Your idea of stable??

It seems to be very well organised here.
Presumably deliveries of the vaccine are being made at weekends to local surgeries and patients are phoned with appointments.
Flu vaccines are given at the same time.

I wish the daily covid figures would tell us how many of the new hospital admissions are people who have not been vaccinated. If it is nearly all of them, as I suspect, it might encourage waiverers to get the vaccine.

Alegrias1

Teacheranne

In today’s paper, it says that almost half of new cases of people testing posting positive for Covid are in ages 12 to 16, ie Secondary ages children.

I wonder which paper that is Teacheranne, and what population it refers to?

The government's own data says that about 34% of new cases in England this week were aged between 10 and 19, so assuming a linear distribution of ages, that probably means about 16% of new cases are in secondary age children between 12 and 16.

(I know we've moved on to vaccination rates, but I can't pass by egregiously exaggerated data that seriously misrepresents the situation. Please feel free, anyone, to tell me where I've gone wrong.)

Alegrias1, it was reported by the BBC and Sky News as coming from the ONS, and I also saw the same figures in the Guardian and the Independent. I think it is attributed to people in the higher age group, 18 upwards, having been able to get the vaccinations for a while. The hope is that new infections will start to decrease in this age group as the vaccination rate increases in secondary aged school children.

I know that some folks here will be able to find contradicting graphs and statistics but I think the ONS are pretty reliable. My head struggles to get around all the data even though I studied statistics as part of my degree - a long time ago though!

Regardless, I know many children in years 7 and upwards who have been off school with Covid recently here in Greater Manchester and Cheshire East. My nephew, age 15, for one, and he was very generous and shared it with his mum and dad! He will now be unable to have the vaccination in two weeks when they are scheduled at his school which has upset him as he really does want it.

I’m getting worried now that things are going to escalate with possibly partial lockdowns or social distancing measures - Greater Manchester was hit hard last year with weeks of extra measures and I dread that happening again,

I wouldn't worry about lockdowns or any other measures,*Teachertanne*. I don't think that the government has any intention at all of doing anything about rising infections. As far as they're concerned covid is over and they've moved on to other concerns.

I'd like to be wrong about this, but I fear that I'm not.

DH said that Whitty (remember him?) has said we’re in for a very bad time this winter with covid and flu. I assume he read it in The Times.

I'd trust Chris Witty before any of the rest of the incompetents in charge.

rubysong

I wish the daily covid figures would tell us how many of the new hospital admissions are people who have not been vaccinated. If it is nearly all of them, as I suspect, it might encourage waiverers to get the vaccine.

I posted this upthread, and it's not "nearly all of them."

Doesn't work that way.

I really take exception to the " finding contradicting graphs" comment Teacheranne. Especially as the BBC and Guardian articles I found said that half of cases were under 19 - not the same at all as half of cases being aged 12 to 16.

Yes, stats are hard, if you misinterpret them. So I'll stick with the ones I have proof of.

www.travellingtabby.com/uk-coronavirus-tracker/

I think that there are a number of measures, that would help mitigate a worsening scenario over the winter, that should be done but are not being enforced in the U.K.

Masks should be mandatory in all public indoor spaces

Large indoor gatherings should be limited and vaccine passports mandatory.

They should push on quickly with vaccinating children

Boosters should be done quickly, and timely and until one is produced that has a “memory” should be continued on a 6 monthly basis.

Just curious but are The Guardian and the BBC regarded as giving the ‘correct’ information as opposed to others? Here the ABC, equivalent to the BBC, tends to be 24 hours behind the news from other sources.

MaizieD

I wouldn't worry about lockdowns or any other measures,*Teachertanne*. I don't think that the government has any intention at all of doing anything about rising infections. As far as they're concerned covid is over and they've moved on to other concerns.

I'd like to be wrong about this, but I fear that I'm not.

I fear you’re not wrong too Maizie.

Whitewave I also think that the measures you have mentioned would hopefully have some effect on reducing numbers.

My biggest fear is the government seems to have washed it’s hands of the whole issue. I’m finding it very difficult watching what is happening.

nanna8 obviously any news outlet can put it’s own slant on the way news is presented, and many people argue and disagree even about the left or right wing slant of BBC news, but overall I think probably the BBC is regarded as fairly reliable where figures are such as these are published. Others may disagree of course.

I agree with you maddyone.

Alegrias1

I really take exception to the " finding contradicting graphs" comment Teacheranne. Especially as the BBC and Guardian articles I found said that half of cases were under 19 - not the same at all as half of cases being aged 12 to 16.

Yes, stats are hard, if you misinterpret them. So I'll stick with the ones I have proof of.

www.travellingtabby.com/uk-coronavirus-tracker/

Apologies, I really did not intend to infer that you would search for contradicting graphs, I meant that there are so many different graphs being produced that information can be very confusing.

I agree with you about the articles saying cases were under 19’s rather than the ages I referred to, I’m not sure where I got that information from and could have mis read, mis remembered or made it up! Not intentionally made up though, more a case of skim reading!

