Are you using just reported positive cases to infer the value of R on this website? Or are you using estimates from local authorities? Or are you doing your own epidemiological modelling to go from raw positive cases to R values?
In the UK, epidemiological modelling is done by various government bodies and universities, and it is this that is being reported in OP:
Is it possible to get aggregate numbers? Say for the Nordics and for Scandinavia, or other such regions of tightly knit countries or regions? Most "Scandis" like to compare with the other Scandinavian countries, and with select European countries that are similar, such as the Netherlands and Belgium.
Headline begs the question - what the hell did we think we were doing between August and November?
Wasn’t R<1 the magic number for ending the first lockdown?
FWIW I’ve always been suspicious of the way R is used by the government and media. It’s always going to be a best guess averaged over an area, but with asymptomatic transmission and initially poor access to testing, seems like it should be treated with caution. Not dismissed, but not the main driver, I guess.
> what the hell did we think we were doing between August and November
I assume our political leaders made a decision with the following inputs:
0. As someone with a degree in classics, I don't have an intuitive understanding of how fast exponential growth can get out of control.
1. The death rate dropped from 9500/week in mid-April to 300/week in mid-July. And stayed below 300/week until the end of September.
2. Our scientific/medical advisors say we should keep things locked down - but it's their job to be cautious, they're medical advisors not economic advisors. I have to weigh up their advice against other interests.
3. Compared to at the start of the first lockdown, we now have more testing capacity and PPE. Face masks are now available for everyone not just medical staff, for example.
4. There are loads of industries saying if they can't re-open they'll need a government bail-out and we've already spent an eye-watering amount of money on the furlough scheme.
5. Some of these industries, like gyms and universities, point out that having them open is good for the nation. Keeping schools closed seems to be widening the performance gap between rich and poor children. People avoiding hospitals is leading to more cancers going untreated.
6. Countries like Sweden and America haven't locked down at all.
7. We're going to keep a lot of restrictions in place, with restaurants and theatres running at a fraction of their normal capacity, so it's not like we're going completely back to normal.
8. The prime minister's own chief advisor is breaking lockdown rules because he's bored of them, and punishing him isn't an option, so it'd be a lot less embarrassing if we could make what he did allowed retroactively.
Between these inputs, our leaders convinced themselves that lowering restrictions was the right thing to do in August.
what the hell did we think we were doing between August and November?
Starting the new school year, for one thing. For many of us that was critical to letting us keep working (and mass home-schooling and online teaching for young kids was not working).
Headline begs the question - what the hell did we think we were doing between August and November?
Numbers were low which makes R very hard to calculate. When numbers are low, it doesn't matter much if there is some growth. And, finally, we were under tiered area restrictions depending on local rates (though I felt the chosen restrictions were a bit odd). Finally, in some parts of the country, a full lockdown didn't really make sense even when it was ordered (though arguably, this is lockdown-lite compared to the spring).
Keeping R<1 is the mandatory criteria for not having your health system collapse. So the goal of lockdowns is to make R<1 and to keep it that way.
As soon as R>1 you need the next lockdown, so when it's working and R is going down, it kind of makes sense to wait for R<0.8 and not just R<0.999 before you end the lockdown, or else you'll have to restart the next one very soon.
Looking at https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
and you can see that current daily infections (tested and confirmed) is way higher than any time in September as are deaths. So whilst the R number and how it is calculated may be down, I'll not place my caution upon such `good` news.
After all this R of below 1 is based upon a reduction in those testing positive and 3 weeks of a country lock-down and you would expect that number to reduce, otherwise your whole reason for a lock down would be proven to of been futile. So that's good, lock downs do work - science shown that here(again).
Looking at the same site, I see "People tested positive" is down by 25% in the last 7 days, and the number tested has been stable in the same time interval, so the ratio is also down by 25%.
I don't see any other figure called "current daily infections"; do you mean something other than "people tested positive"?
The reduction in the last 7 days is considerable and suggests lockdown is working surprisingly well (considering it is hardly noticeable in some places, even though other places are more severely closed).
