Reading just the title, that's kinda a weird article to me. Let's face it, the US has realistically had very few real restrictions (outside of some of the large cities that are requiring proof of vaccination to basically be able to do anything), yet we're down to about 82k cases a day, and it's looking like a pretty steady downward path (not that you'd know it listening to our media). So 52k for the UK, with a population about 1/5 the size of the US, yet realistically I'd say still more locked down in most places than we are here, I have to admit that seems weirdly high, but I don't think the lack of restrictions can really be blamed. (Keep in mind, the UK also has had a much higher rate of vaccination than the US, although we've been doing 12+ for quite a while, so we may be ahead somewhat in that area). Realistically, in town around here, my university requires masks indoors, if you use the bus system you have to wear masks, and the schools require masks (and that last one isn't universal across the state). In my state, we don't have any cities that have requirements for proof of vaccination to go indoors to eat or go to a show or anything. Our 7 day average is about 4k cases a day (they don't even bother to report it daily anymore, but give us a number every couple of days so they can give a higher number). Population adjusted to the population of the UK, that'd be somewhere around 26-27k or so? Now, I wouldn't be surprised if our official numbers might be somewhat on the lower side than reality, because we don't have the culture of test every time you do anything that you folks in the UK seem to have. I don't know how much of that ends up in your official numbers or not. If you asked someone around here when the last time they took an LFT test they'd probably ask you what that was.

Although we did have our first case of a cat catching covid around here. I can't wait until the CDC recommends that everyone mask their cats for their safety.

I'm curious, why do you think the UK is locked down? Let alone more?

Ay.4.2 is now a variant under investigation which I guess raises the possibility that it will mean we will get banned from elsewhere if it becomes one of concern...

Daily data:

Cases 44,985 (43,423 last Saturday)
Deaths 135 (148)
People vaccinated up to and including 22 October 2021:
First dose: 49,606,419
Second dose: 45,489,980

The rolling seven day daily average for cases is now up 15.2% on the previous week and the same measure for deaths is up 12.1%. The rolling 7 day daily average for deaths is 133.4 today. The vaccination figures do not include data from England today. That means they only increase by a little over 3,000 from the other nations.

Daily data:

Cases 39,962 (45,140 last Sunday)
Deaths 72 (57)
Patients admitted 1,080 (920 on the 12th)
People vaccinated up to and including 23 October 2021:
First dose: 49,684,322
Second dose: 45,542,207

The rolling seven day daily average for cases is now up 9.4% on the previous week and the same measure for deaths is up 11.4%. The rolling 7 day daily average for deaths is 135.6 today.

One extraordinary figure today from Cheltenham of all places. The UK national rate is about 491 per 100,000 on a 7 day basis. Cheltenham's age group of 10 to 14 year olds is 7,817 per 100k per 7 days. Which will mean around 15% of kids have symptomatic COVID now. In the same city for age group 80 to 85 years old (the oldest group to be statistically significant) it is currently 45 per 100k. That age group is 99.7% vaccinated.

I am sure there was no link with them wanting a few more days off school to coincide with half term so they all cheated the test! :)

Reading this thread, I really wonder when the UK govt will end this madness of tests. No other country has gone that way AFAIK (apart in Asia) and despite this, UK had and still has record number of Covid cases. Is there any one clever enough to admit that this is useless and has to stop ?

Probably, but BoJo isn't listening to them.

The good thing though is that he does not seem to be fixated on it like MSM/soshial meejah/my mum is. Jeez. Test people is they show symptoms. That's it.

And it would be good if it was the *right* symptoms, as they have vastly changed after vaccination...

Apart from school children, healthcare and social care workers, there isn't much mass screening going on now. So most LFT are for people with symptoms or close household contacts of people with COVID. Roughly a quarter of confirmed PCRs start life as someone without symptoms finding out via a LFD that they do in fact have COVID. While I don't think this is a fundamental point any more, I still think testing people is part of finding out where the disease is, and for example it helps immuno-suppressed kids to keep away from school if an epidemic breaks out. I think the wider population stil doesn't get the "immuno-compromised" bit - a big big range of long term illnesses have that as a feature (even mental health conditions) so all those with cancers, MS, rheumatoid arthritis, various forms of radiation treatment, HIV, diabetes, transplants, old age..... Generally more information is better than less information. It also allows us to see improvements as well as worsening problems - and there are some signs of that happening.

I absolutely agree, more information and data is always better.

The problem is if everyone else isn't playing the same game it makes it look like infection rates are multiple times greater in the UK than many comparable European countries and prompts those who don't understand the subtleties of positivity rates and testing rates to keep posting that current infection rate graph without any context and the usual uninformed comments unfortunately. Interestingly the death rate in the UK is pretty much the same as most European countries, but that graph never gets posted on social media ;)

Let me give the slightly longer version of that. The UK death rate is well below the European average, and about the same as the EU average. This is because there are some terrible problems in Greece and Eastern / Balkan Europe. Some of these countries are not EU members, but some are, hence the EU figure is pushed up by them. Furthermore we can assume Poland is still massaging their figures, their excess death rate is out of kilter with their COVID rates. So UK and EU is about 0.2 per 100k per rolling 7 days, Europe is 0.4 and USA is 0.5. But the UK is way above the figures for near neighbours such as BNL, Germany and France, but fairly similar to the Irish Republic. The Irish Republic has a relatively small population so that comparison isn't always a good one, small numbers blip the figures up and down.

So I think the UK really does have a high level of infection, but not badly out of step of Europe collectively. However as one of Europe's richer countries we should be doing a lot better.

I am not sure the strategy should be focused on reducing infections though in the same way it was back in Jan-Mar 21 or last year. If you reduce infections now all you are doing it prolonging how long this pandemic lasts in the UK. In fact the SAGE modelling showed significant intervention now means exactly that, more infections next year. Reducing infections was critical before as too many of those infected ended up in hospital or dying. That simply isn't happening now so the objectives should not be the same as before since we have now fully deployed the vaccine. I don't think many people have fully understood what the end game to this pandemic would be and are getting overly excited by infection levels - frankly this is inevitable as you release restrictions whenever you decide to do that. But now we are as protected as we can be, so clearly very few of those jabbed are ending up needing medical intervention. If you acknowledge covid is highly infections (especially delta) and more or less everyone will get it, then far better to do so now when your protection level is high than next spring when it's started to wane a bit more. Therefore I don't share your analysis that taking further actions to reduce infection rates now in the UK would necessarily be doing better.

Instead the primary focus now needs to be applying boosters to those who are in at risk groups and who received their jabs early in order to top up their protection.

EDIT: btw apologies as I am going a bit off topic in this thread, I realise this sub discussion is better off placed in the local lockdown thread in the UK board :)