Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 2

[Barracker]

A follow on thread from here

Please try to keep it data driven, factual and civil.

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

Interesting Eresh, I also remember ND as a bit of a turning point in consciousness. Then Thurs 12 March was the day that Boris Johnson announced that people with symptoms should stay at home for 7 days.

So this week, if 4 weeks/a month is the relevant period, and deaths reported for the previous day in fact include some deaths from some days previously (as per Barracker), the figures announced this coming week will not reflect major social distancing; and nor, really, will the next week's figures (4 weeks later than w/b 9 March) although as you say work events were being cancelled by then.

Thanks for the thread

I don't know exactly how cases in other countries which aren't hospital cases get closed as recoveries - as a matter of fact I don't know what criteria makes a case conclusively recovered in the UK either. A negative test perhaps? Discharge? I don't know.

But deaths as a proportion of serious cases must surely be higher than in countries such as Iceland as referenced by Puffinshop, where deaths are measured as a percentage of a much larger cohort of confirmed cases?

"is it true that only deaths following a positive test in hospital are recorded as official COVID deaths here in the UK?"

Today's announcement read: "As of 5pm on 28 March, of those hospitalised in the UK, 1,228 have sadly died."

Wow so they really are only classifying the hospital fatalities as CV deaths. Do we know if there’s posthumous testing taking place?

That is worrying if it’s just the hospitalised cases. Or is it just because they’re only testing in hospitals at the moment?

I’m wondering if post mortems (even brief ones - if there can be such a thing) are being performed at all, or at least if they will be when things peak?

So this week, if 4 weeks/a month is the relevant period,

I seem to remember re Italy and China they said the average time to death was 17 days. But maybe from symptoms rather than infection? The 14 day incubation period mentioned in the Guardian is longer than the government estimate that most people will develop symptoms within 5 days.

Can I please ask, at the end of the previous thread someone posted a REALLY interesting and informative article that had so much information and made for some truly hopeful reading.
I just... don’t understand though.
Having read it, I’d be so convinced that actuslly a lot of this anxiety is unfounded and for the most part, this virus is not as terrible as we are being told.
But... that doesn’t add up. Those research studies, if valid, will also be being looked at by experts. And yet experts have advised us to set up field hospitals ahd temporary morgues. That doesn’t add up?
Neither do the scenes of people dying on camp beds in Italy. If the article is correct in any way at all... why are countries even REQUIRING all this disruption and cost.
Sorry I just really hope someone might be able to help me understand. I desperately want to believe that articles sentiment but if just can’t be the case.

Re: the only testing in hospital. I think personally the figures dying of cv at home will be negligible, as people will go to hospital once their symptoms progress. There will be exceptions to that but I suspect that if it wasn't just people being tested in hospital, if it was anyone with symptoms, the %of those that died after testing positive would actually be much much lower.

I think personally the figures dying of cv at home will be negligible, as people will go to hospital once their symptoms progress.

Unsure of the answer to this, and I appreciate others may also have no idea. But will this change as hospitals become even more overwhelemed?

Interesting article in the sun today re the increased deaths in 2018. The beast from the east was 2017-18 and apparently it increased flu death to an excess 50,000.

It's not my go to paper and obviously it's a tabloid but there's some facts to be gained from the blurb and conjecture.

@Barracker In Italy the people considered "cured" have 2 negative test results taken (iirc) 3 days apart. I can look up the exact wording later (about to do a lesson) but it's something like that.
Our first case (we have had 7 cases confirmed in my town, 2 of whom have died and 2 are cured so far) was "cured" last week after contracting the virus about a month ago now. We get very detailed briefings every day from national, regional and local authorities.

I have posted elsewhere - but labs are running low on one of the reagents required to do the RT- PCR tests and have been told to restrict who gets a test.

This will affect testing numbers - and the type of people who get a test.

Place marking

Perhaps gvt only interested in testing deaths in hospital as those are the stats they need when planning forward for hospital beds and ventilators?

We know from posters on here who probably have it, that at any other time, experiencing symptoms like they are, that they would be hospitalised. So we know that it is only the sickest of the sick who are being admitted.

I think a lot of the info being given to us in the briefings is designed in some way to control our ( the population as a whole) levels of panic, and not necessarily the absolute truth.

I'm looking to the figures and the briefings for some kind of truth and reality, and I'm not finding it. I'm finding what I think is more truth and reality here, which is because we are, as a community, trying to sift through the info we are given, the things we see reported and the realities people post here.

@Bimbleboo

I had some similar conversations with friends who still believe that the this virus is just a fleeting flu. They're missing the bigger picture here. This reaction, by the government has nothing to with how bad the virus is, even though it is more deadly than the flu, but only marginally so and less deadly than MERS etc. It is about being able to treat the patients they get with the resources they have. It is all about resource allocation.

Flu and other diseases drip in over months and months and healthcare systems usually have some capacity to treat patients (a revolving door- one in one out type thing). This virus is spreading really quickly, like wildfire, not dripping in over months, and if a massive chunk of the population get it all at once, it will overwhelm the healthcare system and cause many many more deaths.

A friend said to me " Well we didn't go nuts during the Aids epidemic, we didn't go nuts when SARS happened or swine flu- why now?"

I told her: flickering flame vs wildfire (a wildfire that we don't quite know how to extinguish). We don't all want to get it all at once- that's the point.

Interestingly, a cousin who live sin Vancouver told me the other day" You brits usually understate everything; from the weather, to how you guys feel on any given day, so when an expert or politician in the UK now says "Things will be worse/bad"- they usually mean terrible"

We are one day closer for things to hopefully getting better though :)

I wanted to add that I watched a clip of and Italian IC doctor in Bergamo who said in response to our early indifference, that this is not "just the flu, flu isn't killing people, this is pneumonia".
I'd like to know why there is such disparate outcomes between Spain, France and Germany?

Oops, posted on the old thread....

This is interesting - in one town in italy they tested everyone after the first symptomatic case and found 3% of the population were infected, but mainly asymptomatic
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/20/eradicated-coronavirus-mass-testing-covid-19-italy-vo

I hope that means the virus has actually spread far quicker than thought and we can get out of lockdown sooner

Really governments should start doing some random testing to identify the underlying infection rate

Guardian article today from a lead epidemiologist estimates 2-3% of UK population are already/ have been infected with up to 40% asymptomatic. That would mean the death rate is nearer to 1 in a thousand (appreciate that there’s a lag on this though)

Yes, I wish we would do as the WHO advises and test, test, test.

I think Iceland's figures also showed 50% of carriers were asymptomatic?

Barracker - 'every single case in the UK represents someone ill enough to be hospitalised.' - initially the govt were 'contact tracing' , which would have included people with no symptoms. Only once community transmission was established did they switch to testing only hospitalised people. As far as I recall.

Why the figures are so slippery- testing methodology changed part way through.

deaths are being underreported

Kings are saying they have experienced, and reported 31 COVID-19 deaths, but the National figures only state 11.

If what Kings are saying is happening in other trusts, the actual deaths may be three times higher than the official compiled stats released each day.

The nonsense about delaying stats due to informing families is utterly disingenuous. The govt do not require permission or consent from families to release anonymised centralised stats for the country.

Has anyone been able to locate the trust by trust breakdown stats original NHS England source? It must be somewhere!

The lack of transparency in reporting methodology is frustrating.

Marking place.

Scrimpshaw you're absolutely right. As soon as I hit post I wondered if I should have added that caveat for clarity. Thanks for keeping me honest