R>1

[d000hg]

Well the hospitalisations are scaled 10x according to the graph, so it is not as bad as your figures, but then both are rising exponentially. I know exponential increases are hard for people to get their head around generally, but surely some in the government would have cottoned on by now?
I guess the question is just how many people are left for the virus to infect before it inevitably runs out of steam - but that number could be quite large still (millions).

Well yes if cases are growing exponentially so are hospitalisations and deaths, but that doesn't automatically imply both will get very large if the multiplier is very small now. More complicated, the multiplier is probably shrinking because people are still getting vaccinated, and this takes time to catch up.

Whitty/Valance did say at the last news conference that their modelling predicted the epidemic would peak before hospitalisations reached a level that would stress NHS capacity.

[northernladuk]

Well, uptake in the most vulnerable categories was reportedly very high (90%+?). And that group accounts for the vast majority of hospitalisations and deaths.
I would theorise the sort of people who refuse a vaccine are the sort of people who didn't take restrictions seriously in the first place, and are therefore pretty likely to have caught Covid over the winter. Though I couldn't prove this generalisation of course.

I'd say that's a pretty safe generalisation to be fair.

[mattster]

The graph looks like 28000 infected 4000 hospitlisations. Yeah low connection but next week when it's 60k infected and 8000 hospitlisations will that also be OK?

Well the hospitalisations are scaled 10x according to the graph, so it is not as bad as your figures, but then both are rising exponentially. I know exponential increases are hard for people to get their head around generally, but surely some in the government would have cottoned on by now?
I guess the question is just how many people are left for the virus to infect before it inevitably runs out of steam - but that number could be quite large still (millions).

[d000hg]

I am curious how FT get this result though. I would expect they have used the same data I did.

[d000hg]

I'd be very interested to see the stats on the people hospitalised though. If you took out those that have refused to get a vaccine and just concentrated on the fully vaccinated population what would the numbers look like. Take out the idiots that are refusing and look at what the new tomorrow looks like. What are the infection and hospital figures for a fully vaccinated population. That's the decision point for me. Not including people refusing to get vaccinated scewing the figures.

Well, uptake in the most vulnerable categories was reportedly very high (90%+?). And that group accounts for the vast majority of hospitalisations and deaths.
I would theorise the sort of people who refuse a vaccine are the sort of people who didn't take restrictions seriously in the first place, and are therefore pretty likely to have caught Covid over the winter. Though I couldn't prove this generalisation of course.

[d000hg]

Does that data set also include how many tests are conducted? Considering we're doing lots of testing at the moment, I'd love to know what the proportion of positive cases is rather than a gross figure.

It's the raw figure. However by the 2nd wave testing was already very high; I don't think that has increased massively since. You can very clearly see the relative lack of testing in the first peak on the left though.

I might play with more data but an educated guess is that testing has more or less saturated from last December. %-of-tests-positive is a useful metric to intuit how many cases are being missed, though they also do random testing which is where the "about 1 in X people have Covid" comes from, which is separate to people getting covid tests.

[DealorNoDeal]

I just hope the selection pressure of lots of cases circulating in a heavily vaccinated environment doesn't breed an even more vaccine resistant variety, because then we really are screwed.

This.

And the virus has a leg up because a lot of people have only had one jab.

[northernladuk]

I'd be very interested to see the stats on the people hospitalised though. If you took out those that have refused to get a vaccine and just concentrated on the fully vaccinated population what would the numbers look like. Take out the idiots that are refusing and look at what the new tomorrow looks like. What are the infection and hospital figures for a fully vaccinated population. That's the decision point for me. Not including people refusing to get vaccinated scewing the figures.

[northernladuk]

The connection is definitely weaker - looks very roughly between 5-10x weaker than before - but the sheer number of cases coming up might still put us in an uncomfortable place. There's no getting away from the fact that what we are doing in this country now is an experiment, and the outcome is uncertain. I just hope the selection pressure of lots of cases circulating in a heavily vaccinated environment doesn't breed an even more vaccine resistant variety, because then we really are screwed.

Agreed and what people forget when they look at the graph like that is that it's heading north exponentially with no future measures available to stem it. I can't see any future lockdowns working because people have 'moved on' and won't comply. This is the same argument that has happened every time someone makes a comment on the graphs any one point. It's always a view on where we are right now... not thought for what is going to continue to happen. Had conversations with a few people this weekend that said the same. 'Ah but low deaths and hospitalisations'. That might be the case in the last graph they saw but by the time they wake up next morning that number has risen and so on every day going forward.

The graph looks like 28000 infected 4000 hospitlisations. Yeah low connection but next week when it's 60k infected and 8000 hospitlisations will that also be OK? People will be happy with that situation as well... and then there is the week after. Making statements at a point of time with two exponential graphs happening is pointless and short sighted.

[ladymuck]

Raw data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/download, showing admissions scaled 10X, latest data.
It doesn't look to me like the connection between cases and hospitalisations is anywhere near as strong.

Does that data set also include how many tests are conducted? Considering we're doing lots of testing at the moment, I'd love to know what the proportion of positive cases is rather than a gross figure.