All of Dr John Campbell's videos (like the one linked above by cyclopathic) are worth viewing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Surfy
How is the situation in the uk? Do you have better data quality from the hospital and government?
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As the infection rates spiral it’s going to get much harder trying to make sense of the figures with journalists blithely repeating press release numbers—not understanding the underlying facts, or not asking pertinent questions. Here's something I wrote for my extended family about the UK situation.
1. INFECTIONS: Scientific and medical experts from South Africa were quick to reassure the UK that although the Omicron variant was spreading more rapidly, symptoms, hospitalisations and deaths were much reduced from those of Delta. The UK Health Security Agency felt this was optimistic and in order to impress the urgency of the situation, it issued a statement on 13 December through Health Secretary Sayid Javid saying that current infection levels (people catching the virus THAT day) in the UK were
200,000 per day and doubling every 1.9 days. If this were true then by now the figure would be over 1.1 million infections today. And looking ahead only two weeks, would reach 100 million per day by 31 December—which is 1.5 times the entire population of the UK being infected each day!!
"What are they smoking?” was the general reaction and the UKHSA has now admitted it was wrong to assume the growth rate, and has declined to give an up-to-date estimate of infections.
2. CERTIFIED DAILY CASES: Although the UK is processing a million PCR tests per day the high level of positives (~10%) indicates it needs to do more testing as true figures are not being revealed. The WHO suggests that when positives are over 5%, testing should be ramped up. But in reality, infections and testing numbers are irrelevant as we can't do anything with that knowledge. Does it matter much if daily reported PCR positive cases are 100,000 or 150,000? Anyway, the real case numbers when you add in those who haven't reported are probably two or three times higher. About one in five of UK PCR tests are genome sequenced and the UKHSA has announced that detected Omicron and SGTR (S gene dropout) cases are now at an
accumulated total of
101,000. SGTR is only an indication that it *might* be Omicron. London and Scotland have the highest percentage of Omicron cases. London is also the least vaccinated region of the UK thanks to vaccine hesitancy, so a double whammy.
3. HOSPITAL STATISTICS: The important figures to look out for are (a) daily hospital admissions, (b) beds occupied, (c) mechanically ventilated patients, and (d) daily deaths. At the January 2021 peak—before widespread vaccination—these were
4,580 daily admissions,
39,240 beds,
4,077 ventilated, and
1,250 daily deaths (7 day average).
4. CURRENT FIGURES: are not showing any sign of recent increase—daily admissions of
930 are lower than Oct, beds of
7,600 are lower than Nov, ventilation of
875 is lower than Nov, daily deaths of
112 (rolling average) are at the lowest for three months. As Surfy comments, we don't have the fine data from hospitals—many cases of Omicron are likely to be picked up when the patient is admitted for another reason, but will nevertheless be counted as an Omicron admission. Healthcare staff estimate 75% of (Delta) hospital admissions are unvaccinated patients. UK Health Security Agency reports just
65 hospital admissions of Omicron + SGTR (suspected Omicron) cases and
seven Omicron deaths.
5. LOW DEATH RATES: South Africa's previous peak infection was in July 2021 and the current Omicron outbreak has already overtaken this in numbers of cases. But the current death rate is ~10% that of July 2021.
6. NEXT WEEK: will bring the first real indications of what is to come in the UK hospital statistics. Even though Omicron might be less serious, the fact it is highly infectious will give huge problems for the care and health sectors who will have to manage with vastly depleted personnel whilst key staff isolate. Some London hospitals are already complaining of additional staff shortages. So we can't assume the headroom stretches all the way to the Jan 2021 extremes.
7. LOCKDOWN: I am on the fence as to whether a lockdown is necessary, I believe there's a good chance the hospital figures will only show mild increases. Crossing fingers and toes. We have our own plans for Christmas including four days of isolation beforehand and lateral flow tests on the morning, so we plan to go ahead with our family celebration whatever the government says.
So best wishes to all on the forum, stay safe and have a great festive season (if circumstances permit).
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