Data Update 21st September 2021 – finally, an improving picture on all fronts

Hello Friends!

Video accompaniment to this blog on YouTube Inform Scotland Channel.

It seems that the picture is improving on all fronts today and it felt quite quiet, so I’ve introduced a load more graphs than usual to today’s update. In Graph 1 we continue our physically and mathematically impossible descent in our 5th Wave. This cannot be purely a true epidemic, because of this rate of decline, which exceeds the rate of incline for this wave. But in any case, it’s good news.

Graph 1

I was reminded by graphs posted last year of something I had presented before to illustrate the futility of excessive testing and have replicated it with the more recent data. In Graphs 1.1 – 1.5 – you can see that there has been an ever-smaller return on positive tests, as measured against severe disease (using death as a marker of severe disease). You can see in the first three waves, testing did indicate severe disease but in the last two waves (4 and 5) all relationship has been lost. This is an indication that we are now generating large numbers of random false positives, and also possibly from this you could argue that the disease is not as deadly as it used to be (although this isn’t quite borne out so strongly in the hospitals and deaths data). I have zoomed in to individual waves for you so you can see the loss of the relationship more clearly.

Graph 1.1

Graph 1.2

You can see in Graph 1.3 that we were having to do a great deal more testing to find the serious cases, even by the second and third waves. But from 1.1 you can see that there was a correlation between peaks in positives and peaks in deaths.

Graph 1.3

Graph 1.4 shows very clearly just how much more testing we are doing in the last two waves compared to previously. And Graph 1.5 with the two axes shows how completely unrelated deaths are to positive tests in terms of peaks.

Graph 1.4

Graph 1.5

Whatever the extent of the true epidemic, and whatever the contribution from any testing artefacts, positivity is coming down now as seen in Graph 2, which is very good news. It’s falling fast, but still well above epidemic levels.

Graph 2

Finally, fewer new people are coming forward for testing, which is great news. Graph 3.

Graph 3

Graph 4 shows that hospital occupancy is flattening, which is also good news. Deaths still seem to be rising, but they jump about so much through the week, it’s hard to draw hard conclusions on any one day about what is going on trend-wise with deaths. Graph 4.

Graph 4

Graph 5 shows the relationship between positive tests, hospital occupancy and deaths has almost completely broken down. This is yet more evidence there is too much testing going on.

Graph 5

Hospital occupancy is much much worse this year than it was last year. This should be deeply concerning. Since vaccinations began at the start of 2021, we have had many more covid patients in hospital than we had before we had vaccinations. Is this a testing artefact? Maybe! Should the government not be working this out? Graph 6.

Graph 6

Graph 7 shows the same as graph 6. Covid deaths have been worse since vaccination started, comparing like with like in terms of time of year. The post-vaccine wave in January 2021 was worse than the spring wave in 2020 and we’ve had deaths all through summer 2021, where we had no deaths in summer 2020. Unless deaths this year improve fast as we head in to autumn and winter, it looks like this year will be worse than 2020 for covid deaths. We have had 3818 covid deaths in 2021, compared to 4578 in 2020.

Graph 7

Thankfully, in Graph 8 we see a precipitous drop in community testing recently. NHS testing is quite steady.

Graph 8

Graph 9 shows more evidence of a testdemic, as the drop in number of tests conducted the number of positives is falling. There is still the argument if there are fewer true cases, fewer will present for testing, but the fact is that true epidemics do not wane faster than they wax. It is a mathematical impossibility and we did not see it in early waves of the pandemic.

Graph 9

More evidence that recently the peaks in positivity are coinciding with the number of community tests in Graph 10.

Graph 10

This is an old pair of graphs in 11 and 12. I used to use these every day but have stopped recently because they were less interesting. But here we see now that the journey from a positive test to death for those unlucky enough to succumb seems still to be around 18 days (the matching peaks confirm this). But look how the positive tests and deaths have inverted. This is yet another illustration of just how much more testing we are having to do to find those severe cases. This could either be because the disease is getting less severe, or because we are doing so much more testing.

Graphs 11 and 12

In Graph 13 we can see that there really are in many places as many or more patients in ITU as at other times in the pandemic. It is a variable picture, and actually worthy of its own post – I might put that on my to-do list.

Graph 13

Graph 14 shows that hospital occupancy is comparable to previous waves for all regions. This is deeply alarming for summer time, if we can take these data at face value, as the Government insists we can, and not consider the cases a testing artefact.

Graph 14

Graph 15 shows the three waves since the vaccination programme started. These are ever-worsening. Vaccinations are flattening off now, and I do feel I can say that I hope they will remain quite flat because all the evidence is that the more vaccination we do the worse the situation with cases will get. The data are in from Scotland and around the world and they don’t look good.

Graph 15

Graph 16 shows how much slower vaccination rates are now – but first doses have been rising recently. Coercion works! Coercion works?

Graph 16

Stay tuned ?

Stay sane ?

Stay strong ?

Lots of love! ❤

Christine x