UK Winter COVID-19 deaths closely tracked historical global patterns of winter respiratory infection. COVID-19 deaths fell last spring to near-zero. So why would there be a summer "third wave"?
So, not only did Richard not seek permission, he is totally misquoting me.
I don't support lockdown, I merely seek to justify to myself, and to others, that the sacrifice being made to honour our social contract, is not killing people, and is working to genuinely save lives.
If it were not, I'd be shouting as loudly as Richard.
As to his observations of my work.
Beyond the mobility plateau to mid-May, where (per the pink lines at the top) the gradient of deaths is flat, and constant. As mobility lifts the rates of decline does slow.
This hits zero by mid Jul, then permanently makes it +ve in early Aug, getting very +ve by mid-late Aug.
All of this contrary to Richard's claim it is constant, and invariant to mobility.
As to Christmas, mobility clearly it was a superspreader event, with infections peaking by Dec28, beyond mobility shows people hunkered down, complied with Tier4 measures with schools closed, and that LD3, made little difference to movement patterns, as schools had been closed from Dec20, and this just kept this pattern of behaviour, and the constant decline in infections in place.
Nothing Richard says makes any sense.
His understanding of seasonality is also very flawed.
Seasonality starts after a few seasons of a new virus, when we finally hit the lower summer herd immunity threshold of a virus burning it out. For C19, from best R estimates, likely 60%, last summer NPIs had suppressed spread to 10%. Sure, summer behaviour patterns on top of this helped work against spread, and it getting colder into Sept/Oct did help drive up cases again, but the 2nd wave only took us to 25% spread, so his theory that hitting the natural summer HIT throttled spread, is for the birds.
Vaccinating the old, but not those <50, and lifting measures earlier in Sweden has led right now to their largest spike in cases to date. Sure, deaths are far lower, as vaccines are protecting those far more likely to die.
But, this does not change the reality of spread, and makes the argument that those unvaccinated <50 are anywhere near their summer HIT, with NPIs being lifted, just plain daft.
I don't say this to argue for further lockdowns. I support lifting measures now.
I simply say it so that we all understand the risk trade off we are making with the current policy choice. That being that spread is very likely to be larger than it has been so far, if we can't vaccinate those <50 asap, and that will carry with it the risk of a "mosh pit" that is very likely to generate another home grown variant that might then beat vaccines in our vulnerable cohort this coming winter.
I say it simply so we are correctly aware of the trade off we are making.
All his other noise, and insults, are just there to hide his poor analysis.
Simon - thank you for your detailed response. I accept your criticism of my description of you as an ‘enthusiast’, and I acknowledge that your motivation is in good faith. I have modified the caption to describe you as a lockdown analyst.
I disagree with you about the fact that seasonality starts after a few seasons of a new virus. Seasonality modulates the transmission of respiratory viruses and it is linked to a context and environment independent of the virus itself (temperature, sunlight and humidity). Even after a few months we could detect patterns in the curves of southern US states vs central vs northern and Canada. And the portrait of last year follows Hope-Simpson with an amazing precision and the correlation between latitude and epidemic curves is striking.
So, not only did Richard not seek permission, he is totally misquoting me.
I don't support lockdown, I merely seek to justify to myself, and to others, that the sacrifice being made to honour our social contract, is not killing people, and is working to genuinely save lives.
If it were not, I'd be shouting as loudly as Richard.
As to his observations of my work.
Beyond the mobility plateau to mid-May, where (per the pink lines at the top) the gradient of deaths is flat, and constant. As mobility lifts the rates of decline does slow.
This hits zero by mid Jul, then permanently makes it +ve in early Aug, getting very +ve by mid-late Aug.
All of this contrary to Richard's claim it is constant, and invariant to mobility.
As to Christmas, mobility clearly it was a superspreader event, with infections peaking by Dec28, beyond mobility shows people hunkered down, complied with Tier4 measures with schools closed, and that LD3, made little difference to movement patterns, as schools had been closed from Dec20, and this just kept this pattern of behaviour, and the constant decline in infections in place.
Nothing Richard says makes any sense.
His understanding of seasonality is also very flawed.
Seasonality starts after a few seasons of a new virus, when we finally hit the lower summer herd immunity threshold of a virus burning it out. For C19, from best R estimates, likely 60%, last summer NPIs had suppressed spread to 10%. Sure, summer behaviour patterns on top of this helped work against spread, and it getting colder into Sept/Oct did help drive up cases again, but the 2nd wave only took us to 25% spread, so his theory that hitting the natural summer HIT throttled spread, is for the birds.
Vaccinating the old, but not those <50, and lifting measures earlier in Sweden has led right now to their largest spike in cases to date. Sure, deaths are far lower, as vaccines are protecting those far more likely to die.
But, this does not change the reality of spread, and makes the argument that those unvaccinated <50 are anywhere near their summer HIT, with NPIs being lifted, just plain daft.
I don't say this to argue for further lockdowns. I support lifting measures now.
I simply say it so that we all understand the risk trade off we are making with the current policy choice. That being that spread is very likely to be larger than it has been so far, if we can't vaccinate those <50 asap, and that will carry with it the risk of a "mosh pit" that is very likely to generate another home grown variant that might then beat vaccines in our vulnerable cohort this coming winter.
I say it simply so we are correctly aware of the trade off we are making.
All his other noise, and insults, are just there to hide his poor analysis.
Simon - thank you for your detailed response. I accept your criticism of my description of you as an ‘enthusiast’, and I acknowledge that your motivation is in good faith. I have modified the caption to describe you as a lockdown analyst.
My rebuttal on my blog...
https://medium.com/pragmapolitic/glastos-variant-mosh-pit-516e54043e90
I disagree with you about the fact that seasonality starts after a few seasons of a new virus. Seasonality modulates the transmission of respiratory viruses and it is linked to a context and environment independent of the virus itself (temperature, sunlight and humidity). Even after a few months we could detect patterns in the curves of southern US states vs central vs northern and Canada. And the portrait of last year follows Hope-Simpson with an amazing precision and the correlation between latitude and epidemic curves is striking.