Why Did the UK Have Such a Bad Covid-19 Epidemic?

The Cummings Effect didn't help, as people decided they had good reasons to break lockdown too.

The only way to keep infections low is to use hygiene, physical distancing and masks.

Other than that, no-one can know how it'll play out as there is no info on immunity and whether it even exists.
(I read, recently, that SARS and MERS immunity lasts only a couple of years.)

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/12june2020#antibody-tests-for-covid-19

Section 4 covers antibodies

Here’s some Swedish data
www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-sweden-immunity/around-6-in-sweden-have-developed-covid-19-antibodies-swedish-health-agency-idUSL8N2DV3N2

suziewoozie

It was him GGum

What a shame suzie

They don't seem to have extended our knowledge much do they suzie. We don't even know if it will change enough each year (like flu) to need a new vaccine should we get one or that it will die out as some have done in the past. I would really rather not be part of the experiment that finds out.

For herd immunity to have any real effect, a population has to have at least 40% immunity. To stop spread completely, it needs to be over 90%. The UK is nowhere near that. The difference between the UK and a country such as New Zealand or Germany is statistically insignificant for herd immunity.

However, true herd immunity would kill over half a million people, which isn't statistically insignificant.

Callistemon

Yes, it was Matthew Parris on The World at One.
Followed by a scientist who is a lockdown sceptic and a Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford Uniersity, sorry I forget his name.

I do wonder if this virus has been with us for longer than we know and more people may have had it and developed antibodies. Without more testing we will not know.
However, it is not known if antibodies would guarantee immunity anyway.

Was it Prof Carl Heneghan? Somebody mentioned him earlier today and I've spent ages looking up loads of references. Professor or not, he's a first class tw*t.

He's a GP by training, not even a virologist. On June 3, he predicted there would be no more Covid-19 deaths by July.

He also pointed to Sweden as a country that had "held its nerve" and was not suffering a "doomsday scenario" - well, it is now!

There's more, but I'm too lazy to type it all out.

People like that are dangerous!

growstuff

For herd immunity to have any real effect, a population has to have at least 40% immunity. To stop spread completely, it needs to be over 90%. The UK is nowhere near that. The difference between the UK and a country such as New Zealand or Germany is statistically insignificant for herd immunity.

However, true herd immunity would kill over half a million people, which isn't statistically insignificant.

Ooops! I meant is statistically significant in my last sentence.

Actually Sweden has pretty much just over half of Belgium’s deaths with none of their harsh lockdown - how did that work?

It isn’t going to happen because the government won’t allow a consultation, for obvious reasons, but so much could be learned, perhaps in time to save thousands of more lives.

Bris was too busy on holiday and didn’t want to cancel Carries baby shower at Chequers To bring lockdown a week early. Let’s hope that gets into the public domain.
Teen wa a thread in late February / early March about Italy ( when we were still thinking it wouldn’t happen here) which was full of ignorant stereotypes - they all live with their grans in cramped housing / they don’t have proper toilets/ They don’t have health care/ they all smoke etc etc where are those posters now?

I think Sweden has to be compared with its Nordic neighbours. It’s done much much worse than they did and the real difference is not locking down. Belgium has 15x the population density of Sweden as well. Also Belgium it is now acknowledged ‘overcounted’ and its figures are much closer to its excess death rates than other countries.

The Swedish rate of infection and deaths is also continuing to rise on a par with the US.

What does ‘over counted’ mean exactly- I’ve heard it mentioned in comparisons with UK and Italy, Spain and France but not sure what it means.

Another snippet about Heneghan ...

He was reported in the Telegraph and DM as saying that two metre distancing was a waste of time. That's not what he said at all in his original article for a scientific mag! He said that there was no conclusive evidence that one metre or two metres made any difference, although he couldn't prove that it didn't.

Nevertheless, he acknowledged that social distancing was important and implied that it maybe needed to be more than two metres.

Belgium's coronavirus (over)counting controversy

www.dw.com/en/belgiums-coronavirus-overcounting-controversy/a-53660975

Sorry about the gruesome picture :-(

I agree that we seemed to be ill prepared, and locked down too late. However many other factors need to be taken into account, such as population density ( more people live in London alone than the whole of New Zealand for example), housing density, multi occupancies, strictness and length of lockdown, age and health of population and susceptibility to the virus, and closing of borders/quarantine. I don’t think there is an answer to this question as there are too many variables - and I am of no particular political persuasion.

Whingingmom

I agree that we seemed to be ill prepared, and locked down too late. However many other factors need to be taken into account, such as population density ( more people live in London alone than the whole of New Zealand for example), housing density, multi occupancies, strictness and length of lockdown, age and health of population and susceptibility to the virus, and closing of borders/quarantine. I don’t think there is an answer to this question as there are too many variables - and I am of no particular political persuasion.

You've hit the nail on the head

One thing we really should be looking at is the health of the nation

After Malta, we have the most obese population in Europe

It's a difficult subject but needs to be addressed for the future

www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2237

wa it Prof Carl Heneghan yes, I think that was him.

why were there no figures for the 24 hours to today? My SIL is expected back to work in Wiltshire and my daughter is panicking asthere was no data available for Downing Street .Anyone hav eany idea why its not been made public? I did see something about the cases being near 4000 a week again but it wasn't a official figure

from Downing Street

paddyanne

576 new cases and, sadly, 89 deaths in the last 24 hours in the UKaccording to the Worldometer.

I think the number of cases in Wiltshire have been relatively low; you could look up Wiltshire County Council's website for more detailed information.

paddyanne

why were there no figures for the 24 hours to today? My SIL is expected back to work in Wiltshire and my daughter is panicking asthere was no data available for Downing Street .Anyone hav eany idea why its not been made public? I did see something about the cases being near 4000 a week again but it wasn't a official figure

I don't know.

It seems they're in the process of changing how deaths are counted. I've read three different figures for 2 July:

89 (official one gov.uk)
176 (DHSC)
35 (England only - Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine)

I haven't a clue which one is correct (or maybe it's another one entirely)

I’m in Wiltshire Paddyanne This was Thursday’s figure (attached). I have a friend, a senior manager in 3 large local hospitals, who says if you're going to get it, get it now. Anticipating a peak in August and again in winter - but, who knows.