Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 4

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Welcome to thread 4 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 one thing I have taken from this is that the tests are hugely inaccurate. And also we in this country haven't tested anywhere near the number of people who have had the virus.

Deaths vs cases - it's actually nigh on impossible to get an accurate picture country by country.

I mentioned earlier someone I know who died with CV. She was tested post mortem so I wouldn't assume that all deaths outside of hospital aren't going to be recorded.

On another thread a nurse screen shot an email from her trust that said to be tested as staff they had to be within the first 72 hours of infection for it to be reliable. Since we aren't testing until people go to hospital, with a typical admission point on day 7, that suggests our testing in this country is likely to have a lot of false negatives? Unless the thing about it not being reliable after 72 hours is just for mild cases?

FingonTheValiant - yes 6th really. Finding it really surprising that Switzerland is 7th. I'd always thought of the Swiss as hugely efficient and with a first class healthcare service.

All died at home. None were tested, none will be included in the covid figures. Tragic, and also I find worrying. How inaccurate are our figures?
I don’t think we’ll ever truly know how many deaths were due to this virus. That’s why the ‘excess mortality’ rate has started to be discussed (with some people using it to minimise events, they don’t seem to realise/are wilfully ignoring the time lag between infection/hospital admission and death. I’ve had to hide a few Facebook contacts 🙄}.

Some people are using the ‘died with’ phrasing as some kind of gotcha, but with the risk of infection and bodies piling up, full post mortems to determine contributing factors/true cause of death are unrealistic and potentially putting more lives at risk.

Vast swathes of younger people (who have presumably never had to register a death) seem to think multiple causes of death are unusual, but in my limited experience the main cause is often not what you are expecting?

Personal example (through the haze of memory and grief, so I might be slightly confused on the specifics):
My mother died of ovarian cancer 15 years ago.
Back then the 5 year survival rate was less than 20 % and she was four and half years post diagnosis.
I say my mother died of ovarian cancer, but her cause of death was recorded as ‘perforated bowel leading to septic shock’.
Her bowel perforated because some ovarian cancer cells had invaded it (her actual ovaries were long gone). She’d been in remission for a couple of years and relapsed, her first dose of chemo (the second time around) destroyed those cells, damaging her bowel.

If she hadn’t had cancer, she wouldn’t have needed chemo, if the doctors had realised the cancer had invaded her bowel, they wouldn’t have given her chemo (but would’ve instead offered palliative care) and the chemo wouldn’t have caused the perforated bowel. No perforated bowel would mean no septic shock and my mother would not have died that day.
If my mother had been offered (and accepted) palliative care she would still have died, probably within a year, but the recorded cause of death would be completely different.

Can you tell I am getting annoyed with the ‘bUt tHeY WouLd DiE thIS yEaR AnYwaY’ crowd?
.

I think the testing within 72 hours wasn't all testing but rather the nasal and pharyngeal tests are negative because the virus tends to move down to upper respiratory infection after this point. Which is why they use CT scans as well because there is a very clear pattern in the lungs.

The populations of France, Spain Italy and the U.K. aren't "similar"

We have the highest population.
We also have half the population of the USA which then makes sense when you see their figures.

That's right itsgettingweird - but chest x-rays/scans don't seem to be used as definitive diagnosis; if a patient continues to test negative they remain in a non-Covid ward infecting everyone else

Ireland is now contact tracing without waiting for tests to come back. They are making clinical diagnoses (sometimes over the phone) and doing pre-emptive contact tracing. Hence Leo going back to work - all first calls to those with symptoms are done by medical staff (again anecdotal, sorry, I'm struggling to find anything other than the IT article which is behind a paywall).

I'd always thought of the Swiss as hugely efficient and with a first class healthcare service

There’s little that even the best healthcare system can do to prevent CV from taking its course. You could spend £100k per person per year and be attending in by a dozen doctors with the world’s best equipment, and it would make the difference for many people unfortunately.

wouldn’t not would!

France 67 million, Italy 60 million, Spain 47 million, UK 66.6 million, Germany 83 million.

England is 56 million - none of them are a long way off.

Ireland is obviously much smaller and worth comparing to NI and Scotland perhaps?

Half the population of the US? Where are you getting that figure it getting weird?
US population is approx 330million.

Looking at Europe only in Worldometer, and looking at deaths per million population (and excluding the little countries like Andorra), UK are 6th. Sweden has overtaken Ireland with Norway and even Denmark much further down.

"The populations of France, Spain Italy and the U.K. aren't "similar""

They are all medium-sized countries, similar enough for the purposes of comparing death rates, since the numbers of daily deaths are such a fuzzy figure
Not like vs San Marino

The FT geek discussed this before, inlcuding on a very useful video about why they choose various parameters

It's standard epidemiological practice just to take the numbers, without weighting according to population
The early spread of a disease is not much affected by whether there are 10 million or 80 million in a country

It's only at a later stage, when you come to consider the impact of the total deaths - how quickly a country can recover afterwards -
and herd immunity, that numbers wrt population size becomes important

www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/

USA has a population approximately five times ours, we are very similar to France and Italy and about 50% bigger than Spain.

God, every so often it hits me that I could be talking about a fucking Eurovison result and I feel sick,

Sorry, really sorry.

Lang that's what I keep saying on those threads too. My relative died of Covid. She was a thoroughly eccentric 80 year old smoking diabetic. Yes, she might well have died this year. But not on that day, in that place, on her own except for doctors and nurses.

"I'd always thought of the Swiss as hugely efficient and with a first class healthcare service"

Main reasons why the death rate in Switzerland is higher than expected:
(still better than UK though)

1. Switzerland closed schools, but hasn't implemented as strict social distancing as elsewhere e,g, friends can still meet up socially in each others houses

and people can gather outside in groups of up to 5 friends;
groups of any 5 children to play

2. The central govt had planned for a pandemic, but some of the actual prepping work , buying PPE - and getting the budget - had to be left to the local canton level

Unfortunately people in the cantons didn't vote enough money to prep, so the crisis found them with inadeqate stocks of PPE etc

Thanks DerbyGerbil. I suppose I thought they would be in the same situation (proportionally) as Germany. (Though they have as much in common with Italy and France as with Germany I suppose).

DuLang, I'm really sorry about your mum. And your relative, TheCanterburyWhales. It's not how anyone would choose to go.

Can you tell I am getting annoyed with the ‘bUt tHeY WouLd DiE thIS yEaR AnYwaY’ crowd?

completely agree and understand so sorry you are having to read that.

Sorry also about your poor relative, thecanterburywhales

Switzerland is right next to Italy and France, the bordering regions were/are massively affected.

Crossed with your response BigChocFrenzy. Thanks. Would 2) have been in any way needing a referendum? I used to think that was a really democratic way to handle things, but perhaps when time is of the essence, it's not such a good idea.

The rate of deaths per infections must be massively inaccurate. There must be loads of people who have had it and didn’t know or had it and recovered and aren’t included.

Rate of deaths per infections doesn't make much sense to calculate because it depends on the testing strategy.