Prior to that it was indeed higher than any time in September, and deaths still are, hopefully just due to time lag.
If it's just time lag and 25% reduction per 7 days is already in the pipeline, that is very promising.
For reference, this is the former head of research for Pfizer. The video (and him) have been banned off all the social media platforms due to “misinformation” (really a disagreement about the efficacy of the PCR protocol and how it has lead to a larger false positive rate).
The reason why they are banned is because what he is saying sounds plausible but is very, very likely wrong.
First of all, the number of tests isn't growing at the same rate as the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths: https://imgur.com/2cVrGz7
You can notice the very low positive rate in mid August (150 000 tests and only 500 cases - even if all false positives, thats 0.3% FP rate)
But okay, lets assume that they did something to ramp up the false positive rate, If we look at the daily rate of growth (% increase) for cases, hospitalizations and deaths:
We can see that there is a perfect exponential 7% rate of growth starting in September and slowly decaying after. But more than that, the rate of growth in hospitalizations and deaths also follows the same pattern almost perfectly but with a 5 day and 16 day delay, respectively!
If you were accidentally getting false positives, you would either not expect hospitalizations and deaths to grow at the same rate as false positives do. Even if they did, you would expect them to grow at exactly the same time without any delays. If there is no causal relationship they should all grow at the same rate, at the same time as any other random subgroup of people
To get the delay to happen, you would have to somehow perfectly fine tune the false positives for hospitalizations and deaths as well. In which case you're better off just making numbers up.
But more importantly, there is a much simpler explanation, which we get if we super-impose google mobility trends % increase in amount spent staying at home, and we shift cases by 6 days (avg time to symptoms), hospitalizations by 11 and deaths by 22 days:
We can see that the rate of growth is almost perfectly inversely correlated with the % increase in staying at home (with perhaps some light seasonal / immunity / other measures effects included).
Additionally we have non-PCR data like the Zoe symptom tracker app largely corraborating more or less the same rate of growth as detected by PCR tests: https://covid.joinzoe.com/data#levels-over-time
We empircally know he is wrong because when schools went back there was a MASSSSSSIVE spike it requested tests (as school children got their start of season colds and worried parents got them tested in the first 2 weeks of school returning).
But there was not a MASSSSSIVE spike in Covid cases.
If Covid numbers were being driven by false positives then there HAD to be a massive spike in cases as testing numbers spiked. There was not. So false positives cannot be the reason.
Why would someone who deals in facts do such a thing? Surely the correct position would be to correct and remove.
Personally anyone who refers to his material is tarnished.
On a general point, there are many people now growing in fame (and monetising that) due to the pandemic. Are their interests aligned with a pandemic ending, what do they pivot to?
Even with false positives the real case number is probably larger just because of the combination of asymptomatic cases and the lack of randomized community screening.
Brexit was sorted out ages ago. No deal. Johnson has wanted that from the start of his Preimership, doesn't need to deal and can try and blame the EU for when things go wrong.
It does not hijack it. OP simply contains bbc.co.uk link, which gets redirected to bbc.com, so when you press "back" you get back to the bbc.co.uk link and immediately get redirected back to bbc.com. By pressing the button twice fast enough you will get back to HN.
The same is currently happening in Romania [1] (the country that I live in), even though we don't have the crazy and draconian restrictions imposed on countries like the UK. Not to mention that I've read yesterday the British PM saying that those restrictions will most likely last until late winter - early next spring, as "the beast" must be defeated/tamed or similar such non-sense. This isn't even technocratic leadership (which I'm not a big fan of), it's cargo-cult leadership.
Given the population density of the UK is three times that of Romania it’s not really a surprise that you can get your R number below one with less strict measures than we have in the UK.
I suppose it's just less likely to be misunderstood among people who 8 months ago had never heard of the concept of "R" (or "the R number", or "c" probably) - especially in a language that people hearing "R" in a sentence will probably hear it as "are" or "our" before "R".
I'm much more annoyed by use of "coronavirus" to describe this specific virus.
