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.

Bejing

I'm all for minimising deaths etc but you or someone else else said this is bringing out the totalitarian in many!

The comments I've seen today in social media are shameful and likely to want many to just top themselves.

The death rate on the diamond princess was around 0.5 to 0.6%. Including asymptomatic cases.

I don’t fancy one in two hundred people dying of this in the next few months.

Apparently lab in Iceland said there could be 40 strains but its not verified yet.

I err on the side of caution I just wish we had taken swifter action weeks ago before it got a hold in the UK.

If the results are confirmed, they imply that fewer than one in a thousand of those infected with Covid-19 become ill enough to need hospital treatment, said Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology, who led the study.

Someone check my reasoning and maths please:
The author claims that only 1 in 1000 may require hospitalisation. (or fewer)
Italy currently has 69,176 hospitalised confirmed CV-19 cases, as of today.
The population of Italy is apparently 60,485,322
Therefore, if her supposition is correct, as of today, 114% of Italy's population has CV19.

Umm...

Whatever the true scale, when a 100,000 square meter exhibition centre is being repurposed as a hospital by the fucking army, it is beyond time to lockdown. And I say that as a suddenly impoverished freelancer, and mum of a distraught teenager who can’t take the exams she’s worked hard for nor celebrate her 18th with friends.
Lockdown is shit.
Losing lives is immeasurable worse.

@NathanNathan the tests are not random at all. Initially we only tested people who had travelled to certain areas or had been in contact with a known case, we didn't test people with the symptoms. Now we only test the seriously ill. That tells you nothing about how many people have been infected as it only tests a very small subsection of the population.

Also, the Oxford report is saying there is a need for serological testing - looking for antibodies. The tests currently being used are testing for the virus' DNA so it doesn't identify people who have been infected and recovered, only those who are currently infected.

alloutoffucks, I obviously can't speak for others but I suspect very few people think it's ok to disregard those with underlying issues and the elderly.
But it doesn't change the fact that if the economy is trashed, NHS funding in the future is likely to suffer- this will also affect these groups and many others.
Also, it seems at the moment there's no exit plan. So what happens next?
But that's not to say I am ignoring the latest advice regarding leaving the house.
But I think it is OK to question what is happening.

Could someone please sense check my calculations as to why the report is already demonstrably wrong?

I'm wondering why they went to press with the "fewer than one in a thousand need hospitalisation" suggestion when the basic maths suggest this is impossible, already?

No doubt I've missed something, right? Otherwise that would be embarrassing.

Does anyone else feel like this study is a bit like the ones run by the tobacco industry about lung cancer?

I’m just going to check the numbers back in the actual paper, Barracker.

Barracker, you give the total confirmed cases figure in Italy as total hospitalisations.

In places like Vo, many tested positive and were not hospitalised.

However, I don't think this means you are wrong. I very much doubt that anywhere near everyone in Italy is infected. There is absolutely zero evidence suggesting this to be the case. If it were true, I would imagine we would expect to see even more deaths amongst the elderly and infirm than we have already.

Below is their explanation of the data they built their model on, Barracker. Today’s figures don’t make up part of that data.
Italy: A time series was obtained from the Italian Department of Civil Protection GitHub
repository [18] (accessed on 17/03/2020). We trimmed the data to the first 15 days of death
counts above zero (21/02/2020 to 06/03/2020) to include only the initial increase free of
effects from local control measures.
It’s not that these researchers have missed that - they modelled a specific set of data and are presenting their (range of) results, based on differing parameters.

Remember everyone, the headline in the FT for this article was Coronavirus may have infected half of UK population — Oxford study.
But on the article itself it was: Fundamental principles of epidemic spread highlight the immediate need for large-scale serological surveys to assess the stage of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic

Journalists should be reading that article properly, applying some critical thinking such as fitting their model against the latest data, and reporting it responsibly.

Thank you, nellodee, this is the kind of correction I'm seeking. I read that only hospitalised cases were tested. So I used confirmed cases as a proxy for hospitalisations.
Presumably a small proportion of total tests were in the community, prior to Italy changing testing strategy, as we did in the UK also.

It would be useful to know the exact number of hospitalisations in Italy. I don't have this figure.

I still suspect we may still end up with the mathematical impossibility of more than 100% population infected (with numbers continuing to rise daily)!

I completely agree with blackswan

Thanks Somerville

I would imagine that a massive majority of the confirmed cases were hospitalisations, and I agree that if you did have the figures it would still probably turn out at close to, or over 100% (and almost certainly above the 60-80% being touted as necessary for herd immunity).

I take back what I said about it not contradicting the Imperial model. Their model is suggesting that by 6 March, before lockdown, 60-80% of the population of Italy had already been exposed to the virus based the 1% and 0.1% of the population being at risk of serious illness from COVID-19. So based on the R0 values they have used (2.25-2.75) Italy should have reached the herd immunity threshold now so new cases should be rapidly declining.

To be fair, they are not saying their model is correct just that we need widespread serological testing so we have the data to understand where we are in the epidemic and model correctly.

Following with interest

No problem Barracker and aye, I agree with you both that the most optimistic line on the Gupta model doesn’t pass a basic smell test. Something feels off. (Unfortunately.)

I hope people are happy with this lockdown when the crashing recession hits after this and we take years to recover from it

Hopefully we will all be alive to suffer through the recession, @JaneEyre7.

The only thing worse than living through a recession is missing it because you died.

Sadly, I agree with you too Barracker and Somerville

I'm concluding from the summaries of studies etc on this thread that the reason hospitals are getting overwhelmed may be that in previous years if an elderly patient (or one who also had a health condition) caught a flu bug they would just go to bed and hope for the best, and some would survive and some wouldn't.

But with the current panic, these people or their relatives are now calling ambulances and all going to A&E.

@MarginalGain

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/

Some breakdowns of pre-existing conditions, age, sex, here.

But with the current panic, these people or their relatives are now calling ambulances and all going to A&E.
No that’s bollocks. Paramedics are testing people’s oxygen levels at home and only taking them to hospital if there are significant concerns. And then, after a quick scan or other diagnostics (to, say, rule out a heart attack or blood clot) people are sent home again without admission unless they really (really) need it.

Katie2017 because this particular virus spreads very fast and this appears to be the best approach for a lot of countries. And because, in practical terms, in year 2020 we are better equipped to try this approach.