Quick stats update…Infectiousness.
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-critical-stage-with-96000-a-day-getting-covid-19-as-more-stringent-action-needed-scientists-say-12117337
From this news report let’s then predict infectiousness…
Sadly little is still known about distribution of infectiousness (‘K’, who, more than others, spreads it and at what point) and the duration of infectiousness. These figures are therefore not much reported but this is unfortunate as they are more relevant for prediction than the two data types used here and widely – ‘cases’, or numbers ‘with Covid’.
Given a lot of mild cases are never tested, and infectiousness begins before symptoms, but falls away later in the symptomatic phase, then as an informed rough guess I think maybe 1 in 50-300 people (wide margin I know) in UK are currently infectious. In terms of those who may be infectious and ‘out and about’ I estimate more than half of those infectious don’t know it (as 100% of asymptomatic untested cases won’t know it, nor the pre-symptomatic cases which have 1-4 days of infectiousness). But others will be isolating or careful. So maybe 1 in 100-600 of people ‘around’ is currently infectious. And R=1.5 now so that number range will halve in 10 days without improved distancing and surface cleaning. Ugh. So be careful. But then things improve by 1 Dec if decent Tier 2/3 behaviour kicks in now.
In general it’s still the same story…Covid is totally local, not national…you caught it from someone infectious who is or was recently within 2m of where you physically were then, not from someone far away.
So it’s hard to self-isolate for ever, we need each other. I chose to take a risk this week for example. But we need to learn how to minimise mass transport; make towns more into bubbles (to stop ‘local’ quickly becoming ‘national’); do good distancing and not breathe on people (except thankfully Primary schools are less a problem); and conduct frequent (religiously!) relevant surface cleaning without shutting the economy. It can be done, but many close-quarters businesses (nightclubs, airlines, standing/heaving pubs) and large-distance transport-dependent businesses will have to innovate or go. Just go 5,000 miles East now to see this behaviour already (literally) ‘at work’. If they can do it, we can do it, though our winter makes it worse, so don’t expect to match the figures of warmer countries.
So stay engaged in life.. but avoid infection as far as possible.
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