[+] [-] itsdsmurrell|5 years ago|reply
There is also a search on the landing page: https://reproduction.live which I should probably put in the sidebar of the dashboard page as well.
[+] [-] ml_basics|5 years ago|reply
In the UK, epidemiological modelling is done by various government bodies and universities, and it is this that is being reported in OP:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-number-in-the-uk
[+] [-] kebman|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fordec|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DerDangDerDang|5 years ago|reply
Wasn’t R<1 the magic number for ending the first lockdown?
FWIW I’ve always been suspicious of the way R is used by the government and media. It’s always going to be a best guess averaged over an area, but with asymptomatic transmission and initially poor access to testing, seems like it should be treated with caution. Not dismissed, but not the main driver, I guess.
[+] [-] michaelt|5 years ago|reply
I assume our political leaders made a decision with the following inputs:
0. As someone with a degree in classics, I don't have an intuitive understanding of how fast exponential growth can get out of control.
1. The death rate dropped from 9500/week in mid-April to 300/week in mid-July. And stayed below 300/week until the end of September.
2. Our scientific/medical advisors say we should keep things locked down - but it's their job to be cautious, they're medical advisors not economic advisors. I have to weigh up their advice against other interests.
3. Compared to at the start of the first lockdown, we now have more testing capacity and PPE. Face masks are now available for everyone not just medical staff, for example.
4. There are loads of industries saying if they can't re-open they'll need a government bail-out and we've already spent an eye-watering amount of money on the furlough scheme.
5. Some of these industries, like gyms and universities, point out that having them open is good for the nation. Keeping schools closed seems to be widening the performance gap between rich and poor children. People avoiding hospitals is leading to more cancers going untreated.
6. Countries like Sweden and America haven't locked down at all.
7. We're going to keep a lot of restrictions in place, with restaurants and theatres running at a fraction of their normal capacity, so it's not like we're going completely back to normal.
8. The prime minister's own chief advisor is breaking lockdown rules because he's bored of them, and punishing him isn't an option, so it'd be a lot less embarrassing if we could make what he did allowed retroactively.
Between these inputs, our leaders convinced themselves that lowering restrictions was the right thing to do in August.
[+] [-] habosa|5 years ago|reply
They paid us to eat at restaurants ... basically the highest risk activity.
[+] [-] iainmerrick|5 years ago|reply
Starting the new school year, for one thing. For many of us that was critical to letting us keep working (and mass home-schooling and online teaching for young kids was not working).
[+] [-] goodcanadian|5 years ago|reply
Numbers were low which makes R very hard to calculate. When numbers are low, it doesn't matter much if there is some growth. And, finally, we were under tiered area restrictions depending on local rates (though I felt the chosen restrictions were a bit odd). Finally, in some parts of the country, a full lockdown didn't really make sense even when it was ordered (though arguably, this is lockdown-lite compared to the spring).
[+] [-] beaker52|5 years ago|reply
People were rebounding from not being able to visit their friends for 6 months.
[+] [-] toyg|5 years ago|reply
R was good enough in London, back then. That's all they were worried about.
[+] [-] fxtentacle|5 years ago|reply
As soon as R>1 you need the next lockdown, so when it's working and R is going down, it kind of makes sense to wait for R<0.8 and not just R<0.999 before you end the lockdown, or else you'll have to restart the next one very soon.
[+] [-] Zenst|5 years ago|reply
After all this R of below 1 is based upon a reduction in those testing positive and 3 weeks of a country lock-down and you would expect that number to reduce, otherwise your whole reason for a lock down would be proven to of been futile. So that's good, lock downs do work - science shown that here(again).
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-number-in-the-uk#other-key...
[+] [-] jlokier|5 years ago|reply
I don't see any other figure called "current daily infections"; do you mean something other than "people tested positive"?
The reduction in the last 7 days is considerable and suggests lockdown is working surprisingly well (considering it is hardly noticeable in some places, even though other places are more severely closed).
Prior to that it was indeed higher than any time in September, and deaths still are, hopefully just due to time lag.
If it's just time lag and 25% reduction per 7 days is already in the pipeline, that is very promising.
