Covid-19 Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread

[Barracker]

I thought some of us might find it useful to have a Mumsnet thread specifically dedicated to tracking, discussing and analysing the national and global Covid-19 data.

Direct sources of data include:
The UK govt daily update
and
worldometer global data

Today's UK figures have not yet been released. Yesterday was as follows:

UK
March 14th 2020:
Cases: 1,140
Deaths: 21

This is similar to Italy's figures on the date February 28th/29th.
Their March 1st data= cases:1577 deaths:41

I'll add today's numbers when they are released.

Except it also looks like herd immunity might now be advisable, and the modelling may have been fundamentally correct.

Due to viral load findings, so social distancing, people catching it with a low viral load, and subsequently not being ill, and then getting immunity and stopping the disease looks to be the way the scientific community is moving. It’s high viral load that appears the major risk.

It wasn’t advisable a month or so ago, because they didn’t know how the disease would evolve and it was too risky. But they now have more information.

This is a very fast moving situation, the findings constantly evolve. You shouldn’t read something once then cling on to it as gospel for the next few weeks, because it’s changing all the time.

I don't know if this has been linked to yet, but I'm finding it useful and informative (though I'm not a scientist myself). It's fact based
reddit.com/r/covid19

Livin/Bluntness - thank you if your posts were in response to mine. I was referring to numbers as on here worldometer. So UK has 759 deaths and say, Sweden 105, but the number per 1m population is 11/10 respectively. Is it in anyway reasonable to therefore think UK is not so terrible compared to Sweden, or am I clutching at straws? Sorry if you have actually answered that and I just don't understand!

I think a lot of them were post lock down, which can only mean there is a lot of non compliance in Italy. If they were complying then it couldn’t spread like this.

It doesn’t follow that there’s been significant non-compliance at all. You’re underestimating the time lag with this disease....

For example, if my family and I followed lockdown perfectly, and a family member was infected a day or so beforehand, on average they would show symptoms after 5 days, at which point I would be most likely to be infected by it (perhaps more likely than were we not on lockdown as we’d been with each other 24/7)... cue another 5 days, quite possibly many more, for me to develop symptoms. Once symptomatic i understand it usually takes a week for it to develop into serious symptoms, so that’s 5+5+7 = 17 days post lockdown before my family call for an ambulance as I develop acute respiratory distress.... which is about as long as Italy’s lockdown has been in place. And this is “on average”... many people will take longer than 5 days to become symptomatic.

Is it in anyway reasonable to therefore think UK is not so terrible compared to Sweden

It’s more that the problem is currently underplayed in Sweden than overplayed in the UK. I think there’s a big risk Sweden will regret being so comparatively lax in the coming weeks.

As I mentioned on a different thread, people tend to hold Sweden in very high esteem compared to other places - it’s almost seen as some kind of Nirvana - and assume they must being doing the right thing, when if this were almost any other country we’d be berating them for their complacency. Sweden may lose its reputation rather fast!

Also, imagine the outcry here if at this point we still had Sweden’s measures in place!.... but because it’s Sweden, people’s automatic reaction is to say “oh well, it must be ok, it’s Sweden!”

The modelling also told us a herd immunity strategy was advisable, until it didn’t.

If that's the case, why is the government getting the blame for implementing the herd immunity strategy to begin with? Surely they were just listening to the experts?

Derbygerbil - Yes I guess tighter restrictions there would have made a difference. Much the same situation in The Netherlands.

@Bluntness100

“ This is a very fast moving situation, the findings constantly evolve. You shouldn’t read something once then cling on to it as gospel for the next few weeks, because it’s changing all the time.”

Absolutely. This is the key.

@Utterlybutterly8 - it’s because our government were choosing to listen to particular experts who were basing their advice on an untested theory which was not based on the variables of this particular virus (There is a white paper out there outlining it and an AMA on reddit with an infectious diseases doctor who explains it much better than I could).

There were other experts (most noticeably the WHO) pointing out the flaws and practically begging the government not to implement these measures based on actual data available.

That’s why the government needs to shoulder some blame here. Dr Wakefield (discredited vaccine opponent) was an ‘expert’, it doesn’t mean he gave good advice. Those in government don’t need to be experts themselves but they do need to have good critical thinking and know who to take advice off.

@Cornettoninja thanks for the explanation!

www.newstatesman.com/politics/health/2020/03/government-documents-show-no-planning-ventilators-event-pandemic

That’s the link through the new statesman That links to the papers that I was referring to for anyone interested.

I’ll apologise for any errors in my understanding of it - I can’t Bring myself to read through it in to much detail at the moment.

If that's the case, why is the government getting the blame for implementing the herd immunity strategy to begin with?

when I first heard about the strategy, it was "a long and complete lockdown is very difficult, so better to strictly isolate only the very vulnerable and have the rest go out and build up herd immunity." Then people started attacking it online, totally leaving out the part about strictly isolating the vulnerable, claiming the government were happy to do nothing and just let old people suffocate. The part about protecting the vulnerable was completely left out of their attacks.

sadly there is very little balance, little moderation. If people on the left or on the right want to criticise and attack the ideas of the other side, then fine, but attack their actual ideas, not smears. If a month ago you thought such behaviour couldn't get worse than it was, well now we know that it won't even stop when life and death matters come up.

