source, nor your method, nor a clear definition of what value you are giving, perhaps I have misunderstood.  

Absolute death rates are almost completely meaningless as right now most people don't have Covid, but that can change.    It would be right up your street to make the case that it's a very low number bereft of this critical context however.

The mortality risk of Covid to an unvaccinated adult in ages 30-39 is significant in terms of their pre-Covid mortality risks. 

Why don't you just look in the report?! It's deaths/hospitalisations after a positive test. I simply changed rate per 100,000 into a percentage.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...

Here's what it says about older age groups:

"In individuals aged 40 to 79, the rate of a positive COVID-19 test is higher in vaccinated individuals compared to unvaccinated."

Because until the message to which I am replying...

• You did not give the source (although you hinted at it, it was not actually linked),
• You did not specify what rate you were calculating although you said "For unvaccinated people death rates from Covid " which strongly implies disease fatality rates to me
• You did not specify the method by which you got this value,
• You did not specify what part(s) of this 7,000 word 33 page report you were referring to.

I went to the effort of checking for the % value you gave in the report through a text search (both on the % and on the number '13' to make damned sure I wasn't missing anything).  It wasn't in there.  

To be clear I haven't looked in to the hospitalisations, I am concentrating on just your "death rates from Covid" numbers.

 So what you have done is to give

• the number who have died in the three week period that report covers.  
• from Covid
• as a percentage of people aged 30-39 in the whole country (including the 99% who do not currently have Covid) 

Okay.  Got it.  You absolutely, definitely did not make that clear, and nor I think would any reasonable, numerically literate person infer that from what you wrote.

With regards the resultant number you gave:

• This, unsurprisingly, is a very small number
  • but it's also almost totally meaningless....
• To call it a death rate s to misrepresent it
  • Who ever heard of a "3 week death rate"?  If you'd called it that it would at least not have been staggeringly dishonest......  
• At the least you could annualise it by a actor of 52/3; as such an annualised death rate (from the whole population) would be ~20x higher than your meaningless number. 
  • It seems no matter how you meant the "death rate" it's lowballed by more than an order of magnitude...

What you have given - "The fraction of the whole population aged 30-39 dying of Covid in a 3-week period" meets precisely zero definitions of "death rate" as applied to "death rates from Covid".   

It's a number on the order of 23x to 84x lower than the rate of people with Covid In that age range who are dying from it.  How convenient.

Yes, I bet you're itching to get busy misrepresenting that as well.

I haven't tried to represent anything. Just taken the data from the report and posted it on the thread with the relevant link.

So you're going to skip right over the point where your "death rates from Covid" value was basically a nonsense number - given as it was bereft of any method or description, and falling between 20x and 80x lower than any reasonable value of a "death rate"?

I did not say that you had "represent(ed) anything" (past tense, factual)

I said: Yes, I bet you're itching to get busy misrepresenting that as well" (future tense, speculative)

Please look at the report.

It's "Rates among persons not vaccinated (per 100,000)" of people who died "within 60 days of first positive COVID-19 test or where COVID-19 is mentioned on the death certificate by week of date of death between week 32 and week 35 2021" expressed as a percentage.

The quotes are from the table of results. I'm not trying to hide or misrepresent anything. I don't know how I can be more transparent!

If you weren't trying to hide or misrepresent anything, then you were highly negligent to the point I would call it incompetent in the extreme.

Here is your post:

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/friday_night_covid_plotting_42-...

The key parts are repeated below:

• Ropesufferer has obliged with the data. 
• For unvaccinated people death rates from Covid seem to be 0% in under 18s, 0.0004% for 18-29 year olds and 0.0013% for 30-39 year olds.
• Overnight hospital admission rates are 0.0034% for under 18s, 0,0111% for 18-29 year olds and 0.0174% for 30-39 year olds.

Let me repeat myself

• You did not link the source document 
• You did not link the source numbers you used for your calculation of a death rate
  • E.g. giving a table chart or so on
• Critical Points: You did not qualify that the "death rate from Covid" was limited to a 3 week period
• Your post was a % number that by any reasonable interpretation is out by a factor of 20x to 80x and there was no context at all to explain it.

Now, when I give numbers I try and qualify them because I know most people reading won't drill down in to all the details of the references to check them themselves.  Because I don't want to misrepresent or mislead.

It's only on your fourth reply to me that you acknowledge that this is for a 3-week period.  It's all well and good to say "look at the report" now.  It took me many messages to get you to that point, it wasn't in your original post.  If I had not spent my time challenging you, that false death rate would have stood for all to read unchallenged.  It was a lie by omission of the critical information that it was for a 3 week period.  That was not communicated anywhere in your post in any way.

If it's not misrepresentation it's sheer incompetence at comprehending, analysing and communicating figures onwards to others.  If you bring this same level of utter ineptitude to everything else you look at on Covid, some things start to make an awful lot of sense.

The funny thing is that across your various accounts, what is either incompetence or misrepresentation from you always falls in favour of downplaying the evidenced risks of Covid.  That's where things start to smell more than a little fishy.

If you're original post had linked to the tables and explained how you got the percentage, and noted that it was for a 3-week period, it would just have been just a bit misleading...

It's death rate/100,000 positive tests expressed as a percentage. There was never any claim of an absolute number and so the duration of the period is irrelevant. 

Nonsense.  

The absolute number is the number of people who died in that 3 week period.

The "rate/100,000" is that number normalised to the number of people in the same vaccination category, scaled to a per 100k value.

It's the number of people who died in that 3 week period expressed as a per-100k to normalise values for comparison with each other based on demographic and vaccination status.  It's not an annualised rate, for example. 

The absolute number, the /100k rate value and your % value all apply to deaths in that three week period

You did not explain this.

You qualified that number as a "death rate from Covid" bereft from any other context.  You never mentioned that it was within 3 weeks.  People might interpret that very ambiguous figure as a CFR or as an annualised population level mortality rate.  By any reasonable interpretation of death rate - such as the two I just gave - your figure is between 20x and 80x too low.

Stepping back, even if fully qualified, the percentage of adults dying of Covid in a 3-week period at a time when most people don't have Covid is a pretty useless value...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer...

"Healthy boys may be more likely to be admitted to hospital with a rare side-effect of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine that causes inflammation of the heart than with Covid itself, US researchers claim.

"Their analysis of medical data suggests that boys aged 12 to 15, with no underlying medical conditions, are four to six times more likely to be diagnosed with vaccine-related myocarditis than ending up in hospital with Covid over a four-month period."