Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 3

[Barracker]

Welcome to thread 3 of the daily updates.

Resource links:
Worldometer UK page
Financial Times Daily updates and graphs
HSJ Coronavirus updates
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre
NHS England stats, including breakdown by Hospital Trust
Covidly.com to filter graphs using selected data filters
ONS statistics for CV related deaths outside hospitals, released weekly each Tuesday

Thank you to all contributors for their factual, data driven, and civil discussions.

The graph posted by Baracker seems to show that we are reaching the peak here

I don't think it does, sorry. Not yet.

Barracker's volcano is superb 👏🏼

I also don't think the UK is yet at peak
As I said of Italy, it takes several days past the peak before one can be sure it has happened,
but e.g the FT curve looks like it still has a way to go before flattening

I presume that "peak" means "peak daily deaths"
So we are looking at 2-4 weeks after the "peak cases" point ?

Gloucestershire numbers of people hospitalised are increasing, according to GloucestershireLive (no numbers given though). They've made Tewkesbury Hospital Covid-19 only. They're closed for normal business.

My understanding is that the US will continue to climb because there isn't just one centre. New York may (hopefully) level off, but as it does somewhere else may be climbing.

The population of the US is around the same as the populations of Italy, Spain, UK, France, Italy and Germany (very approximately) so their peak will obviously be both higher and take longer to reach.

Isn't the FT data normally out by now?

For the UK too, Birmingham, London etc probably have some time offset between start and peak

Most countries will have running totals that are the summation of many local concentrations with different timing and gradients

Part of what makes predictions so difficult,
including for national govts with far more detailled data and continual expert input

John Burn-Murdoch@jburnmurdoch (FT stats geek)

Also reassuring to hear that Ferguson's own estimates are in line with mine last night,

that UK is around a week from peak daily deaths

< note: Ferguson also estimated that max 10% of UK pop have immunity so far >

Is anyone looking at covid19.healthdata.org/united-kingdom

I found it when looking for cases per state in the US. I've been looking around the countries, it's projecting 2 days to peak in New York and 10 days til peak in the UK. It gives dates for social distancing/lockdown and also looks at resources, and seems to be updating as countries make more available, but I don't fully understand how it's done.

It's linked from Worldometer who describe it as "COVID-19 forecasting model updated in real-time created by Dr. Christopher Murray and researchers in Washington state and used by the US Government."

That seems to be the data behind the Irish Times and Metro articles linked to earlier in the thread, the ones which suggested 66,000 UK deaths.

I continue to be confused about deaths at home and in nursing homes.
Are they included or not
Have they been included in the past
Are they included or not in the same way by every country
Are they included only if tested for Corona while alive or post-mortem
If people die and Corona is not looked for is that a way of “hiding” the numbers.
Do some countries want to massage the numbers (not just Chine)
Does it matter.
Well it does matter if we are to continue to compare the progress of infections and deaths between countries and MORE importantly will politicians be making decisions based on those comparisons.

Exactly Michelle and I don't know how many ways he can say it will be reviewed as said. What I think they want is for him to say something that goes against PM BoJo or say something they can rip him to shreds about later on. Because they have the answer that cabinet will review as per governments first statement. But it's 6 days away!
I'm really not a Raab fan due to his beliefs. But the guy isn't PM. He's been thrown into it and they need to give him a break.
No one has the answers to this crisis - not least a stand in Pm of 48 hours

They are not included in the daily government updates.
They are included in the ONS stats on a weekly basis, but we only have those stats up to 27th March (I think)
They are included in either of those if corona is on the death certificate
I personally don't think anyone in the UK is "hiding" numbers; there may be a few for whom Corona isn't referred to on the death cert but who have it, and vice versa, but I suspect numbers are relatively small.
Some countries may be massaging numbers; in my opinion many more (especially poorer countries) simply won't know them accurately. I think European countries are, by and large, doing their best to be accurate, even if some results are delayed, and those are the numbers that can be used for comparisons and decision making.

Just my thoughts.

Physalia could that be after Cheltenham? It's the right timeframe?

Gfplux CMO press briefing again today:

NHS data does not include care homes
ONS data does (but was not available until recently)

Some countries, e.g. France, have recently added care homes to their total, which is causing a large blip there, that distorts the real trend of flattening

"If people die and Corona is not looked for is that a way of “hiding” the numbers."

