The R Number

[needawin]

For what seems like an eternity we have listened to Hancock, Johnson and the scientists on the Downing Street briefing scare us with the dreaded R figure.
Mustn't go to 1 or above. Or we are "all doomed".
Today on the briefing Grant Shapps and Prof. Powis were asked to comment on the fact that some places in England were reckoned to be 1 or above.
Powis said not to be concerned as the R figure is only one of a number of ways of following the virus.
Just make it up as you go along lads!

[douglas9401]

This has been obvious almost from day one, the busking it.

[THECORBYLOON]

It was said the R-number for the UK was between 0.7-0.9 and the figure for England ranged between 0.8-1.0.

I might be missing something obvious but with the population of England making up about 85% of the UK population, how can the UK figure be lower than the figure for England?

[fiction-factory]

They did not say the R number was above 1, needawin. They said there are about a dozen different calculations/models used to measure R. One of the dozen model suggested the value might be in the range 0.9-1.1 in one part of the country (South West I think), but all the other models put the maximum R value as being below 1.
Sage took all the models' findings into account, together with ONS data based on real studies tracking people, and came up with the range.

I wondered that too thecorbyloon but I think it's a rounded confidence interval rather than a range showing the highest and lowest values observed. The England value might have been 0.75-0.96 say Scotland and Wales figures are so low as to pull it down. Anyway, I am happy to leave it to Sage. I don't think people like Professor Van Tan, Stephen Powys or Chris Witty would put their name to something that was made up by government.

R has been the main focus but Boris also mentioned the other measure when he did his RoadMap broadcast- there was a little function put up on Powerpoint which explained the point but was criticised by some mathematicians as it showed a + in the function where it should have been a comma, which is why I remember it,

Refreshing to see Douglas is varying his language here- the fag packet has been dispensed with in favour of busking. I like it.

[Old_Geezer]

Surely the something obvious would be that the figures for NI, Wales, and Scotland drag the overall UK average down from the England values ?

[ichkeria]

I don’t think I believe anything I’m told any more.
Why has the virus seemingly vanished from London despite nowhere near 60% of people there having caught it?
Why are we listening to people like Neil Ferguson who has been proved spectacularly wrong in just about all of his predictions (maybe we aren’t)

[fiction-factory]

Yes, O-G- it's just that the figures as they are shown suggest Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland figures would have to be around 0.5 and yet I'm pretty sure Wales is not showing the same falls as the other parts of the UK (certainly their line on the case charts looks flat not decreasing)

[fiction-factory]

People listen to Prof Ferguson when they want to. Some mock his earlier models but now believe his latest modelling which shows we lost 20000 lives by locking down too late (he may be right on that of course but at the time in March the other SAGE scientists didn't agree with him

[woofgang]

fic fac it was the Southwest.....can I suggest Durdle Door and similar beach invasions as being a major contributing factor?
Nobody has ever said "we are all doomed" and its been made clear all along that R is only one of the measures which is why we are shown data on tests and infections, hospitalisation and so on. Corbs, the answer to your question is because there will be individual hotspots and regional variation. the flare in SW has raised the figure for England but overall this is mitigated by better figures from Scotland Wales and NI.....a flare in Scotland say, would raise the UK figure but not the England figure.

[fiction-factory]

>Why has the virus seemingly vanished from London despite nowhere near 60% of people there having caught it?
Because of social distancing and lockdown, perhaps, and the fact that they were two weeks ahead of the rest of country and so their tail off of cases has occurred before ours. I'm surprised though given the scenes of crowded tube trains and the BAME levels. The population is probably younger - that may help

[douglas9401]

Why thank you, fiction-factory, taking time out of your hectic day just to have a condescending dig at little old me.

I'm touched, but not in THAT way.

[fiction-factory]

You taught me everything I know douglas when it comes to little digs

[ichkeria]

I think the likelihood is that we really know a lot less than we like to claim and we should treat individual scientific “models” both optimistic and pessimistic with great scorn.

[THECORBYLOON]

I could have been clearer with my question.

I know you can't average a sum of averages but if there are about six times more folk with an R-number of up to 1.0 and the other nations at 0.8 or 0.9, it suggests to me the R-number for the UK should be closer to 1.0 than 0.9.

[woofgang]

ick if you substituted the word "caution" for the word "scorn" I am sure that the whole of the medical and scientific community would agree with you.