koala_bear

The vaccine trials included very few older people (vaccine effectiveness in general is lower in older people), hence some of this is measuring the lower effectiveness in older people that the trials didn't. Israel has also been measuring vaccine effectiveness by several different metrics from death to asymptomatic cases (similiar to Oxford /AZ trial methodology), the later is less flattering than the Pfizer trial definition. (Also see Chinese vaccine in UAE with flattering effectiveness definition with effectiveness just over 80% but 52% in Brazil where they when for the Oxford/AZ effecti

The key metric is what is going on in ICU not just hospitals overall. ICU admissions from latest stats: Mean age 60.0 (I.e. just over 20 years younger than deaths) Median 61 25% are over 70 25% are under 52 i.e. it will take quite while to get covid ICU admissions under control via vaccination...

Indeed, plenty of people near me being much more careful than they had been before New Year. Cautious optimism - The average age of ICU admissions is ~ 20 years younger than those dying and BoJo has thrown everything at the older age group to cut deaths first. The NHS will be in trouble for a while yet as the mean age of covid ICU admissions is 60 and the median 62, more than half of whom are pretty health and it will be a long time till most groups who might end up in ICU are vaccinated. Boris's top 4 groups only cover about 25% of ICU admissions but 85-90% of deaths. Ab

They haven't published since because of incomplete data

We set a new record for case numbers today - over a bank holiday weekend so expect that some time soon. The last hospital data was for the 22nd and total covid patient numbers were close to record then. The daily admission rate was noticeably higher in April.

Translating the NERVTAG report to plain English: (circa 3 fold) reduction in the typical average viral load needed to cause an infection with the new variant, hence the lower levels of reproduction seen in children can now easily be above the threshold with the new variant compared to below with the old variant. This also means the typical minimum size of particle or number of particles (or both) needed for virus transmission is smaller with the new variant.

The UK does about 45% of virus genomics globally so other countries are much less likely to have found it as they don't have the ability to do it in sufficient quantities. The Germans haven't found it (yet) but reckon they have it but just can't do enough testing. They are assuming it is already there especially as it is also in Denmark. Luckily there is a potential way to identify it without genomics, one of the there is a potential easy way to find it, the Covid PCR testing looks for presence of multiple genes with each manufacturer looking at different gene. The mutation means tha

2 useful expert views (look at entire threads):

Minutes of the Friday morning NREVTAG meeting: https://khub.net/documents/135939561/338928724/SARS-CoV-2+variant+under+investigation%2C+meeting+minutes.pdf/962e866b-161f-2fd5-1030-32b6ab467896?t=1608470511452 Not good news...

On the subject of kids and transmission from the guardian:

That isn't what they mean by 70%... Whitty's commentary on the R change was much more interesting than BoJo's and what the +0.4 means. Whitty's point was that with the older variants and restrictions if R = 1 , with the new variant and the same restrictions the R increases to 1.4. I.e. existing Tier structure and restrictions are effectively shredded. The +0.4 is with current R not R0, hence the increase in R0 for the new variant is probably looking large. The latest estimates for what R0 is are far larger than the original ~2.75 ones earlier in the year. IC's lates

To me that change in R and transmission rate don't quite compute so I'd expect a lower k value as well. Not much public data yet...

R The difference in value R of the new variant is interesting: 1.4 with current restrictions vs 1.0 for the old variant. Transmission rate 70% higher This is not good.

The high case rates are in the under 18s and there is plenty of spare ICU capacity hence not putting an extra 5 million in Tier 3 might look attractive.

Or the the level of CRM systems to automate stuff correctly and keep the staffing levels down. They get lulled in to a false sense of security with low levels of customer interaction with all new customer base as they acquire customers but it all starts to go up massively after 18 months. They end up needing ~3x as many staff as they budgeted for or get their knuckles wrapped by the regulator. The GB (not NI) licencing system is also largely at fault (they are trying to change), if you tick all the boxes they have to give you a licence. In RoI, NI and Netherlands and Scandinavia they lear