[+] [-] lettergram|5 years ago|reply
https://lbry.tv/Mike-Yeadon-Unlocked:0
For reference, this is the former head of research for Pfizer. The video (and him) have been banned off all the social media platforms due to “misinformation” (really a disagreement about the efficacy of the PCR protocol and how it has lead to a larger false positive rate).
[+] [-] spion|5 years ago|reply
First of all, the number of tests isn't growing at the same rate as the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths: https://imgur.com/2cVrGz7
You can notice the very low positive rate in mid August (150 000 tests and only 500 cases - even if all false positives, thats 0.3% FP rate)
But okay, lets assume that they did something to ramp up the false positive rate, If we look at the daily rate of growth (% increase) for cases, hospitalizations and deaths:
https://imgur.com/bEix1Fo
We can see that there is a perfect exponential 7% rate of growth starting in September and slowly decaying after. But more than that, the rate of growth in hospitalizations and deaths also follows the same pattern almost perfectly but with a 5 day and 16 day delay, respectively!
If you were accidentally getting false positives, you would either not expect hospitalizations and deaths to grow at the same rate as false positives do. Even if they did, you would expect them to grow at exactly the same time without any delays. If there is no causal relationship they should all grow at the same rate, at the same time as any other random subgroup of people
To get the delay to happen, you would have to somehow perfectly fine tune the false positives for hospitalizations and deaths as well. In which case you're better off just making numbers up.
But more importantly, there is a much simpler explanation, which we get if we super-impose google mobility trends % increase in amount spent staying at home, and we shift cases by 6 days (avg time to symptoms), hospitalizations by 11 and deaths by 22 days:
https://imgur.com/UKklUIP
We can see that the rate of growth is almost perfectly inversely correlated with the % increase in staying at home (with perhaps some light seasonal / immunity / other measures effects included).
Additionally we have non-PCR data like the Zoe symptom tracker app largely corraborating more or less the same rate of growth as detected by PCR tests: https://covid.joinzoe.com/data#levels-over-time
[+] [-] Marazan|5 years ago|reply
Wrong on a spectacular level.
We empircally know he is wrong because when schools went back there was a MASSSSSSIVE spike it requested tests (as school children got their start of season colds and worried parents got them tested in the first 2 weeks of school returning).
But there was not a MASSSSSIVE spike in Covid cases.
If Covid numbers were being driven by false positives then there HAD to be a massive spike in cases as testing numbers spiked. There was not. So false positives cannot be the reason.
[+] [-] emmelaich|5 years ago|reply
Johns Hopkins Newsletter deletes article re excess Covid-19 deaths --
https://twitter.com/JHUNewsLetter/status/1332100155986882562
[+] [-] robtaylor|5 years ago|reply
Why would someone who deals in facts do such a thing? Surely the correct position would be to correct and remove.
Personally anyone who refers to his material is tarnished.
On a general point, there are many people now growing in fame (and monetising that) due to the pandemic. Are their interests aligned with a pandemic ending, what do they pivot to?
[+] [-] DanBC|5 years ago|reply
Here's a pretty good explainer: https://twitter.com/andrew_croxford/status/13308829944716533...
And another: https://twitter.com/andrew_croxford/status/13317220787777290...
[+] [-] rtkwe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bayeslaw|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] that_guy_iain|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sjcsjc|5 years ago|reply
Useful resource for excess deaths in Europe
[+] [-] 40four|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fuoqi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bArray|5 years ago|reply
(sarcasm)
[+] [-] paganel|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.graphs.ro/covid_r_ma7.php
[+] [-] simonbarker87|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] howlinbash|5 years ago|reply
Obviously this is a complicated scenario. From what great body of research are you drawing your conclusions?
Have you considered population quantity or density in your comparison of the two nations?
[+] [-] lowpro|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bayeslaw|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Traster|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e_commerce|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] williamsmj|5 years ago|reply
It's like calling the speed of light "the c number" rather than "c".
[+] [-] corin_|5 years ago|reply
I'm much more annoyed by use of "coronavirus" to describe this specific virus.