Covid-19 (Part 7) - The Battle Over Child Vaccinations and Long Covid (England/UK)

[Written on 2021-08-25 but unable to to finish due to increased ME/CFS impairment. Publishing 2021-09-16 just to have what's done out there, despite still missing most content on some topics.]

Previous Covid blog posts: Wave 1 - March/April 2020: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3; Wave 2 - Jan 2021: Part 4; Wave 3 - July/August 2021: Part 5, Part 6.

[Fig.1 data.gov.uk] Current (2021-08-25) UK state of Covid dashboard. (We have heave among the best health information reporting in the world!) Cases and hospitalisations continue to climb at a high level, respectively 25x and 11x the numbers of this time last year [Prof Pagel Twitter]. Despite it being mid-summer, usually the easiest time for our health service. 1st dose percentage recently took a small step backwards, with new eligibility of 16-18s (but little provision yet available, I believe).

As I worried in my Covid Part 4 "2021-02-11 point (2)", UK government's pandemic mitigation measures are being stripped away, now that our death rate is greatly diminished by vaccinations. Thankfully, these largely stayed a month or too longer than I expected. So the upsurge has been gradual, since Stage 3 lifting in May, with no further uptick on "Freedom Day" itself (19th July). I analysed the lack of uptick at the end of my part 5 post in sections (I) and (J).

Covid-19 (Part 6) - Calculating UK's Population Immunity to Delta...

This post follows on from my Part 5 Covid blog, which enumerated the problems with, and causes of, UK's apparently reckless re-opening. In the last section (I), I'd been examining the apparent downturn in cases, around the time of our "freedom day". It now looks clear that we were really seeing the end of the football peak (with a big pinch of school-kid case isolation, then finishing for summer) - a bonus peak on top of an overall continuing (slow) upwards trend in cases. Which has plateaued for now, probably (until football gatherings and school start up again, within the month!):

[Fig.1 - GovUK] Official stats show cases steady at ~25k/day, hospital admissions ~700/day.

The official R number, for rate of Covid spread, today is 0.8 to 1.1. I think this is averaged over a time period including some of the brief case drop. So, it looks like R = 1 would be a better approximation of our momentary trajectory. Which is pretty bad, given the high incidence of disease. But fairly ideal for us to take a look and see how far we are from herd immunity (section J, directly below). We're definitely a good way off, because we're at an effective R of ~1, while the population is still being relatively cautious, still a lot of mask use, summer holidays and no football, etc. So we should be able to work out how much of a reduction is coming from these NPIs (non-pharmacological interventions, i.e. stuff other than vaccines).

Actual calculations and results in point (6).

Update 2021-08-14: Summary of the APPG conference call that triggered "herd immunity mythical" headlines, catching the general public up roughly, to what I've concluded here. See (B) below.

Update 2021-08-19: new and clarified information on vaccine effectiveness, section (C).

Covid-19 (Part 5) - UK Government's Reckless Re-opening During Delta

Here we are again. In the alarming but familiar situation where the UK (or rather England's) covid-19 cases are soaring while government fails to act appropriately. The situation that kicked off my first posts, before the March 2020 peak: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Then for the even worst autumn/winter wave: Part 4... 

[Twitter]

... Except that this time, the death rate has been greatly diminished by vaccination: case-fatality rate down roughly 12-fold, from ~2% to 0.16% [Twitter]. For the older, vaccinated portion of society, at least. And as expected, it looks like high deaths really were the only thing holding our government back from pushing through herd immunity by full infection, with a reckless abandon that I feel is a crime against humanity.

Here's a somewhat concise list of reasons why their particular interpretation of "living with Covid" is so dangerous and unnecessary, how it's been enabled (A to D) and a possible upside (E). Followed by a brief overall look at the current pandemic situation in other parts of the world (F) and personal anecdotes (G). Finally, some nice graphs further down (H) that explorer some of the topics in more detail. {Update 2021-07-30: why did cases suddenly start to fall, just before re-opening (I) & (J)?}.