Vidal, there is of course a lag in the figures for infection rates and death rates. Hopefully we wont see a rise in deaths in a couple of weeks time.

There is no reason to suppose that we will. For several weeks some people have been saying that next week, or the week after, it might creep up again once measures are relaxed. In Germany, Spain, Italy, France and the UK measures have been relaxed and exactly the same thing has happened: continued decline in infections and deaths. Because nobody really understands how the virus is operating then naturally there is fear, but the empirical evidence is very compelling. Reasons to be cheerful.

Happened here as well Vidal, we came out of lockdown to level 3 and the numbers kept falling, then to level 2 and the numbers kept falling despite the overly fearful saying we should have stayed in lockdown longer, until they hit 0 and stayed there for 17 days despite life essentially returning to normal aside from mass gatherings.

The trend nationally is for a decline in infections but there are areas of country not so badly hit in April when the infection rate was highest. Now those areas are seeing an increase in infections but they don't have the "benefit" of lockdown to limit the spread. Doncaster again recorded a much higher infection rate than a couple of weeks ago. The problem with using national rates to see trends is that they are skewed by what happens in London.

Many places in the North East and South West had very low infection rates in April but nationally this was recorded as the peak time. Now London has low rates of infection but other places are now seeing an increase yet all the news states that the virus in decline.

There is a similar situation in Shropshire. We had three deaths yesterday compared to none in London. But it doesn't mean that the infection rate is increasing. The number of confirmed infections is entirely dependent on the numbers and profile of those tested. The crude figures of numbers of "new" infections are meaningless. Doncaster has only had one new case in the last three days as it happens.

https://www.getthedata.com/covid-19/doncaster-coronavirus-cases

That doesn't mean that Covid has gone away in Doncaster. It probably means they haven't done many tests in the last three days. In Shropshire we haven't seen much tailing off of numbers in hospital or deaths as yet. In less populous places it takes longer for the virus to work through its population and take its share of victims. It isn't that the infection rate is increasing, it just takes longer to fall to the very low levels of the larger conurbations.

The figures say that they are increasing in the Doncaster area though Vidal. No doubt they will fall sometime in the future but the government policy takes no notice of regional variations. Just seeing that a primary school in Bolton has been closed as two of the teachers have tested positive.

Spart, I don't know how many times I can rephrase this. The number of confirmed positive tests may increase but that does not mean that more people are actually getting infected.The number of tests done has increased dramatically over the last few weeks with far more tests of people with no symptoms. The numbers of confirmed positive cases were until recently a huge under-estimate of the true numbers of people with the virus.

There are other reasons to take test results with a pinch of salt, particularly those undertaken in the community. It is very difficult to do an adequate swab on yourself because it causes great discomfort to do it properly and people are not trained how. I haven't seen anywhere the percentage of positive tests in this group as opposed to where swabbing is done by properly trained personnel. I suspect it would be very low. Like a lot of things it is just an exercise in the government wanting to be seen to achieve an arbitrary target rather than properly monitoring the disease. So there may currently be a lot more people with the virus than are showing up in the figures. We simply can't rely on the tests except in hospitals and maybe care homes if they know what they are doing. The only reliable statistics are the hospital ones about admissions and deaths. I know it's frustrating wanting to know accurate local information but it just isn't there in a form that is meaningful.

Like the figures on Monday though Vidal, they may not be accurate but they show the trends.

Only if what is being measured is the same on each occasion Spart. If you test ten times more people one week compared to the previous week then you don't know what the trend is. If you are looking for the endangered white-clawed crayfish in the streams of Shropshire and one week you lift a hundred rocks and find three crayfish, and the next week you lift a thousand rocks and find twelve, that doesn't mean that the population has gone up fourfold.

Spart's account has been hacked by RFB

They give the figures out same time each week. I can actually tell if a number is bigger or smaller than the previous number. Fact is there are over twice as many people testing positive/day now than there were two weeks ago. Please don't try and give me a lesson on statistics. I can give you lots of examples of how the medical profession fails to understand statistics.

OK Spart, be nasty if you want. I have no axe to grind. I’m just trying to spread a bit of optimism which I think is justified by the statistics.

https://www.leeds-live.co.uk/news/leeds-news/not-single-new-coronavirus-case-18384820

More good news that I expect you won’t want to read. No new case in Doncaster. Not one.

I will see tomorrow where the number is. I know it went from 775 which it took over 2 weeks to get to from 675, to 879 in under a week. Hence my concern about the increasing rate in Doncaster.

I am interested in the truth not Boris Johnson style misplaced optimism. Good that there wasn't any advance on the 879 cases but as I said I will see tomorrow. I can't understand in these days of the internet why there should be any delay at the weekend. All each hospital has to do is enter the number of deaths and infections recorded on the day and click to send it to a central point. It's not like it depends on carrier pigeons to communicate.

Spart, you should flit to London.

Scouse you should flit to somewhere worse like Liverpool.

Sorry about that last post, it was wrong of me to wish something like that to happen to you..

Liverpool has a strange way of keeping some badun's out Spart.

Didn't you once get snowed in on a train on your way here?

What you need is an antibody test, then if you've had it, happy days, you can stop winding-up vidal.

The figures you give are for positive tests not deaths Spart as you probably know. These also seem subject to delays but I don’t know why, presumably they either don’t process them or record them at weekends. For deaths I don’t really know why it is for sure but I would guess that it is down to staffing. Over weekends patients are probably not usually being looked after by their usual consultant and so the filling out of the death certificate may be left to the doctor best able to complete the three parts. The role that the virus played in the death may not always be clear cut. While the death tally is that of patients who died “with a positive test” the actual certificate may list it not as the direct cause but as a contributory factor. But you’re right, there should be no reason why someone with a positive test who then dies shouldn’t be able to be immediately added to a central database. IT and the NHS are not exactly happy bedfellows though.

comment by Scouse (U9675)
posted about 2 hours ago

Liverpool has a strange way of keeping some badun's out Spart

Really!!!!.

I said some, we have plenty here already.

Vidal, the report you pasted saying there was no increase in the number infected in Doncaster in the last 24 hours was incorrect. The number increased by 11 which in itself is good as it means the rate of infection appears to be falling. By Wednesday the figures are usually correct until Friday when they return to the world of fiction.

The source was Public Health England Spart, so I'm sorry if they were incorrect. At present they list the cumulative confirmed cases in Doncaster as:

June 6th 878
June 7th 879
June 8th 879

which was why I had said no new cases. As of yesterday they now say:

June 9th 887, i.e. 8 new patients with positive tests. As you say, very small numbers of new positive tests. At one of the recent daily briefings they seemed to be saying that they will allow care homes to test all of their residents when they want. Since asymptomatic carriage of the virus is very common, then if a care home happened to do a lot of tests on a particular day when it hadn't previously tested its residents then that would generate a sudden spike in the figures of "confirmed cases", but it wouldn't in reality constitute a genuine new outbreak of infection. That's why I don't think paying too much attention to daily figures is helpful. Obviously if those residents had previously tested negative but were now positive then it would be different, but they don't tell us that, just the running total of positive tests.

Watched the matchday live football match yesterday Derby v Preston 2010. My god were we awful and Preston were outplayed. Quite forgot what how little skill Savage had. Don't think he managed a successful pass throughout the game. Man of the match appeared to be Jaymac which might give you an idea of the quality of the game. Thankfully in those days I was still working so it limited the number of games I could get to.

what how?