Obviously everyone is absolutely fuming that the government has pushed back the freedom day that was set for next Monday 21st June and screwed up everyone’s summer plans because of the Delta/Indian variant and hospital admissions going up, but what does this mean for the future?
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Well, I’m not a medical professional with any knowledge of how Coronavirus is developing, but Professor Christina Pagel does have these qualifications and has laid out how she sees the situation developing over the next few weeks and let me tell you, it’s not looking good. I’m not even gonna attempt to paraphrase this so just read the below and see what you think:
2. They point out that current increase in cases will only stop if at least one of below happens:
1) people change their behaviour
2) govt changes policy (more restrictions and/or more public health interventions)
3) enough immunity is built up (through vax or infection) pic.twitter.com/bj5R1THlVu— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) June 15, 2021
4. Note that this *isn’t* a change in policy since the roadmap was designed to be flexible. Unfortunately all the govt rhetoric beforehand obscured this fact.
But now, until option 3 (more immunity) kicks in, we have a situation of rapidly increasing cases.
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) June 15, 2021
6. This means that if cases double, then admissions would be expected double too (so if 100 cases results in 4 admissions 10 days later, 200 cases would result in 8 admissions etc). pic.twitter.com/OZiICv8rs4
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) June 15, 2021
8. As SAGE points out, 187 admissions is 4 doublings away from Apr 2020 peak and less than 5 from Jan 2021 peak.
At 9 day doubling, that’s *5 to 7* weeks from now – just after new July step 4 date… pic.twitter.com/4KSz28wn4w
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) June 15, 2021
10. But then what? how soon will the vaccinations kick in to stop growth? Good weather will help… as will school holidays from mid July.
But over *next* few weeks, cases will keep growing. pic.twitter.com/q763PrpCb4
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) June 15, 2021
12. Things are really uncertain as to when & if vaccination will stop hosp admissions on its own – too much depends on exact transmissibility, severity, vax resistance of Delta and vax uptake. pic.twitter.com/VMA5ekbxHN
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) June 15, 2021
14. Speed of vaccine roll out has an impact but *not* that big.
Different assumptions about Delta’s characteristics (esp transmissibility) have bigger impact on size of peak.
Plus we don’t know how waning vax protection will affect things. pic.twitter.com/0PF14eYuch
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) June 15, 2021
16. This puts me at the more optimistic end of the SAGE models (!) – mainly cos I think their central vax efficacy estimates are still a bit pessimistic. I hope that if I am wrong it’s cos I am not optimistic enough – so much uncertainty still about the medium term.
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) June 15, 2021
18. Even 2 weeks of tens of thousands of daily cases means hundreds of thousands of overall cases, which means tens of thousands more (mostly young) people living with long covid.
It means hundreds of thousands of chances for further mutation that can resist vaccines.
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) June 15, 2021
20. We aren’t empowering local public health directors to impose restrictions if they deem it necessary – nor local alities with the resources to support affected people and businesses.
We aren’t communicating the much wider list of symptoms that should prompt a test.
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) June 15, 2021
22. *if* we can avoid new variants emerging or being imported, we should be in a much better position by end of September – especially if we can extend vaccine protection to secondary school children.
But we mustn’t accept a narrative that this summer wave was or is inevitable.
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) June 15, 2021
23. The policies that allowed Delta to become dominant in 8 weeks & lack of govt interest in actually reducing cases, will now lead to more ill health, more strain on the NHS and more deaths.
We should be furious. /END
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) June 15, 2021
Damn. That really does seem like we might have a couple of OK months in the summer again and then be subject to another extended lockdown again when the autumn rolls round which seems kind of unbelievable at this point given what the government has said all year. It’s especially worse when Pagel makes it very clear that the fact that the government didn’t bother securing the borders meant that the Indian variant managed to take a stranglehold on this country.
Whether or not that’s true is anyone’s guess – I tend to listen to scientists and not doubt them, but there’s obviously a lot of people out there who think that this is just a form of government control or don’t believe in any of it – but it looks like it isn’t going away any time soon. Will it ever end? Depressing.
For more of the same, check out this thread of Matt Hancock being really weird. Isn’t it great that he’s in charge of this crisis?