China now alleged to have covered up large numbers of deaths
(one reason given why Western govts underestimated the crisis in the crucial early weeks)

For UK and other democratic countries, it seems entirely a logistics problem:
obtaining the data, cause of death etc of so many extra deaths within a short time

Existing systems may be struggling with this and with collating care home deaths which were not previously considered urgent to collect

There will always be a lag of some days in collecting and collating deaths from so many health authorities to produce a national total

That was my thinking, itsgettingweird - should have said Seems like the right sort of time for the racegoers and racecourse workers to start showing up (Lee Mack, Andrew Parker-Bowles and so on think they got it there), and then after that, the people it was passed to (lots of the parents of the kids I teach attend).

Why "2 days to peak in New York and 10 days til peak in UK". Did the US lock down earlier than the UK?

ChicChic, I think it's that New York got it early and fast - the peak in the US as a whole is projected as 9 days away, as is New Jersey (currently 2nd on the US list)

Countries don't all follow the same curves & timing

That's because of differences in important factors
e.g. international transport links, demographics, health services, population density etc
as well as measures taken by their govts and compliance with these

Also, these differences exist between the different states of the USA
and the states can choose to act very differently due to the US Federal structure - policies & health services affected a lot by which party runs each state

NYC was hit early & badly, so took tough measures earlier than most of the rest of the USA
Its cases and deaths curves look much worse than other US states or the US overall

Also much worse than the UK, or even London

The UK closed schools on 23 March, NYC on 18 March
but that difference is probably not the main factor in such disparity

A city (NYC) and a country (UK) will have many other differences in factors too

Even school closures can differ. In Spain, NO children have been at school since they closed, whether their parents are key workers or not.

Same here (Italy) Nationally schools closed on 5/3. Some areas beforehand. Totally closed.

I'm confused by the graph in this article
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52197594

At the end it says "Nearly 10% of people aged over 80 will die in the next year, Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, at the University of Cambridge, points out, and the risk of them dying if infected with coronavirus is almost exactly the same."

Surely the 10% who die of coronavirus are separate to the other 10%? Seems really odd to correlate them like that, almost as if they are suggesting CV isnt an issue. It's very confusing.

deaths at home and in nursing homes
Does it matter

In short, no.

On a very basic level - why are the government tracking and studying this data set?

We (the public) were introduced to the idea of "flattening the curve" very early on. Thereby we started tracking the data, predicting the peak, seeing if our curve flattened. Why?

Because what matters in this data is hospital capacity. We flatten the curve so we don't overload the NHS. We need to know we have enough hospital beds and ventilators.

Deaths in care homes and and at home are (and probably will remain) irrelevant in the mathematical analysis of if the NHS will overload. Because by their nature, these deaths have not impacted the NHS hospitals, didn't need hospital beds or ventilators.

So if we start at the basic question - will the NHS cope with "the peak"? Then only patients in hospital matter. Deaths outside of hospital are, frankly, completely irrelevant to the purpose of the study.

I know that sounds cold and callous, but data analysis often is. The deaths in care homes and at home do matter in terms of long term tracking of the pandemic. But in prioritising, these are not important statistics for the government to track in order to manage the live situation we are in.

If the only reason for tracking information is to protect the health system then the numbers of cases/deaths in other settings doesn’t matter, as much.
But if you want to save lives those numbers and patterns do matter. You have to know where the disease is to stop it and contain it.
If you want to be able to ease restrictions you have to know where the disease is and control it.
If Covid is still running rampant through care homes, staff still go in and out, the children if those staff still go to school, families will eventually want to to visit loved ones. Information about non hospital deaths and cases is important to eventually lifting restrictions.

Reuters Special Report: Johnson listened to his scientists about coronavirus - but they were slow to sound the alarm

Fascinating background of all the scientific committees and how they advised the govt
UK epidemic planning was more for a bad flu and the scientists seemed slow to adapt to the actual threat

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-path-speci-idUSKBN21P1VF

Surely the 10% who die of coronavirus are separate to the other 10%? Seems really odd to correlate them like that, almost as if they are suggesting CV isnt an issue. It's very confusing.

Agree. When I look at the graph I can see what they're trying to say about the risk of dying from coronavirus (Spiegelhalter is an expert on risk) but I don't think they've compared female and male death risk from coronavirus with risk of female/male death at x age.