@Bluntness100 I agree - 3 months ago no one had even heard of Coronavirus at all. In those 3 months we have gain an awful lot of information and each day/week we gain more so the situation changes daily.

I also dont think there is any benefit to trying to track different countries to each other - each one is going to have a different journey on this as minor variables can change course. All we can do in the UK is focus on getting through our particular journey with this and making sure its kept to a minimum as much as possible. Focus on what we can do to help change it rather than looking at other countries.

Good morning wise people of Mumsnet- I’m wondering if anyone can enlighten me by answering what might be a silly question. 🙈
The experts keep telling us that the true number of cases is likely to be much higher than the official figures show but when we look at the actual figures there are nearly 100k people who have been tested and had a negative result. I can’t understand why the negative results are so high . Does this just mean the wrong people have been tested?
x

The issue with herd immunity and why the who said don’t do it, and were correct in doing so, was that so little was understood when it was first put forward here. Had we done it at that stage it would have been beyond disastrous.

However now more is understood, but it’s not as simple as they wholly understand, it’s more it’s evolving.

So now what they seem to think is that viral load is really important. If you catch it, say from your mail, you will get a tiny dose of it, and your body’s own immune system will be able to fight it off, because it’s such a small infection. Then you get immunity.

However if you get a large dose of the infection, so say you are on the tube, crammed in for thirty mins, with ten people who have it round you. You will take a lot of it thr infection in, and your body’s immune system will not be able to fight it off. It will be too strong. Too big a dose of the infection. So you will get very ill indeed.

As such, I think what they are saying, is if you can manage social distancing, then people are less likely to get a big dose of it, and will mostly not require hospitalisation, will get immunity and then the disease basically dies out. It becomes manageable with no big peaks.

That seems to be why the scientists are moving to social distancing once we tail down after the peak, whenever that may actually be. And why it would not have been right to do herd immunity a few weeks ago, because then people would have been getting big doses, people wouldn’t have complied with social distancing or understood it properly, and you’d have over whelmed the Nhs, and millions would have died.

The fundamental idea it seems of herd immunity looks like it might have been right, but The approach on how to do it and safeguard the population would have been wrong due to lack of knowledge on the disease..

It seems what’s caused this thought process, is that they have tested a number of patients, and the ones who are sickest, have taken the most viral load.

@jhj67, I agree that there was an outcry (particularly from the elderly and vulnerable themselves) about isolating one group but I also know that there was a significant portion of the population who understood that covid-19 doesn’t just attack and kill the elderly and vulnerable. It was still very much a ‘just take your chances chaps’ kind of policy. Anyone paying attention to the global news knew that.

As it happens we’re basically still hoping for herd immunity whilst hopefully protecting the vulnerable with twelve weeks isolation and managing infections so that the health service doesn’t become overwhelmed.

We’re still not exactly gold standard though, there’s an opportunity to lift restrictions slightly if we could embrace testing and technology in the South Korea have but I can’t see us being coordinated enough for that any time soon.

The latest country graphs from the FT.

It seems what’s caused this thought process, is that they have tested a number of patients, and the ones who are sickest, have taken the most viral load.

Yes, I think this is key. And the people most likely to have a high viral load currently are NHS workers on the frontline. So it's difficult to manage this situation any other way at the moment.

in the way South Korea have

Bluntness
That’s really interesting. I had read that it was worse for HCPs but didn’t get an explanation as to why. If this gives immunity for enough time then yes, it could wipe the thing out.

Thanks @Bluntness100 - really good explanation.

Something else I don't understand is why people are calling so strongly for testing. I know we absolutely need to test our frontline staff in the NHS, as many are having to take time off and go into isolation when they don't even know if they've got coronavirus. I don't think anyone would dispute that.

But what I don't understand is what we would gain from testing huge numbers of the general public? Those who have symptoms are surely very likely to have the virus anyway - we don't need a test to confirm that. Then of those people, the ones who become unwell enough to go to hospital will be tested there anyway, while the rest will recover at home.

In addition, surely if you test someone and they're found to be negative, they could then catch the virus literally the next day anyway, making the test something of a pointless exercise unless it's done on a very regular basis.

Surely the whole exercise is just a waste of time, money and resources when our priority should be on helping the sick?

Can anyone shed any light?

Them problems with achieving herd immunity whilst protecting the old and vulnerable able that in order to achieve it by next winter, 60% of the population would need to get it, that’s c.40 million for the UK... or c.200,000 new infections every day. With the exception of the old and vulnerable we’d all need to act completely normally, mixing and not being especially concerned over hygiene.

Whereas the healthier old and vulnerable might be able to isolate effectively, I don’t see how the very vulnerable would, with their need for personal care. It’s hard to wipe someone’s bum in a hazmat suit!

Bearing in mind we’d be letting run absolutely rampant amongst non-vulnerable groups to get to 40m infections, even if protections were put in place, it would be impossible to hermetically seal off the most vulnerable in a bubble where they weren’t exposed to it.