Post by PamelaPost by PanchoPost by PamelaPost by PanchoPost by PamelaThe UK is on track once again to have one of the highest Covid
death counts (not death rate) in the world.
I hope it's just a blip due to interrupted data collection at Xmas.
<https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/>
Suggests a case fatality rate of 3%. If we are averaging 40,000
cases per day this week, it seems likely in a couple of weeks we
will be averaging 1,200 deaths per day.
Looking at recent daily death rates, that's very prescient
although we need to allow the weekend bump pass to see the true
level.
Not really, we have repeatedly been told the death rate lags
infection rate by two weeks, a predictable process, if you like
math.
The rather worrying thing is that they don't appear to have got
the infection rate under control yet.
The thing I don't have a feel for, but maybe the government do, is
when the vaccination protection will start to significantly reduce
the mortality figures. I would suspect that will only start to
have a significant effect on the daily death stats in a couple of
weeks time.
I suspect it may be longer than a couple of weeks as the vaccine
will lower the transmission rate but the new virus has raised it
significantly.
Yeah, I just meant the vaccine would start to have a significant effect
on the daily death stats, not that it would dominate the effects of
other factors. Factors like the infection rate. Eventually, it probably
will, before the end of February. Assuming the vaccine does what it says
on the tin: almost entirely stops serious Covid and hospitalisation/death.
Post by PamelaAs you say, there is a lag time for the effect of the vaccine to
come through and initally it may be very delayed because those
elderly in care homes getting vaccinated are not virus spreaders.
The vaccine offers them individual protection without community
transmission rates being much affected by their immunity.
Yeah, the vaccine should affect death stats much sooner/more
significantly than community infection rates.
It will probably present quite an interesting dilemma. We will reach a
point where, due to vaccination of the vulnerable, lockdown can be
removed without causing a high hospitalisation/death rate, but it will
still cause a massive infection wave in the young/healthy.
Will the government just accept that? This point will probably come
around the end of March. Summer will reduce infections anyway, so maybe
they will let it rip over the summer.