Coronavirus may have infected half of UK population — Oxford study

[Lycidas]

‘New epidemiological model shows vast majority of people suffer little or no illness.’

www.ft.com/content/5ff6469a-6dd8-11ea-89df-41bea055720b

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“The research presents a very different view of the epidemic to the modelling at Imperial College London, which has strongly influenced government policy. “I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model,” said Prof Gupta.

However, she was reluctant to criticise the government for shutting down the country to suppress viral spread, because the accuracy of the Oxford model has not yet been confirmed and, even if it is correct, social distancing will reduce the number of people becoming seriously ill and relieve severe pressure on the NHS during the peak of the epidemic.”

A glimmer of hope. They’re gonna start with the antibody testing very soon.

Jesus alloutoffucks have you read the article? The study is authored by
Oxford’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious disease group ie not political
Why are you so invested in it being wrong?

@MarginalGain If it was peer reviewed it would have been published in a scientific journal and then summary of it in newspapers.

It's impossible to get the perfect balance between just the right amount of restrictions to keep the NHS operational and preserving the economy as much as possible.

In a year's time I'd much prefer to look back at there having been an over reaction than an under reaction. Because an over reaction will cost money and leave the country with a big debt. But an under reaction? I cannot imagine how bad the consequences of that could end up.

No one yet knows how bad, or not actually that serious, Coronavirus might be if caught by most of the population in a very short period of time. Nor do they know what damage this would cause to our society.

@MarginalGain Because it was published in the FT, that is a political decision. A proper scientific paper would be published in a reputable scientific journal.

And even on a quick read it makes some assumptions that do not stand up to scrutiny. I do not think this would be published in a reputable scientific journal without major revisions.

And if you think scientists are never used for political reasons then you are very naive. That is why the process of peer review is so crucial.

Someone asked if the imperial data is peer reviewed? Has anyone answered?

The Imperial study hadn’t been peer reviewed when the government acted on it.

Maggie the test they are using doesn’t appear to be over sensitive. Some patients aren’t testing positive until they are morbidly ill despite presenting with the symptoms. There may be a large number of false negatives or in mild cases the viral load drops of very quickly. It’s such a new virus that science is playing catch up.

Someone asked if the imperial data is peer reviewed? Has anyone answered?

I'm fairly certain not (in the traditional, published sense). In practice it's had more rigorous peer review than many studies because it's been interrogated and accpeted by the UK's top experts.

It's can't really be subject to more testing until it's predictions are tested in reality.

Apologies, I've been dipping in and out, but I do think it's raising some good questions.

I am a statistical modeller for a living, not in epidemics, but I have enough 'informed' knowledge to read the paper and understand it at a level more than the average lay person. And so do some other posters as well. I think we are all saying the same thing, in that we are all fairly critical of the model.

However, equally as questioned, the Imperial model is more sophisticated but not necessarily correct either. This is the problem with models - they rely on assumptions and often backward looking, when looking forward may not follow the same trajectory.

Every model I, and any statistician, builds comes with a string of assumptions and caveats. Judgement and expertise can help guide those, but errors can and do stack up.

It's not actually that unusual to have preprints of academic papers bypass the usual peer review scrutiny - have a look at Nature, Science, The Lancet et al and they are currently publishing online a lot of Covid-19 related scientific papers that haven't undergone peer review, but are being published in an effort to get rapidly unfolding knowledge 'out there'.

The only way to know how good any model is, is to fit it to actual data and understand the error being actual and predicted.

But the important thing, irrespective of the model , is we just need more widespread testing.

This is next level delusion. I’m all for a balanced argument and discussion of different theories but the facts to date are empirical. With the exception of countries who are hiding their stats of course. The disinformation on this thread is dangerous and smacks of straw clutching. Why, in the face of these drastic government measures are people still deep in denial? The virus is called SARS COV 2. Even if that’s the only bit of information you glean, it tells you all you need to know!

We can all speculate and ruminate until the cows come home but until a few months have passed we won’t know whether the right moves have been made or not.

*This is entirely detached from the enormous scale of preventable deaths, direct and indirect, that we accept every year.

I don't mean to be callous, but let's not close our eyes to the fact it's a pretty niche group of people who are wiling to change their lives to help the 50,000 people dying of starvation every day.*

Quite. The same people aghast that someone might not care about their grandma probably do not care or think for a second about the millions that die a year of malaria, or malnutrition, or in wars (often killed by weapons made in the UK). But now the deaths could be coming here, they're suddenly the most virtuous and caring person on earth.

The same person lecturing everyone about not going out probably buys clothes made by children working 16 hours a day.

Whilst arguments for and against lockdown go on, in the meantime, the NHS becomes more overloaded.

Those who feel this is an infringement on civil liberties, what would you do?

With no lockdown (many British people have more than proved they are not capable of social distancing to help the situation), numbers of infected would continue to grow, maybe quickly and burn the virus out, but during this process who would care for the huge numbers of patients requiring hospital stays in order to recover? Spikes in deaths would surely increase as fewer patients could be effectively treated.

It seems that plenty of people want an excuse to claim this is still just the flu.

Clever deflection to claim the FT is a socialist publication, thereby wasting people’s time arguing that it (demonstrably) isn’t.
The more you see it, the better you recognise it.