I think the Office of National Statistics data can be believed but I would be interested which sources you use as I find the information and graphs you post easy to understand and not exaggerated.

Thanks for pointing out my error.

Oops, done it again and not read a post carefully enough, I see that Alegrias1 has added a link to her sources - off to have a thorough, careful read.

Thank you Teacheranne, what a nice response.

Most of the graphs I post are from TravellingTabby, which is run by a student from Ayrshire. He uses the standard data sources such as ONS, PHS and so on, but puts them into clear graphs. He's won awards for communicating the data effectively throughout the pandemic and has just got funding to keep the site going a bit longer.

No, I'm not his mum

at 16-Oct-21 07:33:59
COVID has become and will remain an endemic disease, like flu. We need to get back to normal. This means getting vaccinated and then living without fear.

Yes, some will get COVID and a few will die, but that applies to almost any infection you can get. DH came close to death last Christmas when he picked up an antibiotic resistant infection when he was in hospital for another reason, my father died as the result of a similar infection.

We will be paying for the economic disruption caused by the pandemic for many decades, probably as long as it took us to pay off all the debt we accrued during WW2, (60 plus years).

Much of what some people see as lack of concern in others is the opposite, it is the conscious decision of other people, once they were vaccinated, to assess the risk and decide life had to go back to normal. In every age group, it is the unvaccinated occupying the hospital beds, and, sadly, a few are dying.

Three weeks ago my DS's family went down with COVID. The children tested positive but were asymptotic. My DDil , who is vaccinated, but has an auto-immune disease, was mainly bed bound for a week, but a week after that was entirely recovered and rushing rund as normal.

This is not a lot different to what is happening with a whole lot of other diseases we are inoculated against. Both my children had all their jabs at children.Both later caught whooping cough and one had measles, despite the innoculation, but the diseases were mild. For whooping cough they both had a slight cough for a few weeks and measles lasted less than a week.

We cannot live our lives in fear for ever. We need each to make our own risk assessments, based on our own risks and who we are. Some people are more anxious, or have reason to be more anxious than others, but look at the number of obese people in the country who know the risks of type 2 diabetes - and probably have it - , heart attacks and strokes, and have a worse prognosis if they do get COVID, yet do nothing to remedy their condition.

Well said, MOnica. A breath of common sense at last.

Hundreds die every week from flu in winter... Covid will be ongoing. We have to accept that. Have your boosters the same as with flu is all we can do as well as wearing a mask when shopping as this will help guard against both

Masks are still to be worn indoor here in Scotland, but it is definitely not always happening. We've been to a concert and a show recently in two different theatres. Emails were sent out to performance goers stating masks must be worn unless eating or drinking - at least a third of the audience on both occasions had no masks on. Unfortunately I think it is the easing of mask restrictions in England which is responsible for some of the discarding of masks north of the border.

I've had my flu jab, tried to book for my booster Covid one today - but there's none available locally (London). I'll keep trying, though.

I don't think this is similar to flu or other infectious diseases, where we just get the jabs and carry on, though. We don't know the long term effects of Covid - or long Covid - and won't know (obviously) for quite some time. They could be severe, for some.

If I were particularly vulnerable, perhaps with pre-existing conditions, I'd feel very let down by the general 'back to normal' mood. I see the lack of precautions as reckless.

This morning my 14 year old grand-daughter tested positive after feeling unwell all weekend. She loves school and never asks not to go. Today she said she just didn't feel right. She still has the headache and she was aching all over. Her mother did a test on her and it came up as a strong positive. My grand-daughter's twin brother recovered from Covid about 11 days ago. She does sound in much more discomfort than he was. My daughter reported today's case to the Covid line. They said there was an outbreak in Gloucestershire at the moment and most of their calls were from that area. We were going down for the weekend the week after this and we have all agreed it would be wiser to postpone the visit until things are much clearer.

MayBee70

DD messaged me tonight to say she’d nipped into the Coop and no one was wearing a mask. I’ve got to go to Max Spielmans next week to get my passport photo done. It’ll be the first time in eighteen months that I’ll be in a shop without wearing a mask, albeit only for a few minutes, and I’d be much happier if other people in the shop were wearing masks.

Just wear one until you need to take it off for the photos…..

Daisymae I answered your other comment on Christmas. Please try to keep some perspective on this and reality.

Daisymae Given that nearly 9 million people die world wide from poor air pollution, might encourage people to rationalise Covid infection rates.

Alegrias1

I really take exception to the " finding contradicting graphs" comment Teacheranne. Especially as the BBC and Guardian articles I found said that half of cases were under 19 - not the same at all as half of cases being aged 12 to 16.

Yes, stats are hard, if you misinterpret them. So I'll stick with the ones I have proof of.

www.travellingtabby.com/uk-coronavirus-tracker/

Do we have any statistics which tell us how many deaths there were in unvaccinated and vaccinated people anywhere?