Based on this article, I’d guess mostly reduced testing following “freedom day”:
So, what could be behind the drop in new infections, and is it too early to be celebrating? The Office of National Statistics (ONS) weekly infection survey … showed the estimated prevalence of infections in England had actually risen from 1 in 75 people to 1 in 65 in the week to July 24.
The ONS survey aims to estimate infection numbers in the community beyond people who have been tested, and gives an estimate of COVID-19′s prevalence that is unaffected by fluctuations in people putting their hands up to be tested.
The good news in this is that with the ~88% vaccination rate reducing the death rate in vulnerable and elderly populations, there won’t be anywhere near as many casualties as a ‘let it rip’ approach to herd immunity would have seen before. And at some point the UK will run out of unvaccinated uninfected people; hopefully before sharing another variant with the rest of us -_-.
So I don’t think your theory passes the sniff test. I’m personally very confused about the drop in cases, and none of the theories I’ve heard seem likely.
This seems highly unlikely. There hasn’t been a significant drop in testing, and Scotland (which saw an earlier peak) has also seen a drop in hospitalizations, which are much harder to fake.
Isn’t “prevalence of infections … [rising] … in the week to July 24” completely consistent with the cases peaking on the 16th? Given people are infected for ~10 days, and cases were higher in the week to 24th than the equivalent period 10 days earlier.
Calculating the 10-day rolling average of cases* in the UK (from here) I think that the prevalence should have increased by ~10%. The prevalence increasing by 15% obviously suggests there was some affect of fewer people being tested but also cases are definitely declining. (Usually attributed to schools doing less testing rather than ‘freedom day’)
* cases calculated using a rolling 7-day average re-centered on each day to remove weekly seasonality
Based on this article, I’d guess mostly reduced testing following “freedom day”:
The good news in this is that with the ~88% vaccination rate reducing the death rate in vulnerable and elderly populations, there won’t be anywhere near as many casualties as a ‘let it rip’ approach to herd immunity would have seen before. And at some point the UK will run out of unvaccinated uninfected people; hopefully before sharing another variant with the rest of us -_-.
I disagree. Daily tests have only gone down slightly, which is to be expected if less people are getting infected (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-covid-19-tests-per-day?country=~GBR)
And crucially, it’s not only total positive tests per day that has been dropping; the share of positive tests has also been going down significantly: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/uk-covid-positivity
So I don’t think your theory passes the sniff test.
I’m personally very confused about the drop in cases, and none of the theories I’ve heard seem likely.
This seems highly unlikely. There hasn’t been a significant drop in testing, and Scotland (which saw an earlier peak) has also seen a drop in hospitalizations, which are much harder to fake.
Isn’t “prevalence of infections … [rising] … in the week to July 24” completely consistent with the cases peaking on the 16th? Given people are infected for ~10 days, and cases were higher in the week to 24th than the equivalent period 10 days earlier.
Calculating the 10-day rolling average of cases* in the UK (from here) I think that the prevalence should have increased by ~10%. The prevalence increasing by 15% obviously suggests there was some affect of fewer people being tested but also cases are definitely declining. (Usually attributed to schools doing less testing rather than ‘freedom day’)
* cases calculated using a rolling 7-day average re-centered on each day to remove weekly seasonality