And if you think scientists are never used for political reasons then you are very naive. That is why the process of peer review is so crucial.
Ok so tell us about how the imperial model? Was it political, or uniquely unbiased?

This all feels like a paralel reality or a social experiment.

I read this paper earlier.
The news articles on it exhibit poor reporting. It’s not saying half the population is infected - they’re saying they could be depending on the as yet unknown parameters, and that we need antibody testing to find out ASAP.

(There isn’t any science in the paper BTW, it’s laying out a model. And whilst it should be peer reviewed, researchers working on this are all releasing things as soon as they can, to help the global effort.)

Look at the graph on p4 - the different possible parameters generate the different coloured lines. According to some parameters we’re early on in the infection cycle (like the Imperial paper suggested) - but change those parameters to being a bit more infectious and a bit less lethal and we would be later on. It could even be very infectious and not very lethal and then we would be very late on, with 50-70% of the population infected.
TLDR - there’s a wide range of where we could be - so we need to sample with the antibody tests to find out!

I think even a random sample of 1000 people would be enough to set the parameters fairly accurately. Until we get that we don’t know what we’re dealing with, and we need to isolate completely from everyone outside our household.

F

An interesting article in the Telegraph. Most of the article is behind a paywall, but the comments are interesting

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/03/24/hope-havent-overreacted-coronavirus-wrecked-grandsons-future/

@TheReelSlimShady Nature and The Lancet do not publish papers without having people who understand the subject matter read the paper first and approve that it is meets a reasonable scientific rigour. The FT are journalists who largely know about economic matters. They do not have the expertise to do that. Also if you read publications like Nature, other experts will write in and disagree with elements of reports.

Another key point is that Nature and The Lancet are aimed at people who can understand the papers and carry out a reasonable critique themselves on its contents. I could not carry out a reasonable critique on most papers in The Lancet I suspect although I have occasionally read it, but I do read Nature when I get the chance. This is very different from publishing in a national newspaper like the FT where the bast majority of the readership do not have that knowledge and are unable to assess whether the study has any validity at all.

Remember just because a scientific paper has been written it does not mean the science actually stands up. We have had scientific papers claiming there is a gay gene, that there are male and female brains and that autism is caused by a vaccine. All were bollocks.

The government in the UK has wanted to from the beginning pursue a policy of letting people die and safeguarding the economy. We are already heading for at least as many deaths as Italy. You can argue all you want whether it is better to let people die and safeguard the economy, that is a political decision. But the scientific evidence simply does not support that there will not be a lot of deaths without more government intervention. Even this paper shows a graph of over a quarter of a million deaths that finish suspiciously on an upward curve but without any conclusion.

Sorry i would write more buy my internet is shit tonight, so incredibly slow.

This is a political study. Not a scientific one I don't know, @alloutoffucks It's a model looking at something very different from the Imperial model.

The Oxford model is suggesting that if you look at the number of high risk patients who have developed COVID-19 that might indicate that there are more asymptomatic people than has been estimated if you consider the percentage of the population who are in that category and we urgently need widespread serological testing of the population in general to understand the real picture.

If that is the case, it could mean that the curve would be a lot flatter than the Imperial model but still nowhere near flat enough to avoid the NHS running out of critical care beds. You don't even need a model to predict that, we can see it for ourselves in Italy.

Very very interesting and intriguing thread.

The u tube video of the German man was very interesting.

Is this why German figures are so low? Because they record what was killing them initially anyway?

Someone mentioned something about the elderly allowed to die without being asphyxiated by covid.

Well I had to spend 2 weeks watching df being asphyxiated by heart failure 🤔.

Maybe we need to look at how we let old people with terminal conditions and die? He had to hang in for 2 weeks longer than he wished it was utterly shameful and cruel.

I took my dc out a week before school shut. We should have done what we are doing now weeks ago.

I don't think Boris in any way shape or form wants to be hang onto any draconian laws either.

It's crucial in any extreme situation that we hear alternatives and as ever the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle.

Once more with feeling

I have had your exact symptoms!

I think even a random sample of 1000 people would be enough to set the parameters fairly accurately. Until we get that we don’t know what we’re dealing with, and we need to isolate completely from everyone outside our household.

But what about the people they HAVE tested? Are they not random enough as they've largely been in hospital?

@Somerville has explained it perfectly and succinctly, both what the paper actually says and what has happened - the media has jumped on a headline that does not reflect what the paper says at all.

@Somerville Another point is that it has been reported that the virus has already mutated. There has not been enough research to assess whether both versions have the same mortality rate. I understand, although I may be incorrect, that it is largely the new mutated version in the UK.

I am under no illusions that a sizeable proportion of the population think people like me should be left to die rather than have a hit on the economy or have their DCs exams postponed. Indeed those exact words have been said on MN.
And I think this has been published in newspapers as part of a campaign to try and get the public to accept that.
Personally I always listen to WHO. They are the real experts. If there is any decent research coming out they will incorporate it into their advice.

This may sound a little callous, and I apologise for that.

Either the death rate is high, and lockdown is the right idea.

Or the death rate is lower than we think, and an extended lockdown is damaging to the economy with little benefit.

Right now we don't know which for certain.

But some countries are unable or unwilling to lockdown.

So, isn't the sensible approach to lockdown and see what happens in the countries that do and don't lockdown, and then make our choice based on that?

Why do we need the UK to be the guinea pig?